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Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Russian forces struck warehouse facilities in Sviatopetrivske, Kyiv Oblast, four times on the evening of 4 September, causing a fire and heavy smoke but no reported casualties.

Economic · Economic

Japan and the United States have confirmed they will advance cooperation on investing in strategic sectors and honour the other terms of a trade deal they reached last year, even though President Donald Trump’s tariff policies have changed significantly over time. “We reaffirmed that last year’s agreement remains unchanged,” Japan’s Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa told reporters in Washington on Friday, after meeting Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative...

Natural · Natural

At least one person was killed and 11 are missing after they were buried by a landslide in central China as the region continued to battle severe flooding caused by Typhoon Saudel. The landslide hit Gaoping, a town in a mountainous area of Jiangxi province, at around 4am on Saturday, according to state broadcaster CCTV. It said rescue teams were rushing to the disaster site. The accident followed days of torrential rain brought by the outer bands of Typhoon Saudel and a cold front. Floodwaters...

Economic · Economic

In an effort to control escalating inflation, the Reserve Bank of India is running auctions to draw in surplus liquidity from the financial system. This move comes as call money rates fall beneath the policy repo rate, with predictions indicating liquidity levels could exceed fifteen lakh crore by the close of September. Additionally, the central bank recently sold government securities worth thirty-two thousand crore.

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

US, allies push IAEA board to report Iran to UN Security Council The United States, Britain, France and Germany are seeking a resolution by the UN nuclear watchdog's board next week reporting Iran to the UN Security Council for the first time in 20 years, according to diplomats and the proposed text seen by Reuters. If passed, the resolution would follow up on one adopted on June 12 of last year declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for not fully cooperating with an investigation into uranium traces found at undeclared sites. Israel started bombing Iran's nuclear facilities the next day, soon joined by the US Iran's uranium-enrichment plants were destroyed or badly damaged. Iran has not let International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors return to the bombed sites since then or verify what remains of its stocks of enriched uranium, some of which was enriched to up to 60 percent purity, a short step from weapons grade. (Reporting by Reuters)

Social Demographic · Education

Weeks before President Javier Milei visits France, scrutiny has grown around an Argentina-run university residence in Paris supposed to promote peaceful coexistence but which activists say instead restricts lodger freedoms and hosts European far-right figures. Paris city officials have demanded the foreign ministry investigate Argentina House, one of dozens of homes run by foreign nations or French institutions on an international campus in the French capital. The Cite Universitaire campus, or...

Economic · Economic

Investors await crucial inflation data next week which may decide the Fed's interest rate move. The S&P 500 index is nearing its record high while facing market volatility. Producer and Consumer Price Index reports will offer insights into August's inflation trends. Odds for a Fed rate hike are currently around a coin flip. Treasury yields and AI trade developments also remain key market concerns.

Economic · Economic

US job growth data boosted Federal Reserve rate hike expectations. Treasury yields and the dollar strengthened after the positive jobs report. Major US stock indexes and global stocks experienced a broad selloff. Oil prices rose due to renewed attacks in the US-Iran war. Investors now await inflation data before the Fed's September decision.

Economic · Economic

European markets wrapped up the week with a dip, influenced by ongoing Middle East tensions and persistent inflation apprehensions. A positive turn from Volkswagen shares provided some needed support after they revealed a new strategic plan. Investors are now keenly awaiting US inflation metrics to gauge potential shifts in the Federal Reserve's interest rate stance.

Economic · Economic

Oil prices have surged dramatically this week amidst escalating military tensions between the U. S. and Iran. S. Record-high retail diesel prices in the U. are fueling global inflation concerns. Supply chain disruptions in the Middle East are dealing a blow to crude oil futures. Analysts warn of potential further increases if the conflict deepens. S. Additionally, positive U. employment figures could encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates soon.

Economic · Economic

Gold prices experienced a downturn on Friday, setting the stage for a weekly loss as solid US job data raised the bar for anticipated rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. This shift has rendered the non-yielding precious metal less desirable. Alongside gold, silver and platinum also saw drops. Investors are now keenly awaiting inflation updates for insights into policy adjustments.

Economic · Economic

The U. S. job market showed surprising resilience in August, adding 162,000 positions—far beyond what analysts anticipated. This result has led to heightened expectations for a Federal Reserve rate increase in September. However, the dollar softened slightly as traders now focus on looming inflation reports. Wages saw a year-over-year uptick of 3.1%, the weakest growth since June 2021, while the yen appreciated against the dollar throughout the week.

