Relatives of passengers killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine gathered with officials at Australia’s Parliament House on Wednesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragedy that claimed 298 lives.

One of those relatives, Paul Guard, mostly blames the conflict raging in eastern Ukraine a decade ago for the missile attack that killed 38 Australian citizens and permanent residents including his parents, Toowoomba doctors Roger and Jill Guard.

“I don’t think anyone intended to bring down a passenger plane. So in that sense, I’m heartbroken that the conflict continues,” Paul Guard told Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC).

“But I think that a lot of families would really have just liked an acknowledgement that what happened was wrong and that Russia should not have been waging war,” the son added.

The conflict has since escalated into a full-scale war with Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor in February 2022.

The pro-Russia rebel-held border region from where a Soviet-era Buk surface-to-air missile was fatefully launched and the fields where much of the debris landed after the Boeing 777 disintegrated is now territory controlled by the Russian military.

Moscow has repeatedly denied responsibility for MH17’s destruction and refused to hand over two Russians and a Ukrainian convicted by a Dutch court in absentia in 2022 of murder.

Russia continues to be pursued under international law by the Netherlands through the European Court of Human Rights and by Australia and the Netherlands jointly through the International Civil Aviation Organization Council, or ICAO, over its alleged role in bringing down MH17.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told Wednesday’s service she was “appalled” that Russia had withdrawn from the ICAO proceedings in June.

“The case will continue and we will not be deterred in our commitment to hold Russia to account,” Wong told the gathering that included foreign diplomats.

“Today, on behalf of the Australian government, I recommit again to our collective pursuit of truth, justice and accountability for the outrages perpetrated on 17th July, 2014,” she added.

A commemoration is also planned in the Netherlands later Wednesday at a monument near Schiphol Airport, from where MH17 left on its way to the Malaysian city of Kuala Lumpur.

Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus will represent Australia at that monument, where 298 trees were planted to commemorate each victim and sunflowers like those that grew at the crash site.

He expected the Netherlands-Australia case against Russia would be back before the ICAO in October despite Moscow’s withdrawal.

“We won’t let this go until we’ve brought Russia to account,” Dreyfus said.

The Netherlands was home to 196 victims. As well as Australia, victims also came from Malaysia, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, the Philippines, Canada, New Zealand, Vietnam, Israel, Italy, Romania, the United States and South Africa.

An international investigation initiated in the U.N. Security Council by the Netherlands, Malaysia and Australia concluded that the Buk missile system that destroyed MH17 belonged to the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. The investigation concluded the missile was driven into Ukraine from a Russian military base near the city of Kursk and returned there after the plane was shot down.

Tony Abbott was Australia’s prime minister when MH17 was shot down. Abbott recalled on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin became physically aggressive when the Australian raised MH17 and the Ukraine conflict on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in Beijing in 2014.

Putin said through an interpreter that Ukrainians were all fascists, had brought down MH17 themselves and that Ukraine had no right to exist, Abbott said.

“Then as we were going back into the conference — and this was really quite an extraordinary thing — he suddenly turned, grabbed the elbows and tried to shake me and then pushed me away. And he said in English, where he’s quite fluent: ‘Look, you are not a native Australian but I am a native Russian,’ and pushed me away,” Abbott told ABC.

“I think what he was trying to say to me in his own rather blunt and brutal way was that how could I as a citizen of a settler society understand the blood and soil and mystical attachment that he had to every last inch of Mother Russia?” Abbott said.

“So it was pretty obvious to me right back then what he was on about. I just think it’s a pity that more wasn’t done to arm up the Ukrainians in the meantime,” Abbott added.

Flooding from heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan has left about 40 people dead and 347 injured, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

The storms have destroyed many homes, the health ministry added, leaving about 1,500 children displaced, according to Save the Children.

Save the Children also said the storms damaged a reception center in Torkham, which was set up to support some of the 650,000 Afghans who have returned to the country since September 2023, after being forced out of Pakistan in a crackdown on migrants.

