US warns of possible retaliation over Zawahiri
The US has urged its citizens to be vigilant against possible anti-American violence abroad following the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
His death could prompt al-Qaeda supporters or other linked terror groups to target US facilities and personnel, said the state department.
Zawahiri was killed by a US drone in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday.
He had helped mastermind the 9/11 attacks on the US in which nearly 3,000 people lost their lives.
The 71-year-old Egyptian doctor took over al-Qaeda after the death of Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
The killing was confirmed on Monday by US President Joe Biden, who said Zawahiri had carved "a trail of murder and violence" against American citizens.
Mr Biden said Zawahiri's death would bring closure to families of the victims of the 2001 attacks, in which hijackers crashed passenger jets into landmark buildings in New York and Washington - including two skyscrapers in Manhattan.
He added that Zawahiri had also masterminded other acts of violence, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole naval destroyer in Aden in October 2000, which killed 17 US sailors, and the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 223 people died.
"The Department of State believes there is a higher potential for anti-American violence given the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri on 31 July 2022," the department said in a worldwide caution update.
"Current information suggests that terrorist organisations continue to plan terrorist attacks against US interests in multiple regions across the globe," it added.
"These attacks may employ a wide variety of tactics including suicide operations, assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings and bombings."
US citizens are strongly encouraged to maintain a "high level of vigilance and practice good situational awareness" when travelling abroad, the alert added.
Beyoncé revises Renaissance album after complaints
Beyoncé has updated her latest album, Renaissance, in response to criticism from fans and the pop star Kelis.
The song Heated has received a lyrical update, removing a slur that is often used to demean people with spastic cerebral palsy.
In place of the so-called "s-word", Beyoncé now sings "blast".
Meanwhile, a reference to Kelis's hit Milkshake has also disappeared from the album, after the singer complained she had not given permission for its use.
The "la la la" hook from Milkshake was originally used in the background of Beyoncé's song Energy. Those vocals have now been erased from the mix.
A drum sample from the 1999 Kelis track Get Along With You remains on the track.
The updates happened on streaming services including Spotify, Tidal and Apple overnight on Tuesday, just five days after Renaissance was released.
At the time of writing, the original versions remain on YouTube. It is also too late to change the vinyl and CD editions of the album - although future pressings may contain the revisions.
Beyoncé came under fire from disability advocates over the weekend for the lyrics on Heated.
It came just a few weeks after another US pop star, Lizzo, apologised for using the same derogatory term in her song GRRRLS.
Both Lizzo and Beyoncé said they were unaware of the connotations of the word - whose links to cerebral palsy are less well-known in the US.
In a statement on Monday, Beyoncé's publicist said: "The word, not used intentionally in a harmful manner, will be replaced in the lyrics".
The Kelis story is less clear-cut.
The singer took to social media last week, accusing Beyoncé of "theft" after learning her anthem Milkshake had been interpolated on the song Energy (interpolation is when one song references another, without directly sampling it).
Kelis said she had not been informed in advance, and that her mind was "blown" by the "level of disrespect".
"It's not hard. She can contact me, right?" Kelis said on Instagram. "It's common decency."
However, Beyoncé would not have had to seek Kelis's permission to reference Milkshake, as the singer is not a credited writer on the song and does not own the copyright.
Instead, permission would have been sought from writer/producers Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo - and Kelis's disagreement is largely with them.
She has previously accused the duo, professionally known as the Neptunes, of "lying and tricking" her into a bad deal, which gave them the rights to her music at the start of her career.
"I was told we were going to split the whole thing 33/33/33, which we didn't do," she told the Guardian in 2020. "Their argument is, 'Well, you signed it.'
"I'm like, 'Yeah, I signed what I was told, and I was too young and too stupid to double-check it.'"
In an Instagram video about Beyoncé's song, she confirmed that Pharrell, in particular, was the source of her frustration.
"Publishing was stolen, people were swindled out of rights. It happens all the time, especially back then. So it's not about me being mad about Beyoncé.
"Pharrell knows better," she added. "This is a direct hit at me [and] he does this stuff all the time. It's very petty [and] the reason I'm annoyed is because I know it was on purpose."
Beyoncé appears to have sided with the singer, by removing the reference to Milkshake - although Pharrell and Chad Hugo still receive a writing credit, presumably for the brief sample of Get Along With You.
Meanwhile, Monica Lewinsky has tweeted a request for Beyoncé to consider adjusting a lyric in her 2013 song Partition, which references her affair with President Clinton.
