CHINA MARKETS CONTINUE DIVE
The Chinese stock market continued to crumble today, with the Shanghai Composite index closing down 7.6% at 2,964.97 points. Japan also saw more sharp falls with Tokyo’s Nikkei index falling 4%, Reuters reports.
- In an attempt to tackle the crisis, China’s central bank cut interest rates by 0.25% today, The Guardian reports.But Chinese newspapers are urging the government not to intervene in the market. “The authorities should slowly step out of the policy of rescuing the stock market,” Xinhua’s Economic Information Daily writes. “The purpose of the government’s intervention is to control financial risks and not to lift up the equity market.”
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Meanwhile, other markets in Asia and Europe jumped back up. In the U.S., a higher opening is expected on Wall Street today, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed down nearly 4% Monday, The New York Times reports.
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Even as it dominates headlines around the world, the Chinese stock market crash is getting notably scant coverage at home. Read more in our Extra! feature.
TYPHOON GONI HITS JAPAN
Photo: Yuan Jing/Xinhua/ZUMA
Typhoon Goni has made landfall on Japan’s main island of Kyushu, causing blackouts and disrupting air traffic and train services, the Japan Times reports. The storm is weakening but not before leaving a trail of destruction, triggering landslides and floods that reportedly killed 10 in the northern Philippines.
SUSPECTED ISIS RECRUITERS ARRESTED
Spanish and Moroccan authorities arrested 14 people in a joint operation targeting suspected ISIS recruiters today in the outskirts of Madrid and in the Moroccan cities of Fez, Casablanca, Nador, Al Hoceima and Driouch, El País reports. The aim of the operation was to break up a network that sends people to Syria or Iraq to join the terror group. The Spanish Ministry of Interior said the operation would continue.
350
A 12-year-old Taiwanese boy damaged a 350-year-old painting by Paolo Porpora at an exhibition in Taipei last weekend when he tripped and smashed a fist-sized hole in the $1.5 million still life in an attempt to break his fall, Focus Taiwan reports. The organizers of the exhibition say they won’t ask the boy’s family to pay for the damage.
KOREAN TENSIONS EASE
After two days of talks, North and South Korea agreed early today to ease tensions at their shared border, putting an end to a military standoff sparked by an exchange of artillery fire last week, Reuters reports. South Korea has agreed to halt its anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts at the border, and North Korea has expressed regret over two South Korean soldiers being wounded in a landmine blast earlier this month and ended the “semi-state of war” it had declared. The two sides also began pulling back troops at the border. Although South Korea said it would maintain its “defense posture,” the BBC quoted South Korean President Park Guen-hye as saying that this agreement “could serve as an occasion to resolve all inter-Korean issues through trust.”
ON THIS DAY
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On this day in 2012, NASA’s Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space. That and more in today’s shot of history.
3 DIE IN LEBANON REFUGEE CAMP VIOLENCE
At least three people were killed and several others injured in clashes between rival armed groups in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon Monday. The casualties were reportedly members of the Fatah movement, which clashed with the jihadist Jund al-Sham group, Al Jazeera reports. There has been violence between the two groups over the past few months. Two Fatah members were killed Saturday when the Jund al-Sham group attempted to kill a Fatah official. Ain al-Hilweh, home to more than 100,000 people living in squalid conditions, is Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp. The Lebanese army doesn’t enter the camp, and security is left to Palestinian factions.
MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD
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MERKEL, HOLLANDE CALL FOR EU ASYLUM SYSTEM
In a joint statement in Berlin yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande called for a unified European response to the migrant crisis. “We must put in place a unified system for the right to asylum,” Radio France Internationale quoted the French head of state as saying, describing the crisis as “an exceptional situation that will last for some time.”
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Merkel stressed all European countries would have to implement this right to asylum as soon as possible, and also issued a strong condemnation of anti-migrant protests that erupted in eastern Germany over the weekend. “It is vile for far-right extremists and neo-Nazis to try to spread their hollow, hateful propaganda, but it is just as shameful for citizens including families with children to join them,” the AFP quoted her as saying
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A record 2,093 potential asylum seekers crossed from Serbia to Hungary Monday, local authorities reported. Hungary said it would complete the construction of a border fence with Serbia by Aug. 31, as part of tough anti-migrant government measures.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Paris-based big data whiz Rand Hindi wants to put his technology savvy to work to free us from our growing enslavement to the digital masters. “In Hindi’s ideal world,” writes Le Monde‘s Jean-Baptiste Jacquin, “technology won’t disappear per se. But it will stop being something we constantly need to think about. ‘When connected objects are smart enough not to be invasive, we can add as many as we want,’ he says. He thinks we’re 10 years away from the inflection point between growing enslavement to technology and the liberation it will provide.”
Read the full article, One Tech Founder’s Quest To Make Technology Disappear.
AUSTERE BRAZIL TO CLOSE 10 MINISTRIES
Brazilian Planning Minister Nelson Barbosa said Monday the government will cut 10 of its 39 ministries in a move to show wary markets President Dilma Rousseff’s commitment to an unpopular austerity plan, Reuters reports. It’s not yet clear which ministries will be affected and what the cost savings will be, but the Brazilian government said more details will be revealed in early September.
TOUCAN GETS 3D-PRINTED BEAK
A Brazilian toucan missing half of its upper beak recently received a 3D-printed prosthesis designed by researchers in Rio de Janeiro. As CNN reports, it took the bird just three days to get used to its new beak.