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Five teenagers killed after car driven on wrong side of Irish motorway

Five teenagers have died and four other people have been seriously injured in a crash involving a car driving in the wrong direction on a motorway in the Republic of Ireland, police said. Gardaí confirmed the bodies of the youths, all male, had been removed from the scene of the two-vehicle collision, which happened at about 3am on Sunday on the M9 in County Kildare. The force said the occupants of the second vehicle involved, three women, two in their 30s and one in her 20s, and a boy, all remained in hospital with serious injuries. The Garda commissioner, Justin Kelly, described the head-on collision between the two cars as “horrific” and said “in some cases” vehicles were being driven on the wrong side of motorways for social media likes. Last weekend, nine people were injured in a head-on collision on the M50 in Dublin involving a car travelling in the wrong direction. Describing Sunday’s crash, Kelly said: “These family members were travelling innocently when they were struck by a vehicle being driven the wrong way down the motorway. “This horrific incident, after the recent collision on the M50, shows how irresponsible and dangerous driving on the wrong side of the motorway is. “That, of course, should be self-evident, but what makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that in some cases it is being done for social media likes, regardless of the potentially devastating impact it might have on innocent people and themselves.” He added: “As this particular incident has been referred to Fiosrú, the police ombudsman, I am constrained in what I can say in detail about this incident, but I know that gardaí do what they can to stop such vehicles while also taking into consideration all other road users. “Gardaí are put in a really challenging situation dealing with such incidents.” Officers are investigating the circumstances of the crash, which happened at junction 3 of the motorway, near Athy, at about 3am on Sunday. Emergency services had been alerted to reports of a vehicle travelling southbound on the M9 northbound carriageway. Earlier, a Garda Síochána spokesperson said the female driver and front-seat passenger of the second car had been taken to Tallaght university hospital, and were in a critical condition. A female rear-seat passenger, in her 20s, was taken to St Luke’s general hospital in a serious condition. The third passenger, a child, was taken to the Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin in Dublin, also in a serious condition. The bodies of the teenagers who died were taken to Naas general hospital, where postmortem examinations were due to take place. Gardaí appealed for anyone who witnessed the collision or has dashcam footage to come forward.

Wildfires kill two in Greece and torch Belgian nature reserve

An elderly couple died in fires on the Greek island of Salamis on Sunday and a fire ravaged Belgium’s largest nature reserve, in the latest wave of European wildfires. The couple died outside their home in the Peristeria beach area of Salamis, Greece’s coastguard said. More than 500 people were ordered to evacuate. In Spain, a soldier died on Sunday while helping efforts to extinguish a large wildfire in Aragon, authorities said. The fire in the north-eastern region has raged for a week and threatened a 1,000-year-old monastery. In Belgium, a wildfire that broke out on Friday in the High Fens, a large nature reserve popular with hikers, had ravaged about 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of land and was encroaching on the border with Germany by early Sunday morning. About 600 people in the municipalities of Waimes and Bütgenbach, in Liège province, were told on Saturday to evacuate from their homes, and tourists were also advised to leave, as winds shifted and smoke spread. Of those who followed the order, about 20 spent the night in a sports hall, while others sought refuge with family and friends. Hervé Jamar, the governor of Liège, said more than 250 firefighters and emergency staff were involved in the operation, including firefighters from Germany. Farmers have also been helping to battle the blaze, using their tractors to pull in water from Lake Robertville. Air support, provided by two water-bombing aircraft from Sweden and four helicopters – two from Belgium and two from the Netherlands – is crucial owing to the nature reserve’s complex and fragile terrain, which is made up of dense forest, peat bogs and raised wooden boardwalks where heavy firefighting vehicles risk sinking. Access to Lake Bütgenbach was prohibited on Sunday to allow the aircraft to refill. Authorities described the conditions as still challenging, although two fire fronts towards Jalhay and Monschau were now under control, said Belgium’s interior minister, Bernard Quintin, after visiting the crisis centre in Vottem on Sunday afternoon. “On this third day of fighting the fires, all resources remain mobilised on the ground,” he wrote on X, and he thanked all those involved. “We can also count on the solidarity of our European partners … thank you to everyone who mobilised to fight the fires. United, we are stronger.” The fire, described by officials as the largest in Belgium’s modern history, began in an area that in 1911 was badly affected by massive wildfires during a drought. Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather around the world, driving more frequent and deadlier disasters from heatwaves to floods to wildfires. Much of Europe is experiencing a new period of intense heat, creating conditions conducive to wildfire outbreaks. On Friday a fire engulfed ⁠homes in a Croatian holiday resort, killing one person, injuring 40 and forcing 1,200 to evacuate, officials said, as the EU warned that pockets of “very extreme” wildfire conditions stretched across the continent. Hundreds more people were evacuated from villages in western Germany and south-west France, while stranded holidaymakers were picked up from beaches threatened by flames in Greece and the army rescued historical relics in Spain.