Social Demographic · Culture

Half a century on, Jim Henson’s fuzzy felt friends are as influential as Monty Python and the Beatles. It’s been a wild journey of nightclubbing, light operas, duetting with Debbie Harry and tying John Cleese to a chair Fifty years ago today, it was time to play the music and time to light the lights. On 5 September 1976, the British public first met the Muppets – an epochal moment in the history of light entertainment whose reverberations are still felt to this day. This was the show that saw Rita Moreno conclude a performance of Fever by smashing a puppet’s head between two cymbals, Alice Cooper convince the characters to sell their souls to the devil and Vincent Price cover Carole King’s You’ve Got a Friend, accompanied by ghosts. The Muppet Show was not like other television programmes. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

The arrival of a Blue Note venue displays a confidence in the city’s youthful, multicultural jazz scene — even while many smaller music spaces are struggling

Natural · Natural

Bangladesh’s deadliest measles outbreak in decades is nearing the grim milestone of 1,000 child deaths, as a devastating epidemic sweeps through the country and crowded hospital wards fill with struggling babies. Cries of sick children and the hiss of oxygen machines fill the air at Dhaka’s Shishu Hospital, where Rima Akter keeps a vigil beside her nine-month-old son. “Just an hour ago, a child died, and they wheeled him out in front of us,” 30-year-old Akter said on Thursday. “We saw two...

Social Demographic · Sports

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! That icy wind rattling the rafters is the cold reality of what follows the closure of the transfer window, a hungover pall of regret. Despite £3.5bn shelled out in the men’s window, several things will not be happening in the Premier League when they might have been. When Arsenal host Chelsea for a most super of Sundays, Vinícius Júnior will not be playing in their attack, and neither will Gabriel Martinelli, whose lengthy social media disgrace farewells on his departure for Saudi Arabia pointedly made no mention of Mikel Arteta. Re: yesterday’s Football Daily. Perhaps Messrs Vardy and James thought they had booked Jasper Carrott to kick off their hilarious podcast party. And got the not-so-funny doppelganger Mike Dean instead? ” – Jim Arrowsmith. With Premier League clubs now owned by a motley assortment of hedge funds, petrostates, billionaires and so on, perhaps the time is right to take a leaf out of pro cycling’s book and name the teams after their owners and sponsors. It will be a regular reminder to fans that the football entities they support are far removed from the community-based groups of like-minded individuals that the word ‘club’ denotes, and that they are instead cash-cow playthings of the mega-rich. As for me, I’ve been a fan of Fosun International Debet since they were known as Bhatti Brothers Manders Paints and Inks” – Neil Withers. As someone who likes watching football rather than wasting time on transfers, this week has been boring, to say the least. Not so dull that it’s been enough to pick up a book, mind, but still. However, the result was that, after finding out that West Ham have a midfielder called Engels, I was sent down an internet wormhole and discovered that there is also a Brazilian midfielder called Marx Lenin (his real name, not just a nickname). Now, if only we could get them to play together, we would have something. Revolutionary tactics, no one in the centre or on the right wing, everyone on the left (a bit like Arsenal circa Henry, Pires and Ashley Cole), etc” – Noble Francis. This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

At this week’s world championship, the women’s record holder who once feared a 5K will try to top her own 144-hour distance – and beat the US men’s mark While many teachers head back to school this week, middle-school math teacher Megan Eckert will be 5,000 miles from her classroom in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has a good reason to miss a few classes: she’ll be competing at the Global Organization of Multi-Day Ultramarathoners World Championship. On Thursday, more than 100 runners will gather on a start line in Balatonfüred, Hungary, and attempt to run as many miles as they can in six days. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Seb Hutchinson and R obyn Cowen to preview the upcoming Premier League weekend Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

The France forward took his time to develop but his attacking verve and ability to exploit spaces can endear him to Liverpool fans “As a kid, he always spoke to me about Liverpool,” says Amaury Barlet, one of Bradley Barcola’s youth coaches. No wonder that when the Merseyside club came knocking, the forward “didn’t ask any questions”, as he said in his first interview after a £123m move to Anfield. Barcola joined after three seasons with Paris Saint-Germain, but came through the ranks at Lyon, where interviews are conducted with returning youth players at the start of each campaign. It was during one such discussion that Barcola made his revelation to Barlet. “When he was 15, 16, it was his dream [to play for Liverpool],” Barlet says. “Maybe that changed when he was 19 or 20 … ” Or perhaps not. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Education

