While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, July 28
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President Joe Biden hosts Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
China tops agenda as Biden meets Italy’s Meloni
US President Joe Biden met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House on Thursday, with the Ukraine war, trade and Italy’s relations with China featuring atop the list of items on the leaders’ agenda.
Italy’s first woman prime minister came to power last October and is seeking an assertive role abroad as she plans the country’s upcoming Italian presidency of the Group of 7 (G-7) nations in 2024.
She and her right-wing coalition have staked out positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights sharply at odds with those of Mr Biden, a Democrat who used last year’s Italian election results as an occasion to warn fellow liberals about the dangers facing the world’s democracies.
“Our relations are strong,” Ms Meloni told Mr Biden in the Oval Office. “They cross governments and remain solid regardless of their political colours. We know who our friends are in times that are tough.”
July to be hottest month on record as UN warns of ‘global boiling’
July is on track to be the hottest month in recorded history, scientists confirmed on Thursday, as UN chief Antonio Guterres warned Earth has moved into an “era of global boiling”.
Searing heat intensified by global warming has affected tens of millions of people in parts of Europe, Asia and North America this month, combining with fierce wildfires that have scorched across Canada and parts of southern Europe.
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning,” said Mr Guterres, urging immediate and bold action to cut planet-heating emissions.
Bomb blast kills several people at Syrian shrine
AFP
A bomb planted in a vehicle exploded outside the Sayeda Zeinab shrine city south of the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, killing several people and wounding others, Syrian state media reported.
A reporter for Syrian state television said a preliminary death toll indicated as many as six people may have died. The station broadcast footage of the charred front of a car.
It was the second attack this week at the shrine. Two people were wounded in a separate blast on Tuesday. It is high season for the shrine as Shi’ite Muslims flock there to mark the mourning period of Ashura.
Rich Russians are flocking to Thailand’s Phuket
REUTERS
Russian businessman Alexander Nakhapetov has been a regular at the “banyas” in his adopted home of Phuket ever since several of the traditional steam baths opened last year.
Lately, though, the 41-year-old’s routine has been disrupted by an influx of his countrymen to Thailand’s biggest island – which has resulted in those new bathhouses being booked out much of the time.
While Phuket has long attracted Russia’s wealthier citizens, the influx is accelerating as President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine makes competing destinations in Europe and elsewhere harder to enter.
Fencer disqualified for refusing to shake hands
AFP
Ukraine’s Olha Kharlan was disqualified from the world fencing championships for refusing to shake hands with her beaten Russian opponent on Thursday, in a decision blasted as “absolutely shameful”.
Kharlan, the first athlete officially representing Ukraine to face a Russian or Belarusian opponent since Moscow’s invasion of her country in February 2022, opted against shaking the hand of Anna Smirnova.
Instead, she offered a touch of her blade after the bout at the tournament in Milan.
