Reminders For Running A Better Business

Chant follows Trump’s racist tweets targeting Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen of color

Goaded on by the president, a crowd at a Donald Trump rally on Wednesday night chanted “send her back! send her back!” in reference to Ilhan Omar, a US congresswoman who arrived almost 30 years ago as a child refugee in the United States.

Trump used the 2020 campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, to attack Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – calling them “hate-filled extremists”. The group, which calls itself “the Squad”, has been the focus of racist attacks by the president this week, kickstarted by tweets posted Sunday in which he said the lawmakers, all women of color, should “go back” to other countries.

Dozens also injured after man spread flammable liquid and set fire to building of company famous for anime cartoons

Twelve people are presumed dead, fire officials have said, and more could be missing after becoming trapped by a suspected arson attack at a renowned animation production company in Japan.

Thirty-five others have been injured, some of them critically, said Kyoto fire department official Satoshi Fujiwara.

Foreign leaders Boris Yeltsin and François Mitterrand also subjects of gossipy anecdotes, papers show

Confidential and sometimes unflattering appraisals of foreign leaders have been a staple of the diplomatic cable long before the leaking of the former US ambassador Kim Darroch’s emails.

Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, François Mitterrand and the Saudi royal family were all subjects of candid pen portraits and gossipy anecdotes during John Major’s premiership.

South Australian man and his son found the bottle, which was dropped from an ocean liner by 13-year-old Paul Gilmore in 1969

The British author of a message in a bottle that recently washed up on the South Australian coast after more than half a century has been found – and he is currently out to sea, his sister says.

South Australian man Paul Elliot and his son Jyah told ABC radio they found the bottle on the Eyre Peninsula’s west coast recently while fishing.

Marital rape not being prosecuted enough, campaigners say, in a country where women face growing harassment

Activists have warned of an “epidemic” of sexual harassment and violence against women in Indonesia, in the wake of two recent cases of horrific domestic abuse.

In one incident, a man in Jakarta reportedly slashed his wife’s throat with a machete after she refused to have sex with him, an act witnessed by their two children, aged seven and 14.

Michel Barnier says the UK will ‘have to face the consequences’ of crashing out

Boris Johnson’s suggestion he could use the threat of no deal to win an improved Brexit deal for the UK risks falling on deaf ears in Brussels, the EU’s top negotiator has suggested.

Michel Barnier suggested, in an interview carried out in May for the BBC Panorama programme, that Theresa May’s negotiating team never tried to use the spectre of a no-deal Brexit despite calls from Tory hardliners to do so.

Organisation calls for more funds as 2,512 cases are confirmed in the region

The Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a public health emergency of international concern, the World Health Organization has declared, calling for more funds and support to close it down.

The second biggest Ebola outbreak ever, after the 2014-16 epidemic in west Africa, has reached a critical point with the diagnosis of a case in Goma, a city of 2 million people, which is a transport hub on the border with Rwanda. That follows the case last week of a women who crossed into Uganda to buy fish – and the arrival of a family harbouring the virus, three of whom died, in Uganda last month.

Cyber attack compromised records on incomes, tax, health insurance and loans of millions of people

A 20-year-old cybersecurity worker has been arrested in Bulgaria and charged with hacking the personal and financial records of millions of taxpayers, as police continue to investigate the country’s biggest ever data breach.

Bulgaria’s NRA tax agency is facing a fine of up to €20m ($22.43m) over the hack, which was revealed this week and is thought to have compromised the records of nearly every working adult among the country’s population of 7 million.

• Ricardo Rosselló resisting calls to resign over leaked messages
• Ricky Martin and other performers join crowds on streets of San Juan

Accompanied by some of Puerto Rico’s most famous performers, thousands of people marched to the governor’s residence in San Juan on Wednesday chanting demands for the embattled governor, Ricardo Rosselló, to resign after the leak of online chats that show him making misogynistic slurs and mocking his constituents.

The crowd ranged from teenagers to retirees, with some waving the island’s flag printed in black and gray rather than red, white and blue to symbolize their discontent with a government they call corrupt and unresponsive to its people. Musicians Ricky Martin, Residente and Bad Bunny marched and addressed the crowd.

Chloe Haines, 25, allegedly tried to open aircraft doors on Jet2 flight from Stansted to Turkey

A passenger who allegedly caused two RAF jets to be scrambled to escort a plane back to Stansted airport has been sent a bill for £85,000 by the airline.

Chloe Haines has been accused by Jet2 of a “catalogue of aggressive, abusive and dangerous behaviour” on a flight bound for Dalaman in Turkey in June, including trying to open the aircraft doors during the flight.