Many people have been stranded without access to basic needs, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Emergency personnel have responded by providing health services “with full dedication,” the health ministry said.

The IRC has deployed a mobile health team to the worst affected areas in Nangarhar province and is preparing to deploy another two emergency response teams.

“The loss of life and devastation in flood-affected areas is a fresh disaster for Afghanistan. Our thoughts are with the people impacted by this tragedy and the first responders working to rescue and provide medical care to families and individuals,” IRC Afghanistan Director Salma ben Aissa said.

The storms come just two months after major flooding and rainfall in the northeast killed more than 300 people and destroyed over 1,000 homes, according to the Word Food Programme.

One in 10 young people in Japan – the vast majority women – have been groped on trains and in other public places, a government survey has found, highlighting an often unreported crime that has long plagued the country despite official efforts to fight it.

“Chikan” — touching or groping without consent in public places, typically on crowded trains — is a widespread problem in Japan, where extensive rail networks transport millions of passengers each day, often in packed carriages during hectic rush hours.

In a nationwide poll of more than 36,000 people aged 16 to 29 by the Cabinet Office in February, 10.5% of respondents said they had been groped or experienced other indecent acts in public.

Women accounted for nearly 90% of those who said they were assaulted, according to the survey released this month. About two-thirds of those respondents said the offense took place aboard a train, with a similar amount saying it occurred during the morning or evening rush hour.

Many of those respondents also said they had been groped on multiple occasions, with one person saying they were assaulted “almost daily” while still in high school.

“For some reason, I cry more now when I remember it than when it happened,” they told the survey.

Efforts to tackle chikan picked up at the turn of the century, when major cities like Tokyo began rolling out women-only carriages on trains.

In recent years, more surveillance cameras have been installed on trains and in stations and transit police – both in uniform and plain clothes – have stepped up patrols.

Wider efforts to combat the crime include the sale of “anti-groping” stamps to mark assailants with invisible ink, and mobile apps that map groping incidents.

Meanwhile, posters at stations aim to raise awareness of groping and urge people to report the crime.

But some survey respondents urged authorities to do more.

“I would like the government to create a society that prevents crime, to offer mental health care for victims by professionals, and to carry out public relations activities to raise public awareness so that victims are not taken lightly,” one respondent wrote.

Japan arrested nearly 2,000 people nationwide on suspicion of chikan in 2023, according to police statistics.

But many offenses go unreported: 80% of survey respondents who said they were groped did not report the crimes to police or other officials – with many saying they did not register the gravity of what happened to them or did not think it was worth alerting the authorities.

“Please do not worry alone, but consult with us,” the spokesperson said.

The fatal stabbing of two people by a man at a residential compound in southern China has ignited an online debate that has amplified during a summer scarred by a spree of similar crimes across the country.

Two days after those June 28 killings in the Guangxi region, national attention shifted to another stabbing incident, thousands of miles away – which was then followed by two others, also unrelated attacks in public places, taking the toll to seven dead in four provinces within two weeks.

The circumstances differed in each case; one perpetrator had been in a drunken argument, while another has a history of mental illness, according to police. All cases remain under investigation, and scant information has been released on the suspects or their motives.

The country of 1.4 billion has generally low violent crime rates and very tight gun controls. But China has been rocked by a number of high-profile stabbing cases in recent decades, including multiple such attacks at schools.

What stands out about the latest stabbings is the social media debate triggered by them, which experts say reflects a growing sense of anxiety and discontent that has spread across the nation in recent years as the country’s economy struggles to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

China’s economy, the world’s second largest, has been plagued by myriad problems including a property crisis, weak spending, regulatory crackdowns and high youth unemployment – with economists fearing it could face years, if not decades, of stagnation.

These worries were clear on Chinese social media after the latest attacks, with several commentators connecting China’s dire economic circumstances to the violence, even as the attackers’ motives remained unclear.

