RISHI SUNAK SAYS UK'S 'GOLDEN ERA' WITH CHINA IS OVER

Beijing’s systemic challenge to Britain’s interests and values was growing more acute and the so-called 'golden era' of relations with China was over, Britain Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said. The remarks of the Indian-origin PM came at a time when the relationship between both countries strained further after a BBC journalist,working in China, was assaulted and detained while covering the anti-Covid protests in Shanghai.

"Let’s be clear, the so-called ‘golden era’ is over, along with the naive idea that trade would lead to social and political reform,” Rishi Sunak was quoted by Reuters as saying. The Indian-Origin PM, in his first major foreign policy speech, said that Britain's 'approach to China needed to evolve and Beijing was “consciously competing for global influence using all the levers of state power'.

"We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism," Sunak said as his government condemned Beijing after one of the BBC journalists was assaulted. Last week, London barred Chinese-made security cameras from sensitive buildings.

From global economic stability or issues like climate change, the world cannot simply ignore China's significance in world affairs, the UK PM pointed out. However, he said that under his leadership, Britain would not choose the 'status quo and would confront international competitors “not with grand rhetoric but with robust pragmatism”.

CHINA MOVES TO CURB PROTESTS, SOME COVID CURBS EASED

Protests against Covid restrictions which erupted over the weekend appear to have died down, as a heavy police presence is reported in Chinese cities.

Large barriers have gone up along the main protest road in Shanghai and police have made several arrests.

They have been stopping people taking photos of the protests and deleting pictures on their devices.

A BBC journalist was detained while covering a protest in Shanghai on Sunday. Ed Lawrence was beaten and kicked by the police during his arrest, and held for several hours before being released.

China remains the only major economy with a strict zero-Covid policy, with local authorities clamping down on even small outbreaks with mass testing, quarantines and snap lockdowns.

Many images of anti-lockdown protests have emerged from Shanghai and the capital Beijing, as well as other major urban areas like Chengdu and Wuhan.

Censorship has gone into overdrive on Chinese social media platforms since the weekend's protests, to stop people seeing and discussing them.

Tens of millions of posts have been filtered from search results, while media are muting their coverage of Covid in favour of upbeat stories about the World Cup and China's space achievements.

Dozens of protesters gathered in central Hong Kong on Monday, and at the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in a show of solidarity with demonstrations across China.

PAKISTAN TALIBAN END CEASEFIRE, ORDER NATIONWIDE ATTACKS

Islamabad : Pakistan’s Taliban said on Monday they have called off a shaky ceasefire agreed with the government in June and ordered fighters to stage attacks across the country. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)have been responsible for hundreds of attacks since emerging in 2007. They agreed to a truce earlier this year after Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers took a prominent role in brokering peace talks. “We. . . have shown our continued patience so that the negotiation process is not sabotaged. But the army and intelligence agencies do not stop and continue the attacks, so now our retaliatory attacks will also start across the country,” the TTP said. Less than two weeks ago the TTP claimed an ambush that killed six policemen in NW Pakistan, claiming they were plotting a “raid” on their base in the area.

MAUNA LOA: WORLD'S LARGEST ACTIVE VOLCANO ERUPTS IN HAWAII

The world's largest active volcano, Hawaii's Mauna Loa, has erupted for the first time in almost 40 years.

The lava flow is mostly contained within the summit, but residents have been placed on alert and were earlier warned about the risk of falling ash.

The US Geological Service (USGS) has said the situation could change rapidly.

The volcano's alert level has also been upgraded from an "advisory" to a "warning" - the highest classification.

No evacuation orders have been issued and populated areas are unlikely to be impacted at this stage, emergency officials say.

Mauna Loa, located inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, covers half of the US state's Big Island. The volcano rises 13,679ft (4,169m) above sea level and spans an area of more than 2,000 sq miles (5,179 sq km).

It erupted at 23:30 local time on Sunday (09:30 GMT Monday) at Moku'āweoweo, the volcano's summit caldera. Calderas are hollows that form beneath the summit at the end of an eruption.

