More than 20 people were injured after a Ferris wheel at a music festival in Germany caught fire on Saturday evening.

Images show two carriages of the ride on fire as smoke billows into the air at the Highfield Festival near the city of Leipzig.

According to a statement from Saxony police, the ride caught fire shortly after 9 p.m. local time, for reasons that are still unclear.

Four people suffered from burn injuries due to the incident, the statement said, while another was treated for injuries from falling.

According to the statement, 18 people including first responders, police officers and others on the ride came into contact with smoke and were taken to hospitals for medical treatment.

Police have launched an investigation. The scene of the incident has been cordoned off.

German rapper Ski Aggu was performing onstage at the festival when the Ferris wheel caught fire. He later took to his Instagram stories to write that he was “dismayed and shocked” over the night’s events.

He added that he was told in his ear that he should “not cancel the show under any circumstances” but rather maintain dialogue with the crowds to avoid any mass panic.

“What are your parents’ names?”

Fang, then a third grader, hemmed and hawed at the simple question as her teacher waited impatiently, unaware the 9-year-old was caught in a dilemma.

Since preschool, Fang had been officially registered as the daughter of her eldest uncle – an attempt by her birth parents to circumvent harsh penalties for having a second baby under China’s controversial one-child policy that was enforced from 1980 to 2015.

Since then, Beijing has gradually lifted the birth caps from one to two children, then to three in 2021, in a bid to arrest a looming demographic crisis.

The one-child rules have gone, but the wounds of the past cast long shadows. A new generation of women like Fang, haunted by their parents’ struggles and their own sacrifices as children under the one-child policy, now eye parenthood with reluctance – making Beijing’s current pro-birth push a tough sell.

Fang was born in the 1990s – when the one-child limit was at its strictest – and became a big sister just a year later, when her mother “illegally” became pregnant again. To avoid punishment, the family sent Fang to live with extended family members, while her mother pretended her second pregnancy was her first.

Fang, now 30 and married, doesn’t want children at all.

“All the fears, drifts and insecurity felt throughout my own childhood have, more or less, played a part in my current call,” she said.

Sacrifices of eldest daughters

Keeping their firstborn secret spared Fang’s parents ruinous fines, job loss and even forced abortion and sterilization – the heavy price for having an “unauthorized” second child, another daughter.

Fang was finally allowed to return home at age 10 – but was still registered as her eldest uncle’s daughter and told to “stick with her official registration” whenever she was asked about her parents.

After the one-child policy was dismantled in 2015, Fang’s parents tried for another child. Fang sensed their unstated wish for a son, but her mother gave birth to a girl – her third.

Over 30 years of China’s one-child policy, an estimated 20 million baby girls “disappeared” due to sex-selective abortions or infanticide, according to Li Shuzhuo, director of the Center for Population and Social Policy Research at China’s Xi’an Jiaotong University.

She was born in a rural village in northeastern Shandong, one of the 19 provinces that allowed rural couples to have a second child – if their first was a girl – during the single child policy’s reign.

This “one-and-a-half child policy” variant, introduced in 1984, reinforced the traditional Chinese preference for sons by implying that girls were worth “half” as much as boys, as noted in a leading Chinese academic study published last year.

Yao’s first sibling was a girl – allowed under the policy – but then her mother fell pregnant with a third child – a forbidden one – and soon fled to another village with Yao’s sister, leaving Yao in the care of her grandparents.

Yao said her mother was forced to keep her pregnancy secret to avoid a potential forced abortion. But after the “extra baby” arrived, she sought to officially register him as her son – and paid a crushing fine of 50,000 yuan (about $7,000).

For Yao, it meant losing her mother’s companionship for nearly a year when she moved out to carry her son to term.

“I was only a first grader then and had no one to walk me to and from school,” Yao recalled.

“I felt all alone at that time.”

From one to three – or none?

Since the shift to a three-child policy in 2021, Beijing has been running national campaigns to foster a “pro-birth culture” as China’s population shrinks and grays at an alarming rate.