Popular video blogger whose image of the menu went viral now faces police inquiry

Indonesia’s national airline has come under fire for banning the taking of in-flight photos and videos after a popular video blogger posted an image online showing a handwritten menu he was handed in business class.

The well-known travel v-logger Rius Vernandes was also reported to police after the post, which saw the airline Garuda Indonesia widely mocked online. The photo was uploaded with the caption: “The menu is still being printed sir.”

Wood smoke smothers Coyhaique, Chile, in June and July. Yet despite the WHO ranking its air worst in the Americas, residents are reluctant to alter their habits

Photographs by Claudio Frías

“I was born and raised beside a roaring fire,” says Yasna Seguel proudly, as wet snowflakes tap against the kitchen window behind her and orange flames warm an outstretched palm. A tobacco-yellow stain soaks into the table cloth as she sets her mate gourd down to select a fresh log for the fire.

Every evening through the bitterly cold winter months of June and July, the southern city of Coyhaique, the most populous in the region of Aysén in Chilean Patagonia, is smothered by a thick, fragrant blanket of damp wood smoke that clings to the hillsides.

You might think of Hong Kong, given its famous skyscraper skyline, but by different measures of verticality other cities come out on top

Looking out from sky100, Hong Kong’s highest observation deck on the 100th floor of the city’s tallest building, the 494-metre-high International Commerce Centre, you get a 360-degree view of one of the world’s most famous skylines – an urban jungle framed by mountains and the gleaming Victoria harbour, with endless clusters of high-rise buildings packed so closely together they resemble a game of Tetris.

It’s little wonder a city of such visible density has more skyscrapers than anywhere else in the world. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), Hong Kong has 355 buildings over 150m in height.

Ridership is high and there’s plenty of work for drivers, but success has come at a cost to this Ontario town

Photographs by Cole Burston

When Daniel Arrega, 19, heads to work at a mall in Innisfil, he has few options for his commute. Walking along the highway would take nearly three hours. A taxi is faster but expensive.

So he takes the town’s public transit: Uber.

Thousands of Aleppians are using a Facebook group to share their way of life before the Syrian war

Going to the hammam was once a beloved ritual for Aleppo resident Atef Shikhouni and his friends. Recalling the boisterous, joyful experience, the 55-year-old wrote: “Here is a man shouting, ‘Where is the soap?’ while another one is asking for the shampoo and a third wants someone to rub his back. It becomes very noisy. After spending some time in the sauna, it is time for the ‘rubbing man’. He uses a rough loofah to rub my body mercilessly and I pray it will end without any damage.”

But that was before the outbreak of war in Syria. “Today, the bath is cold and has no soul,” the sports teacher wrote in February 2017, shortly after the worst of the fighting in Aleppo had ended. “Cruel are our days, exactly like our bath today.”

President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent crackdown has left 20,000 dead, and in a devout country, he has repeatedly hurled insults at bishops, the pope – and even God. But only a handful of Catholic activists are brave enough to speak out. By Adam Willis

One of the most famous victims – and a rare survivor – of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is a 30-year-old pedicab driver named Francisco Santiago Jr. In September 2016, while cycling through central Manila, Santiago was abducted by a Philippine national police (PNP) officer posing as a passenger. Santiago’s name was not on the “kill list” of the PNP’s now-infamous drug-sting operation known as Oplan Tokhang, or “Operation Knock and Plead”, but he had become a target, nonetheless.

After he was taken to a police station and beaten for the better part of a day, Santiago was led back into the streets and shot multiple times, suffering wounds to his chest and arms. Thinking him dead, one officer approached Santiago and placed a pistol next to his hand. Santiago waited, barely breathing as blood pooled around him, until he heard the hurried sounds of journalists arriving at the scene. He sat up, pleading for his life and waving his blood-soaked arms in surrender. By the next morning, local newspapers had already assigned Santiago a new name: Lazarus.

Report identifies Zimbabwe-style seizures as key concern in the event of a united Ireland

Some unionists in Northern Ireland fear Zimbabwe-style land seizures by Irish nationalists if the region joins a united Ireland, according to a report that lays bare anxieties about any Brexit-fuelled breakup of the UK.

Farmers and others with Protestant and unionist backgrounds worry that Catholic and nationalist neighbours would claim their land in a cultural, economic and political takeover by Dublin – “the mother of all fears”, the report found.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vows to find those behind attack on restaurant in city of Erbil

A gunman has killed a senior Turkish diplomat and a civilian in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, in a daytime attack inside a restaurant.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, vowed to find whoever was behind the “treacherous” attack. The dead man was identified by Iraqi media as the deputy consul for the region.

