Top EU officials will boycott informal meetings hosted by Hungary while the country has the EU’s rotating presidency, after Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister Viktor Orbán held a series of rogue meetings with foreign leaders about Ukraine that angered European partners.

The highly unusual decision to have the European Commission president and other top officials of the body boycott the meetings was made “in light of recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian (EU) presidency”, commission spokesperson Eric Mamer posted on Monday on X.

Hungary took over the rotating role on 1 July and since then Orban has visited Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan, China, and the United States on a world tour he has touted as a “peace mission” aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. That angered many leaders in the EU, who said they had not been informed in advance of Orbán’s plans. His government is friendly with Russia and has gone against the policy of most EU countries on support for Ukraine.

Hungary’s Europe minister, János Bóka, lashed out at the commission’s decision saying the body “cannot cherrypick institutions and member states it wants to cooperate with.”

The decision by the European Commission applies to informal meetings hosted by Hungary. Senior civil servants will attend instead of top officials such as the European Commission president, currently Ursula von der Leyen.

Orbán’s government has gone against the policy of most EU countries by refusing to supply Kyiv with weapons to deter Russia’s invasion and by threatening to block financial assistance to the war-ravaged country.

The long-serving prime minister’s visits to Moscow and Beijing, where he held talks with leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, angered his EU counterparts, who said they had not been informed in advance. They rushed to clarify that Orbán – whose country is currently filling the bloc’s six-month rotating presidency – was not acting on behalf of the EU.

In an interview with Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet on Monday, Orbán’s political director said the prime minister had briefed the leaders of other EU countries “in writing about the negotiations, the experiences of the first phase of the peace mission and the Hungarian proposals”.

“If Europe wants peace and wants to have a decisive say in settling the war and ending the bloodshed, it must now work out and implement a change of direction,” said Balázs Orbán, who is not related to the premier. “A realistic assessment of the situation, realistic goals and the right timing – that’s our approach.”

Hungary’s government has long argued for an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations in the conflict in Ukraine, but has not outlined what such moves might mean for the country’s territorial integrity and future security. It has exhibited an adversarial posture toward Ukraine while maintaining close ties to Moscow, even after its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Orbán’s critics have accused him of acting against the unity and interests of the EU and Nato, of which Hungary is a member, and of pursuing an “appeasement” strategy concerning Russia’s aggression.

After Orbán’s unannounced trip to Moscow for talks with Putin on 5 July – the first such visit from an EU head of state or government in more than two years – von der Leyen accused him of trying to mollify the Russian leader, writing on X: “Appeasement will not stop Putin. Only unity and determination will pave the path to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that Russia should be represented at a second peace summit in November, after a first summit convened by the Ukrainian president last month in Switzerland to which Moscow was not invited. Both sides have shunned direct peace talks since negotiations between Russian and Ukraine delegations fell through in the early weeks of Russia’s invasion in February 2022. But during a press conference in Kyiv after his visit to the US for a Nato defence alliance summit, Zelenskiy opened the door to direct talks with officials from Moscow. “I believe that Russian representatives should be at the second summit,” Zelensky said, describing preparations for a follow-up gathering of Ukraine’s allies.

• In the same news conference, Zelenskiy said Ukraine needs 25 Patriot air defence systems to fully defend its airspace, adding that he also wants western partners to send more F-16 warplanes than those already pledged. A six-month delay in military assistance from the US, the biggest single contributor to Ukraine, meant that Kyiv’s forces had “lost the initiative” on the frontline, Zelenskiy said.

• Top EU officials will boycott informal meetings hosted by Hungary while the country has the EU’s rotating presidency, after Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister Viktor Orbán held a series of rogue meetings with foreign leaders about Ukraine that angered European partners. The highly unusual decision to have the European Commission president and other top officials of the body boycott the meetings was made “in light of recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian [EU] presidency”, commission spokesperson Eric Mamer posted on Monday on X.

