👋 Sveiki!*
Welcome to Friday, where the Russia-West conflict over Ukraine is rapidly escalating, Kim Jong-un gives a tour of a secret North Korean uranium enrichment site and Banksy’s Girl with Balloon is found a week after it was stolen from a London gallery. And for Arabic-language news website Al-Manassa, Aya Assir reports on the alarming stories of Egyptian women forced to go under the knife to please their rich husbands.
[*Latvian]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Der Standard’s front page today is orbiting “740 kilometers above the Earth”, as it celebrates the first ever commercial spacewalk. Like many other international newspapers, the Vienna-based daily chose to lend its front page to U.S. billionaire Jared Isaacman’s exploit, as part of the Polaris Dawn mission. “Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said during the spacewalk.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Russia to expel 6 British diplomats, as Putin warns West about war. The country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said in an online statement that a decision was made to revoke the diplomats’ accreditation after it had detected “signs of intelligence and subversive work” and considered that their actions were “threatening the security of the Russian Federation.” This comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West against allowing Ukraine to use long-range weapons to target Moscow, saying it would mean that “NATO countries, the U.S., European countries, are at war with Russia.” A topic that will be discussed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and U.S. President Joe Biden who are meeting in Washington on Friday.
• Trump says he will not debate with Harris again. Two days after the presidential candidates’ first showdown in Philadelphia, the former U.S. president said on Thursday in a post on his Truth Social account that “there will be no third debate” and that Vice President Kamala Harris only wanted a rematch because he “clearly” won, despite the fact that polls and pundits saw the showdown very differently.
• Boeing workers go on strike for first time in 16 years. About 33,000 union members of the aircraft giant’s U.S. West Coast factory walked off the job early Friday after they overwhelmingly rejected a proposed four-year contract. The strike comes as the planemaker is under heavy scrutiny from regulators and customers after a door plug blew off a 737 Max in January. Production of Boeing’s strongest-selling jet is now stopped, dealing a potential blow to the U.S. economy.
• China will raise retirement age for the first time since 1978. The country’s top legislative body has approved proposals to “gradually raise” the retirement age from 60 to 63 for men, 55 to 58 for women in white-collar jobs and 50 to 55 for women in blue-collar jobs. The move aims at addressing China’s shrinking population and aging workforce. The policy change will be carried out over 15 years, starting in January 2025. China’s current retirement ages are among the lowest in the world.
• India’s top court grants bail to New Delhi’s chief minister. The country’s Supreme Court allowed on Friday the release on bail of opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal, who was arrested six months ago ahead of national elections on corruption charges. Opposition parties had widely condemned the arrest of Kejriwal, calling it a political conspiracy orchestrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government against its opponents.
• Senegal’s president dissolves parliament, calls for snap vote. Just six months after he was elected president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye announced on Thursday he was dissolving the country's opposition-led parliament, paving the way for a snap legislative election. According to Senegal’s constitution, the election has to take place within the next 90 days.
• Stolen Banksy is recovered, two men charged. Girl with Balloon artwork, one of the British street artist’s best-known paintings, has been found after it was stolen from a central London art gallery last week. Two men were charged with burglary on Thursday and remain in police custody. In other art-crime news, Canadian police said Winston Churchill’s The Roaring Lion portrait, which was stolen from an Ottawa hotel in 2021 and replaced with a forgery, has been tracked down in Italy. For more, read this article: Banksy And The Indestructible Force Of Capitalism, translated from French by Worldcrunch.
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💬 LEXICON
หมูเด้ง
Moo Deng is a two-month-old pygmy hippo living at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo near Pattaya, Thailand. The little mammal named หมูเด้ง in Thai (which translates as “bouncy pig”) has gone viral, doubling the zoo’s number of visitors numbers since her July birth. But as BBC reports, Moo Deng’s fame has also led to troubling behavior from disrespectful visitors, who started throwing shellfish and splashing water at her to wake her from her naps. In response, the zoo director has installed a CCTV system and has threatened legal action against disorderly zoo-goers.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇮🇱🇱🇧 In the face of the rising Israeli threatening signs, an “all-out” war in southern Lebanon seems to be on the verge of becoming a reality.
— DARAJ
⚖️ Gisèle Pelicot, who has publicly accused her husband and multiple other men of rape, wants the world to know her name and know her story.
— DIE ZEIT
💉 “He wanted me to look different.” Many women in Egypt are willing to resort to surgery to get the ideal body their wealthy husbands want and save their marriage.
— AL-MANASSA
📣 VERBATIM
“If I were ever to harm Slovenia’s interests, I would not be able to work in the Slovenian government or be an ambassador.”
— Marta Kos, Slovenia’s pick for EU Commissioner, has strongly refuted allegations of links to former Yugoslav secret services, leveled at her by Romana Tomc, the head of Slovenia's European People’s Party (EPP) delegation in the European Parliament. Kos defended her extensive diplomatic and executive experience, including roles as ambassador and government spokesperson, while also dismissing claims of lacking qualifications and being nominated solely based on gender. The nomination has sparked political controversy in Slovenia, potentially delaying EU Commission appointments.
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet & David Aterburn
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