South-east of country rocked as rescuers struggle to find survivors of first quake
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake has shaken Afghanistan as the death toll from the devastating quake on Sunday rose to more than 2,200.
It struck south-eastern regions on Thursday night, according to the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany. It was not immediately clear how much damage there was.
The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, faced the Senate finance committee in a tense and combative hearing on Thursday, during which lawmakers questioned his remarks expressing vaccine skepticism, claims that the scientific community is deeply politicized and the ongoing turmoil plaguing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In a hearing lasting more than three hours and ostensibly about the Trump administration’s healthcare agenda, Kennedy defended his leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), claiming that his time at the agency will be focused on “unbiased, politics-free, transparent, evidence-based science in the public interest”.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the suspect who attacked Hollow Water First Nation has also died
One person has been killed and six others injured in a mass stabbing in an Indigenous community in central Canada, according to federal police who said that the the suspect also died in the incident.
The violence occurred in Hollow Water First Nation, a remote community with about 1,000 residents, 217km (135 miles) north of Manitoba’s provincial capital, Winnipeg, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told AFP.
Leaders ask president on call to detail security guarantees US could give to European force in event of ceasefire
European leaders have made fresh efforts to pin down Donald Trump on the level of support he is willing to give Ukraine to push back a Russian advance, and asked him to detail the security guarantees he would provide to any European peacekeeping force inside Ukraine in the event of a lasting ceasefire.
European leaders spoke with Trump by video call on Thursday after first holding a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing” in Paris, co-chaired by Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer.
Michael H Schill led the institution for three years, during which Trump administration slashed nearly $800m
The president of Northwestern University said Thursday that he was stepping down amid a turbulent period marked by clashes with Republican lawmakers and steep federal funding cuts under the Trump administration that forced widespread layoffs.
Michael H Schill, who has led the institution for three years, has been under heavy scrutiny in conservative circles this year. The Trump administration slashed nearly $800m in research funding after sustained criticism from Republicans.
Briton has struggled in uncompetitive Scuderia car
‘It’s been an emotional rollercoaster … but that’s life’
Lewis Hamilton has described his time at Ferrari as an “emotional rollercoaster” as he prepares to drive for the Scuderia at their home grand prix in Monza for the first time this weekend.
Hamilton, who observed bluntly that he had no expectation his first season would prove so “volatile”, has struggled with an uncompetitive car as well as having to adapt to a new team, having enjoyed enormous success in the previous 12 years with Mercedes.
Residents recall smoke, screams and a mountain of bodies at site of ‘one of the biggest tragedies in our recent history’
António Azevedo was in central Lisbon early on Wednesday evening, waiting to gather enough tourists for a ride in his tuk-tuk, when he heard what sounded like dozens of glass containers being dropped into rubbish trucks.
The driver looked around Restauradores Square but saw no trucks, only smoke rising from the lower station of the Elevador da Glória funicular railway, 100 metres from where his vehicle was parked.
The pair, born 16 years apart, will have met at every single major when they enter Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday
Carlos Alcaraz took his final leave from Rod Laver Arena this year consumed by frustration. Losing at the Australian Open, the first grand slam tournament of the year, was painful enough, but Alcaraz’s disappointment was particularly down to how he had lost.
Novak Djokovic had visibly begun to struggle with a leg injury early in their four-set quarter-final, but instead of focusing on his own game, Alcaraz found himself staring across the net and thinking too much about his opponent’s condition rather than about what he needed to win. While the Spaniard’s focus wavered, Djokovic’s difficulties inspired his most offensive, decisive tennis, and he willed himself to a miraculous victory.
Chelsea have until 11pm BST to complete club-record deal
Chelsea are on the verge of signing the United States winger Alyssa Thompson from Angel City on the Women’s Super League’s transfer deadline day, for an upfront fee understood to be just shy of $1.5m (£1.1m), which sources say could climb close to a world-record sum with potential add-ons.
The 20-year-old completed a medical on Thursday in London, after boarding a flight from Los Angeles late on Wednesday night, amid extensive negotiations between the two clubs. All parties are increasingly confident the move will be finalised in time for the 11pm BST transfer deadline.
Airborne particles cause toxic clumps of proteins in brain that are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, study indicates
Fine-particulate air pollution can drive devastating forms of dementia by triggering the formation of toxic clumps of protein that destroy nerve cells as they spread through the brain, research suggests.
Exposure to the airborne particles causes proteins in the brain to misfold into the clumps, which are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease.
Korean rival returns Jones’ 1988 medal in surprise
Park Si-hun: ‘It belongs to you’ at Florida reunion
Bout’s judging remains infamous Olympic scandal
Roy Jones Jr has been handed the Olympic gold medal he was controversially denied in 1988 in an extraordinary act of sportsmanship by the South Korean fighter who beat him.
Hall of Fame boxer Jones shared a video on Wednesday from two years ago that showed Park Si-hun visiting the American’s ranch in Pensacola, Florida to present him with the light middleweight gold medal.
Images of the autocrats at Wednesday’s military parade reflected the shifting global order. But Donald Trump is hastening Beijing’s rise
On Wednesday morning, Beijingers living near Tiananmen Square were issued with cold breakfast packs and ordered to refrain from cooking, lest smoke from stoves cloud the skies above the mammoth military parade. China’s Communist party goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that nothing obscures the message of such performances – in this case, that Xi Jinping is reshaping the global order and that China is, in his words, “unstoppable”.
The parade marked 80 years since the end of the second world war, positioning China as the critical force in victory in the east then, and a force to be similarly reckoned with today as “humanity is again faced with the choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero-sum”, in Mr Xi’s words. China is “not afraid of bullies”.