Posters and slogans once warning of the perils of having more than one child have been replaced with ones encouraging more births. Local governments have rolled out a flurry of policy incentives, from cash handouts and real estate subsidies to the extension of maternity leave.

The policy U-turn, from birth limits to birth boost, has left Yao “speechless.”

“How ‘well-planned’ the family-planning policy is!” Yao mocked. “(The government) used to slap us for having two (babies) and now expects us to have three?”

Fang said she was “somewhat nettled” by Beijing’s initiatives to spur births, arguing: “Having kids or not is purely a woman’s personal choice, not out of any policy, be it a stick or a carrot.”

In May, China’s National Health Commission issued a dozen “birth-friendly theme posters” to local bureaus, calling for a “widespread dissemination” from social media to community parks.

The move was met with wry comments online, referencing past one-child slogans like “Fewer kids, happier lives,” and, “If you want to be rich, have fewer children and plant more trees.”

These chants are not just recounted for ridicule – people have found new resonance with the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s old teachings and are now acting on them earnestly.

Last year, the country’s total fertility rate (TFR) – meaning the average number of children a woman delivers during her reproductive years – stood at around 1.0, according to the 2024 China Birth Report from the YuWa Population Research Institute, a China-based think tank.

That’s far lower than the 2.1 rate needed to maintain a stable population, or the “replacement rate” in demographic terms, and ranks as the second lowest among the world’s major economies.

The birth deficit is even grimmer in China’s richest city, Shanghai, where roughly half of all women do not have children throughout their reproductive periods, based on the city’s 2023 TFR figure (0.6) announced in May.

Rock kicked off cliff

Yi Fuxian, an expert on China’s demographics at the University of Wisconsin, says the country faces three major obstacles to reversing its shrinking population: low fertility desire, high child-raising costs and a climbing infertility rate.

Of these, “the sole challenge Beijing has any capacity to impact is the affordability issue,” Yi said.

Last month, the Communist Party proposed boosting incentives, including childbirth subsidies and more affordable childcare, at a key meeting of party leaders.

Yet, debt-stricken local governments – including many that are struggling to recover from three years of strict pandemic controls and a loss of revenue from a real estate crash – can only carry them out on a shoestring budget, dooming the party’s birth boost attempt, according to Yi.

Chinese state-run media outlet Jiemian reported in early June that the highest childcare subsidies nationwide amount to only 57,800 yuan (about $8,000) – a drop in the bucket for one of the world’s priciest countries to raise kids.

The cost of raising a child to age 18 in China is 6.3 times its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita – second only to its neighbor South Korea at 7.79 times, according to a YuWa report.

The hefty price tag means some people are putting off parenthood until later in life, when their fertility and openness to child-rearing might be on the wane.

“China has fallen into a ‘low-fertility trap’ and the figure will only dip further,” warned Yi.

A “low fertility trap” describes a self-reinforcing cycle, where low fertility rates (typically under 1.5) drive population aging and economic stagnation – which further deter childbearing and sink the figure even lower.

“China’s fertility rate should have been falling naturally as its economy advances, like a giant rock gradually rolling down along a hillside,” Yi said. “But the one-child policy kicked the rock right down the cliff – it’s extremely hard to lift the rock back now.”

‘State violence’

Online discussions in China about childbirth decisions are often dominated by economic concerns, but some have also thrown shade at the country’s one-child policy by sharing decades-old receipts for over-quota birth fines on Xiaohongshu, China’s version of Instagram.

“Childbearing isn’t just a financial matter,” said Lü Pin, a prominent Chinese feminist.

“Coercive family planning, as a form of state violence, has scarred women deeply … and people just haven’t got over it yet,” added Lü, who’s pursuing a doctorate in women and politics at Rutgers University in the United States.

Forced abortion and sterilization, arguably the most ghoulish facet of China’s one-child “social engineering,” have left an indelible mark on hundreds of millions of Chinese women, physically and mentally.

According to state-owned news outlet The Paper, between 1980 and 2014, 324 million Chinese women were fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs) and 107 million underwent tubal ligations to prevent pregnancy.