• US journalist and author Masha Gessen was convicted in absentia on Monday by a Moscow court on charges of spreading false information about the military and was sentenced to eight years in prison. The Moscow-born Gessen, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a columnist for The New York Times who lives in the US, is a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an award-winning writer.

• A Ukraine drone attack sparked a fire at a factory producing electrical devices and components in Russia’s Kursk region, the interim governor of the region bordering Ukraine said early Tuesday. “None of the workers were injured,” Alexei Smirnov, the governor, said on the Telegram messaging app.

• A Russian military court on Monday granted house arrest to a general and former commander in Moscow’s Ukraine offensive who has been charged with fraud. Major-General Ivan Popov was released from behind bars Monday after being arrested in May on suspicion of large-scale fraud, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

• Ukraine said Monday that a military serviceman allegedly attempting to flee the country illegally had been shot dead by a border guard after being caught and detained. The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) said four servicemen were apprehended while approaching the Moldovan border by foot in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa on Sunday. “While trying to cross the border, border guards noticed them and detained them,” the SBI said. “One of the fugitives attacked the border guard while trying to escape. In response, he used his service weapon and shot the attacker.”

The leftwing coalition that won most seats in France’s snap general election is facing division after its leading party said it was suspending negotiations with the others over a failure to agree on a prime minister.

Just one week after the election, the fragile unity within the New Popular Front (NFP) fractured on Monday when France Unbowed (LFI) accused the Socialist party (PS) of “unacceptable methods” in vetoing suggestions over who should lead any new administration.

The rift comes at the start of a crucial week in which the government will resign and new MPs will vote on Thursday to appoint a new president of the national assembly, the equivalent of the speaker of the house.

On Monday, LFI said it would not resume talks about forming a government or agreeing a possible prime minister until after the vote for president of the lower house.

In an angry statement, LFI accused the PS of playing into the hands of Macron – whose centrist alliance Ensemble pushed the far-right National Rally (RN) into third place – by putting the leftwing alliance into a “deadlock”.

“Is the PS playing for time to allow the NFP to crumble and abandoning the programme on which it was elected? We will not allow this stalemate to facilitate presidential manoeuvres,” it wrote.

Macron has said he would not work with a government led by LFI. Both LFI and RN have said they would launch a motion of no confidence in any government that included the other.

“The PS has chosen to veto any candidacy [for prime minister] from the NFP, with the sole aim of imposing its own, arguing that it would be the only one acceptable to Emmanuel Macron. It is thus making the president of the republic the decision-maker on our alliance, even though it has been formed against him and his policies,” the LFI statement said.

It added: “These methods are unacceptable. We demand an immediate agreement on a single candidate from the New Popular Front for the presidency of the national assembly … until then we will not participate in any other discussion about the forming of a government.”

The legislative election that Macron called after the RN’s success in the European elections was meant to “clarify” the French political landscape. Instead, the result just over a week ago revealed three similarly sized blocs had emerged – none of which has a majority, or the prospect of forming one.

French union leaders have accused Macron of hijacking democracy, and called for protests and strikes outside the national assembly and government offices across France at noon on Thursday.

Britain is taking its first steps towards forging closer trading links with the EU in meetings between the new business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, and international counterparts in Italy.

In his first overseas visit since Labour’s election landslide, Reynolds will tell a G7 meeting of trade ministers in the Italian city of Reggio Calabria that the new UK government wants to foster a “closer, more mature relationship with our friends in the EU”.

Aiming to reset relations after a volatile period under successive Conservative administrations since the 2016 Brexit vote, he is expected to tell international ministers that Britain is “back on the world stage and ‘open for business’”.

Reynolds will add: “We are seeking a closer, more mature, more level-headed relationship with our friends in the European Union – our nearest and largest trading partner, and we also intend to forge better trading relationships with countries around the world.”

The meetings come as Keir Starmer tries to build closer links with Brussels by hosting EU leaders at Blenheim Palace near Oxford on Thursday, as part of a one-day European Political Community summit.