Washington DC on Thursday sued to stop Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops during the administration’s law enforcement intervention there.
The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, said the hundreds of troops were essentially an “involuntary military occupation”. He argued in the federal lawsuit that the deployment was an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
The designer reinvented power dressing, redefined what it meant to look modern and was the architect of how we dress now
Giorgio Armani dressed all of us. Whether or not you ever had the money for a jacket with an Armani label, you wore a jacket that he invented. He was the mastermind of contemporary style, the architect of how we dress now. If you have worn an unstructured suit with a T-shirt to a wedding; if you have worn muted neutrals to work; if you have thought it might be chic to paint your living room grey: that was Armani.
Armani was working until his final days. Invitations had already been sent out for his next show, to be held on 28 September in the 14th-century courtyard of Milan’s Palazzo Brera. A spectacular party to accompany the show was planned as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the brand, which he founded in the summer of 1975.
The world during Donald Trump’s second presidency has entered a period of danger with “certain similarities to the 30s”, according to Mitch McConnell, the veteran Republican former Senate leader.
McConnell made the comments primarily in reference to tariffs and foreign affairs, in a wide-ranging interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader published on Wednesday as he prepares to enter his final year in office.
The president is targeting Chicago in his latest bid to assert authority over Democratic governance and racial pluralism
“We’re going in,” Donald Trump said on Tuesday, when asked whether national guard troops would be sent to invade Chicago. The comment came as reports emerged that national guard troops from Texas – not yet federalized under direct presidential control – were preparing to deploy to Chicago in the coming days, in defiance of the opposition repeatedly and forcefully expressed by the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, both Democrats.
The White House and the president’s allies have claimed that the deployment is a response to violent crime in Chicago. This is a lie. Crime in Chicago has dropped dramatically over the past decades, as it has in every major American city – including Los Angeles, where Trump deployed the national guard and the marines earlier this year, and Washington DC, where armed federal agents have patrolled the streets for much of the past month. The deployment of armed forces to American cities – serving at his pleasure even when they are not officially under his direct command – has nothing to do with “crime”, except insofar as the administration has sought to redefine the term to mean Democratic governance, racial pluralism or the presence of immigrants. There is no violent crime in Chicago, or in any of these cities, that federal troops can be usefully deployed to quell.
After New Orleans was ravaged 20 years ago, two places of worship teamed up to offer a space for devastated residents
Before the floods from Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city of New Orleans 20 years ago, Franklin Avenue Baptist church was booming.
“We had three morning services. We had a gymnasium, overflow rooms. Next door was the family center. There was an exercise room and library,” said the Rev Fred Luter Jr, pastor of Franklin Avenue. “We had just bought 90 acres of property. We were the talk of the town.”
Elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, medical workers and children among 6,000 Palestinians held
Only one in four detainees from Gaza are identified as fighters by Israel’s military intelligence, classified data indicates, with civilians making up the vast majority of Palestinians held without charge or trial in abusive prisons.
Daniel Levy has stepped down as the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur with immediate effect.
The 63-year-old was the longest-serving chairman in the Premier League before his departure, having been appointed in March 2001. He leaves after the club won the Europa League last season to end a 17-year wait for a trophy.
Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) outsprinted his Spanish compatriot Javier Romo (Movistar) to win stage 12 of the Vuelta a España, his second stage win of this year’s race, with Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) retaining the overall lead.
Palestine flags were in evidence again after protests had brought Wednesday’s stage to a premature end but the race passed without serious incident, while the Israel-Premier Tech team have said pulling out of this year’s Vuelta would “set a dangerous precedent in the sport of cycling” in reaction to the incidents on stage 11.
In 1980 when Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union and Donald Trump was a property developer, the nine leaders of the then European Community made their first major foray into joint diplomacy. The cause: the Middle East, including a Palestinian state.
“The time has come to promote the recognition and implementation of two principles universally accepted by the international community: the right to existence and to security of all states in the region, including Israel … [and] recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” stated the Venice declaration calling for Palestinian self-determination.
Kazakhstan, 114th in the Fifa rankings and all in yellow, represented a banana skin on an artificial surface in Astana. Their last World Cup qualifying victory was almost 12 years ago, a narrow success over the Faroe Islands, but this was anything but a straightforward win for Wales.
By the end the chances were totting up, Craig Bellamy’s side clinging on with the Kazakhstan substitute Serikzhan Muzhikov cracking the bar with the final action, a 95th-minute free-kick. The visitors were ultimately grateful for Kieffer Moore’s first-half strike, which was sufficient to earn a victory that keeps alive their hopes of automatic qualification from Group J.
Aid agencies plead for funds as rough terrain hinders relief effort and 98% of buildings in one province are damaged
Hundreds more bodies have been recovered from houses in mountain villages destroyed by a major earthquake in Afghanistan early this week, pushing the death toll to more than 2,200, a Taliban government spokesperson said Thursday.
The shallow, magnitude-6.0 quake struck the mountainous and remote eastern part of the country late on Sunday, levelling villages and trapping people under rubble. Most of the casualties have been in Kunar province, where people typically live in wood and mud-brick houses along steep river valleys separated by high mountains.
Leaning on lies is feels easy to get out of sticky social situations, but it can quickly become a nasty habit
I never lie. Except when declining an invitation – then I always lie.
Once, my fiance, Jared, and I were invited to a dinner we didn’t want to attend. We were worn out from traveling, and some of the other guests required a lot of energy to be around. I replied in the group text that we already had plans – but we were “so sorry to miss!” Jared, sitting next to me on the couch, gawped.
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