Decades after the one-child policy’s introduction in 1980, those contraceptive devices – only meant to remain in women’s bodies for five to 20 years – have long outlived their safe stay.

But family planning officials, who once had performance targets to push women to fit IUDs after having their first child, now lack similar incentives to remove those devices in a timely manner, demographer Sun Xiaoming told The Beijing News, a state-linked newspaper.

“The government has stretched its hands far enough – even into common folks’ bodies!” Yi said.

Lü added that Beijing had not conducted any “open self-reflection, nor even admission (of the state-inflicted trauma).”

“Now it expects women to forget all this and embrace its lurch to birth boost? Fat chance.”

Israeli police are investigating an explosion that killed a person in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening.

The person who died is believed to have been carrying the explosive material, District Commander Peretz Amar said. Police have not yet identified the person.

A second person was moderately injured after being hit in the lower body by shrapnel and was taken to a hospital.

Amar said that it was “too early to say” whether it was a terrorist attack.

Police said they received dozens of calls reporting the loud explosion on HaLehi Street in Tel Aviv.

This is a developing story. More to come.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine is “getting stronger” in Kursk, with his troops blowing up a second bridge in the Russian territory on Sunday.

Fighting continues in the Kursk region, where Ukraine has been inching forward since launching its surprise cross-border incursion last week. But Ukraine remains under pressure its occupied east.

The Kursk offensive has left Russia struggling to shore up its own territory. Kyiv seems to have multiple goals with the assault, from boosting morale after a torrid few months to stretching Russia’s resources. A Ukrainian presidential aide said the incursion aimed at ensuring a “fair” negotiation process.

The foothold of Kyiv’s presence in Kursk is “getting stronger” and “now we are reinforcing our positions,” Zelensky said in his latest address.

As part of efforts to cripple Moscow’s logistical capabilities, Ukrainian forces said Sunday they blew up another bridge over the Seym river in the Kursk region, with “precision air strikes.”

“The Air Force aviation continues to deprive the enemy of logistics capabilities with precision air strikes, which significantly affects the course of combat operations,” Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykolaiv Oleshchuk said in a post on social media that included a video showing plumes of smoke engulfing parts of the bridge.

It comes two days after Ukrainian forces destroyed another bridge over the Seym. Russia’s foreign ministry said Ukraine had used Western rockets to carry out that attack, which were likely US-made HIMARS.

Kyiv’s forces took control of Sudzha after launching their cross-border incursion earlier this month and have established a Ukrainian military commandant’s office there.

The Ukrainian military says it has taken control of more than 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory amid the ongoing incursion in the southwestern region.

On Sunday, Ukrainian armed forces published a video of what they said were “Sivalka” flamethrower systems “engaged in active combat operations” in the Kursk direction.

Russia has urged residents to evacuate areas where heavy fighting is underway. The head of the Kursk region’s Korenevsky district, Marina Degtyareva, appealed to residents who have left the area not to return.

“The operational situation on the territory of our district remains complicated. Some citizens are not giving up their attempts to return home, thus hindering the work of our military,” she said on Sunday. “Returning to the area so far is impossible for local residents, and sometimes results in terrible tragedies.”

“I appeal to all residents of Korenevsky district, let’s be patient and let our military deal with the enemy, let’s not interfere with our defenders,” Degtyareva said, adding that authorities would let residents know when it is safe to return.

Russian forces on the outskirts of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region

Meanwhile, Russian forces are continuing their advances in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv has been under pressure all year.

Russia’s army has moved closer to the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, which serves as a key hub for the Ukrainian military because of its easy access to the town of Kostiantynivka, another military center. Ukraine uses the road connecting the two to resupply the front lines and evacuate casualties.

“The Russians are close, up to 11 kilometers from the outskirts of the town. The town is getting ready,” Serhii Dobriak, the head of the Pokrovsk city military administration, said Sunday.

“Every town in Donetsk region has a combat unit assigned to it, and defense plans have been developed. We are working with the military to build fortifications. This is a continuous process,” Dobriak said.

