🇷🇺🇨🇳🇮🇳 Russia's trade with China and India is increasing due to a growing number of goods categories, despite Western sanctions against Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Our trade with China for eight months increased by a third, the trade with India for six months grew by 120%," Lavrov told Russian weekly newspaper Argumenty i Fakty.

Sanctions are not an obstacle to the development of economic relations between the countries, the minister noted. "And it is quite natural. Many foreign companies are trying to fill in niches after Western businesses left the Russian market," Lavrov said.

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🇰🇵 North Korea reportedly fires unidentified ballistic missile towards Sea of Japan

❗️Railway traffic on the Crimean bridge has been restored - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin

Protesters have gathered in Paris demanding the resignation of French President Emmanuel Macron, a Sputnik correspondent reports from the scene

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🇳🇬 Nigeria facing worst flooding in a decade

More than 40 people have died as floods hit several Nigerian states, destroying dozens of homes and facilities.

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🇰🇷🇰🇵 NKorea launches 2 missiles toward sea after US-SKorea drills

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters on Sunday, the latest in its barrage of weapons tests in recent days, after the North warned against the US redeployment of an aircraft carrier for a new round of drills with South Korean warships.

The drills involved the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its battle group, which returned to the area after North Korea fired a powerful missile over Japan last week to protest the carrier group’s previous training with South Korea.

On Saturday, North Korea’s Defense Ministry warned that the Regan’s redeployment was causing a “considerably huge negative splash” in regional security. The Japanese coast guard said it has warned ships around the country’s coasts about falling objects and urged them to stay away.

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🇨🇳 China lashes out at latest US export controls on chips

China on Saturday criticized the latest US decision to tighten export controls that would make it harder for China to obtain and manufacture advanced computing chips, calling it a violation of international economic and trade rules that will “isolate and backfire” on the US

The tensions have impacted semiconductor companies in the US and globally which either export chips or manufacture chips in China. Semiconductor companies such as Nvidia and AMD has seen a 40% decline in stock price over the past year.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said that the US “weaponization and politicization” of science and technology as well as economic and trade issues will not stop China’s progress.

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🇷🇺 Russia Building Up Export Potential, Ready to Assist Poorest Countries

Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Russians on Agriculture and Processing Industry Workers’ Day, emphasizing that Russia’s export potential is getting stronger and it is ready to help developing nations.

"We are fully meeting the domestic demand for basic, essential products and providing reliable food security. Moreover, we are building up our export potential, and – I’d like to emphasize this – we are ready to make our contribution to overcoming global food challenges and provide the necessary assistance to the poorest, developing nations," Putin said in a Sunday statement.

Disruptions in supply chains have led to higher fuel and food prices across the EU, driving inflation to record levels and causing the cost of living to soar.

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🇬🇧 Latest in string of strikes brings most UK trains to a halt

Most train services across the UK were canceled Saturday as thousands of rail workers staged the latest in a string of strikes over jobs, pay and working conditions.

The 24-hour walkout by 40,000 cleaners, signalers, maintenance workers and station staff was the third in a week, and part of a surging wave of strikes from workers seeking pay raises to keep up with inflation that is running at almost 10%. Only about 20% of train services were expected to operate across the UK on Saturday, according to infrastructure operator Network Rail, with disruption spilling over into Sunday morning.

Britain is seeing a growing number of strikes amid the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis in decades. Unions accuse the government of preventing train companies — which are privately owned but heavily regulated — from making a deal. 

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🚀 SpaceX delivers Russian, Native American women to station

A Russian cosmonaut who caught a US lift to the International Space Station arrived at her new home Thursday for a five-month stay, accompanied by a Japanese astronaut and two from NASA, including the first Native American woman in space.

The SpaceX capsule pulled up to the station a day after launching into orbit. The linkup occurred 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the Atlantic, just off the west coast of Africa. It was the first time in 20 years that a Russian hitched a ride from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the result of a new agreement reached despite friction over the Ukraine conflict.

Until Elon Musk’s SpaceX started launching astronauts two years ago, NASA was forced to spend tens of millions of dollars every time an astronaut flew up on a Soyuz.

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‼️ WATCH Sputnik Correspondent Wyatt Reed is reporting from Donetsk after Ukrainian forces carried out an artillery strike on the Donbass Palace Hotel.

Mainstream media couldn’t possibly defend the Ukrainian terror tactics that I saw unfold tonight — instead, they will simply ignore it. Sadly, the people of Donetsk don’t have the luxury of looking the other way.