The prime minister is attempting to walk a tightrope between strengthening EU relations while also telling voters that his government will not take Britain back into the single market or customs union. Starmer is instead relying on more modest reforms and a warmer tone with Brussels.

The prime minister insisted during the election campaign that the UK would not rejoin the EU within his lifetime. Instead, Labour committed in its manifesto to building stronger trade and investment links with the 27-nation bloc, including through a veterinary agreement, support for touring artists, and mutual recognition deals for professional qualifications.

The EU accounted for 41% of UK exports of goods and services and 52% of imports in 2023. Business leaders have urged Starmer to forge closer links with Brussels given the importance of the EU market to UK companies, while also calling for looser migration rules to give them more access to EU workers.

Under the terms of the Brexit deal finalised by Boris Johnson’s government in late December 2020, and in force since January 2021, the UK and the EU are committed to reviewing the implementation of the agreement every five years, with Starmer expected to oversee the first such process in 2026.

Some commentators have suggested the review could pose an opportunity for the deal to be renegotiated. However, EU officials have argued the process may only offer limited scope for change.

Reynolds is expected on Tuesday to hold his first in-person meetings with G7 counterparts since his appointment earlier this month, including with the vice-president of the EU Commission Valdis Dombrovskis and the German vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck.

The new government is hoping a “reset” of international relations will bolster Britain’s status among global businesses and investors, as part of efforts to secure the highest sustained rate of economic growth in the G7.

It also comes amid rising geopolitical tensions and political uncertainty elsewhere. The US president, Joe Biden, appeared last week to back Starmer’s ambitions for closer EU ties, telling the prime minister in talks at the White House that this would also strengthen the transatlantic alliance with Washington.

Parts of Tonga have been without internet for more than two weeks after an undersea cable was damaged in an earthquake, leaving a third of the country’s population in the dark and causing chaos for local businesses.

The crisis has been further compounded after the government ordered the Starlink internet satellite company to cease operations in Tonga until it was granted a licence.

“Starlink has been notified that they do not have a licence, so all terminals should be disabled,” prime minister Siaosi ‘Ofakivahafolau Sovaleni told reporters last week.

The island networks of Vava’u and Haʻapai were cut off on 29 June after damage to the undersea cable which connects internet services to the northern archipelagos. The government has said it is still waiting for the arrival of a repair vessel for the submarine cable.

Starlink notified its users in Tonga on 10 July they had been directed by the country’s regulator to disable internet services to users.

“We will continue to work to obtain the necessary regulatory approvals to turn on Starlink services in Tonga as soon as possible,” a note from the company to users in the region said.

Starlink – which is operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX – uses a network of over 4,500 satellites to deliver internet access to almost anywhere in the world.

It is the third time in recent years that Tonga’s undersea internet cables have been damaged, plunging parts of the nation into digital darkness. In 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, causing an “unprecedented disaster” and cutting off internet to the country.

After that incident Musk sent a number of terminals to Tonga to help restore communication. Since then the service has grown in popularity within Tonga.

Hospitality providers in the outer islands that depend on internet communications have complained they are in danger of going out of business due to the communications crisis.

Darren Rice, a resort owner in Haʻapai who is reliant on Starlink, told local news that the shutting off the satellite service at the same time as the undersea cable was severed could prove very dangerous.

“When Starlink goes off … we can’t call for help, we don’t know when storms are coming, we don’t know if there is a tsunami warning, we can’t call the hospital or the fire engine,” he said.

Viki Moore, the managing director of Island Cruising which has 126 yachts in the Pacific, told RNZ that her boats rely on Starlink for communication as there was no viable alternative.

A petition to allow access to Starlink in Tonga has attracted over 1,000 signatures.

Sovaleni told reporters last week that his government were working to fast track “actions to get a licence to Starlink.”

A senior North Korean diplomat based in Cuba defected to South Korea in November, a South Korean newspaper has reported, becoming the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to escape to the South since 2016.