Brazil’s Lula launches historic fourth term bid – but son of jailed Bolsonaro stands in his way

Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has launched his campaign for a historic fourth term and vowed that as long as he lived he would not allow the “shameless” right to return to power. Addressing a sea of supporters in São Bernardo do Campo, the industrial city where his political career began nearly half a century ago, the 80-year-old politician reminded voters of the chaos and violence that unfolded during the 2018-22 presidency of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose son Flávio Bolsonaro will face Lula in October’s presidential election. Lula recalled how hundreds of thousands of citizens died during a Covid outbreak Jair Bolsonaro was accused of bungling with his anti-science policies. Gun ownership soared as laws were relaxed, allowing criminal groups to expand their arsenals. “They handed out … more than a million weapons,” Lula said, promising to dedicate a fourth term to improving education and healthcare as well as developing Brazil’s rare-earth deposits, the world’s second largest after China’s. Lula also said he would improve security by targeting the rich organised crime bosses who lived in luxury apartments. “It’s easy to kill a crook in a favela. But the guy running the show lives in a penthouse … and we need to stop this,” Lula said. He also told his far-right rivals to “show some shame”. Lula was speaking at the Vila Euclides football stadium, where his astonishing rise to the presidency began in 1979 when, as 33-year-old union leader, he spearheaded two historic strikes that helped end the military dictatorship. Those strikes made Lula a household name and in 2002, after three failed attempts, he won a landslide victory to become his country’s first working-class president. During Lula’s first two-terms, from 2002 until 2010, he was credited with fighting hunger, dramatically expanding social welfare programmes and access to higher education, and improving Brazil’s global standing, although his administration was blighted by corruption scandals. His successor, Dilma Rousseff, became Brazil’s first female president but led the country into a severe economic recession before being controversially impeached in 2016. In 2018, Lula was jailed for alleged corruption and he spent 580 days in prison before the supreme court quashed his conviction. Lula’s imprisonment allowed Bolsonaro to win that year’s election, ushering in four years of environmental destruction and international isolation. In 2022 Lula won his third term, defeating Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin and vowing to rescue the country from “one of the worst periods in Brazilian history”. “This nightmare is over,” Lula declared at his January 2023 inauguration. A week later, far-right radicals rampaged through the capital, Brasília, in a botched attempt to bring Bolsonaro back. Bolsonaro was jailed in 2025 for 27 years for plotting that failed post-election power grab. Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator, launched his campaign on Sunday with an event on Rio’s Copacabana beach, previously the scene of huge rallies in support of his father. “I am going to be Brazil’s next president because I’m going to fight this system,” Bolsonaro, who wore a bullet-proof vest under a yellow Brazil shirt, told a crowd far smaller than those his father used to attract. Polls suggest Lula holds a slender advantage over Bolsonaro, with 43% of intended votes to his rival’s 40% in a run-off which will take place on 25 October if, as expected, no candidate secures 50% of the vote in the 4 October first round. André Pagliarini, the author of a book about Lula called A People’s President and the Fight for Brazil’s Future, said the showdown would be “the single most important electoral contest this year in the world”. Pagliarini said he believed a Bolsonaro victory would be a significant boost for the pro-Trump “reactionary block” that has won elections across Latin America, from Argentina and Chile to Colombia, where the far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella recently took office. Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly asserted its leadership over the region, launching deadly military operations against alleged “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific, threatening to “take back” the Panama canal and, in January, abducting Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro. Last week, the US state department published an incendiary video declaring that “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again”. In recent months Trump has turned up the heat on Brazil, designating its two biggest organised crime groups, the Red Command and the PCC, as terrorist organisations. That has kindled fears of a US military intervention on Brazilian soil or interference in Brazil’s presidential election. During a visit to a jungle training camp in Panama on Friday, Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said Washington planned to use the military to “ruthlessly” pursue Latin American drug traffickers, “just like [they did with] Isis and al-Qaida” during the “war on terror”. The idea, Hegseth said, was to “do bad things to bad people – because for too long, bad people did bad things to good people inside the United States of America and across Central and South America”. There was anger at the US outside Lula’s campaign launch on Sunday, where some activists handed out stickers that read: “Fuck Trump.” Seixas Alves, a 33-year-old Lula supporter, said he worried the decision to classify Brazilian drug factions as terrorist groups could be used as a pretext for a US attack. “Just like they [did with] Saddam Hussein,” Alves added, referring to the Iraqi dictator’s supposed development of weapons of mass destruction. In Rio, Flávio Bolsonaro praised Trump’s decision to target the Brazilian crime groups and said he was the only politician capable of “sitting down with the US”. In Vila Euclides, Simone Tebet, a centrist Lula ally, urged voters to do everything they could to stop Brazil falling back into the hands of far-right politicians who wanted “to kill Brazilian democracy” and create “a country of hate”.