The Home Office’s hostile handling of visiting African professionals doesn’t bode well for Global Britain

An African passport is the most egalitarian of documents, in that if you have one then class, employment status and professional invitations from the country you are visiting all count for nothing. From university professors to unskilled labourers, anyone holding a passport issued by a country in Africa will be treated the same by UK border officers. They will also show no compassion for or recognition of the need for people to be reunited with family or to see friends.

In fact it’s not too far-fetched to say an African passport is a no-travel document. Even countries within Africa are miserly with each other. I am a veteran visa applicant, and I can tell you there is no respite. A European visa is as prohibitively hard to secure as one to a neighbouring African country. My Sudanese passport meant that I had to become an Olympian visa-applier in order to visit, study and settle in the UK. You can’t slouch with a passport from a country on a terror watchlist.

Fossil fuel interests, pro-gun groups, foreign delegations and all manner of allies visit the Trump International Hotel to cozy up to the administration, say watchdogs

On 25 July, the conservative Heartland Institute is slated to host a one-day meeting at the Trump International Hotel, just a few blocks from the White House. It will feature leading climate science deniers who will discuss issues like “the benefits of ending the Democrats’ war on fossil fuels”, according to the institute.

Last month, as Donald Trump was kicking off his 2020 campaign and boasting again of “draining the swamp” of Washington’s powerful lobbyists and elites, a couple of dozen oil and gas executives with the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance were checking into the president’s hotel before a day of schmoozing with Republican House leaders and cabinet officials.

18 July 1979: Leaders of the victorious Sandinista movement expected to enter Managua to start rebuilding a country which has been ravaged by civil war

Church bells rang and rifles were joyfully fired into the air throughout Nicaragua yesterday as the crumbling dictatorship of the Somoza family finally ended in Latin America’s first successful popular uprising for 20 years.

Anastasio Somoza, the 53-year-old President whose father had been put into power by the United States Marine Corps in the 1930s, resigned yesterday before flying with his family and a retinue of five aircraft to Homestead Air Force Base, south of Miami.

Federal minister says states to retain responsibility for rectification work, including of combustible cladding

State and territory ministers have agreed to take a “nationally consistent approach” to building industry safety standards, according to the federal industry minister.

On Thursday Karen Andrews declared that she had brokered an agreement after meeting building and housing ministers to discuss industry complaints about skyrocketing insurance costs and the patchwork response to safety concerns.

Twelve people are presumed dead, fire officials have said, and more could be missing after becoming trapped by a suspected arson attack at a renowned animation production company in Japan. Thirty-five others have been injured, some of them critically, said Kyoto fire department official Satoshi Fujiwara. The 41-year-old suspect was reportedly among the injured and has been taken to hospital.

Once a malaria blackspot, Myanmar has used aid money to tackle the disease locally – an approach, say experts, from which other countries can learn

With a plastic case full of cheap medical supplies and only a few days’ training, Say Mu Phaw is on the verge of eliminating malaria from her village in south-eastern Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region.

Back in 2015, her first full year as a village health worker, 16 people came down with the disease in Mi Kyaung Hlaung, where roughly 600 residents live surrounded by mosquito-ridden tropical forests.

Cross-party inquiry finds people from African countries often perceive reasons given for failed applications as biased or discriminatory

British MPs have warned that the UK visitor visa system is “broken” and doing “severe damage” to UK-Africa relations.

The problems faced by experts trying to visit the UK are so widespread that many Africans believe the Home Office to be prejudiced against them and deliberately trying to reduce visitor numbers.

Pupils believe their bilingual school is proof that peace is possible between Palestinians and Israelis

It’s mid-morning in grade one and children are sitting in small groups, peering over colourful maths books. When it reaches 9.45am, a song plays for morning break and excited chattering breaks out.

It sounds like a typical classroom scene, but their school, say students, is unlike any other. The children are growing up in Jerusalem, a city at the heart of the Israel and Palestine conflict, where communities are deeply divided. Max Rayne Hand in Hand school is the only place in Jerusalem where students from Jewish and Arab backgrounds learn together, studying a bilingual and multicultural curriculum.

Report finds significant financial boost needed to meet targets to eradicate disease

The pace of reducing new HIV infections is slowing and progress in accessing treatment is decreasing, putting UN targets to end the Aids epidemic by 2030 in doubt.

The UNAids report, published on Tuesday, showed mixed progress, with certain countries making solid gains but others experiencing rises in both new infections and Aids-related deaths.

Chief of leading aid agency warns that halfway through current funding year, less than a third of required money has been donated

The head of one of the world’s leading aid agencies has issued a stark warning over the “alarming lack of funding” for global humanitarian crises.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, noted that halfway through the current funding year, humanitarian organisations had received less than a third of money – 27% – needed to provide relief to people affected by crises worldwide.