Before fleeing to the South, Ri Il-kyu, 52, was responsible for political affairs at the North Korean embassy in Cuba, the Chosun Ilbo said on Tuesday citing an interview with Ri.

Among Ri’s jobs at the embassy was to block North Korea’s rival South Korea and old ally Cuba from forging diplomatic ties, the newspaper reported. In February, the two countries established diplomatic relations.

The South’s unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, declined to confirm the report, citing privacy issues.

Details on North Koreans defections often take months to come to light, with defectors needing to be cleared by authorities and going through a course of education about South Korean society and systems.

Ri entered North Korea’s foreign ministry in 1999 and received a commendation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for successfully negotiating with Panama to lift the detention of a North Korean ship caught carrying arms from Cuba in 2013, Chosun said.

He told the newspaper he had decided to defect over disillusionment with the regime and unfair evaluation of his work.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea. Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection,” he told the paper.

“In fact, North Koreans yearn for reunification even more than South Koreans. Everyone believes that reunification is the only way for their children to have a better future. Today, the Kim Jong-un regime has brutally extinguished even the slightest hope left among the people.”

He said he flew out of Cuba with his family but he did not elaborate further on how he pulled off the high-risk escape.

“I bought flight tickets and called my wife and kid to tell them about my decision, six hours before the defection. I didn’t say South Korea, but said, let’s live abroad,” he said.

Ri said he made a final decision to run when his request to travel to Mexico for medical treatment was denied last year, adding that his parents and parents-in-law who might face reprisals for his defection had passed away.

North Koreans caught attempting to defect face severe punishment, including death, according to human rights groups and defectors who have been successful.

Fewer North Korean defectors have been arriving in South Korea in recent years due to strict limits on border crossings into China and hefty broker fees, human rights groups and experts say.

In 2023, 196 North Korean defectors came to Seoul, down from as many as 2,700 a decade ago, South Korean government data showed.

Most of those North Korean defectors who recently defected to the South are the ones who had long lived overseas, like the diplomat Ri, human rights activists say.

The last such known high-profile defection to the South was that of Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, in 2016.

Other notable defections include that of the acting ambassador to Italy, Jo Song-gil, in 2019 and the acting ambassador to Kuwait, Ryu Hyun-woo, in 2021, who held the ranks of first secretary and counsellor respectively, according to the Chosun Ilbo.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Sunday promised better financial support for North Korean defectors and tax incentives for companies hiring those defectors, as he attended the ceremony for the inaugural North Korean Defectors’ Day.

North Korea last year shut some embassies in an effort to “rearrange its diplomatic capacity efficiently”, closures that South Korea says indicates the North is struggling under the burden of sanctions.

North Korea maintains an embassy in Cuba, though its ambassador returned home in March, according to media reports.

Reuters contributed to this report

A senior North Korean diplomat based in Cuba defected to South Korea in November, a South Korean newspaper has reported, becoming the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to escape to the South since 2016.

Before fleeing to the South, Ri Il-kyu, 52, was responsible for political affairs at the North Korean embassy in Cuba, the Chosun Ilbo said on Tuesday citing an interview with Ri.

Among Ri’s jobs at the embassy was to block North Korea’s rival South Korea and old ally Cuba from forging diplomatic ties, the newspaper reported. In February, the two countries established diplomatic relations.

The South’s unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, declined to confirm the report, citing privacy issues.

Details on North Koreans defections often take months to come to light, with defectors needing to be cleared by authorities and going through a course of education about South Korean society and systems.

Ri entered North Korea’s foreign ministry in 1999 and received a commendation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for successfully negotiating with Panama to lift the detention of a North Korean ship caught carrying arms from Cuba in 2013, Chosun said.

He told the newspaper he had decided to defect over disillusionment with the regime and unfair evaluation of his work.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea. Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection,” he told the paper.