Taliban threaten former Afghan police worker after MoD leak reveals identity

A man has received threats from the Taliban after his work for the Afghan police was revealed by a Ministry of Defence leak and the UK refused his application for resettlement. Hamid* worked for the Afghan national police special unit and received certificates for his work signed by senior British figures praising his “dedication, unparalleled service and leadership”. His details were also included in an accidental 2022 leak by an MoD official that identified 18,700 Afghans who had worked with or for the British government. Hamid said he had received a number of threats from the Taliban, including a video he shared with the Guardian in which a man cradling a rifle and sitting below a Taliban flag threatens to pursue him and cites knowledge of his previous movements. The MoD, however, has rejected his application for resettlement under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) scheme. His most recent rejection, received on 31 July, stated that Hamid had not provided evidence of “working alongside, in partnership with or closely supporting a UK government department”. It gave him 28 days to appeal. Hamid said: “This is extremely painful because I have already submitted every document available to me proving my service. Furthermore, many of my former colleagues who served in exactly the same department and performed the same duties have already been relocated to the UK through the Arap scheme. “Despite this evidence, my case continues to be refused. I believe my case raises serious questions about how some former Afghan partners of the UK continue to be treated despite years of loyal service.” Hamid’s plea for help comes five years after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan on 15 August 2021 after the withdrawal of US and Nato forces. The UK government launched the Arap scheme on 1 April 2021 and closed it to new applications on 1 July last year. Pre-existing applications continue to be processed. Under Arap, high risk of death or serious injury are only taken into account if the rest of the criteria are deemed to have been met, which they have not in Hamid’s case. “Must I wait until I am captured, tortured or killed by the Taliban before my service and the danger I face are finally recognised?” he said. “Following the Ministry of Defence data breach, my personal information was exposed, placing me at even greater risk. Since then, my life has changed completely. I cannot safely leave my home to work. I live in constant fear of being recognised or targeted.” After the leak, the then defence secretary, John Healey, said the dataset included people who had made speculative applications under Arap and had not worked with British forces. He said being included in the leak “doesn’t give them a right to claim access to Britain”. “It doesn’t give them a right to claim asylum. It doesn’t make them eligible for the special [Arap] scheme that Britain put in place for those who’d worked alongside or served with our forces,” he said. Hamid said that because he was in hiding he had no reliable income and relied on his wife, who supports the family by doing small jobs from home. “This is our family’s only source of income, and even then we struggle simply to survive,” he said. “The emotional impact has been devastating. My wife and I have become deeply exhausted, depressed and hopeless after years of fear, uncertainty, repeated refusals and financial hardship. “I am not asking for special treatment. I am only asking for a fair review based on the evidence I have already provided.” An MoD spokesperson said: “Each application is considered on a case-by-case basis, assessed against the evidence provided, such as how they supported the UK mission in Afghanistan, and in line with the publicly available eligibility criteria. “Since the Taliban takeover, the UK has resettled almost 39,000 Afghan men, women and children through Afghan resettlement schemes.” Name has been changed

