👋 Manao ahoana!*
Welcome to Friday, where fighting intensifies between Israel and Hezbollah, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announces a €35 billion loan to Ukraine, and L.A. Dodgers Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani becomes the first player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season. We also take you on a world tour of senior social media influencers who prove that age ain’t nothing but a number (of followers).
[*Malagasy, Madagascar]
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🗞️ FRONT PAGE
“Are politics over?” asks São Paulo-based weekly news magazine Istoé, referring to an incident earlier this week that saw a mayoral candidate in the Brazilian city hit a rival with a chair during a live televised debate. Pablo Marçal had brought up old sexual harassment allegations against Datena that were dismissed several years ago. For the weekly, this attack is the latest proof that “negotiation has been extinguished in politics,” calling such violent incidents “a byproduct of the Bolsonaro government.”
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Israel and Hezbollah trade fire after heaviest airstrikes yet. UN peacekeepers in Lebanon urged immediate de-escalation as hostilities continued on the Lebanese-Israeli border on Friday, following Israel's most intense airstrikes in nearly a year of conflict with the Iran-backed Hezbollah. Israel's military said on Thursday it had struck hundreds of Hezbollah rocket launchers that had been set to fire towards Israel. The White House said a diplomatic solution was achievable and urgent, and Britain called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Read more about the Israel-Hezbollah showdown in this piece by French geopolitical commentator Pierre Haski.
• Russia vows to take back Kursk territory captured by Ukraine. Russia said on Friday that its army would regain control of its Kursk region “in a timely manner,” declining to say how soon this could be achieved. Ukraine on Aug. 6 launched the biggest foreign attack on Russia since World War II, bursting through the border into the western Kursk region supported by drones and heavy weaponry, including Western-made arms. Russia has been fighting since then to expel the Ukrainian forces. Read more about the situation on Kursk’s frontlines in this article translated from Russian by Worldrcrunch.
• Flood-hit central Europe will get billions in EU aid. The European Union will make billions of euros available to help central Europe recover from severe floods, announced European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as she pledged support for regions that have been devastated by the deluge. The worst floods to hit central Europe in at least two decades have caused widespread damage from Romania to Poland, killing at least 24 people. Meanwhile, two people are missing and some 1,000 people have been evacuated from their homes after heavy flooding and landslides hit the northeastern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna on Thursday.
• Economic issues top the agenda as Sri Lanka heads to the polls.Sri Lankans will vote on Saturday to elect the South Asian nation’s 10th president in the first election since the catastrophic 2022 economic crisis that saw the country default on its loans. Months of food and fuel shortages had caused political chaos forcing then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in July 2022. We also offer this recent piece about the country: A Bitter Return To Sri Lanka After Failed Migration Attempt.
• Violence rocks France overseas territories. France’s territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific are facing a new wave of unrest with security forces killing two men in New Caledonia and a curfew imposed after rioting in Martinique. The rise in violence poses a challenge for new center-right Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who has struggled to form a government following snap parliamentary elections in June, when no party won an absolute majority.
• Transgender model stabbed to death in Georgia amid LGBTQ bill controversy. Kesaria Abramidze, who had become a prominent public figure and advocate for LGBTQ rights in the former Soviet republic, was stabbed to death in her apartment in a “premeditated” attack, amid criticism of a government crackdown on LGBTQ rights. The incident came a day after a bill supporting “family values” passed its final reading. The Georgian law has been compared to Russia’s “gay propaganda” law and criticized by the European Union as stigmatizing LGBTQ people. To read more about how the LGBTQ+ community is treated in Russia, read this article from independent media Important Stories.
• Young boy in Wisconsin shoots bear as it mauls his father. A 12-year-old boy fatally shot a black bear as it was mauling his father in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Owen Beierman took aim at the bear as it pinned down his dad while they were on a legal hunting trip. “Owen was a hero,” Ryan Beierman, 43, told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “He shot that bear and killed it on top of me.”
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#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
51
Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani entered baseball history by becoming the first player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season. The Japanese athlete ended with 51 each after a 20-4 win over the Miami Marlins on Thursday evening in which he hit three home runs and stole two bases. Ohtani was congratulated by Japan’s chief government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi who lauded his “amazing achievement” while “Ohtani-san” became the top trending topic on X. The baseball player joined the Dodgers on a 10-year $700m contract in December — the biggest deal in the sport’s history. The groundbreaking 30-year-old is also among the best pitchers in the league. From the Worldcrunch vault, we offer this piece: A Yankee Journalist's Unexpected Foray Into French Baseball.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
💥 Israel’s fight for self-defense has crossed the boundaries of international humanitarian law. The country now faces the risk of losing the war not just on moral and legal grounds, but also from a strategic perspective.
— DIE ZEIT
🇺🇦🇷🇺 An estimated one million people have died after two-and-a-half years of war between Ukraine and Russia — a tragic toll which only reinforces both sides to continue to seek victory.
— FRANCE INTER
🧓📱 Grey-haired influencers are gaining millions of followers on social media, fighting back against ageist stereotypes and redefining what it means to grow older.
— WORLDCRUNCH
📣 VERBATIM
“The enemy crossed all rules, laws and red lines.”
— In his first televised speech since the pager and walkie-talkie attacks in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that though the attacks dealt a “big blow in terms of security and humanity,” they had failed to deter the group in its fight against Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza. Nasrallah added Hezbollah would continue to support Palestinians “no matter what the consequences are, what the sacrifices are, what scenarios will unfold.” The attacks, which he called “unprecedented in the history of the resistance movement in Lebanon,” killed at least 37 people.
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright & Anne-Sophie Goninet
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