👋 Aluu!*
Welcome to Friday, where Joe Biden mixes up names but sticks in the race, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is in Florida to meet with Trump, and scientists are headed to the Titanic to photograph the wreck in detail. Meanwhile, German correspondent Christian Putsch looks at how a Cologne-based truck company is turning to Congo and Burkina Faso to recruit drivers.
[*Inuktitut - Canada, Alaska]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“Ukrainian chess in NATO,” titles Istanbul-based daily Milliyet, reporting on the three-day NATO summit in Washington DC which ended on July 11, with the launch of the Ukraine Compact, a security framework signed by 32 allies. This will compel members to support Ukraine in its war against Russia through training, military aid, and economic assistance. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would continue its diplomatic efforts to end the conflict between the two countries, but also warned during a press conference on Friday that NATO could not continue its partnership with the Israeli administration “until comprehensive, sustainable peace is established in Palestine.”
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Biden mixes up Harris with Trump, Putin with Zelensky, insists he won’t quit race. U.S. President Joe Biden mixed up the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and his Republican rival Donald Trump during an hour-long press conference Thursday, which followed him mixing up the names of Putin and Zelensky during the NATO summit. Still, Biden insisted he was pushing ahead with his re-election bid even as more of his fellow Democrats urged him to pull out.
• Viktor Orbán meets Donald Trump. The former U.S. President hosted the Hungarian leader in Florida on Thursday night, just a week after Orbán met Russian President Vladimir Putin. His visit to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach is the latest in a number of meetings between the two men, and Orbán has publicly endorsed Trump's re-election bid.
• Australia charges soldier, husband with attempting to spy for Russia. The couple, a 40-year-old army private and 62-year-old self-employed laborer, are accused of obtaining Australian Defence Force material to share with Russian authorities. The pair, both of whom are Russian-born Australian citizens, are due to appear in court Friday to face one count each of preparing for an espionage offense.
• Gaza talks explore alternative to Israeli troops on Gaza-Egypt border. Israeli and Egyptian ceasefire negotiators are in talks about an electronic surveillance system along the border between Gaza and Egypt that could allow Israel to pull back its troops from the area if a ceasefire is agreed, according to a Reuters exclusive. The question of whether Israeli forces stay on the border is one of the issues blocking a potential ceasefire deal because both Palestinian militant group Hamas and Egypt are opposed to Israel keeping its forces there. Here’s a Daraj piece translated from Arabic on how Israel has occupied the buffer zone at the border as a “land grab.”
• Panama installs barbed wire to block migrants in the Darién Gap. Panama has placed barbed wire across several routes along the dangerous passage in a bid to block migrants making their way north. At least five passages near Panama’s border with Colombia have been shut using barbed wire installed by the country’s border agency (Senafront). Meanwhile, Panama’s navy is patrolling areas in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Read more about the Darién Gap here, thanks to this El Salto article translated from Spanish by Worldcrunch.
• More than 60 missing after two buses swept into river in Nepal. The two buses were swept by a landslide into a rain-swollen river in Nepal, with three survivors rescued after swimming to safety.
• Titanic mission to map wreck in greatest-ever detail. A team of imaging experts, scientists and historians will set sail for the Titanic on Friday to gather the most detailed photographic record ever made of the wreck. They will be using state-of-the-art technology to scan the remains of the boat to gain new insights into its sinking. This will be the first commercial mission to Titanic since last year's OceanGate incident. Five men died while trying to visit the lost ship in a submersible.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
77
In one of the largest such strandings in decades, an entire pod of 77 long-finned pilot whales have washed up ashore in Sanday, Orkney, an archipelago off the northeastern coast of Scotland. Despite efforts to refloat the 12 whales that were still alive upon discovery, the cetaceans later had to be euthanized. Investigations are underway to determine what led to the incident, while authorities also discuss how to best dispose of the carcasses.
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📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Where a German truck company goes to recruit drivers: the heart of Africa
Struggling to find drivers in Germany, the Cologne-based trucking company Emons is now successfully recruiting apprentices in the crisis-hit central African countries of Congo and Burkina Faso. While recruiting skilled workers abroad is a slow process, it is always better than unregulated migration, reports Christian Putsch in German daily Die Welt.
🚚 Few industries face as severe a personnel shortage as the trucking sector, which lacks 100,000 truck drivers. Companies have tried, unsuccessfully, to attract young people in schools, and in Eastern Europe, where interest is low due to high competition from other industrialized countries. The shortage of skilled workers could soon become the biggest threat to Germany's economy, employer associations have warned. German ministers are increasingly addressing the issue during their trips to Africa.
🤝 The first German migration agreements in sub-Saharan Africa are close to being signed with Ghana and Kenya. The aim is to do more than just repatriation — neither country is among a main source of illegal migrants. Uncontrolled immigration is far more present in political debate than the often-promised and urgently needed legal migration pathways. This is gradually changing. Germany has already set up dedicated recruitment websites, complete with hotlines, for countries such as Namibia and Tunisia.
📚💬 Cologne-based trucking company Emons set out on its own in search of staff. The company is currently training 35 truck driver apprentices and has the capacity for up to 100. It provides accommodation, a week-long introduction course in Germany and ongoing communication with all parties involved. While there were initial reservations in communities and sometimes among employees, those concerns have long since disappeared, said Christiane Bauer, head of Human Relations at Emons.
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📣 VERBATIM
“Stop hyping up the so-called China threat.”
— China hit back at NATO’s accusations that the country is helping Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, with a foreign ministry spokesperson saying the organization was smearing Beijing with “fabricated disinformation.” China’s foreign minister Wang Yi also called the accusations “groundless” and warned NATO against stirring up confrontation. This comes after the Western alliance issued a declaration that pointed China as a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, and called on the country to stop “all material and political support” to Russia's war effort. French political commentator Pierre Haski sees the NATO declaration as an escalation of the “Cold War” between Washington and Beijing.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Palestinians Can Expect Nothing Good From Keir Starmer — AL-MANASSA
• Javier Milei And The Destructive Art Of Anti-Diplomacy — CLARÍN
• Gùsto! How · What · Where Locals Eat (And Drink) In Cologne — WORLDCRUNCH
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright, Anne-Sophie Goninet and Bertrand Hauger
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