Linking to a news story about the lyric change on Heated, Lewinsky wrote: "Uhmm, while we're at it... #Partition".
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Asked if she had ever mentioned the song to Beyoncé's team, Lewinsky replied: "No, I haven't. I did mention it in the first Vanity Fair article I wrote in 2014, which was the first public thing I'd done in 10 years. But you make an interesting point."
It is not unusual for musicians to update albums after release in the streaming era.
Kanye West, a former Beyoncé collaborator, has turned it into an artform. In 2016, on the day he released his seventh album The Life Of Pablo, he tweeted: "Im'a fix Wolves" - referring to one of the album's key songs.
A month later, the original version of the track was replaced, featuring new vocals from Australian pop star Sia. Frank Ocean's contribution to the song was then separated out, and given it's own track on the album, simply known as Frank's Track.
- Source: BBC
IMF: UK set for slowest growth of G7 countries in 2023
The UK is set for the slowest growth of the G7 richest economies next year, the International Monetary Fund has warned.
It is predicting UK growth will fall to just 0.5% in 2023, much lower than its forecast in April of 1.2%.
The global economy has shrunk for the first time since 2020, the IMF said, hit by the Ukraine war and Covid-19.
With growth stalling in the UK, US, China and Europe, the world "may soon be teetering on the edge of a global recession", it said.
"We know that people are feeling the impact of rising prices, caused by global economic factors, triggered by the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine," a HM Treasury spokesperson said in a statement, adding that help for households included £400 off energy bills plus personal tax cuts worth up to £330 a year.
The IMF has cut its 2022 global growth forecast to just 3.2% and warned the slowdown risks being even more severe.
It said fast-rising prices were to blame for much of the slowdown, with households and businesses squeezed by a combination of higher prices and higher borrowing costs as policymakers raise interest rates to try to counter inflation.
"The global economy, still reeling from the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is facing an increasingly gloomy and uncertain outlook," economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas wrote in a blog outlining the international lending body's latest economic forecast.
"The outlook has darkened significantly" since April, the last time the IMF issued forecasts, he added.
The global economy contracted in the three months to July, which was the first decline since the pandemic hit, the IMF said.
The probability of a recession in the G7 economies - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and UK - now stands at roughly 15% - nearly four times higher than usual.
While UK growth is expected to remain relatively strong this year, Mr Gourinchas said unusually high inflation - faster than in Europe or the US - is expected to take a toll in 2023.
"If you were to look at both years together, it's actually not very far from where the other advanced economies are," he told the BBC. "The one thing that worries me more about the UK economy is that their inflation numbers seem to be quite high. There is a fairly high pass through from high gas prices to broader prices in the economy.
"That would signal even further monetary policy tightening by the Bank of England and that would also weigh down on growth going forward."
The IMF now expects inflation to reach 6.6% in advanced economies and 9.5% in emerging market and developing economies - nearly a full percentage point higher than it expected in April.
"Inflation at current levels represents a clear risk for current and future macroeconomic stability and bringing it back to central bank targets should be the top priority for policymakers," Mr Gourinchas said.
"Tighter monetary policy will inevitably have real economic costs, but delaying it will only exacerbate the hardship."
The US saw the steepest downgrade of any country for 2022. The IMF cut its growth forecast for the world's largest economy to 2.3% this year, from 3.7% previously, and to just 1% in 2023.
Meanwhile growth in China is expected to fall to 3.3% this year, the slowest rate in nearly four decades, as the country wrestles with new Covid lockdowns and a property crisis.
Questions about the reliability of Europe's natural gas supplies from Russia, as well as political unrest generated by high food and fuel prices, are among the risks the global economy is facing in the months ahead, the IMF said.
"We can be reasonably hopeful that China might be rebound," Mr Gourinchas said, adding that he was "much more concerned about both the inflation path and the tightening of monetary policy leading to a slowdown going ahead".
It warned that in a "plausible" scenario, in which only some of those risks materialise, like a shutdown of Russian gas flows to Europe, global economic growth could fall to 2% next year - a pace the world has fallen below just five times since 1970.
- Source: BBC
Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner share Instagram criticism
Reality TV stars Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner have joined Instagram content creators in criticising the platform's new design.
Ms Kardashian and Ms Jenner shared posts on their Instagram Stories asking the Meta-owned platform to "make Instagram Instagram again".
Instagram has recently shifted its focus from individual posts to its own short video format Reels.
But some users are telling Instagram to "stop trying to be TikTok".
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri admitted in a Reel on Tuesday that there has been "a lot of change all at once" on the platform.
