The last year’s release of the mini-series The Queen's Gambit provoked a surge of interest in chess. Such interest, says The Times, had not been seen since the 1972 world championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, which also sparked a wave of chess enthusiasm. The COVID-19 pandemic, which forced people to spend more time at home and find something interesting to do, contributed...

Brussels needs to begin negotiations with the Taliban, who have established power in Afghanistan. This was stated by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell in an interview to the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. "The Taliban is now becoming an unavoidable interlocutor in negotiations for us. We should ensure our presence in Kabul and try to avoid...

EU interior ministers discussed developments in Afghanistan at an extraordinary meeting. They agreed that EU member states would not allow mass resettlement of migrants from Afghanistan. The ministers agreed that the EU would also step up support for countries in Afghanistan's immediate neighbourhood. "Timely security checks for evacuees from Afghanistan remain crucial," the statement said. The...

So far, 64 million cases and 1.3 million deaths from coronavirus have been reported in Europe. In the past two weeks, there have been reports of an increase of more than 10% in the incidence of the disease from 33 European countries. Hans Kluge, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, said at a briefing: "In several countries, the burden on hospitals and the...

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, a measure of household confidence in the U.S. economy, dropped to 70.3 points in August from 81.2 points in July, according to its website. Analysts polled by DailyFX expected the index to fall to 70.7 points for the month. The first estimate showed the index falling to 70.2 points. The index of current economic conditions in the United...

Iraq increased the average daily volume of oil exports in July by 0.9% compared to the previous month, to 2.918 million barrels per day, according to data from the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO). As of June, the average daily oil supply from Iraq was 2.892 million barrels per day. As a result, Iraq exported a total of 90.468 million barrels of oil in July and 86.766 million...

New Zealand has imposed a repeated nationwide lockdown because of the threat of spread of the delta strain COVID-19. These are the toughest measures since last year's quarantine. The restrictions are due to the fact that the country has detected intra-border transmission of the virus for the first time since February. New Zealand has imposed a second lockdown because of new cases of the...

The World Health Organization (WHO) asked the global community to allocate $7.7 billion to fight the spread of dangerous variants of the coronavirus, including the delta strain. A statement to this effect has been published on the organization's website. It is planned to allocate the funds for financing the international ACT-Accelerator program operating since April 2020. The funds are needed to...

Japan's GDP grew by 1.3% in the second quarter compared with the same period last year. This was higher than analysts' forecasts, who expected growth of only 0.7%. The country’s GDP increased by 0.3% compared with the first quarter. Thus, the Japanese economy returned to growth after declining in the first quarter, when annualized GDP fell by 3.7% and quarterly GDP decreased by 0.9%. However,...