BIRMINGHAM (Reuters) - Protesters from Greenpeace disrupted a speech by British Prime Minister Liz Truss at a conference of the governing Conservative Party on Wednesday, holding up a sign and shouting slogans before they were removed by security. Two protesters among the audience at the conference in Birmingham stood up and displayed a bright yellow flag with the words “Who Voted For This?” and Greenpeace’s logo on it as Truss was speaking on stage. Truss paused her speech as the protesters shouted slogans including “Who voted for fracking?” Security personnel then took their flag and the pair were led away amid boos from the audience. 

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden’s public approval rating edged lower this week and was close to the lowest level of his presidency, with just five weeks to go before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed found. The two-day national poll found that 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, down from 41% a week earlier. The president’s sagging popularity, which drifted as low as 36% in May and June, has helped drive expectations that his Democratic Party will lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, and possibly the Senate as well.

 

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MALANG, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo said on Wednesday that locked gates had contributed to the crush at the soccer stadium that left 131 dead and over 400 injured when police fired tear gas and set off a panicked run for the exits. Widodo made the statement after touring the Kanjuruhan soccer stadium in East Java’s Malang city for a first-hand look at the scene of one of the world’s deadliest disasters at a sporting event. He also visited the victims recovering at Saiful Anwar General Hospital and pledged a thorough investigation into what had transpired on Saturday night.

 

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NEW DELHI (Al-Jazeera) - At least 10 trainee mountaineers died after being swept away by an avalanche in the Himalayas in northern India, media reports said, as rescuers searched for 11 others missing. A group of 29 people was hit by an avalanche on a mountain peak located in the Gangotri range of the Garhwal Himalayas on Tuesday morning, said Uttarakhand state police chief Ashok Kumar. He said rescuers pulled eight survivors from the snow and took them to a local hospital for treatment. All the missing were undergoing training at a mountaineering institute but far from the avalanche site, Kumar said.

 

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PARIS (AFP) - New clashes were reported in an Ecuadoran prison where 15 people died in a riot the day before, the state prison administration authority said. Violence in Ecuador’s prisons, where drug gangs vie for power, is often carried out with knives and sometimes involves beheadings. The unrest has left more than 400 prisoners dead since February 2021. “There has been a new incident” in the Latacunga prison in the center of Ecuador, around 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Quito, the SNAI prison authority told reporters. The prison authority had to send in tactical units to re-establish control following Monday’s riot that left at least 15 inmates dead and 33 injured.