While reassuring viewers photos will stay on Instagram as "part of our heritage", he said he believes Instagram will become more video-based over time.
Instagram will need "to lean into that shift" of what people like, consume, share and view on Instagram to video - while still supporting photos, he added.
He noted that other features causing concern for creators, such as a full-screen mode, recommendations and visibility of friends' posts, will be subject to further improvement.
"We're going to stay in a place where we try and put your friends' content at the top of feeds and in front of stories whenever possible," he said.
"But we're also going to need to evolve because the world is changing quickly. And we're going to have to change along with it."
The platform announced new tools for creators using its Reels feature on 21 July, letting them "Remix" previous public photo posts as Reels and simultaneously film and react to content on front and back cameras with a "Dual" feature.
Instagram also revealed that new videos which are less than 15 minutes long will be automatically uploaded as Reels in coming weeks.
INSTAntaneous
In 2018 shares of social media company Snap tumbled after Ms Jenner tweeted about her reluctance to use Snapchat, to her 24.5million Twitter followers.
Her tweet followed a controversial Snapchat re-design in response to increased competition from alternative social media platforms.
After referring to Snapchat as her "first love" in a follow-up tweet, Ms Jenner helped to accelerate a drastic share slide for Snap which wiped $1.3bn (£1bn) off the company's stock in a day.
At the time of writing, Ms Jenner has 360million followers on Instagram and Ms Kardashian has 325million.
Both shared a post to their followers on Monday which said "Make Instagram Instagram again" and in brackets added "stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends".
Ms Kardashian added "pretty please" when sharing this on her Story, while Ms Jenner seconded this by adding "pleaseeeeeee" on her own.
The original post, uploaded as a meme by 21-year-old photographer and content creator Tati Bruening, has now been shared across Instagram and made its way onto other social platforms like Twitter.
Ms Bruening says she was scrolling through Instagram last week when she noticed her friends' photos missing from her feed.
"I was getting quite frustrated, so half-jokingly made a meme about it and posted it," she said.
She added that while the post just came from a place of "momentary frustration", it's not surprising that it "started getting shared around the photography community and expanded from there".
"I'm all for the app evolving and adding features like Reels," she said, but added there is a "stark difference" between what sort of content used to be visible on Instagram feeds and now.
She says this left many who grew their platform as photographers on Instagram wondering "how they're going to further their platform on an app that no longer favours the content that they create".
Ms Bruening's petition, calling on Instagram to bring back chronological timelines and "an algorithm which favours photos" now has more than 140,000 signatures.
"We just want to see when our friends post," the petition states. "The beauty of Instagram was that it was INSTAntaneous."
The authors added: "Back in the dawn of the app we were all living in the moment, seeing our best moments in real time."
- Source: BBC
Sri Lanka: Gotabaya Rajapaksa expected to return to country, official says
Sri Lanka's former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa is expected to return to the country from Singapore, a Sri Lankan lawmaker says.
Cabinet spokesperson Bandula Gunawardena told reporters on Tuesday that Mr Rajapaksa was not in hiding but the date of his return was not known.
The former leader fled Sri Lanka after mass unrest over an economic crisis.
Many protesters say he mishandled the nation's finances, leading to soaring prices of essential goods.
Mr Rajapaksa left Sri Lanka on 13 July for the Maldives, before making his way to Singapore on 14 July.
Singapore says the ousted president did not ask for political asylum when he arrived there.
The former president travelled with his wife and two bodyguards. He no longer has legal immunity as a head of state.
Speculation has since swirled about his possible plans, with some suggesting he might move to the United Arab Emirates.
"To my knowledge he is expected to come back," Mr Gunawardena told reporters on Tuesday.
Sri Lankans blame Mr Rajapaksa's administration for their worst economic crisis in decades.
They have been struggling with months of daily power cuts and shortages of basics like fuel, food and medicines.
Mr Rajapaksa has been replaced as president by his close ally Ranil Wickremesinghe - he was voted in by lawmakers last week but is deeply unpopular among Sri Lankans.
- Source: BBC
Marvel teases new Avengers movies, ‘Black Panther' sequel
Marvel Studios unveiled the first trailer for “ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ” — set to “No Woman No Cry” — to fans at Comic-Con on Saturday in San Diego.
It was just one part of the massive Hall H presentation, which also included first-looks at “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and new information about Phase 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which will conclude with two Avengers movies in 2025: “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty” and “Avengers: Secret Wars.”