“In fact, North Koreans yearn for reunification even more than South Koreans. Everyone believes that reunification is the only way for their children to have a better future. Today, the Kim Jong-un regime has brutally extinguished even the slightest hope left among the people.”

He said he flew out of Cuba with his family but he did not elaborate further on how he pulled off the high-risk escape.

“I bought flight tickets and called my wife and kid to tell them about my decision, six hours before the defection. I didn’t say South Korea, but said, let’s live abroad,” he said.

Ri said he made a final decision to run when his request to travel to Mexico for medical treatment was denied last year, adding that his parents and parents-in-law who might face reprisals for his defection had passed away.

North Koreans caught attempting to defect face severe punishment, including death, according to human rights groups and defectors who have been successful.

Fewer North Korean defectors have been arriving in South Korea in recent years due to strict limits on border crossings into China and hefty broker fees, human rights groups and experts say.

In 2023, 196 North Korean defectors came to Seoul, down from as many as 2,700 a decade ago, South Korean government data showed.

Most of those North Korean defectors who recently defected to the South are the ones who had long lived overseas, like the diplomat Ri, human rights activists say.

The last such known high-profile defection to the South was that of Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, in 2016.

Other notable defections include that of the acting ambassador to Italy, Jo Song-gil, in 2019 and the acting ambassador to Kuwait, Ryu Hyun-woo, in 2021, who held the ranks of first secretary and counsellor respectively, according to the Chosun Ilbo.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Sunday promised better financial support for North Korean defectors and tax incentives for companies hiring those defectors, as he attended the ceremony for the inaugural North Korean Defectors’ Day.

North Korea last year shut some embassies in an effort to “rearrange its diplomatic capacity efficiently”, closures that South Korea says indicates the North is struggling under the burden of sanctions.

North Korea maintains an embassy in Cuba, though its ambassador returned home in March, according to media reports.

Reuters contributed to this report

Violent clashes at a site designated to house asylum seekers in north Dublin were described as “reprehensible” by the taoiseach, after at least 15 people were arrested.

“No person has a right to burn cars, damage property or attack members of An Garda Síochána and emergency services,” Simon Harris said on Monday.

“These actions are criminal and are designed to sow fear and division. We should not accept them being legitimised in any way by describing them as ‘protest’.”

The clashes are the latest at sites earmarked for asylum seekers, who have arrived in Ireland in growing numbers in recent years. Videos posted on social media showed machinery and construction materials on fire at the site, a former paint factory in the north of the capital.

The rioters threw bricks and launched fireworks at police, who used pepper spray to disperse the crowd of more than 100. One video showed a person, believed to be a security guard at the site, being removed from the scene on a stretcher. The site is due to be repurposed as an accommodation facility for up to 500 asylum seekers.

Videos on social media also showed a standoff between gardaí and rioters, while some demonstrators shouted abuse at officers. Masked men and youths were also at the site, while a man with a megaphone told the crowd the government was going to “change the constitution”.

The violence escalated as bricks and fireworks were thrown at officers and the fire service, and bins and mattresses were set alight.

Gardaí have charged 15 people in relation to public order incidents. They were due to appear before a special sitting of the criminal courts of justice in Dublin on Monday evening. A garda spokesperson said officers remained at the scene of a “serious public order incident”.

The violence was sparked by a provider attempting to start work, said the ministry, which is responsible for housing asylum seekers. “The [ministry] condemns all acts of criminality and intimidation of providers and their employees.”

Ireland’s justice minister, Helen McEntee, told the Irish Times she was “appalled” by the scenes and that those involved would face the “full rigours of the law”.

Since 2022, there has been a sharp increase in arson attacks on properties around the country linked to accommodating asylum seekers.

During violent riots in Dublin last November, which were sparked by unrest over increased immigration and ignited by a knife attack outside a school, rioters also targeted properties used to house asylum seekers.

Additional reporting by PA Media and AFP

Tired of waiting for the authorities to come to their aid, young men in the Mayo-Kebbi Ouest region of south-west Chad are banding into vigilante groups, using bows, arrows and spears to fight gunmen who have turned kidnapping into a professional pastime.

