• G7 leaders plan to pledge unity on Taliban recognition: The leaders of the G7 are expected to pledge unity on whether or not to officially recognize or sanction the Taliban, the organization that took over Afghanistan last week. The G7 will meet virtually today to discuss the situation in the Central Asian country.

• COVID-19 update:New Zealand is bracing for its biggest outbreak of the pandemic after it recorded an additional 41 new cases in a day, taking the total to 148. Experts say the cluster could grow to 1,000 and take four to six weeks to eradicate. In Israel, however, there is hope: the country's COVID-19 vaccine booster program shows signs of taming the Delta variant. Officials began administering booster shots — a third dose of the vaccine — to people above 60 on July 30. Meanwhile, after almost a year of emergency use, the U.S. drug regulator, the FDA, granted the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine full approval.

• Haiti desperate for "right" aid: Ten days after the earthquake that struck southern Haiti, more than 2,200 people have died, and at least 30,000 families had to abandon their homes. And yet, many Haitian families are wary of the massive international aid response underway, saying that "the international NGOs do what they want, not what we need."

• Floods linked to climate change: According to new research, the climate crisis made the record-shattering rainfall that caused the floods in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands earlier this summer "up to nine times more likely". The work reinforces the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report this month that there is "unequivocal" evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause of worsening weather.

• Paralympic Games kick off: The 16th Summer Paralympic Games are beginning in Tokyo today after being delayed for a year due to the pandemic. But the city — the first ever to host two editions of the Paralympic Games — is still grappling with COVID as cases continue to rise.

• Duterte to run as VP in 2022: The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has agreed to be the ruling party's vice presidential candidate in next year's elections. In the Philippines, the president can only serve one six-year term, but political observers say Duterte's vice-presidential un could be an attempt to hold on to power.

• Dare to summon the Candyman: The trailer for the latest installment in the horror movie series Candyman is out — but there's a catch: to unlock it, you must whisper the killer's name, Candyman, five times in your computer's microphone. Spooky …

"Amatrice, 5 years of nothing," headlines Italian dailyIl Tempo, as it reports on the fifth anniversary of the 6.2 magnitude earthquake that ravaged more than 100 towns of central Italy, killing 300, displacing some 65,000 people and razing the town of Amatrice to the ground. Today, as they witness the fifth Italian prime minister who visits Amatrice in as many years, locals are still waiting for any of the crumbled houses and buildings to be rebuilt.

In China, women still have to fight for their right to be single

Nowadays, Chinese women are gaining higher social status through access to better education. And yet, the traditional norm of "getting married as early as possible" is still popular, albeit women have gained new social powers, Hong Kong-based media The Initium says. The writer argues that societal norms make marriage the only significant relationship for women to be accepted in society. That discriminates women who have not walked down the aisle as being somehow "leftovers".

The issue of single women was also brought up, interestingly, in a 2017 IKEA commercial that aired in China. In the ad, which stirred up more than a bit of controversy on social media, a girl dines with her parents and calls out to her mother, who slams her chopsticks on the spot and turns against her: "Don't call me mom if you don't bring your boyfriend back!" Then, when the girl's boyfriend comes to visit, the girl's parents completely change their attitude and immediately set up a happy and warm home.

In another ad (SK-II's "She Ended Up at the Matchmaking Corner," from 2016) several "leftover women" are shown speaking with their parents. It opens with the parents putting pressure on their unmarried daughters. But in the second half of the commercial, the daughters explain to their parents that they "don't want to get married just for the sake of getting married." In the end, the parents seem to understand, and there's a reconciliation between the generations.

While social norms pressure women to choose between infertility and marriage, some single Chinese women are looking for a third way: single parenthood. A particularly well-known case is Haiyang Ye, CEO of a cosmetics company, who traveled to the United States in 2017 to buy sperm and gave birth to her daughter Doris through artificial insemination. The effort cost her more than $75,000.

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День незалежності

Ukraine celebrates Independence Day ("Den nezalezhnosti") today, 30 years after the country separated from the Soviet Union. Celebrations come amid tensions with Russia after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed yesterday to reclaim areas of its territory that were annexed by Moscow.

We know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea.

— U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said in a speech delivered in Singapore on the first leg of her Southeast Asian tour. She referred to the landmark international legal case the Philippines won over China about its territorial incursions in the South China Sea. Despite the ruling, Chinese coastguards remain present — with Filipino fishermen frequently reporting harassment. Harris also touched on other issues, such as the Afghanistan pullout, which she described as "courageous and right."

Newsletter by Meike Eijsberg, Alessio Perrone and Bertrand Hauger