Recruiting ex-pros. Inflaming Ukraine-Russia tensions. Suing the SEC and being sued back. The school is adapting to a new reality – and also creating a new one In 1893, a chemistry professor named Charles Coates arrived at Louisiana State University and wrote that, to his surprise, “there was practically no athletics in the student body: no football, no tennis, and only very little baseball in the spring. ” A broad program of sports struck him as the kind of thing a school should have, particularly as US universities were beginning to tout intercollegiate athletics as critical to a balanced higher-ed experience and another way to justify the cost of entry. But 133 years on, sports aren’t merely the main attraction at LSU. They’re the school’s raison d’être, the blinkered obsession that consumes the university and its most prominent ambassadors. Any doubt that the business of educating college students is just a nettlesome distraction from the business of college sports in Baton Rouge has been emphatically dispelled over the past 10 months. On the football side, the school has spent or committed roughly $162m to its last three head coaches: Ed Orgeron, the folksy national champion in 2019 who received a $17m buyout when he was fired two years later; Brian Kelly, the unloved underachiever who received a $54m buyout after being fired last October; and Lane Kiffin, the Kelly replacement whom it signed to a $91m deal a month later. Clemson, the opponent for LSU’s season opener at home on Saturday, are about to find out what all that money buys. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Australian returns on AU$4.9m contract after season on sidelines Former No 1 pick hopes to reignite basketball career with fourth club Australian former No 1 overall draft pick Ben Simmons has taken a significant step towards resurrecting his NBA career, agreeing a one-year deal with the Sacramento Kings. The Melbourne-born guard returns on a US$3.5m (AU$4.9m) contract after sitting ‌out the entire 2025-26 campaign while rehabilitating back and leg injuries that have hampered him in recent years. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Jeering and heckling are increasingly commonplace, even at grand slams, as spectators try to influence matches Midway through the first week of the US Open a couple of years ago, Jiri Lehecka’s attempts to find his form were disrupted by incessant taunting from a spectator close by. “There was a guy who sat just behind my bench on a smaller court, court four, and he was talking to me basically for the first three sets, like non-stop,” Lehecka says. “He was talking to me like: ‘You can’t do it. You are tired. He’s better than you are. ’” Lehecka maintained his composure and closed out the match, but even as he focused on navigating the intense stress of competition, he believed he understood this spectator’s motivations. The spectator, he thinks, was not there just to cheer for his favourite player: he was a bettor who had put money on Lehecka to lose. He had entered court four solely to influence the outcome of the match. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Before his home grand prix, the Mercedes driver opens up on his rocky debut season and quest to become the first Italian world champion since 1953 If Kimi Antonelli feels any pressure as the favourite to take the Formula One world championship at just 20 years old and in his second year in the sport, it is imperceptible. He admits F1 can be brutal but a thing of beauty too, a labour of love for the Italian who has been a revelation this season. Compelling and brilliant, that he is also endearing and likable marks Antonelli out as more than just a potential champion. Sitting in the Mercedes motorhome it is impossible not to be struck by how young he looks, the tousled hair, engaging smile and eyes gleaming with youthful enthusiasm. He speaks with an open candour, the air of a kid in a sweetshop who still can’t quite believe all those sherbet lemons are there for the taking. Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

A first win for Andoni Iraola’s Liverpool, the introduction of the latest star signing in Bradley Barcola making for a successful Friday night. Better yet, continuing signs that Alexander Isak, last year’s model, is coming back to life, his two, well-taken early goals securing the three points. That Cody Gakpo, Isak’s supplier, might have been at Manchester City or Tottenham had the transfer runes been right, added further to a sense of renewal. Liverpool’s attackers were full of the speed and invention sorely lacking for much of last season. Once Barcola arrived in the second half, those velocity levels increased yet further, Liverpool playing the attacking style, high on risk and entertainment, the appointment of Iraola promised. “We are starting to get to the way we want to play,” said Isak afterwards. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

McCarthy/Waarts/National Symphony Orchestra Ireland/McAdams (Nonesuch) Dennehy’s Limina, based on areas of the body, is firmly grounded in the harmonic series, and sparklingly executed here, while Stephen Waarts gives a bravura performance of the Violin Concerto These two concertos, beautifully paired, again find Donnacha Dennehy writing music that is both firmly grounded – both rhythmically and in his fascination with the harmonic series – and, to the ear at least, joyously unfettered. Limina was written in 2023 for the pianist Eliza McCarthy, who is a powerhouse soloist here with the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland and conductor Ryan McAdams. It’s a serious piece born of a slightly playful idea. Its three movements are each named for a part of the body, staking out one area before moving to the threshold, or limina, of the next. Head starts with synapses firing high up the keyboard in sparks and glitter; it travels downwards, frenetic energy dissipating, towards Chest, which evokes breathing – not with regular rhythms but with gentle palindromic phrases that swell in and out and sigh back towards the same bass pitch. Nervous System begins deep in the gut, with coarser sounds – low piano vamping, and slapped bowing from the strings – but eventually escapes its tether and disperses around the keyboard. The Violin Concerto, written in 2020, is just as propulsive, and the outer movements especially are a workout for Stephen Waarts, who gives a bravura performance. In the middle movement his violin soars, pushing off from the orchestral support to trace slow, weightless somersaults in the air. The finale has a thrilling sense of motion creating its own gravity: as with so much of Dennehy’s writing, it’s as if the music is held together by centrifugal force. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