“We guide the gendarmes in the bush, but we are also the first to go after the criminals after a kidnapping,” said Amos Nangyo, head of one of the units in Pala, capital of the region, which borders Cameroon, told Agence France-Presse earlier this month.

In the last decade, the Sahelian tri-border area of Liptako-Gourma – where Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger meet – has become a hotspot for booming jihadist activity.

But another crisis is brewing in a nearby area that some have called “the triangle of death”: the area from Mayo-Kebbi Ouest and Logone Oriental in Chad to Cameroon’s North Region and Lim-Pendé in the Central African Republic.

Official data is hard to come by for this area and many people do not report incidents for fear of further attacks.

But Chadian authorities say ransoms paid in the area amounted to 43 million Central African Francs (CFA) in 2022 and increased to 52.4 million CFA the following year.

In February, a Polish doctor and her Mexican colleague were abducted from the Tandjilé region but was freed a week later, after a combined rescue mission by Chadian and French forces.

Approximately 86 million CFA was paid in ransom in six incidents between February and May 2023 in Cameroon’s Northern Region, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

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The rise in abductions is happening alongside small arms trafficking, cattle rustling and drug trafficking. Economic interests, rather than ethnic or religious grudges, are driving kidnappings, according to experts.

In west and central Africa, porous borders are the norm, allowing terror groups such as Boko Haram, for example, to move along the diagonal from northern Nigeria to the Cameroon-Chad-CAR corridor to find possible victims as well as criminal allies to finance their jihadist ventures.

Other regional players include ethnic Fulani herders, who experts say can be both perpetrators and victims, given their nomadic lifestyle and the complex nature of criminal activity in the zone.

The Fulani, perceived as having a lot of money by virtue of having herds of cattle, have long been targets of kidnapping. But some herders, grieving the loss of their cattle and other belongings to rustling, or tired of being harassed by security personnel, have turned to kidnapping too.

There are also the zaraguinas, gangs of rampaging bandits and mercenary rebels who are active in the forests of northern CAR, some having migrated in from its neighbours such as Chad. With the presence of foreign counterparts like the Wagner group in CAR, some local mercenaries have moved to Chad.

Targets include traders, civil servants, aid workers and anyone who seems remotely important or likely to have relatives and friends capable of raising ransoms.

Insecurity escalated south of the Sahara in 2011 after the Nato-led ousting of Muammar Gaddafi opened a highway for the southward flow of small arms and light weapon, galvanising rebel activity from Mali to Nigeria.

This made Chad, a country with a history of long-running domestic conflicts and a reputation for breeding warriors in the hinterlands, even more fertile ground for armed non-state actors who export themselves to stoke conflicts or extinguish them elsewhere.

Remadji Hoinathy, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies for Central Africa and Lake Chad Basin who is based in N’Djamena, said “the geography and even the demography and anthropology of that zone” was key to its emergence as a recruitment centre for armed groups and a nucleus of the kidnapping crisis.

“A lot of people in Chad [have] grown up with rebellions [and learned] that the only life they have is a link with weapons,” he said. “They are finding ways of living by the gun … either you are a rebel with the army, or you end up as a mercenary, kidnapper, in banditry or Boko Haram.”

The perpetrators have thrived partly because of weak state governance architecture but also because of spaces – and forests – that serve as criminal hideouts. Combined, the three countries in the corridor account for almost a tenth of the area of Africa but only 4% of its population. Their borders with Maghreb states, which have local conflicts waged by actors with transnational communal ties, stretch for thousands of kilometres. Worse still, the armies in the corridor are stretched by conflicts at their other borders.

“Chad is very concerned about security on the border with Sudan in the east, so they’ve moved their capacity to better monitor that border,” said Ulf Laessing, director of the Sahel programme at German thinktank the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. “That might be a reason that they are not able to effectively guard the border with Cameroon as before.”

