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TikTok: Chinese platform challenges X and Threads with text-only posts
TikTok By Annabelle Liang Business reporter Video streaming app TikTok is to offer text-only posts as it becomes the latest technology giant to challenge X, Elon Musk’s rebranded Twitter platform. The Chinese-owned app says the new feature gives users “another way to express themselves”. Earlier this month, TikTok launched a new music streaming service to…
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Typhoon Doksuri: Taiwan cancels Han Kuang military drills
Reuters By Derek Cai BBC News, Singapore Taiwan has cancelled parts of its largest military drills as it braces for what could be the strongest typhoon to hit the island in four years. Doksuri has roared to super typhoon strength with winds of 240km/h (149mph) and is headed to waters that separate Taiwan and the…
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Watch raging wildfires close down Italian airport
Palermo’s international airport was shut down overnight as fires burned around its perimeter. The wildfire is one of several on the island of Sicily and has spread due to windy conditions. Southern Italy has been sweltering through weeks of extreme heat. On Monday, temperatures in Palermo reached a record 47C (116F).
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Yemen: The children of a forgotten war
Goktay Koraltan/BBC By Orla Guerin BBC News, Yemen If suffering had an address, it might be al-Rasheed Street, in Taiz, a Yemeni city ringed by mountains and rebel Houthi fighters. On this narrow street of rough-hewn homes, the young can’t escape a grinding conflict the world tends to forget. A slight boy with a mop…
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Bayer: Weedkiller maker to take $2.8bn hit as sales fall
Getty Images By Annabelle Liang Business reporter Germany’s Bayer AG says it expects to take a €2.5bn ($2.8bn; £2.2bn) hit from a slower demand for glyphosate-based products, including its controversial weedkiller Roundup. The announcement came as the company lowered its outlook for the year. In all, it has set aside over $15bn (£11.7bn) to settle…
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Is Musk right to ditch the Twitter logo?
Getty Images By Natalie Sherman Business reporter, New York When Jean-Pierre Dube saw the news that billionaire Elon Musk was scrapping Twitter’s blue bird logo in favour of an Art Deco-style black and white X, the marketing professor thought it was a joke. “Why take a recognised brand, with a lot of brand capital around…
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How desperate US prisoners try to escape deadly heat
Getty Images By Brandon Drenon & Juan Benn Jr BBC News As temperatures rise, prisoners locked in cells without air conditioning – and the staff guarding them – are struggling. Calvin Johnson spent 37 years in a Texas state prison, including 37 summers in a jail cell with no air conditioning. On the countless blisteringly…
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Ghana minister Cecilia Abena Dapaah reported a robbery. Why was she arrested?
Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources By Favour Nunoo & Damian Zane BBC News, Accra & London A government minister in Ghana must have thought she was doing the right thing by going to the police to report a theft at her house, but it backfired spectacularly and she is now under arrest herself. According…
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Iraq and others condemn Quran-burning in Denmark
Reuters By Laurence Peter BBC News Iraq and some other Muslim-majority countries have strongly condemned the burning of a Quran on Monday by a group called “Danish Patriots” outside the Iraqi embassy in Copenhagen. The far-right group livestreamed a similar act on Facebook on Friday. Nearly 1,000 demonstrators in Baghdad tried to reach the Danish…
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Obamas’ personal chef Tafari Campbell dies in paddleboarding accident
The White House By Max Matza BBC News A personal chef to former US president Barack Obama has died during an accident on a paddle boarding trip near the Obamas’ Massachusetts home. Tafari Campbell, 45, worked in the White House before staying on with the Obama family after Mr Obama left office in 2016. On…