The orchestra – at the Proms this week – is hailed as among the best in the world, if not the best. For my money, that’s quite possibly right, but why? The Berlin Philharmonic are in London tonight and tomorrow at the Proms, days after closing the Edinburgh international festival in thrilling style. It was their first visit to Scotland in over 20 years, but the orchestra and their chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, are regular Proms visitors; their Royal Albert Hall concerts are always season highlights. “The best orchestra in the world”, as it is often hailed, brings programmes that offer the expected and – for them – the unexpected. Tonight there’s Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony paired with Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a piece that’s still an astoundingly rare visitor to this orchestra’s concerts; and tomorrow, the safety-first repertoire warhorse is Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, but it’s paired with Scriabin’s brilliantly unhinged Third Symphony. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Thirty years after Tupac Shakur’s death, a man has been found guilty of killing the hip-hop legend. William Shaw on the star’s life, legacy and untimely death In 1996, Tupac Shakur was shot in a drive-by ambush in Las Vegas. He was only 25 years old and already one of the biggest artists in the US. He had just released a huge album, All Eyez on Me, which spawned two No 1 singles. He’d worked with some of hip-hop’s greatest stars. He’d starred in Hollywood films. It seemed he could do anything. And then, he died. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Fifty years ago Parker was hailed as rock’s next big thing, but he picked a different path: cult records, a Hollywood diversion, an aversion to stardom. Ahead of a UK tour, he looks back at his strange trajectory To say Graham Parker enjoyed a swift rise to fame is an understatement. He played his first live show with his most famous backing band, the Rumour, in October 1975, at the Newlands Tavern, a pub in Nunhead, south-east London. By the start of the following year, he had a record deal and was in the studio recording his debut album, Howlin’ Wind. The buzz around him was such that the sessions were interrupted by the arrival of a succession of stars – Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott among them – intrigued to hear what the fuss was about: a petrol pump attendant from Surrey who sang like Van Morrison and had written a set of smart, sharp, literate songs in between filling up cars. The record arrived in April 1976 to vast critical excitement, a lot of it occasioned by the album’s closing track, the reggae-influenced, attitude-laden Don’t Ask Me Questions. After Howlin’ Wind came out, followed in October by Heat Treatment, things ratcheted up another notch. Parker turned up in Australia to discover the media waiting for him and a press conference arranged in the airport: they had taken the amount of music press coverage Parker was receiving to mean he was “as big as Bruce Springsteen, which was insane”. Low down on a festival bill topped by Bob Dylan, he found himself backstage collared by the headline act, eager to tell Parker how much he loved his work. There also exists a photo of Parker in Los Angeles, with, of all people, Michael Jackson, but their meeting was apparently less successful. “I said to him: ‘Michael, great to meet you, I did a version of [Jackson 5 hit] I Want You Back recently. ’ And he just sort of said: ‘Ooh. ’ So that,” he laughs, “was the full extent of my conversation with Michael Jackson. ” Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Like Johnny Depp and Chris Brown before him, Homme has got past his chequered history to retain an adoring fanbase. Almost a decade post-#MeToo, audiences no longer seem to care As part of the promo for Queens of the Stone Age’s new album Perfecth, the band has set up a novelty complaints hotline for fans to call. “No bitching too big, no whiny too tiny,” it promises. I’ll bite: how about the fact that frontman Josh Homme’s ex-wife Brody Dalle testified in court that he head-butted her so hard that she “saw stars” and said he had fantasised about killing her? Or that he kicked a female photographer in the face? It’s certainly not what anyone’s talking about as part of Homme’s friendly neighbourhood rock star image rehabilitation: duetting on Shania Twain’s new album, taking the couch on Celebrity Gogglebox, teatime BBC 6 Music interviews. Homme and Dalle clearly had a complicated relationship: he allegedly tried to throw her boyfriend off a balcony; he claims that she was violent towards him; both have taken out restraining orders against one another; Homme has full custody of their kids after Dalle’s boyfriend was found to have forged her signature on an application for a restraining order. Homme has recently talked about coming through a dark period, including successful treatment for cancer, and getting a handle on his vices. Nevertheless, there is clear footage of him brutally kicking the camera of photographer Chelsea Lauren back into her face, which he acknowledged in an apology video, and court testimony from Dalle alleging that a drunk Homme told her “I want to fucking strangle you right now” on one occasion, and head-butted her on another. Continue reading...