The kidnappings have had an adverse impact on movements of goods, cattle and humans across the corridor. Farmers are also scared to work, leading to rotting harvests and depleting food volumes.

This in turn could “cause damaging economic ripples across the region”, according to a January 2024 report by Global Initiative. “Following the 2023 coup in Niger, and with instability continuing in Libya, Sudan and the Lake Chad basin, Cameroon has become the main trade artery for Chad and the CAR. The majority of imports and exports into these countries now pass through the tri-border region,” the report said.

Last October, service chiefs from Cameroon and Chad met in Yaoundé to discuss a bilateral cooperation to tackle cross-border crime.

But experts say more action must be taken to dismantle criminal networks, including a structured regional collaboration to increase security and patrol remote forest zones.

Until then, the local vigilantes in the corridor are staying alert to protect their families and communities. “It’s dangerous volunteer work and we ask the state for means to [help] us,” Nangyo told Agence France-Presse.

Emissions of two of the most potent greenhouse gases have substantially increased in China over the last decade, a study has found.

Perfluorocarbons are used in the manufacturing processes for flat-panel TVs and semiconductors, or as by-products from aluminium smelting. They are far more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2, and can persist in the Earth’s atmosphere for thousands of years, unlike CO2 which can persist for up to 200 years.

A research team led by Minde An at Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined the emissions of two specific perfluorocarbons, tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane, both with atmospheric lifetimes of 50,000 and 10,000 years respectively.

By analysing atmospheric observations in nine cities across China from 2011 to 2021, they found that both gases exhibited an increase of 78% in emissions in China and, by 2020, represented 64-66% of global emissions for tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane. However, while levels of fluorocarbon emissions are increasing at an alarming rate, CO2 still accounts for about 76% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

The increase in emissions from China was sufficient to account for the global emission increases over that same period, suggesting that China is the dominant driver in tetrafluoromethane and hexafluoroethane release into the atmosphere globally.

The emissions were found to mainly originate from the less populated industrial zones in the western regions of China, and are thought to be due to the role of perfluorocarbons in the aluminium industry.

China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of aluminium, with the country’s production reaching a record-high output of 41.5m tonnes last year.

With the rapid expansion of China’s aluminium and semiconductor industries, these ongoing high levels of fluorocarbon emissions could pose a particular threat to China’s carbon neutrality goal and global climate mitigation. The country is aiming to achieve “peak carbon” emission by 2030 and become “carbon neutral” by 2060.

The authors suggest that with technological innovation and incorporation of the aluminium industry into the carbon market, or a national carbon trading scheme allowing emitters to buy or sell emission credits, it is possible that these rising levels could be reduced.

While being a significant source of CO2 emissions, aluminium production is also essential in the energy transition from fossil fuels to cleaner renewable energy sources by helping produce many low-carbon technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles and wind turbines.

Organisations such as the World Economic Forum argue that the aluminium industry must act now to find a balance between ensuring efficient production alongside mitigating the industry’s negative impacts on the climate.

The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet.

The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years.

The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.

The length of the Earth’s day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet’s oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate – or fatter – slowing the rotation of the planet and lengthening the day still further.

The planetary impact of humanity was also demonstrated recently by research that showed the redistribution of water had caused the Earth’s axis of rotation – the north and south poles – to move. Other work has revealed that humanity’s carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere.

“We can see our impact as humans on the whole Earth system, not just locally, like the rise in temperature, but really fundamentally, altering how it moves in space and rotates,” said Prof Benedikt Soja of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “Due to our carbon emissions, we have done this in just 100 or 200 years. Whereas the governing processes previously had been going on for billions of years, and that is striking.”

Human timekeeping is based on atomic clocks, which are extremely precise. However, the exact time of a day – one rotation of the Earth – varies due to lunar tides, climate impacts and some other factors, such as the slow rebound of the Earth’s crust after the retreat of ice sheets formed in the last ice age.