Bus carrying Polish pilgrims crashes in Hungary, leaving 12 dead

Twelve people have died after a bus carrying a group of Polish tourists overturned on the M3 motorway in Hungary on the way back from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Local police said the bus crashed near the town of Mezőkeresztes after it “went off the straight road into a ditch and overturned” at 1am local time. Early reports suggested the driver had probably fallen asleep. He survived the crash and was taken into custody. The bus was carrying a group of pilgrims from Poland’s south-eastern Podkarpackie region who were returning from a pilgrimage to the Catholic shrine in Međugorje, in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 57 passengers and two drivers onboard. Poland’s foreign ministry said “virtually all” passengers were transferred to local hospitals in Eger, Debrecen and Miskolc, and 10 people were in a serious condition. The Hungarian ambulance service said 37 people sustained minor injuries. Polish and Hungarian leaders expressed their condolences after the crash. Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, said: “With deep sorrow, I received the tragic news of the accident involving a Polish bus in Hungary, in which so many of our compatriots perished. “In the face of this unimaginable tragedy, which has touched us all, I join in prayer and profound compassion with the families and loved ones of the victims.” Hungary’s prime minister, Péter Magyar, expressed his “sincere condolences to the families of the victims” and thanked the emergency services involved in the rescue operation. Poland’s infrastructure minister, Dariusz Klimczak, said the general inspectorate of road transport would conduct enhanced checks on all buses and drivers’ working hours. The owner of the bus company involved in the crash told Business Insider Polska that the vehicle “was driven by two experienced drivers”. The investigation into the crash will be led by a group of Polish prosecutors from the south-eastern town of Krosno, the prosecutors’ office said in a statement. Međugorje, despite some doubts about its religious history, is a popular summer destination for Polish Catholics. In 2022, 12 people died and 30 were injured when a bus carrying Polish pilgrims to Međugorje crashed in Croatia. In 2002, 20 Polish pilgrims died and 31 were injured in a bus crash in Hungary.

Japan’s defence minister heads to Australia to meet Marles in wake of melon-gate controversy

Japan’s defence minister will visit Canberra this week, the highest level engagement with Australia after controversy over Anthony Albanese’s comments about a gift of melons from prime minister Sanae Takaichi. The defence minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, will meet his counterpart and deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, on Tuesday, with discussions focused on Australia’s acquisition of Japan’s Mogami-class frigates and enhanced security cooperation. Koizumi is considered a potential future prime minister of Japan. His father, Junichiro Koizumi, was prime minister from 2001 to 2006. Koizumi’s visit comes after a week in which Albanese defended himself over comments made on the Bush Deep podcast, released last month. He was discussing a pair of Japanese melons presented by Takaichi during a visit to Canberra earlier this year, and, while appearing to make hand gestures in front of his chest, said “she brought two, as you do”. Host Nikki Osborne joked: “She came in looking like Pamela Anderson.” Facing days of criticism from the opposition and in the media, Albanese has insisted his hand gestures and a comment about melons were misinterpreted and were not innuendo about breasts. The opposition criticised Albanese for putting at risk close relations with one of Australia’s most important partners in Asia. Public comments from Japan’s ambassador to Australia on Wednesday suggested Takaichi’s government wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident over the comments, which were initially not controversial but soon sparked strong criticism, including by a former envoy to Australia. Japan’s government refrained from public comments on the issue until Wednesday, when its current ambassador to Australia Kazuhiro Suzuki released a statement not raising any further issue with Albanese’s conduct. Suzuki noted Takaichi had visited Australia in May – shortly before the interview in question – and had been hosted for dinner by Albanese “in a very relaxed atmosphere, and we believe it helped build a personal trust relationship between the two leaders”. Albanese had earlier apologised for comments about Australian signer Kylie Minogue made in the same appearance. A Japanese diplomatic cable sent in July, and leaked during the controversy, blamed “sensationalised reporting in the Australian media” and said Tokyo believed there was no “ill intention” in Albanese’s actions. The visit comes as part of a five-day trip which will include a stop in India. “Our relationship with Japan continues to go from strength to strength, and I look forward to welcoming my good friend, minister Koizumi back to Australia this week,” Marles told Guardian Australia. “Together we will progress efforts to enhance defence cooperation and support our shared commitment to regional security, building on the joint statement announced by our prime ministers in May. “This includes in the areas of co-developing and co-producing defence capabilities, advanced weapons testing, enhanced training and exercises, and increased information and intelligence cooperation.” Takaichi has faced mounting political challenges, including on policies to help with the cost of living, and has seen sliding support in opinion polls in recent months. Koizumi was criticised by China at the weekend for visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to Japan’s war dead. Visits to the shrine by senior politicians are regularly criticised by Japan’s neighbours including China and South Korea, who suggest they are symbolic of a lack of remorse for Japan’s actions during the second world war. In August last year, Labor agreed to buy Japan’s Mogami‑class frigates for the Royal Australian Navy. Australia will spend $10bn over a decade to buy three of the frigates, with the first expected to be delivered in December 2029.

