👋 Bunâ!*
Welcome to Monday, where Bangladesh’s prime minister resigns and leaves the country as more deadly protests are feared, Hezbollah says it has launched a drone attack on northern Israel and a 15-year-old becomes the UK’s youngest chess grandmaster. Meanwhile, Colombian daily El Espectador speaks with a veteran LGBTQ+ activist in Medellín, who has worked for decades to create safe, supportive environments for gay women.
[*Romanian]
✅ SIGN UP
This is our daily newsletter Worldcrunch Today, a rapid tour of the news of the day from the world's best journalism sources, regardless of language or geography.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“Gold, a gift to Serbia” Belgrade-based newspaper Alo! dedicates its front page to the country’s tennis champion, Novak Djokovic, who won his first Olympic gold medal, bringing Serbia its second medal of the Paris Games. He beat Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz 7-6 (3) 7-6 (2) in an intense final match on Sunday. During the press conference following the game, Djokovic called his gold the “biggest sporting achievement” of his career. The 37 year-old, whose glittering resume includes 24 Grand Slam titles and the most weeks spent at No. 1 in the rankings, became the fifth player to achieve a Golden Slam, i.e. all four Grand Slam tournaments and Olympic singles gold.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Bangladesh PM has resigned, media say, as protesters storm palace. Media reported on Monday that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and fled Bangladesh after a weekend of violence between police and protesters that left about 100 people dead. This increases the death toll from the ongoing anti-government protests to at least 300. Some demonstrators have reportedly stormed Hasina’s official residence in Dhaka as thousands have taken to the streets in the capital city. Bangladesh’s army chief said an interim government would be formed.
• Hezbollah launches drone attack on Israel. The Lebanese militant group said it launched a drone attack early Monday on northern Israel as fears of an all-out regional war mount following the killings of the top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah last week. This comes after Axios reported that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told G7 counterparts in a conference call that Iran and Hezbollah could launch an attack against Israel as early as Monday. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of the situation in the Middle East here.
• UK PM to hold emergency meeting as far-right violence spreads. Keir Starmer will hold an urgent meeting with ministers and top law enforcement officials following an attack on a hotel housing asylum seekers that saw at least 10 police officers injured, which he described as “far-right thuggery.” England has experienced its worst rioting in 13 years as unrest linked to the murder of three children last week flared across the country. False rumors spread online that the attack’s suspect was Muslim and an immigrant, sparking violent attacks on Muslims and immigrants.
• Ukraine finally receives U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Ukrainian pilots have started flying F-16s for operations within the nation, confirming the arrival of the long-awaited fighter jets more than 29 months after Russia's invasion. Around 65 F-16s have been pledged by NATO countries. Zelensky did not specify how many aircraft had arrived in Ukraine. Read more about why F-16s could be decisive for Ukraine.
• Japan’s Nikkei registers worst losses since 1987. Japanese stocks suffered their biggest ever daily loss since the 1987 Black Monday sell-offs on Monday, with the country’s benchmark stock index plunging 12.4%, as fears about a U.S. economic slowdown sent shock waves through global markets.
• Paris Olympics see historically close 100-meter sprint. U.S. Noah Lyles won the race by .005 seconds, ahead of Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson in a dramatic photo finish, becoming the first American to win the marquee event in Olympic track since Justin Gatlin in 2004. With eight men running under 10 seconds in a wind-legal race, this makes the sprint the fastest race of all time. Meanwhile, Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour became the first African athlete to win an Olympic gymnastics medal with gold on the uneven bars, and high jumper Iryna Gerashchenko won Ukraine’s first individual gold.
• Teenager becomes youngest British chess grandmaster. Shreyas Royal, 15, set the new record at the British Chess Championships in Hull on Sunday, beating David Howell, who had become the UK’s youngest chess grandmaster at 16 in 2007. The teenager’s family had faced a battle to remain in the country in 2018, but was eventually granted visa after an appeal supported by two MPs. From the Worldcrunch vault, we offer a look at the very, very strange world of "chessboxing".
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
3.43 million
The number of marriages in China for the first half of this year has fallen to its lowest level since 2013. According to official data, 3.43 million couples tied the knot between January and June, a drop of 498,000 from the same year-ago period. The country’s population has been shrinking for years, with the birth rate hitting a new low in 2023. Amid a slowing economy, rising living costs and poor job prospects, young people are opting to stay single or delay getting married, a tacit prerequisite for having children. For more about love and marriage in China, we offer this Economic Observer article, How China's Free Market Economy Opened The Door To Romance, translated by Worldcrunch.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Tamales, soccer and a lesbian bar: The singular journey of a Medellín LGBTQ+ leader
Marta Lida Arias, a veteran LGBTQ+ activist in Medellín, discusses with Colombian daily El Espectador’s Valentina Arango Correa how she's created a community for other women who were once intimidated by Colombia's patriarchal society and norms, and why their fight isn't over yet.
🇨🇴 Marta Lida Arias, a community-oriented, gay woman living in Medellín, knows first-hand about the endemic threat of violence in this conservative part of Colombia. Her father was killed when she was 2 years old and living in the town of San Pedro de los Milagros, just north of Medellín. In 1964, her family moved to the Bello suburb of Medellín. Today, she is recognized in the city as a prominent activist who has worked for decades creating safe, supportive environments for gay women.
⚽ In the mid-1980s, Arias began playing soccer professionally. Her female team was one of the first to join the Antioquia Football League, and some of the players she trained even made it to the Colombian national team. Soccer and activism went hand in hand for Arias. In addition to being team leader, she also organized fundraising initiatives for members of her team. "We promoted soccer not as a clash of enemies, but as training. Beyond the game, we're all women," she said.
🌈 A decisive phase of Arias' life started in bars. For 12 years, she worked weekends in bars or bowling joints in different parts of the city, selling lottery tickets during the week. She enjoyed working in bars so much that she opened one of her own, Ruta 69. It became an iconic establishment in Medellín; it was also well-located in the city center, "so access was safe." For many lesbians there, it also became a kind of safe house, where they could be themselves, out of the closet.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
✉️ Want to receive all Worldcrunch articles by email? Subscribe to The Latest here (and check our other — free! — newsletters while you’re at it!)
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📣 VERBATIM
“I was absolutely certain I would die in Putin’s prison.”
— Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian dissident, who was part of last week’s landmark U.S.-Russia prisoner swap, expressed his surprise and relief after being released from his cell in Omsk. The Russian-British citizen had been arrested in Moscow in April 2022 and later convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years for his fierce opposition to President Vladimir Putin and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with the BBC, he said that in September, a prison doctor gave him “a year, 18 months at best” to live, if he stayed behind bars. For more, read this Holod article, Teenage Letter From A Russian Jail: "Don't Let Putin Scare Us", translated from Russian by Worldcrunch.
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Fear Or Futility? Four Young Ukrainians Abroad Explain Why They Won't Return To Fight — DIE ZEIT
• "Destroy The Regime, Save The Nation": A Call To Rebuild The Russian Opposition — HOLOD
• How Summer Vacations Have Become A Curse For Parents — WORLDCRUNCH
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet and Laure Gautherin
Let us know what’s happening in your corner of the world!