The evacuation of civilians from Pokrovsk has been accelerated because of the approach of Russian troops, he said. Nearly 1,800 people have been evacuated from the city over the past week alone, while until recently 450-500 residents were being evacuated every month.

“The Russians are destroying our towns and villages, killing civilians, so we need to think about our safety and evacuate,” Dobriak said. “Currently, the town is being hit by missiles, MLRS, and there have been several guided aerial bomb attacks.”

All services are currently operating in the community, including shops, farmers’ markets, pharmacies, banks and ATMs. Courts and administrative service centers are also open, Dobriak said.

Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk on Sunday urged residents of Pokrovsk and other settlements “in the immediate vicinity of the front line” to evacuate and “leave for safer regions.”

Vereshchuk said she understood residents would have to leave their jobs, homes and property, but “nevertheless, the lives and health of you and your children are more valuable,” and staying in the area interferes with the work of the defense forces.

“I also understand that you may face difficulties and uncertainty during the evacuation. However, it is far better than being under enemy fire, on the front line. You will not be alone in the evacuation,” she said, adding “the government, local authorities, volunteers, international organizations and, in fact, the host communities will all help.”

Intense fighting is also underway around the villages of Pivnichne and Zalizne in Donetsk region, located about 40 miles east of Pokrovsk, where Russian forces launched “a massive assault” Sunday morning, Ukraine’s General Staff said.

“The Russian invaders, supported by an armored group of 12 vehicles, attempted to break through the Ukrainian military positions and advance towards Toretsk,” the General Staff said, referring to another strategic town that could open the way for Russian forces to advance towards Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Over the course of the week, Russia has used more than 40 missiles of various types, 750 guided aerial bombs and 200 strike UAVs of different types against Ukrainian cities and villages, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.

“For such terror, the occupier must be held accountable before the courts and history. They are already facing the strength of our warriors,” Zelensky said.

In his daily address on Sunday, Zelensky said Ukrainian units were “doing everything to hold the positions” amid dozens of attacks on the front lines in Donetsk.

“And all this is more than just defense for Ukraine; it is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions,” Zelensky said.

“Everything that inflicts losses on the Russian army, Russian state, their military-industrial complex, and their economy helps prevent the war from expanding and brings us closer to a just end to this aggression – a just peace for Ukraine,” he added.

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Syrskyi told Zelensky that “our guys are doing great on all fronts” but he called for allies to deliver supplies more quickly. “There are no vacations in war,” Syrskyi said, directing his comments especially to the United States, United Kingdom, and France.

At the mouth of the Motagua, Guatemala’s longest river, 40 million pounds (18 million kilograms) of trash pours into the ocean each year.

It is one of the most polluted rivers in Central America, winding 302 miles (486 kilometers) through Guatemala before flowing into the Gulf of Honduras and, ultimately, the Caribbean Sea. By some estimates, the trash carried downstream by the Motagua River makes up roughly 2% of the total plastic waste that enters the world’s oceans each year.

Schulze founded 4ocean in 2017 along with his friend Andrew Cooper following a surfing trip in Bali, Indonesia, where they were shocked by the overwhelming quantity of plastic pollution in the ocean. The company collects trash from oceans, rivers and coastlines and converts it into products such as bracelets, building materials or fuel, which it then sells. Whatever the company cannot recycle, it sends to a landfill. Today, it has teams in Guatemala, the US state of Florida, and Indonesia and estimates it has collected more than 37 million tons of trash since 2017.

In Guatemala, in addition to trash-collecting missions undertaken by locally hired crews, the company installed a boom, a floating fence-like barrier, 30 miles (48 kilometers) upstream from the mouth of the Motagua River. Made of a durable fabric, the boom is designed to catch debris before it enters the bay, without disturbing wildlife.

“We hope to stop most of the trash and plastic that’s coming down the Río Motagua from inland during the rainy season before it reaches the ocean,” said Kevin Kuhlow, 4ocean’s country manager for Guatemala.