Claims of a Chinese fifth column within Google stoke paranoia against Asian Americans and threaten to ruin the economy – and our democracy

The billionaire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “treason” and called for a law enforcement investigation of the search engine’s parent company. He speculated that the Chinese government has invaded its employee ranks. A German immigrant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeated assertions of the rabble rouser Steve Bannon that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley.

These claims, combined with similar charges of wrongdoing against students and professors of Chinese origin on campuses across the country, are as ominous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evidence, Bannon displays ample prejudice. They are inspiring paranoia about everyone of Chinese heritage.

The president seems to regard divisive, nativist rhetoric as his best chance of staying in the White House. Analysts say he may be right

It was foul and repugnant. But was it a vote winner?

Donald Trump’s bigoted tirade against four congresswoman of colour, telling them to “go back” to the countries they came from, prompted widespread revulsion – the comments “drip with racism”, said the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer – and yet will not necessarily damage his chances of reelection.

Trump telling four politicians of color to ‘go back’ to countries they came from shows more than just his own nativist instincts

In an unfashionable corner of Washington, with African American community activists standing behind him, House speaker Paul Ryan described Donald Trump’s view that an American-born judge was not qualified to preside over a case because of his Mexican heritage as the “textbook definition of a racist comment”.

Related: 'You can leave': Trump unrepentant over racist attack on congresswomen

The cost of keeping China out of the region is too great. We must build forces that could counter its operations instead

Let’s be honest: Australians have never had much time for our South Pacific neighbours.

The island nations that lie to our north and north-east, stretching from Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands to Vanuatu, Fiji and beyond, may be close to us geographically, but we have not found them especially interesting, important or profitable.

Sudan's ruling military and the pro-democracy movement signed a political document on Wednesday which is part of a power-sharing deal meant to end the country's deadlock after weeks of stalled talks. The signing comes after months of street protests and violence after the military ousted the dictator Omar al-Bashir

• Sudan military and protesters sign power-sharing accord

The family of Eric Garner have spoken of their anger after no charges were brought against Daniel Pantaleo, a white police officer implicated in the chokehold death of Garner, an African American man killed almost five years ago. The arrest was captured on cellphone video, which showed Garner repeating the phrase 11 times as Pantaleo pulled him to the ground in what has been described as a banned chokehold. Eric Garner's mother said: 'My son said 'I can't breathe' 11 times, and today we can't breathe' 

• Eric Garner: no charges against white police officer over chokehold death
  

The EU commission president candidate Ursula von der Leyen was booed by Brexit party MEPs as she spoke of her openness to extend the UK’s membership of the EU after 31 October. Speaking in Strasbourg before a vote on Tuesday evening to confirm her position, the outgoing German defence minister said: 'I stand ready for a further extension of the withdrawal date, should more time be required for a good reason.' The leader of the Brexit party, Nigel Farage, accused Von der Leyen of wanting to build 'a centralised, undemocratic, updated form of communism where nation state parliaments will cease to have any relevance at all'

Hundreds of people have been evacuated from a hip-hop festival on the Croatian island of Pag after a forest fire broke out nearby. Flames were seen billowing behind the site as attendees left the Fresh Island festival on Zrće beach on Monday night. The organisers said emergency services were working to contain the blaze and it was unclear whether the event would continue as planned on Tuesday

Donald Trump has said that his tweets on Sunday were 'not at all' racist after he was questioned by the media as he walked up the podium at his Made in America showcase speech. 

On Sunday, the US president used racist language to attack four progressive Democratic congresswomen, telling them to 'go back and help fix the totally broken and crime[-]infested places from which they came'. Trump did not name his targets, but the attack was directed at a group of liberal congresswomen who have had a run-in with the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and who are sometimes referred to as 'the Squad': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota

• Trump's racist attack prompts trickle of criticism from handful of Republicans
• May condemns Trump's racist remarks about four congresswomen
• 'Go back home': Trump aims racist attack at Ocasio-Cortez and other congresswomen

Arriving in Brussels on Monday, the UK’s foreign secretary said there was still time to save the Iran nuclear deal. European powers are trying to preserve the landmark deal, which the US abandoned unilaterally a year ago. Iran recently announced it would start enriching uranium beyond agreed limits

• Failure of Iran deal could pose ‘existential threat’, says Hunt

Officers dressed in riot gear have fought with demonstrators inside a shopping centre in the residential district of Sha Tin, as they tried to disperse tens of thousands of people rallying against an extradition bill that would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China to face trial. Millions have taken to the streets in the past month in some of the largest and most violent protests for decades

• Hong Kong protest ends in chaotic clashes between police and demonstrators