👋 Goedemorgen!*
Welcome to Tuesday, where Hezbollah appoints Sheikh Naim Qassem as its new leader, Georgia is set to conduct a partial recount after disputed parliamentary elections, and a PhD student stumbles upon a major Mayan city. Meanwhile, La Marea reports on the race against time (and climate change) to collect information from the world’s glaciers.
[*Flemish]
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”Spain in gold,” titles proudly Spanish sports daily AS after the country almost won it all at the Ballon d’Or awards. Midfielders Rodri and Aitana Bonmatí were crowned the world's best soccer players during a ceremony in Paris. Rodri, 28, of the Spanish national team and Manchester United, succeeds eight-time winner Lionel Messi of Argentina. Bonmatí, 26, retained her award after helping Barcelona win the Spanish league, the Spanish Cup and the Champions League. Real Madrid's Carlo Ancelotti won the coach of the year award, while the club was voted the best men’s team. Lamine Yamal — the youngest-ever scorer at a European Championship — won the Kopa award for best Under-21 player and Barca won the best women’s team award. Finally, Spain forward Jenni Hermoso, collected the Socrates award for humanitarian work.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Hezbollah announces new leader, Israel votes to ban UN aid agency. Following the killing of Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air strike last month, Lebanon’s militant group said on Tuesday it has chosen Sheikh Naim Qassem, a senior figure in the Iran-backed movement for more than 30 years, as its new top leader. Meanwhile, Israel’s parliament voted on Monday to pass laws banning the UN relief agency UNRWA from operating inside the country, prompting widespread condemnation from its allies. At least 60 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike in northern Gaza on Tuesday, according to health officials, while the Lebanese health ministry reported a similar death toll following Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.
• North Korean troops may be headed to Ukraine frontline. Citing the country’s intelligence officials, South Korean lawmakers told reporters on Tuesday some high-ranking North Korean military officials and troops deployed to Russia for the war in Ukraine might soon move to the frontline. This comes after the U.S. announced an estimated 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to Russia, up from an initial U.S. estimate of 3,000 last week. Meanwhile, Ukraine reported the killing of at least four people following multi-wave overnight attacks by Moscow in Kharkiv and Kyiv. Read more in this Die Zeit analysis about China’s role translated from German by Worldcrunch.
• Kamala Harris to deliver “closing argument” at site of Trump’s Jan. 6 rally. The U.S. Vice President and Democrat candidate is set to make her final case for her bid for the presidency on Washington, D.C.'s Ellipse on Tuesday, at the same spot where then-President Donald Trump delivered remarks prior to the Jan.6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. Harris is expected to call on Americans to “turn the page” on Trump a week before the Nov. 5 election in a race that opinion polls show remains tight.
• Georgia conducts partial vote recount in disputed poll, thousands protest to denounce results. The country’s central electoral commission announced it would recount ballots on Tuesday in five randomly selected polling stations in each of Georgia’s 84 electoral districts, after the opposition denounced the results of the weekend parliamentary election as rigged and refused to recognize them. Official results showed the ruling Georgian Dream party won 53.9% of the vote but a Georgian monitoring coalition said it had logged over 900 reports of voting irregularities. Thousands of Georgians took to the streets in the capital city Tbilisi on Monday evening.
• Iran executes German-Iranian dissident. Germany’s Foreign Office on Tuesday summoned the Iranian ambassador to Germany after the Islamic Republic executed German-Iranian dual national Jamshid Sharmahd on charges of “corruption on Earth” linked to a 2008 terror attack. The 69-year-old political scientist was seized by Iranian authorities in 2020 while traveling through the United Arab Emirates. Rights group Amnesty International said that Sharmahd’s “confessions” were forced.
• Founder of TikTok owner ByteDance becomes China’s richest person. Zhang Yiming, 41, who stepped down as chief executive of ByteDance in 2021, overtook bottled water magnate Zhong Shanshan at the top of the Hurun China Rich List, with personal wealth of $49.3 billion. The data published on Tuesday also showed the number of billionaires in the country has dropped by 142 to 753, shrinking more than a third from its 2021 peak. Here’s a recent analysis translated from French by Worldcrunch: Billionaires, Jingoists And The Paradox Of China's Economic Slowdown.
• Lost Mayan city found “by accident.” A U.S. PhD student analyzing data from “a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring” discovered a sprawling Mayan city the size of Scotland’s capital Edinburgh hidden under jungle canopy in Mexico’s southeastern state of Campeche. The city, since named “Valeriana,” may have been home to up to 50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
130 years
Tourists currently in Japan to admire one of the world's most famous mountains will be disappointed. Mount Fuji remains snowless, marking the latest date without a snowcap since records began 130 years ago. Its peaks are usually dusted in white by early October, but the region has not recorded any snowfall since the end of the climbing season on September 10. According to Japan’s Kofu Local Meteorological Office, unseasonably warm weather is to blame after the country went through its hottest summer since 1898.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
🇪🇬 Israel’s new offensive in northern Gaza is forcing Palestinians into the south, toward the Egyptian border and into the Sinai. But Egypt is dead set against taking in more war refugees.
— AL-MANASSA
✍️ “I’m neither a dog nor a pig: I am a refugee.” Soumaila Diawara, a refugee living in Italy, addresses Matteo Salvini’s remarks made on live television last week.
— LA STAMPA
🧊 The Ice Memory Foundation aims to collect ice cores from 20 glaciers from around the world before 2035, before they melt way. The goal is to study both the past and possible future of humanity’s impact on the world's climate.
— LA MAREA
📣 VERBATIM
“We will not allow this.”
— Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the presidency in Ramallah, reacted to the two new laws passed on Monday by the Israeli parliament that brand the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) a “terror” group and ban the humanitarian organization from operating on Israeli soil. "The overwhelming vote of the Knesset reflects Israel’s transformation into a fascist state,” said Abu Rudeineh in a statement, stressing that the international community “must treat Israel as a racist state and remove it from international legitimacy.” The legislation is due to take effect in 90 days.
✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet & Laure Gautherin
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