These differences have to be accounted for, said Soja: “All the datacentres that run the internet, communications and financial transactions, they are based on precise timing. We also need a precise knowledge of time for navigation, and particularly for satellites and spacecraft.”

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, used observations and computer reconstructions to assess the impact of melting ice on the length of the day. The rate of slowing varied between 0.3 and 1.0 millisecond per century (ms/cy) between 1900 and 2000. But since 2000, as melting accelerated, the rate of change also accelerated to 1.3ms/cy.

“This present-day rate is likely higher than at any time in the past few thousand years,” the researchers said. “It is projected to remain approximately at a level of 1.0 ms/cy for the next few decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions are severely curbed.” If emissions are not cut, the slowing rate will increase to 2.6 ms/cy by 2100, overtaking lunar tides as the single biggest contributor to long-term variations in the length of days, they said.

Dr Santiago Belda of the University of Alicante in Spain, who was not part of the research team, said: “This study is a great advance because it confirms that the worrying loss of ice that Greenland and Antarctica are suffering has a direct impact on day length, causing our days to lengthen. This variation in day length has critical implications not only for how we measure time, but also for GPS and other technologies that govern our modern lives.”

Evan Wright, the award-winning journalist who wrote about US subcultures in the book Generation Kill, which he helped adapt into the HBO miniseries of the same name, has died aged 59.

Wright died by suicide on Friday at a home in Los Angeles, a report by the Los Angeles County medical examiner said.

He appeared in the Max documentary Teen Torture, Inc, in which he spoke about his time in the Seed, a controversial “scared straight” program for children in Florida.

In interviews over the years, Wright spoke about being sent there after his mother’s best friend and her husband were murdered by their son in 1972, leading to his mother’s breakdown. He began to act out and was expelled from school aged 13 and held on drug charges after he pretended to sell marijuana, which was actually catnip. He was then sent to the Seed.

The Seed, which received federal funding until 1974, was subject to a Senate report that same year which revealed the institution used sleep deprivation, threats of physical violence, public humiliation and constant surveillance as a means controlling the children – tactics that were compared to those used by North Korea during the Korean war. The Seed shut down in 2001.

Wright spoke about living with post-traumatic stress disorder after his experience there, after the socialite Paris Hilton testified before a House committee about her experience in four similar youth facilities.

“Whenever I see victims of these programs speak out, I always think, ‘That’s my brother or sister,’” he wrote on X the day before he died. “I feel a bond with anyone who went through this. Then I saw Paris Hilton’s testimony and I realised, ‘Oh, shit she’s my sister, too?’ But yes, it’s a big, messed up family of us.”

Wright eventually returned to school. In the 1990s he moved from Ohio to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter but began working as the entertainment editor and “chief pornographic film reviewer” for Hustler magazine. He soon began writing for Rolling Stone, Time magazine and Vanity Fair.

“I failed at everything else,” Wright once said of journalism. “I was optimistic. It was a refuge for rogues and miscreants. So far, it has exceeded my expectations.”

In 2003 he was sent to Iraq by Rolling Stone and embedded with the Marines’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Bravo Company. His journalism resulted in the book Generation Kill, which he adapted into an HBO miniseries with David Simon, the creator of The Wire. In the show Wright was played by the actor Lee Tergesen.

“We’ve lost a fine journalist and storyteller,” Simon wrote on social media on Sunday. “Evan’s contributions to the scripting and filming of Generation Kill were elemental. He was charming, funny and not a little bit feral, as many reporters are. So many moments writing in Baltimore and on set in Africa to remember.”

After Generation Kill, Wright continued to write about topics ranging from environmentalists to neo-Nazis; his other books included American Desperado, about the mafia cocaine smuggler Jon Roberts, and How to Get Away with Murder in America, about a CIA agent who became the focus of an FBI investigation. He also worked as a producer on TV shows including The Bridge, The Man in the High Castle, Homeland and Dirty John.

Wright is survived by his wife, Kelli, and their three children.