WILL SHUT N-PLANT: RUSSIA; UKRAINE WARNS OF DISASTER

Kyiv/Lviv : UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Thursday he was gravely concerned by the situation at Europe’s largest nuclear power station after it came under shelling at the front lines in Ukraine. Russia, which captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant soon after its February 24 invasion of Ukraine, said it could shut down the facility — a move Kyiv said would increase the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. Guterres, speaking to reporters after talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, said military equipment and personnel should be withdrawn from the plant. “The facility must not be used as part of any military operation. Instead, agreement is urgently needed to re-establish Zaporizhzhia’s purely civilian infrastructure and to ensure the safety of the area,” he said.

Zelensky said after meeting Guterres on Thursday that they had agreed parameters of a possible mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the plant. Earlier, he had accused Russia of “nuclear blackmail”. “This deliberate terror on the part of the aggressor can have global catastrophic consequences for the whole world,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram messaging app.

In Moscow, the defence ministry said Russia could shut the plant down if it came underfurther attack. Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of planning to shut the plant to sever it from Ukraine’s power grid and switch it over to Russia’s — effectively stealing its output. Ukrainian state nuclear energy company Energoatom said shutting down the plant would increase the risk of “a radiation disaster at the nuclear power plant”. Disconnecting the complex’s generators from Ukraine’s power system would prevent them being used to keep nuclear fuel cool in the event of a power outage at the plant, it s aid.

UK, PAKISTAN, INK DEAL ON REPATRIATION OF CRIMINALS, IMMIGRATION OFFENDERS

London : Britain has clinched anew agreement with Pakistan, dubbed a “landmark” deal, to speedily remove Pakistani nationals with no legal right to remain in the UK. The Returns Agreement was signed by home secretary Priti Patel and Pakistan interior secretary Yousaf Naseem Khokhar and the country’s high commissioner to the UK, Moazzam Ahmad Khan in London on Wednesday. The agreement will target Pakistan criminals, failed asylum seekers, visa overstayers and immigration offenders to facilitate their return to their home nation.

“I’m proud to have signed a new landmark agreement with our Pakistani friends to return foreign criminals and immigration offenders from the UK to Pakistan,” said Patel. “I make no apology for removing dangerous foreign criminals and immigration offenders who have no right to remain in the UK. The British public havequite rightly had enough of people abusing our laws and gaming the system so we can't remove them. This agreement, which I am proud to have signed with our Pakistani friends, shows the New Plan for Immigration in action and the government delivering,” she said.

According to the UK Home Office data, Pakistan nationals make up the seventh largest number of foreign criminals in prisons in England and Wales —totalling nearly 3% of the foreign national offender population, around 2,500 prisoners.

‘CHINA MAY STEP UP COERCION OF TAIWAN’

The United States expects China to ramp up its military, diplomatic and economic “coercion” of Taiwan, its top envoy in East Asia said on Thursday, after Beijing’s unprecedented drills around the island it claims as its own.

The Chinese military has staged days of air and sea exercises in the Taiwan Strait after visits by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a congressional delegation to the self-ruled island.

Washington’s top envoy in East Asia on Thursday said Beijing will likely ramp up pressure on Taiwan in the coming months after the drills.

“While our policy has not changed, what has changed is Beijing’s growing coercion,” Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said.

Washington believes the drive to press the island’s government will carry on in the coming “weeks and months”, he added.

WHO: WORLD COVID-19 CASES FALL 24%; DEATHS RISE IN ASIA

London : New Covid cases reported globally dropped nearly a quarter in the last week while deaths fell 6% but were still higher in parts of Asia, according to a report on Thursday on the pandemic by the WHO. The agency said there were 5. 4 million new cases reported last week, a decline of 24% from the previous week. Infections fell everywhere in the world, including by nearly 40% in Africa and Europe and by a third in West Asia.

Covid deaths rose in the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia by 31% and 12% respectively, but fell or remained stable everywhere else.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said reported coronavirus deaths over the past month have surged 35%, and noted there had been 15,000 deaths in the past week. “A total of 15,000 deaths aweek is unacceptable, whenwe have all the tools to prevent infections and save lives,” Tedros said. He said the number of virus sequences shared every week has plummeted 90%, making it difficult to monitor how Covid might be mutating. “Please get vaccinated if you are not, and if you needabooster, get one,” he said.

On Thursday, WHO’s vaccine advisory group recommended for the first time that people most vulnerable to Covid —including older people, those with underlying health conditions and health workers —get a second booster shot.

JAPAN CAN TALK TO CREDITORS, SAYS COLOMBO

Sri Lanka will ask Japan to invite the Indian Ocean island’s main creditor nations, including China and India, to talks on bilateral debt restructuring as it seeks a way out of its worst economic crisis in decades, its President said on Thursday.

“Someone needs to call in, invite the main creditor nations. We will ask Japan to do it,” President Ranil Wickremesinghe told Reuters in an interview, adding that he would travel to Tokyo next month to meet Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Left with scant foreign exchange reserves, stalling imports of essentials including fuel and medicines, ordinary Sri Lankans have been battling crippling shortages for months amid sky-rocketing inflation and a devalued currency.

Udeeshan Jonas, chief strategist at Colombo-based investment bank CAL Group, said Mr. Wickremesinghe’s outreach to Japan could help secure additional funds after once a restructuring plan is agreed.

“As one of the Quad countries, Japan can bring India and the rest of the key bilateral creditors together and Sri Lanka can work on a restructuring plan that will cover a large part of the debt,” Mr. Jonas said, referring to the Quad grouping of the United States, Japan, Australia and India.

“Only China will be on the other side,” he said.

U.K. RAIL WORKERS STRIKE AGAIN AS INFLATION INTENSIFIES CRISIS

Thousands of train workers in Britain staged a new round of strikes on Thursday, paralysing rail service across the country in an escalating dispute over pay and working conditions exacerbated by a deepening cost-of-living crisis.

Only around one in five trains ran across the U.K. as a result of the walkout by union members, who have already staged multiple strikes in recent months. A strike planned for Friday is expected to affect most of the London Underground subway network as well as bus service in the capital, while another walkout on Saturday is set to disrupt national train travel again.

Mick Lynch, leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said rail workers, like socores of ther public sector employees in the U.K., are struggling to cope with soaring food and fuel prices.

He warned of “a wave of solidarity action” affecting multiple sectors after official figures on Wednesday showed that the country’s inflation rate jumped to a new 40-year high of 10.1% in July, higher than analysts’ forecast of 9.8%.

Unions representing postal, port and aviation workers have also announced strikes as the cost-of-living crisis bites into wages. In Scotland, garbage collectors and recycling workers in the capital city of Edinburgh began a 11-day strike on Thursday, saying a pay rise offer of 3.5% was far from enough to battle rising bills.

UK inks deal to deport illegal Pak migrants

RUSHDIE ATTACKER PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO MURDER CHARGES

Mayville : A man accused of stabbing novelist Salman Rushdie last week in New York pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges on Thursday during an arraignment hearing and was ordered held without bail.

Hadi Matar, 24, is accused of wounding Rushdie, 75, on Friday just before the “The Satanic Verses” author was to deliver a lecture on stage at an educational retreat. Rushdie was hospitalised with serious injuries in what writers and politicians around the world decried as an attack on the freedom of expression. Matar was arraigned during a hearing in Chautauqua County district court on an indictment returned earlier in the day by a grand jury that charged him with one count of second-degree attempted murder and one count of seconddegree assault. The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after “The Satanic Verses” was published. Some Muslims saw passages about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.