Six In The Morning Tuesday 2 August 2022

 Pelosi visits Taiwan in defiance of Chinese warnings

Protesters outside hotel where Pelosi is expected to stay

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes

Reporting from Taiwan

Nancy Pelosi's plane touched down at Taipei's Songshan airport at 22:44 local time.

Shortly afterwards, the top Democrat and her delegation could be seen coming down the steps of the US government plane and being greeted by local Taiwanese officials.

Pelosi is now expected to travel by motorcade to the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Taipei where she will stay the night.

Over 80 men accused of raping eight women appear in South African court

Crew filming music video at abandoned mine in Krugersdorp was attacked by armed men, police say

Associated Press

More than 80 men suspected of the gang rapes of eight women and the armed robbery of a video production crew in the South African town of Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, have appeared in court.

The men were arrested at an abandoned mining site following the rapes and robbery near the disused mine.

The suspects are allegedly illegal miners known as zama-zamas who dig for gold in the Johannesburg area’s many closed mine shafts. Many of the miners are foreigners, according to local reports. The zama-zama gangs of illegal miners are also blamed for widespread crime in the area, according to local people.

The gang rapes occurred when a crew filming a music video at one of the abandoned mines was attacked by armed men on Thursday last week, according to police.

Euro 2022: Now that the party's over, where does the women's game go from here?

Euro 2022 was an overwhelming success, smashing attendance records from the opening match to a classic final. Whether Europe's biggest leagues can build on this momentum will dictate its longer-term impact.

Chloe Kelly's scrappy winner for England was an incongruous end to a tournament where the most significant impact was that talk revolved more around teams, tactics and backheels than growth, equality or legacy.

There is, of course, a huge amount of work to be done in the women's game. And there is, of course, still a chance this could be a one off, a moment to look back on, rather than a platform to build on.

But from the wide-eyed, record-breaking crowd that watched a nervous England win at Old Trafford back on July 6, to an absorbing final between Euro 2022's two outstanding teams on Sunday, this tournament felt like a new high watermark for the game in Europe.

From Cairo doctor to al Qaeda’s chief ideologue: Who was Ayman al-Zawahiri?

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has been killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden said Monday, was the key ideologue behind the global terror network for several decades, though he was never able to revive the status it had under charismatic founder Osama bin Laden.

The Egyptian eye doctor, 71, had central roles in al Qaeda's signature attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the massive assault on the United States itself on September 11, 2001, that left almost 3,000 dead.

But during the decade that he presided over the group following bin Laden’s killing in 2011, it never recovered its prominence, as the aggressive Islamic State (IS) group took the lead in the jihadist movement, seizing large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and declaring a caliphate.

A-bomb survivor says Kishida's nuclear speech avoided 'honest debate'

Atomic bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow on Monday expressed her disappointment over Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's speech at the U.N. headquarters in which he called for a world free of nuclear weapons, saying it was largely "rhetoric" and avoided a fundamental question Japan faces in advancing toward the goal.

While hailing Kishida for becoming the first Japanese leader to attend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, Thurlow, a 90-year-old peace advocate living in Canada, said, "He covered all the nice things...but what I thought was lacking in his speech was real, honest debate of Japan's role to play."

"He said he wants a world free of nuclear weapons, but how can we expect that as long as Japan is in alignment with the United States?" she asked, referring to the fact that Japan relies on U.S. nuclear deterrence for protection.

Israel's Prime Minister makes rare allusion to country's nuclear weapons arsenal

By Andrew Carey and Amir Tal, CNN

Updated 1107 GMT (1907 HKT) August 2, 2022

Israel's Prime Minister Yair Lapid made a rare allusion to the country's widely suspected nuclear arsenal during a speech on Monday.

Speaking at an event to mark a change of leadership at the country's Atomic Energy Commission, Lapid referred to Israel's defensive and offensive capabilities, as well as what he called its "other capabilities" -- understood to be a reference to nuclear weapons.

"The operational arena in the invisible dome above us is built on defensive capabilities and offensive capabilities, and what the foreign media tends to call 'other capabilities.' These other capabilities keep us alive and will keep us alive so long as we and our children are here," Lapid said.