It followed a series of warnings that an eruption was possible after a spate of recent earthquakes in the region, including more than a dozen reported tremors on Sunday.

MUSK FEUDS WITH APPLE OVER TWITTER ADVERTISING

Elon Musk has said Apple has halted most of its advertising on Twitter and accused the company of threatening to remove the platform from its app store.

The feud comes as many companies have halted spending on Twitter amid concerns about Mr Musk's content moderation plans for the site.

Apple has not responded to requests for comment from the BBC.

Mr Musk has said Twitter has seen a "massive" drop in revenue, blaming activists for pressuring advertisers.

In a series of Tweets on Monday, he accused Apple of "censorship" and criticised its policies, including the charge it levies on purchases made on its app store.

"Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?" he said.

He appealed directly to Apple's CEO - asking: "What's going on here @tim_cook?"

The owner of the social media platform also claimed Apple had threatened to withhold Twitter from its app store, but did not say why.

Mr Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44bn last month, is under pressure as some companies halt spending.

He has said he hopes to make money by turning Twitter verification into a paid subscription service, but currently the vast majority of the site's revenue comes from advertising.

The Washington Post reported Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending $48m on ads on the social network in the first quarter of 2022.

Companies including Cheerios maker General Mills and Volkswagen are among the firms that have halted their spending in recent weeks.

POSTPONING ARMS CONTROL TALKS WITH U.S., SAYS RUSSIA

Russia announced on Monday that it was postponing highly-anticipated arms control talks with the U.S., scheduled to take place in Egypt despite tensions over the Ukraine conflict.

“The session of the bilateral coordinating committee on the Russian-American START Treaty, previously scheduled to take place in Cairo between November 29 and December 6, will not take place on the dates indicated,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told state-run news agency TASS.

“The event is postponed to a later date,” the spokesperson was cited as saying.

No other details were provided.

The U.S. had said this month that it expected to meet with Russia soon to discuss the possible resumption of inspections under New START.

Moscow announced in August that it was suspending U.S. inspections of its military sites, saying it was responding to American obstruction of inspections by Russia.

JAPAN BIRTHS HIT A NEW LOW IN 2022

Tokyo : Thenumber of babies born in Japan this year is below last year’s record low in what the the top government spokesman described as a “critical situation. ”Chiefcabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno promised comprehensive measures to encourage more marriages andbirths. The total of 5,99,636 Japanese born in January-September was 4. 9% below last year’s figure, suggesting the number of births in all of 2022 might fall below last year’s record low of 8,11,000 babies, he said. The number of births has been falling since 1973, when it peaked at about 2. 1 million. It’s projected to fall to 740,000 in 2040. Japan’s population of more than 125 million is projected to fall to 86. 7 million by 2060.

WHO TO USE ‘MPOX’ FOR MONKEYPOX TO FIGHT STIGMA

The WHO said on Monday it would start using a new preferred term, ‘mpox’, as a synonym

for monkeypox and urged others to follow suit after receivingcomplaints that the current name for the disease was racist and stigmatising. “Both names will be used simultaneously for one year while ‘monkeypox’ is phased out,” the organisation said. The WHO launched a public consultation process to find a new name for the disease earlier this year.

‘GASLIGHTING’ IS MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S WORD OF 2022

New York : “Gaslighting” — mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. Lookups for the word on merriam-webster. com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in the curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year.

The gaslighting was pervasive. “It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large.

“It was a word looked up frequently every single day of theyear,” he said. Merriam-Webster’s top definition for gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of a personthat “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability”.

ISRAEL’S LIKUD PARTY SIGNS COALITION DEAL WITH ANTI-LGBTQ RADICAL

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a coalition deal with a small ultranationalist faction leader known for homophobic rhetoric and disparaging remarks about non-Orthodox Jews. Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party announced on Sunday that Noam faction leader Avi Maoz is named as a Deputy Minister.