A 14-year-old boy is apprehended by police during Bangkok mall shooting which saw three killed and four injured.
👋 Zdravo!*
Welcome to Tuesday, where Turkish authorities arrest nearly 1,000 suspects after the suicide bomb attack in Ankara, a shooting at a Bangkok mall kills three, and the Nobel Prize in Physics goes to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it science. Meanwhile, Frédéric Schaeffer for French daily Les Echos goes to a Buddhist temple in China where disillusioned young graduates flock to find “another school of life.”
[*Slovenian]
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🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• At least 928 detained after Ankara bomb attack: Turkish authorities have arrested at least 928 suspects in connection to the suicide bomb attack of the capital Ankara on Sunday. Police carried out raids in 64 Turkish provinces to detain people suspected of forming part of the intelligence structure of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party.
• Delhi police raid journalists’ homes: Police in the Indian capital have raided the homes of prominent journalists working for independent news and current affairs website NewsClick. Authorities say the investigation is in connection to NewsClick allegedly receiving illegal funds from China, but critics call it an attack on press freedom, with the independent publication having been previously raided in 2021 by tax authorities.
• 41 Canadian diplomats asked to leave India: India has threatened to revoke the immunity status of 41 Canadian diplomats if they remain in the country after Oct. 10. This announcement comes in the midst of strained relations between the two countries following Canada’s suspicion that Indian government agents were involved in the June killing of Sikh separatist leader and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
• U.S. speaker McCarthy faces historic bid to oust him: Republican congressman Matt Gaetz introduced a seldom-used motion to vacate Kevin McCarthy as House speaker on Monday. Gaetz’s announcement is in response to McCarthy’s bipartisan effort to avert government shutdown through Friday’s stopgap spending bill. Leadership has two days to bring forth a vote, where a simple majority of the house could see McCarthy’s removal. McCarthy took to X to respond to Geatz’s motion with “Bring it on,” to which the congressman replied: “Just did.”
• Greenland women seek compensation for forced birth control: A group of 67 indigenous women of Greenland are demanding compensation from the Danish government for a campaign of forced birth control between the 1960s and 1970s. More than 4,500 women and girls were fitted with coils without knowledge or consent in an attempt to limit birth rates among the indigenous population.
• Abercrombie & Fitch ex-CEO facing possible sex trafficking charges: Mike Jeffries, ex-CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, and British partner Matthew Smith are facing an investigation for alleged sex trafficking of their male models at international events. The BBC conducted a two-year inquiry into the company that found several men were misled about the events they would be attending and had then been coerced into performing sexual acts.
• Nobel Physics Prize: The Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to Pierre Agostini and Anne L'Huillier of France, and Austria’s Ferenc Krausz for their work on the creation of impossibly short pulses of light – measured in “attoseconds”, i.e. quintillionths of a second — in order to study how electrons behave. Prior to the three laureats’ work, electrons processes were so rapid that they were impossible to follow.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
The Washington Post looks into the $250-million fraud trial against Donald Trump, which kicked off on Monday and is expected to last several weeks. The former U.S. president and attorneys presented opposing views on whether he misrepresented business deals by inflating the value of his real estate properties by over $2 billion. Trump called the proceedings a “witch hunt” with the purpose of “interfering with the elections”. He also faces four separate criminal trials.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
120
The carcasses of an estimated 120 river dolphins are being retrieved from an effluent of Brazil’s Solimoes river (a tributary of the Amazon River), with environmentalists blaming the deaths on severe drought and heat. The pink-colored mammals are one of the few remaining species of freshwater dolphins.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
A refuge from China's “rat race”: the young people flocking to Buddhist monasteries
Unemployment, stress in the workplace, economic difficulties: more and more young Chinese graduates are flocking to monasteries to find “another school of life,” reports Frédéric Schaeffer in French daily Les Echos.
🧑🎓 While economic uncertainty has prompted many young Chinese to head for stable positions in the civil service and state-owned companies, Lin is one of a growing number of young graduates who, disillusioned or exhausted, have temporarily withdrawn from the job market to reflect on their future. The economy has begun to show signs of recovery in recent months, following the end of a harsh "zero-COVID" policy. But the recovery remains sluggish, and young people face extraordinary difficulties to find work.
📈 Disillusioned by these economic difficulties, young people are flocking to Buddhist and Taoist temples. "The number of bookings for temple visits has been rising since the beginning of the year," says Trip.com. "Bookings in May (days off around Labor Day on May 1) have risen up 98% compared to February." More than half of all visitors are between the ages of 20 and 40, according to Trip.com's data.
☸️ At the Xianghai Temple in Jiaxing, Lin attends meditation, calligraphy or Buddhist scripture reading sessions; she takes photos to post on the monastery's WeChat account, cleans the temples, tends to the vegetable garden and helps peel vegetables. "Most people have the impression that temples are just tourist sites or historical monuments. Today, my vision is different: it's human, warm and modern. For me, the monastery is another school of life."
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📣 VERBATIM
“I have decided to nominate myself to complete the dream during a new presidential term.”
— During a televised speech Monday evening, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi confirmed that he would run for a third term in office at upcoming elections which will be held over three days in December. The former army chief came to power after ousting elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 before winning the elections in 2014 and again in 2018, by 96% and 97% respectively. Four years ago, the leader oversaw the adoption of amendments to the country’s constitution that would allow him to stand for a third term while extending presidential terms from four to six years.
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
Three people were killed and four injured Tuesday during a shooting at a luxury shopping mall in the center of Bangkok. Above, a 14-year-old boy being apprehended by police. — Photo: Pakorn Manorom via X
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• An End To Venezuela Sanctions? The Lula Factor In Biden's Democratization Gamble — EL ESPECTADOR
• Big Tobacco, Tax Windfalls: The Inside Story Of What Really Feeds China's Smoking Habit — THE INITIUM✍️ Newsletter by Valeria Berghinz, Michelle Courtois and Anne-Sophie Goninet
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