“We should be nicer to others, especially given the economy is not doing well these past two years,” one user wrote on the X-like platform Weibo. “Many people are struggling and their emotions are unstable.”

Many others echoed this sentiment. “Try not to argue with people outside,” another Weibo user wrote. “You never know if they are unhappy in life and can take it out on others.”

Experts caution that these messages don’t necessarily reflect the reality of those stabbings – authorities haven’t released much information about the suspects besides their age and gender. We don’t know anything about their personal lives or financial backgrounds and in some cases it’s unclear whether their attackers knew their victims.

The stabbings this summer have garnered significant online attention, for example one related hashtag viewed more than 64 million times on Weibo. That’s even as overall violent crime in China – already extremely low compared to many other countries – has been declining in recent years, according to state media reports.

Instead, it’s possible the online speculation could mirror the public’s own concerns as the economic slump drags on, said Michelle Miao, an associate law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Rare violent crime

Two of the most high-profile recent attacks came in June – and both targeted foreign nationals. One involved the stabbing of four visiting US college instructors, while the other saw an attacker stab people at a bus stop near a Japanese school.

Ultra-nationalism has risen across China and Chinese social media in recent years, as has anti-American and anti-Japanese sentiment. But Chinese authorities have been keen to play down any suggestion that these attacks specifically targeted foreigners.

“Such isolated incidents may happen in any country in the world,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular news briefing after the attack on the Japanese school bus, which killed a Chinese woman who tried to stop the attacker and injured a Japanese woman and her child.

According to Chinese authorities, the American instructors and a Chinese tourist who intervened had been stabbed after one of the instructors “collided” with the attacker while walking. They added that China would continue protecting the safety of foreigners in the country.

The suspects in both attacks were unemployed, according to a police report on the bus stop case and one of the US instructors, citing Chinese officials.

The Chinese government doesn’t provide detailed data on knife attacks and keeps a tight lid on crime in its powerful and ubiquitous surveillance system.

China only recorded 0.46 homicides per 100,000 people in 2023, state media reported, citing the Ministry of Public Security. According to the World Bank, citing the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s International Homicide Statistics database, there was just one intentional homicide per 100,000 people in China in 2020 – compared to seven in the US.

The UNODC says the homicide rate per 100,000 people for Asia stood at 2.3 and at 15 for the Americas in 2021, the most recent available figures.

A 2023 work report by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, which oversees legal prosecutions, claimed that China had curbed serious violent crimes and crimes related to guns, explosives and drugs in the previous five years, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

Gun violence is rare in China, where the regulation of firearms is among the strictest in the world. Chinese law generally prohibits private possession of firearms (except for hunters with permits), and the government has stepped up its policing of illegal firearms in recent years.

Stabbings have, however, made headlines in recent years – often shining a light on the need for greater mental health services in China, as suspects are often described to have been living with a mental illness, according to official announcements.

Several have targeted schools – including a 2020 knife attack at an elementary school, and attacks at or near kindergartens in 2022 and 2023.

Miao at CUHK said the situation in China today – compared with other countries and unlike in the late 1970s and 1980s when China faced momentous societal changes and an accompanying crime wave – did not seem to show a “significant pattern of rising crimes.”

There have, however, been Chinese studies showing a correlation between crime rates and economic indicators such as unemployment.

Youth unemployment hit record highs last spring; at one point, more than one in five people aged 16 to 24 were jobless. That rate has since lowered, according to the government’s latest data, which now uses a different metric to calculate youth unemployment.

At the same time, other economic crises deepened, including the real estate collapse – which caused defaults and sparked protests across the country. As local governments struggled with financial difficulties, some cities cut basic services or reduced medical benefits for seniors.

On social media, the belief that economic insecurity is making the country less safe remains palpable.

China’s financial pressures had been “passed on to everyone layer by layer,” one Weibo user wrote after the Guangxi stabbing.