But the rainy season initially took a toll on the boom itself. Last year, a heavy storm dislodged the boom and fragments of it washed away downstream. To prevent this from happening again, 4ocean dug holes into the riverbed to securely anchor the system.

The company estimates that the boom has captured 100,000 pounds (45,000 kilograms) of trash since its installment in 2023. While that number is only a fraction of the total trash that flows downriver, 4ocean hopes that it can make a difference by raising awareness about plastic pollution in the local community.

A lack of waste disposal infrastructure in Guatemala, combined with a lack of awareness of the causes of plastic pollution, means that many dispose of trash improperly, according to 4ocean. This not only has an impact on the environment, but it endangers the livelihoods of locals who depend on fishing, which is why the company hires local people to work on the project.

Already, some of its Guatemalan employees say they have noticed a change in how they and the people in their community treat the environment.

4ocean is not the only company working to pull plastic from the Motagua River. In 2023, non-profit organization The Ocean Cleanup erected its own barricade in Las Vacas, a tributary of the Motagua River, located close to Guatemala City, the country’s capital. It recently announced it would be deploying another of its interceptors in the basin of the Motagua.

Other organizations, both local and international, came together this year to form the Alliance for the Motagua River, which aims to restore and clean up the river basin. One of the member organizations, Fundación Crecer, creates accessible educational programs for children that teach them how to recycle and compost.

Schulze recognizes that pulling trash from the ocean won’t solve the issue alone. It starts, he said, with education and changes in the way people and corporations use and produce plastic.

“We say it a lot that cleaning the ocean alone will not solve the ocean plastic crisis. We have to stop it at the source and turn off the tap,” he said.

A former Soviet aircraft carrier burned in a waterway near Shanghai over the weekend, the latest setback for the decommissioned warship since its conversion into a Chinese tourist attraction.

The carrier Minsk, which has been anchored for the past eight years in a lagoon near the Yangtze River in Nantong, Jiangsu province, caught fire during renovations for it to become part of a military theme park, state-run China National Radio reported Saturday.

The blaze broke out Friday afternoon and was extinguished about 24 hours later, the report said.

Images on social media showed thick smoke and large flames burning on the deck of the carrier, with later pictures showing extensive damage to the ship’s superstructure and charred metal on its flank below the main deck.

“There are no casualties, and the cause of the accident is under investigation,” the report said, citing local fire officials.

The Minsk had previously been the main attraction for 16 years at a now defunct theme park in southern China, according to the report.

Recently started renovation efforts to make the ship the centerpiece of another theme park are now in doubt, the report added.

“It’s a pity that a fire has made the prospects of this project full of too many uncertainties,” an official told China National Radio.

Once part of the mighty Soviet Pacific Fleet, the Minsk was the second of four Kiev-class aircraft carriers built by the Soviet Union between 1970 and 1987.

Conventionally powered and with a displacement of about 42,000 tons – less than half that of a US Navy Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – the 896-feet (273 meter) ship could carry a dozen fighter jets and an equal number of helicopters.

Built at a shipyard in what is now Ukraine and named after what is now the capital of Belarus, it served in the Soviet Pacific Fleet after its commissioning in 1978 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it became property of the Russian Navy.

Russia retired the ship in 1993, selling it and a sister ship, the Novorossiysk, to a South Korean company for scrap.

While the Novorossiysk was dismantled in the South Korean port of Pohang, environmental groups opposed the presence of the Minsk in the country. The ship was then sold to a Chinese company, eventually being transferred to developers who made it the centerpiece of the Minsk World theme park in Shenzhen, which opened in 2000.

The park suffered financial troubles and eventually closed in 2016, with the Minsk moved to its current site in Nantong.

One of the Minsk’s other sister ships, the Kiev – named for the Ukrainian capital – is an attraction at the Binhai Aircraft Carrier Theme Park in Tianjin, on China’s northeastern coast.

Of the four Kiev-class carriers the Soviets built, only the final one, the Baku, remains in service. It was sold to India in 2004, refurbished and commissioned into the Indian Navy in 2013 as the INS Vikramaditya and is now the service’s flagship.