🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Explosion strikes Afghan mosque during prayers: Developing: An explosion has rocked a Shia mosque in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar during Friday prayers. At least 32 people have been killed.

• Norway bow-and-arrow suspect is convert to Islam: Norway's security service says the deadly bow-and-arrow attack that killed five people in Konsberg "appears to be terrorism." The suspect, a 37-year-old Danish citizen named Espen Andersen Brathen, is a convert to Islam and had already been flagged to the police for showing signs of radicalization.

• COVID update: Italy's COVID "green pass" comes into force, with all workers across public and private sectors now required to be vaccinated or take frequent coronavirus tests to enter their workplace, a first for a Western democracy. Meanwhile, Israel sees a sharp drop in new COVID-19 infections aided by its use of vaccine passports, vaccine boosters, and masks.

• Linkedin pulls out of China: Citing a "challenging operating environment", Microsoft has decided to replace LinkedIn in China with a version focused on job applications, with no networking features.

• Beirut on edge, death count rises to six: The Lebanese capital remained tense Friday after the worst violence in a decade left at least six people dead and 30 wounded. The shootings were sparked by demands that a judge investigating last year's deadly port blast be replaced. On Friday, the country's judges association again rejected attempts to interfere in the carrying out of the probe.

• Michelin awards stars to Russian chefs for the first time: The Michelin Guide has awarded nine Moscow restaurants with its star as they released the first edition of their gastronomic bible in the country.

• Adele drops new music after six years: After a slow-burning PR campaign, Adele's first new songs in six years arrived with the release of her new music video "Easy On Me" directed by Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan. The London singer will drop the complete album, her fourth, next month.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

"The dramatic minutes," titles Norwegian daily Aftenposten reporting on the attack in the city of Konsberg, where a man armed with a bow and arrow killed five people and injured two others "in the course of 35 minutes," the daily writes. The suspect, a 37-year-old Danish man who converted to Islam, has confessed to the killings in what authorities are calling an apparent "act of terror."

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

Ghosts of defeat inside deserted German base in Afghanistan

The new Taliban commander shows Alfred Hackensberger, Sebastian Backhaus, Ricardo Vilanova, reporters from Berlin-based daily Die Welt, around the deserted Camp Marmal, the German army's former headquarters in Afghanistan.

🇦🇫 On June 29, the German army finally withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving their largest military base, at the foot of the Hindu Kush, deserted. It was only two weeks before the Taliban took it over. "During this time, when the base wasn't guarded, all the machinery was looted," says Taliban commander Abdullah Sajjad. The 30-year-old is now responsible for security on the former German base. Today," he says, "the camp is absolutely secure."

⏸️ Driving through the long, wide streets, the former German military base feels like a ghost town. A strange quiet reigns, broken now and again by birdsong, dogs barking or one of the few planes taking off or landing at the neighboring Mazar-i-Sharif airport. Inside the buildings, everything is as the German army left it. If it weren't for the thick layer of dust on everything, you could be forgiven for thinking the German soldiers were about to return. It is incredible how precisely everything has been tidied up, with typical German thoroughness. It looks like they wanted to hand the base over to its next occupants as smoothly as possible.

➗ Camp Marmal is a symbol of a reality that still feels ungraspable, although it's already been consigned to history. The West has lost its fight against fundamentalist Islam and turned its back on Afghanistan and its people. Mohammed, the interpreter for the German army, is torn. He still can't accept that they have left. He feels let down by people he saw as comrades and friends. They abandoned him to the Taliban, who've started hunting down locals who worked with NATO troops. He is only one of many hundreds who worked for the German army and have been left behind in Afghanistan.

➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com

#️⃣  BY THE NUMBERS

$21.9 million

Banksy's Love is in the Bin sold at Sotheby's in London on Thursday for a record 18.5 million pounds ($21.9 million). The half-shredded artwork is what remains of the elusive artist's Girl with Balloon, which became a piece of performance art when it started self-destructing in the same auction room three years ago, moments after it went under the hammer for $1.4 million.

❗❓  WHAT THE WORLD

Fart at famous thermal spa sparks 12-person brawl, three arrested

Close your eyes. You've arrived in the lush and peaceful microstate of Andorra, known around the world for its natural spas. Flanked by majestic mountains, you take in the deep valleys and glistening lakes of this landlocked nation nestled between Spain and France as you settle in at one of the largest spas in Europe. You've spent the day relaxing with that special someone in the 70 °C thermal waters. Maybe you've just gotten a nice massage.

And then someone farts.

It was exactly just such a mood (and wind) breaker that set off a major brawl this past Monday night at the Caldea spa, leading to three arrests and two injuries, reports local French-language daily L'Indépendant.

The scene was set just northeast of the capital city Andorra la Vella, as several groups of people gathered in the spa's locker room at the end of a relaxing day. A man let one rip, apparently a little too close to another man — insults were exchanged, and two groups of friends quickly came to blows, with a dozen spa-goers in total involved in the kerfuffle.

According to Catalan-language news website Altaveu, the establishment's overwhelmed security staff was forced to call the police, and four patrols were dispatched to the scene.

Three people, including the original "guilty" party, were taken into custody before being released.

➡️ Keep up with all the planet's police reports and plot twists on Worldcrunch.com

📣 VERBATIM

It is more dangerous, it requires more sacrifices, just to do what journalists have always done.

— Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, this year's joint Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in an interview with France24. The founder of digital media Rappler and outspoken critic of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is free on bail as she appeals a six-year prison sentence for a libel conviction.