Watch this firsthand footage and see the results of the US government’s backing of the rogue regime in Kiev for yourself.

⚖️ Harvey Weinstein goes on trial in LA, where he once reigned

Five years after women’s stories about him made the #MeToo movement explode, Harvey Weinstein is going on trial in the city where he once was a colossus at the Oscars.

Already serving a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York, the 70-year-old former movie mogul faces different allegations including several that prosecutors say occurred during a pivotal Oscar week in Los Angeles. Jury selection for an eight-week trial begins Monday.

Weinstein’s trial is one of several with #MeToo connections that have begun or are about to begin as the fifth anniversary of the movement’s biggest moment passes, including the rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson just down the hall from Weinstein’s and the New York sexual assault civil trial of Kevin Spacey.

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💵 White House spending $265K on staff to deflect Hunter Biden probe

The White House is gearing up for a growing army of staff to fend off potential Republican-led probes on everything from Hunter Biden to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan — and taxpayers are footing the bill.

Battening down the hatches should the GOP regain control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, the White House is shelling out $265,000 a year in salary for staff, including Richard A. Sauber, the top attorney for the Department of Veterans Affairs, whose primary portfolio will be to run comms and defense for the administration from an approaching blizzard of subpoenas.

House Republicans have vowed to investigate everything the connections of Hunter Biden and his father in his shady overseas business dealings.

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🇿🇼 Zimbabwe will continue to support Russia following referendums held in Donbass and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions on joining Russia, Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Zimbabwe Jacob Mudenda told Sputnik.

"Zimbabwe, even before the referendum[s], was on the side of Russia in terms of understanding the root cause of the conflict. …Zimbabwe and Russia are victims of sanctions, so they are comrades in the sanctions battle," Mudenda said.

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🍡Marshmallows go on trial in the UK.

This summer, Britain's First-tier Tribunal assembled to examine a bag of 27 Mega Marshmallows to determine their fate in the world of sweets.

🕵️‍♂️No crimes here, though. The British legal minds were deciding whether large marshmallows should be subject to the same standard retail sales tax as regular ones.

According to the nine-page court ruling, larger marshmallows are not in fact confectionery and should therefore be zero-rated, unlike standard marshmallows, which are subject to a VAT of 20 percent

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🇲🇽The prosecutor's office in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas says it is investigating the causes of mass poisoning of high school students in the municipality of Bochil.

According to local media reports, the students' parents claim that about 100 people exhibited various symptoms, such as nausea, drowsiness, abdominal pain, and fainting, after a Friday school event. At least 57 minors required medical assistance and two remain hospitalized.

🔬The prosecutor's office said that, following toxicology tests on students from the Juana de Asbaje secondary school, 15 samples came back "negative for prohibited substances, drugs of abuse." Further testing will be conducted.

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❗️🇦🇲 An explosion occurred in Yerevan, Armenia, in Bagratunyats Avenue on Sunday morning, according to the National Center for Crisis Management.

There are casualties but the emergency services have not yet disclosed the number and severity.

"Two combat teams from the fire-rescue squad of the Yerevan rescue department went to the scene of the incident," the official statement read.

⚡️The blast in Bagratunyats Avenue has injured two people, they were hospitalized — Armenia's National Center for Crisis Management

💎🇿🇼Companies mining highly valued minerals in Zimbabwe, such as gold, diamonds, lithium and the platinum group of metals (PGM), will have to pay half their royalties in refined mineral produce to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).

According to Zimbabwe's president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the policy, which comes into effect this October, will allow Zimbabwe to build up a national reserve of precious minerals to “augment the country’s credit-worthiness” and help “circumvent and fend off funding limitations caused by illegal sanctions imposed on the country”.

💰The plan to accumulate physical reserves of precious and strategic minerals will also boost the collection of cash revenues for the daily running of state affairs, Mnangagwa wrote in his weekly column for The Sunday Mail.

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🇮🇱The Israeli soldier killed yesterday in the shooting at the Shuafat checkpoint has been identified as Noa Lazar, the Israeli Defense Forces said.

A member of the Military Police’s Erez battalion, Lazar was 18 years old. After her death, she was promoted to the sergeant rank, the IDF said.

Lazar, as well as a civilian guard, were hit in a shooting attack at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem on Saturday night. She was proclaimed dead in the hospital. Prime Minister Yair Lapid, along with President Isaac Herzog, expressed condolences over Lazar's death and vowed to apprehend the gunman.

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