2025-09-01 16:30

Sept 1 (Reuters) - Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will hold bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at China's World War Two anniversary celebrations in Beijing this week, Fico said on Monday. He will then meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in eastern Slovakia on Friday, he said in a statement. Sign up here. Fico, who leads a NATO and EU member country but has opposed Western sanctions on Russia, has had tense relations with Zelenskiy and broken ranks with European allies. He met with Putin in Moscow in December. Fico will also be the only European Union country leader to attend the celebrations in Beijing, where Xi will be flanked by Putin and also the leaders of North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar in a show of solidarity against the West. "I respect every single victim of the fight against fascism, therefore I have in the past stood with respect in front of memorials in Moscow, Normandy, or Washington," Fico said in an emailed statement. "I personally regret, and I admit I do not understand why, that from among EU countries, only Slovakia will be present in Beijing. New world order is being built, new rules of multipolar world, new balance of powers, which is extremely important for stability in the world." He said it was necessary to use the opportunity to meet world leaders, and that he had informed EU representatives about his trip. He did not further specify the agenda of his meetings in Beijing nor the meeting with Zelenskiy. Slovakia lashed out at Ukraine when it did not renew a contract to ship Russian gas to Slovakia after the old one expired at the end of last year, forcing Slovakia to use alternative routes for Russian gas and look for other suppliers. Slovakia has also been keen to keep imports of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline running through Ukraine, which were temporarily halted in the past two weeks after Ukrainian attacks on the pipeline in Russia. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/slovak-prime-minister-fico-meet-xi-putin-zelenskiy-this-week-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 16:17

Degraded land, polluted air and water hitting economies Around 80% of low-income populace face all three World Bank 'will not waver' on mission, senior MD says LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Degraded land, polluted air and water stress pose a direct global economic threat but using natural resources more efficiently could cut pollution by half, one of the World Bank's senior managing directors told Reuters. The damage is particularly acute for low-income countries most at threat from poverty, climate change and biodiversity loss, Axel van Trotsenburg said. Sign up here. Speaking alongside the publication of a new report on Monday, he said around 80% of people in low-income nations were exposed to all three and the World Bank was committed to responding even as many countries cut aid budgets. "Our commitment... is ending poverty on a liveable planet, full stop. We will not waver on this," van Trotsenburg said. Among the most impacted countries are Burundi, where 8 million people face water risk and air pollution, and 7 million face land degradation. In Malawi, 12 million people face all three risks, the report said. More broadly, 90% of the world's population face at least one of the challenges, with the report urging countries to repurpose subsidies currently spent on harmful activities. The report is published against a fractious political backdrop ahead of November's COP30 climate talks in Brazil. The World Bank and other multilateral lenders are also awaiting the outcome of a U.S. review , opens new tab of their operations ordered by President Donald Trump in February. The World Bank would provide data-backed evidence to inform discussions on environmental degradation among its member governments, van Trotsenburg said. The report estimated that forests help around half of the world's rain clouds form and said deforestation cut rainfall at a cost of $14 billion a year for the nine-country Amazon region alone, a material hit for the affected nations. It also means landscapes are less able to store and release moisture slowly over time. That amplifies the effects of droughts and results in a $379 billion hit, or 8% of global agricultural economic output. While ecological threats were often seen as being distant, the report zeroed in on economic impacts happening now. "We've often had this mantra that we believed countries need to grow first, pollute and clean up later. What this evidence is telling you is that is simply false," the bank's chief economist for sustainable development and report co-author, Richard Damania, said. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/world-bank-urges-fresh-push-economic-threat-pollution-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 15:44

LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Britain has experienced its warmest summer since records began in 1884 and is now more likely to see similar hot weather in the future due to human-induced climate change, the Met Office weather forecaster said on Monday. Countries worldwide have experienced record-breaking heat in recent years as global warming intensifies, with the summer of 2024 now considered the world's hottest on record. Sign up here. In Europe, sweltering heatwaves this summer contributed to deadly wildfires in countries such as Spain and Portugal. Britain's summer months of June, July and August saw a mean temperature this year of 16.10 degrees Celsius (60.98 degrees Fahrenheit) - surpassing a 2018 record of 15.76 C, the Met Office said. The summer 2025 mean is 1.51 C above the long-term meteorological average. "Our analysis shows that the summer of 2025 has been made much more likely because of the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution," head of climate attribution at the Met Office, Mark McCarthy, said. "We could plausibly experience much hotter summers in our current and near-future ... what would have been seen as extremes in the past are becoming more common in our changing climate." Britain saw four heatwaves this summer, with the highest temperature of 35.8 C recorded in Faversham, southeast England. This peak was lower than the UK's all-time high of  40.3 C in the summer of 2022. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/uk-summer-was-its-warmest-since-records-began-says-met-office-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 12:53