“Don’t let yourself become a victim of the economic environment,” they said.

Thirty-three Indian farm laborers were allegedly forced to work more than 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for wages of around $4 an hour that were sometimes withheld, a statement from the police said.

The police spokesperson said they also confiscated more than $500,000 in cash and other assets from two Indian nationals suspected of being the gangmasters. The money is believed to be tied to the alleged “sale” of the workers as “low-cost labor,” they said.

This comes as Italian authorities were investigating the death of a 31-year-old Indian national who died after his arm was severed in an accident at a fruit farm in June.

The 33 freed workers were lured to Italy by Indian “brokers” who worked with traffickers in promising people legitimate jobs, the spokesperson said.

The workers had each paid more than 17,000 euros (around $18,500) for travel and for what turned out to be fake seasonal work permits to enter the country, according to the spokesperson. Many of the workers were charged an additional 13,000 euros (around $14,100) in a promise of permanent work permits, according to the police statement.

“To guarantee their total silence and submission, the two Indian subjects took away the passports of the laborers as soon as they arrived in Italy and imposed on them an absolute ban on leaving the dilapidated ‘houses’ in which they were forced to live under threat, several times implemented, of physical retaliation in case of refusal,” the police statement said.

The identities and genders of the freed workers have not been made public.

The financial police said they are now investigating the business relationships the suspected gangmasters had with other entities, including many companies who used the “low-cost labor.”

On Saturday, the Indian embassy in Rome said on X that it was “aware of media reports about Indian nationals working in agricultural farms in Italy.”

“We are in contact with Italian authorities and the Indian community to ensure safety and well being of Indian nationals,” it added.

Italy has a complicated history with labor trafficking. In 2018, the financial police said that at least a quarter of all agriculture related labor was tied to a gangmaster system whereby farm and other labor workers are contracted out by individuals who “own” them. The practice has been illegal since 2016 after a female laborer working under slave-like conditions for little money died.

More than 11 percent of all workers in Italy work in the black market, meaning they are not documented even if they are Italian nationals, and neither they nor their employees pay taxes on the salaries, which serves to enable labor trafficking, according to the police spokesperson.

Seventy-one “arbitrary detentions” have been reported within days of the start of campaigning for Venezuela’s presidential election, according to a human rights NGO.

A report by Laboratorio de Paz said that 48 of those detentions involved people who had provided some type of service to the campaign command of the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, of the Democratic Unitary Platform.

The arrests all took place between July 4 and 14 and most were in the state of Táchira, according to the report. The NGO also reported 26 cases of harassment, 11 obstructions to free movement, two closures of premises and three raids.

The NGO said the figures were part of a “recurring pattern” of Venezuelans being “systematically” targeted for political reasons “at the national level” and warned of concerns that such actions would increase as the election drew nearer.

Critics of President Nicolas Maduro’s government have long accused it of rigging votes and silencing the opposition, with the 2018 election that returned Maduro to office described as illegitimate by an alliance of 14 Latin American nations, Canada and the United States.

This time around, two opposition candidates – Maria Corina Machado and Corina Yoris – have been barred from running despite Maduro’s pledge to the United States that he would hold free and fair elections in exchange for sanctions relief.

The election is scheduled to take place on July 28. Ten candidates are in the running, including the incumbent Maduro, who aspires to re-election for six more years after 11 years in power.

Maduro’s main opponent is González Urrutia, who represents an alliance bringing together the main opposition parties and leaders in Venezuela.

The legal adviser to the opposition campaign, Perkins Rocha, said Sunday that at least 11 people linked to the campaign command had been arrested over the weekend.

At least six people are dead following a shooting near a mosque in Oman’s Wadi Al-Kabir region, according to the Royal Oman Police.

At least one police officer was among those killed in Monday evening’s attack and more than two dozen people of various nationalities were injured, including four Omani first responders, the police said.

