HONG KONG (AP) — Most of Hong Kong and other parts of southern China ground to a near standstill Friday with classes and flights canceled as powerful Typhoon Saola passed along the coast.

Many workers stayed at home and students in various cities saw the start of their school year postponed to next week. Trading on Hong Kong’s stock market was suspended and hundreds of people were stranded at the airport after about 460 flights were canceled in the key regional business and travel hub.

BEIRUT, Sept 1 (NNN-NNA) – Qatar announced yesterday that, it would supply the Lebanese army with fuel aid valued at 30 million U.S. dollars, over a period of six months.

Lebanese Army Commander, Joseph Aoun, thanked Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, for the generous donation, it reported.

Aoun said, the Lebanese army appreciated Qatar for standing by Lebanon’s military establishment and being committed to providing various forms of support to the military.

31 August 2023; MEMO: The Iranian authorities revealed details of the dismantling of a cell affiliated with Israel’s Mossad spy agency yesterday. The cell is said to have been operating in four provinces. According to the Ministry of Security and Intelligence in Tehran, it included 14 people and was shut down in mid-August.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Search teams finished checking a derelict Johannesburg apartment building a day after one of South Africa’s deadliest fires broke out there as pathologists faced the grisly task Friday of identifying charred bodies and body parts that were transported in large trucks to mortuaries across the city.

The death toll from Thursday’s predawn blaze rose to 76 after two people died in a hospital overnight, Health Minister Joe Phaahla told reporters. At least 12 of the victims were children, authorities said.

HELSINKI, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Finland's former Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who narrowly lost an election in April, stepped down on Friday as chair of the centre-left Social Democrats, hoping to take the focus off her personal life after an often turbulent four years at the helm.

Marin, who had announced her intention to quit soon after the election loss, was the world's youngest prime minister when she took the post in 2019 aged 34, attracting attention around the globe and helping lift Finland's profile.

31 August 2023; MEMO: A court in Israel ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair yesterday to pay 130,000 shekels (around $34,000) in compensation for “slander and defamation” in a case lodged against him by Blue and White party activist Dana Kashdi. The order was made by the Magistrates’ Court in Kfar Saba.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the length of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may help shine some light on how long the West will support Ukraine.

At a meeting with students and faculty of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), the top diplomat drew attention to statements by Western politicians about plans to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes."

COPENHAGEN, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Under a new financial aid package, Denmark aims to increase its aid to Ukraine and its eastern neighbors from 1.2 billion Danish kroner (DKK, 174.8 million U.S. dollars) to 1.5 billion Danish kroner, the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.

This would make Ukraine the largest recipient of Danish foreign aid for the second year in a row.

MANILA, Sept 1 (NNN-PNA) – Super typhoon Saola, which triggered floods and landslides in the Philippines, has left at least one dead and displaced 387,242 people across the country, the government said, today.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said, more than 21,000 are still in temporary shelters.

Saola grew into a super typhoon last Sunday, dumping heavy rain and severe winds in the main Luzon island and central Philippines.

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — Pope Francis arrived in Mongolia on Friday morning to encourage one of the world’s smallest and newest Catholic communities.

It’s the first time a pope has visited the landlocked Asian country and comes at a time when the Vatican’s relations with Mongolia’s two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are once again strained.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: Russian forces delivered five multiple-launch precision strikes over the week, disrupting the Ukrainian army’s strategic electronic interference control system and wiping out naval drone assembly workshops used by the Kiev regime for terrorist attacks, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Friday.

ANKARA, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Türkiye launched an air operation targeting "terrorists" in the Qandil and Asos regions of northern Iraq early on Friday, the country's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The operation was carried out in the early morning to "neutralize" the terrorist elements of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and other Kurdish armed groups, said the statement.

Turkish authorities often use the term "neutralized" in their statements to imply the "terrorists" in question surrendered or were killed or captured.