Rescuers comb rubble of homes in remote mountainous area Helicopters ferry the injured to hospital Midnight quake hit at a depth of 10 km (6 miles) KABUL, Sept 1 (Reuters) - One of Afghanistan's worst earthquakes killed more than 800 people and injured at least 2,800, authorities said on Monday, as helicopters ferried the wounded to hospital after they were plucked from the rubble of homes being combed for survivors. The disaster is set to further stretch the resources of the war-torn nation's Taliban administration, already grappling with humanitarian crises, from a sharp drop in aid to the pushback of hundreds of thousands of Afghans by neighbouring countries. Sign up here. Sharafat Zaman, the spokesperson for the health ministry in Kabul, called for international aid to tackle the devastation from the quake of magnitude 6 that struck around midnight, at a depth of 10 km (6 miles). "We need it because here lots of people lost their lives and houses," he told Reuters. The quake killed 812 people in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, said administration spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. Rescuers were battling to reach remote mountainous areas cut off from mobile networks along the Pakistani border, where mudbrick homes dotting the slopes collapsed in the quake. "All our ... teams have been mobilised to accelerate assistance, so that comprehensive and full support can be provided," said health ministry spokesperson Abdul Maten Qanee, citing efforts in areas from security to food and health. Reuters Television images showed helicopters ferrying out the affected, while residents helped security forces and medics carry the wounded to ambulances in an area with a long history of earthquakes and floods. Military rescue teams fanned out across the region, the defence ministry said in a statement, with 40 flights carrying away 420 wounded and dead. The quake razed three villages in Kunar, with substantial damage in many others, authorities said. At least 610 people were killed in Kunar with 12 dead in Nangarhar, they added. It was Afghanistan's third major deadly quake since the Taliban took over in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew, triggering a cut to the international funding that formed the bulk of government finances. Even humanitarian aid, aimed at bypassing political institutions to serve urgent needs, has shrunk to $767 million this year, down from $3.8 billion in 2022. A 6.1-magnitude earthquake that killed 1,000 people in the eastern region that year was the first major natural disaster faced by the Taliban government. CALLS FOR FUNDING Humanitarian agencies say they are fighting a forgotten crisis in Afghanistan, where the United Nations estimates more than half the population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Diplomats and aid officials say crises elsewhere in the world, along with donor frustration over the Taliban's policies towards women, including curbs on those who are aid workers, have spurred the cuts in funding. "So far, no foreign governments have reached out to provide support for rescue or relief work," a spokesperson of Afghanistan's foreign office said. China was ready to provide disaster relief assistance "according to Afghanistan's needs and within its capacity," a spokesperson of its foreign ministry said later. In a post on X, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said its mission in Afghanistan was preparing to help those in areas devastated by the quake. Humanitarian officials and locals say almost two years after a powerful tremor hit the western city of Herat, many villages are still recovering and living in temporary structures. Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/earthquake-afghanistan-kills-800-injures-2800-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 12:42

NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Some of the digital tokens backing the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, began trading on Monday, the cryptocurrency company said. In July, investors in the tokens voted to make them tradeable, paving the way for their sale and purchase - and potentially boosting the value of the president's holdings of them. Sign up here. The World Liberty tokens, known as $WLFI, were sold to investors after the Trump family and their business partners launched the venture - a "decentralized finance" platform that has also issued a stablecoin - last year. https://www.reuters.com/business/trumps-world-liberty-financial-tokens-begin-trading-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 12:37

Sept 1 (Reuters) - Sudan has initiated a shutdown of the Heglig oil facility following drone attacks it blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to a letter sent by its government to its South Sudanese neighbour and seen by Reuters. Heglig, which lies along Sudan's southern border, houses the main processing facility for South Sudanese oil, which accounts for the majority of South Sudan's government revenues. Sign up here. The 2023 outbreak of the war between the Sudanese army and the RSF has disrupted the flow of South Sudanese oil to Sudan, which before the conflict had been receiving between 100,000 and 150,000 barrels of oil per day for further exports. The letter sent by Sudan's energy ministry to its South Sudanese counterparts cited drone attacks on August 26 and 30 as the cause for the shutdown. "Such unprovoked attacks represent a serious threat to the stability of oil flows from South Sudan and we cannot in good faith continue to man the operation there," the letter, dated August 30, said. As a result, Sudan had instructed the Sudanese companies operating in the area, 2B OPCO and PETCO to evacuate, and said the latter would not be able to meet its lifting schedule. "Their continued operation despite ongoing attacks by the RSF will render them inoperable in the long run," the letter said. South Sudanese officials and the two companies could not be immediately reached for comment. The RSF did not respond to requests for comment. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sudan-shuts-down-heglig-oil-facilities-after-drone-attacks-2025-09-01/