Three perpetrators were identified and were killed during the exchange, according to the police.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that at least four Pakistanis were among the dead, citing Omani authorities. Another 30 Pakistanis were injured and currently receiving treatment at the hospital, the ministry added.

The ministry condemned the incident, calling it a “dastardly terrorist attack.”

“We are heartened that the government of Oman has neutralized the attackers,” the ministry said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif posted on X Tuesday that he had been “deeply saddened” by what he deemed a terrorist attack.

“My heart goes out to the families of the victims. I have instructed the Pakistan Embassy in Muscat to extend all possible assistance to the injured and visit the hospitals personally,” he wrote.

One Indian citizen was killed and another injured, India’s embassy in Oman’s capital city of Muscat announced in a post on X Tuesday.

The Royal Oman Police say military and security procedures have concluded, and an investigation is ongoing.

Voters in Rwanda lined up at polling stations on Monday to elect their next president, with 66-year-old incumbent Paul Kagame, who has ruled the central African country for nearly a quarter of a century, expected to cruise to victory.

Kagame has won more than 93% of the vote at each of the three previous elections. Eight candidates had applied to run against him, but only two were retained in the final list validated by the electoral commission.

The others, including Kagame’s most vocal critics, were barred for various reasons that included prior criminal convictions.

At the Rwandexco polling center in the capital Kigali, people started queueing 90 minutes before polls opened.

Voter Barimukije Pheneas said he had chosen to re-elect Kagame, who is praised for rebuilding the country in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide by prioritizing development and putting in place effective social services.

“We voted smoothly without any crowding, and we are happy,” Pheneas said. “I voted for Paul Kagame because he has achieved a lot for us; he united us.”

Kagame is running against two other candidates, Frank Habineza and Philippe Mpayimana, who also challenged him at the last poll in 2017.

He is looking to win the endorsement of the more than 9 million eligible voters, who are also electing members of parliament. Provisional results are expected by July 20.

Motorcycle taxi driver Karangwa Vedaste said the voting process was calm and peaceful.

“I voted for a leader I trust. The one I voted for is a secret in my heart. We will share it when he wins,” Vedaste said.

Kagame won nearly 99% of the vote in the 2017 poll, which followed a constitutional change removing term limits that would have prevented him from standing again.

He has won acclaim for transforming Rwanda into a thriving economy but has also faced criticism from rights activists and Western nations for muzzling the media, stifling opposition and backing rebel groups in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Rwanda’s government has denied all the accusations against it, and while campaigning, Kagame promised continued development and stability.

Its human rights record was thrown into the spotlight when Rwanda struck a migration deal in 2022 with the UK to receive thousands of asylum seekers. Britain’s new government has said it would scrap the deal.

As dramatic images of the failed assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump spread around the world Saturday, news of the attack also sparked immerse online interest – as well as pointed criticism of the US – on China’s heavily censored internet.

Discussion of the assassination attempt, in which a gunman opened fire at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, dominated Chinese social media in the hours after the attack.

Related hashtags garnered hundreds of millions of views on China’s X-like social media platform Weibo, where Trump – who as president played an outsized role reframing the US-China relationship into the more contentious one that exists today – has for years been a frequent subject of discussion, fascination and often ridicule.

Some social media users were quick to hail former president and presumptive Republican US presidential nominee as “lucky” that he didn’t sustain more serious injury and praised Trump’s “quick reflexes,” while many others made quips about how the situation would boost his re-election bid.

Trump, who said he was shot in the ear, was declared safe following the incident.

As shots rang out during his speech at the rally, the former president ducked to the ground and was covered by Secret Service agents. He then raised his fist in a defiant pose with blood visible on his face before agents took him off the stage – a gesture captured in an image widely shared worldwide and in China.

“Just judging by his quick reaction and agility to duck, I’d vote for Trump. I bet (US President Joe) Biden would take ages to crouch down,” read one social media comment that got thousands of likes and appeared to allude to concerns about Biden’s age.

