👋 Halò!*
Welcome to Thursday, where an armed man is shot dead by police near Munich’s Israeli Consulate, Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei dies after her former boyfriend set her on fire, and a new Māori queen gets crowned. And for Arabic-language news website Al-Manassa, Mary Qatan writes about the myths and beliefs some Egyptian women still turn to as they search for fertility.
[*Scottish Gaelic]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
U.S. daily The Atlanta Journal-Constitution devotes its front page to a high school shooting in Winder, Georgia, which left two 14-year-old students and two teachers dead on Wednesday. Nine other people were wounded and hospitalized. The suspect, a 14-year-old student identified as Colt Gray, was arrested on campus and will be prosecuted as an adult. Gray had been questioned last year regarding “several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time,” the FBI said. This marks the 45th school shooting in the U.S. and the deadliest this year, according to a CNN analysis.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel continues West Bank operation, Netanyahu demands control of Egypt border. Israeli forces continue their operation in the West Bank, where five Palestinians were killed in a drone strike, and a military raid was conducted in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said “there is not choice” but to go to war with Hezbollah, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel must keep open-ended control of Gaza’s border with Egypt.
• Armed man shot dead in Munich near Israeli Consulate. Police in Munich exchanged fire and killed a man carrying a long-barrelled gun near the city’s Nazi Documentation Center and the Israeli Consulate. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said it was a “serious incident” and that protection of Israeli institutions is of the highest priority. The Israeli consulate was closed today in commemoration of the 52 years since the Munich Olympic Games terrorist attack.
• Zaporizhzhia tower to be demolished. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said a cooling tower of the Russian-occupied nuclear plant would have to be demolished, after sustaining bad damage in a fire last month. The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog was on his fifth visit to the plant to assess the damage and inspect the site’s safety. Read more about the Zaporizhzhia plant in this piece here.
• Teen charged with Georgia school shooting was the focus of tips about online threats. The investigation revealed that the 14-year-old student who opened fire at Apalachee High School near Atlanta on Wednesday was the subject of tips about online posts threatening a school shooting a year ago. At the time, investigators lacked evidence to arrest him. The teen killed four people and injured nine others before being arrested and taken into custody.
• Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei killed by boyfriend. The 33-year-old Ugandan marathon runner has died, days after suffering extensive burns in an attack by her former boyfriend. Her ex-partner targeted her on Sunday after she came home from church with her daughter, doused her in petrol and set her on fire. An investigation has been opened. Cheptegei is the third female athlete to have been killed in Kenya since October 2021.
• China pledges $50 billion to Africa. Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced that he would allocate $50 billion in financing to Africa over the next three years. Xi Jinping also promised to “create at least one million jobs for Africa” and said China “is ready to deepen cooperation with African countries.” The announcement took place at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation currently happening in Beijing, where more than 50 African leaders are securing agreements regarding industry, natural resources, energy and infrastructure. Africa is building lasting relations with China, but what of its former ties? Pierre Haski gives some answers in this piece for France Inter.
• Fireball! A small asteroid safely disintegrated in a bright “fireball” in the atmosphere above the Philippines, said the NASA space agency. Space rock 2024 RW1, measuring about 1 meter (3 feet) across, is “just the ninth that humankind has ever spotted before impact” according to the European Space Agency.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
25.6 °C
South Korea registered an average temperature of 25.6 °C (78.08 °F) from June to August — nearly two degrees higher than the historic average, the Korea Meteorological Administration said on Thursday. This is the highest summer figure since the agency set up such records in 1973. The country also experienced the longest stretch of tropical nights (when the temperature does not fall below 25 °C) on record, averaging 20.2 days for the same period. Read how extreme heat threatens human rights in the Middle East.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🚚⚡Could the shift towards electric trucks actually happen faster than with cars?
— DIE ZEIT
🤰 From visiting shrines to laying on the ground and rolling in a desert cemetery, some Egyptian women are still turning to ancient practices in hopes of becoming pregnant.
— AL-MANASSA
💧🌱 In the context of climate change, it’s time to say goodbye to the Western ideal of green and pristine lawns.
— LA MAREA
💬 LEXICON
Kuini
Following the death of her father Kiingi Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII, 27-year-old Ngā Wai hono i te pō was chosen to become kuini, the Māori word for queen, by a council of New Zealand’s indigenous Māori chiefs. The youngest child of Kiingi Tuheitia, who died last week at the age of 69, was crowned in a ceremony in the country’s North Island on Thursday as her father was laid to rest. Ngā Wai hono i te pō is only the second Māori queen, the first being her grandmother.
✍️ Newsletter by Chloé Touchard & Anne-Sophie Goninet
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