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv faces missile barrage after Zelenskyy targets Russian satellite network

Russian forces launched a missile ⁠attack on Kyiv early on Sunday, sparking fires in ⁠at least ⁠two districts of the Ukrainian capital, the city’s mayor said. Kyiv’s ⁠military administration said one person had been injured. Witnesses reported explosions in the city amid air alerts that sounded after 2am. Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on ⁠Telegram, said falling debris had ‌caused a ‌fire in a non-residential part of ‌a northern suburb. Several cars were on fire, and another fire had broken out in an area just south of the city ‌centre, he said. Unofficial Telegram channels posted photos of what were described as market stalls ablaze. Russia ‌has in recent weeks been staging intensive air attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Ukraine says long-range strikes hit a Russian military airfield and a rocket centre ⁠that supports ⁠Russia’s nascent Starlink-style satellite internet network. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday said Flamingo cruise missiles struck the rocket facility, about 900km from Ukraine’s border, as part of Kyiv’s campaign to pressure Moscow to end ⁠the war by targeting sites deep inside Russia.“It is important that Russia’s war potential be reduced. Peace is needed, and this must be evident in Russia – through concrete damage ⁠to specific facilities,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. He said the airfield hosted aircraft used to attack Ukraine. Ukraine’s armed forces said direct hits were ‌recorded at the airfield in Russia’s ‌Nizhny Novgorod region and the Progress rocket centre in Samara region, sparking fires ‌at both sites. The Samara plant produces rockets used to launch satellites for the Rassvet broadband network, which Russia is developing as an alternative to SpaceX’s Starlink. Starlink operates in Ukraine but not in Russia, giving Kyiv an advantage in drone operations and battlefield communications. In Samara region, local officials said air defences had repelled a “massive missile attack”. “Samara’s industrial infrastructure ‌sustained localised damage,” Ivan Noskov, head of the regional capital, said in an online post. Emergency services were working at the scene, he said. Russia has ⁠asked Washington and ⁠Ankara ⁠to explain reports of possible plans ⁠to transfer to Kyiv a “substantial ⁠arsenal” of ‌US weapons ‌and ammunition ‌held by Turkey, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry said ‌on Saturday. Such a transfer would cause “serious harm … to our bilateral relations ⁠with Washington and Ankara,” the spokesperson said in a ‌statement. A Russian strike on an apartment block in south-eastern Ukraine on Saturday killed a three-month-old baby and wounded 11 people, local officials said. Drones hit the building in the town of Marhanets, said Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration. Russia’s defence ministry on Saturday said in the ‌past 24 hours its drones and missiles had struck Ukrainian logistics centres and energy and transport infrastructure used by the Ukrainian army, as well as assembly workshops for long-range drones and drone boats. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has told Russian president Vladimir Putin in a letter that he was “proud” of their countries’ strong ties, state media reported. North Korea has become a key ally of the Kremlin, sending troops to support Moscow’s war effort in return for economic benefits and military technology, analysts say. Kim added that he had a “firm belief” that Russia would thrive and defend its “territorial integrity” under Putin’s “wise leadership”. In a letter to Kim delivered on Friday to mark Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of the second world war, Putin said relations between the two countries had reached the “unprecedentedly high level of comprehensive strategic partnership”. “Our states are actively cooperating in all the sectors while making concerted efforts to ensure the regional security and stability,” the Russian leader said. The exchange of letters follows Ukraine’s accusation this month that Moscow had launched North Korean ballistic missiles in a strike that killed at least nine people and wounded dozens. Kyiv has also recently said that up to 50,000 North Korean troops are due to deploy to Russia, although it has provided no evidence to back the claim or a timeframe for the deployment.