One blogger with over a million followers noted that the incident made Trump look more like a “a traditional Hollywood president.”

Other commentators made morbid parallels between the incident and the 2022 assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for example noting that the two ex-leaders did not end up “meeting” over the weekend.

There were also repeated links made between the attack and recurring instances of gun violence in the United States, which are often highlighted by Chinese state media as an example of the country’s failings.

“In the land of liberty, gunshots ring out every day,” said one comment on Weibo with several thousand likes, while another said Trump would be “confirmed as the next president with gunfire.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put forward an official comment Sunday, with a spokesperson saying Chinese leader Xi Jinping “expressed sympathy” to Trump.

State-linked media also stepped in to shape public discussion around the incident. Several op-eds or editorials published by such outlets framed Saturday’s violence as a symptom of American democracy, echoing Beijing’s longstanding rhetorical push to portray the US political system as dysfunctional and inferior to its own.

An editorial published by the state-linked Beijing News on Sunday claimed the incident had “combined all the political symbols typical of an American election: violence, uncertainty, and tough guys.”

State-run nationalist tabloid Global Times on Monday published an op-ed from a Beijing-based professor describing how “the escalation of political polarization into violence shows that more people are feeling hopeless about American democracy.”

“Political polarization and violence stem from severe income inequality and hopelessness about social change,” the piece said, while the outlet’s English-language arm repeated similar themes in an editorial for international audiences.

As such commentary filtered across China’s media, Biden, in an Oval Office address Sunday evening, took aim at what he described as “foreign actors” who “fan the flames of our division.

Their aim is “to shape the outcomes consistent with their interests, not ours,” Biden said in an apparent reference to Washington’s concern that China, Russia and other rivals are playing on existing social divisions in the US in influence campaigns, something Beijing denies.

“Tonight, I’m asking every American to recommit …. (to) think about what’s made America so special,” the US president said.

The rapt focus on the attempted assassination in China adds to what has already been frequent discussion of Trump on the Chinese internet, where he earned the nickname “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder” during his time in office – a quip to suggest his isolationist foreign policy and divisive domestic agenda were actually helping Beijing to overtake Washington on the global stage.

Trump’s re-election bid is also believed to be watched closely in Beijing, not least because the former president has threatened, if re-elected, to raise tariffs that experts say could trigger a de facto decoupling between the US and Chinese economies – a shock that would hit as China grapples with numerous internal fiscal challenges.

A man has been charged with two counts of murder following the discovery of human remains at a famous bridge in southwest England.

Yostin Andres Mosquera, a 34-year-old Colombian national, was arrested in Bristol early Saturday and charged on Monday, London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

The remains were found in suitcases at Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol last week, as well as at Mosquera’s address in Shepherd’s Bush, a neighborhood in west London.

The two victims have been named as Albert Alfonso, 62, and Paul Longworth, 71. The two men had previously been in a relationship and still lived together at the London apartment.

Mosquera had also been staying with them in the apartment for a short while, police said.

Longworth was British and Alfonso was originally from France but had obtained British citizenship.

The Metropolitan Police said it is “making thorough enquiries” to find out whether there are any linked offenses in the United Kingdom or internationally, but none has yet been identified.

Andy Valentine, the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner, said that his thoughts are “first and foremost with Albert and Paul’s loved ones who are coming to terms” with the grisly news.

“I know that this awful incident will cause concern not just among residents in Shepherd’s Bush but in the wider LGBTQ+ community across London,” he said.

“I hope it will be of some reassurance that whilst enquiries are still ongoing and the investigation is at a relatively early stage, we are not currently looking for anyone else in connection with the two murders,” Valentine added.

Police said the evidence gathered so far “does not suggest there was a homophobic motive in this case” but, following national guidelines, have provisionally categorized the incident as a hate crime. The Met will continue to review this as more evidence becomes available, it said.