“ Black Panther: Wakanda Foreve r” director Ryan Coogler was on site in San Diego to preview the highly anticipated film, which is due to arrive in theaters on Nov. 11 and serve as the conclusion to Phase 4. Coogler paid tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who died in August 2020.
“The impact that he made on this industry will be felt forever,” Coogler said.
After the massive success of “Black Panther” in 2018, plans for a sequel were quickly set into motion. But those were altered after Boseman’s unexpected death from colon cancer. The studio said it would not recast Boseman’s role of T’Challa. but very little has come out about the film in the years since. Production wrapped in March after several delays, one of which was due to an injury sustained by Letitia Wright, who plays T’Challa’s brainy sister Shuri. Also returning are Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke and Angela Bassett, but not Daniel Kaluuya, whose “Nope” schedule conflicted.
Phase 5, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige said, will kick off in February with “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and conclude with “Thunderbolts” in July 2024. The new “Blade,” starring Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, also got a release date of Nov. 3, 2023, and “Captain America and the New World Order,” featuring Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, will hit theaters on May 3, 2024.
The “Guardians of the Galaxy” will also come to an end in the midst of Phase 5 in May. Director James Gunn showed up in San Diego to confirm that “Vol. 3” would be the last for the space rogues. Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillian and Dave Bautista are all returning for the film. New cast members include Will Poulter, as Guardians adversary Adam Warlock, and Maria Bakalova.
Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors and director Peyton Reed made the trip to San Diego to show some footage from “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
Phase 6 will launch with a new “Fantastic Four” movie on Nov. 8, 2024, and finish with “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty,” set for May 2, 2025, followed by “Avengers: Secret Wars,” on Nov. 7, 2025.
Marvel also showed trailers for Disney+ series such as “Secret Invasion,” with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria Hill, due in the spring, and the half-hour comedy “ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” starring Tatiana Maslany, debuting in August. The second season of “Loki” is also expected next summer.
Comic-Con runs through Sunday.
- Source: AP
Sydney McLaughlin shatters 400m hurdles record to win gold
Sydney McLaughlin produced another astonishing run as she broke her own world record by almost three-quarters of a second to take 400m hurdles gold at the World Championships in Eugene.
The 22-year-old American left her rivals for dust as she came home in 50.68 seconds, smashing her own record of 51.41 seconds set in June.
"The time is absolutely amazing and the sport is getting faster and faster," said McLaughlin.
"I only get faster from here."
The Netherlands' Femke Bol, who won bronze at last year's Tokyo Olympics, took silver in 52.27, ahead of the United States' Dalilah Muhammad.
Muhammad held the world record after breaking it twice in 2019 - on the second occasion, running 52.16 to beat McLaughlin to gold at the last world championships in Doha.
But McLaughlin has improved that mark four times in the past 13 months, and has now run five of the six fastest times in history.
Her winning time was faster than the seventh and eighth-placed times in the women's flat 400m final, raced half an hour earlier on the same track.
McLaughlin said that the presence of fans and family, after the Covid pandemic took sport behind closed doors, has helped spur her on to new heights.
"The last 100 really hurt, but I'm grateful to have this crowd," she added.
"It was absolutely unreal to have my family in the stands. I have never had them together on one place."
Second-placed Bol said it was surreal to see McLaughlin's pace at first hand.
"It was crazy," Bol said. "She was so far in front at the end so I was always doubting if I really had a good race because it felt very good.
"It means a lot that she also broke the 51-second barrier.
"It is unbelievable but it is amazing to be a part of it and to come out second in such a race."
McLaughlin hinted once again that she may switch events, with a change to the 400m flat looking most likely.
"Me and [coach Bobby Kersee] are going to go back after the season, decide if this is still an event I even want to do, or if we're going to find something else because we've accomplished so much in it," she told NBC.
WHO declares monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
The decision was announced Saturday morning after WHO convened its second emergency committee on the issue on Thursday.
"I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Saturday morning.
Tedros said while the committee was unable to reach a consensus, he came to the decision after considering the five elements required on deciding whether an outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.
He added that while he was declaring monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern, "For the moment this is an outbreak that's concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those who have multiple partners, that means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right right groups."
WHO initially stopped short of declaring the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern after its first emergency committee meeting on June 23. At the time, Tedros said the emergency committee advised that at the moment, "the event does not constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern" but acknowledged the "evolving health threat" that WHO would be following extremely closely.
WHO defines a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, as "an extraordinary event" that constitutes a "public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease" and "to potentially require a coordinated international response."
The organization's emergency committee on monkeypox first met in late June, when its members reported serious concerns about the scale and speed of the virus outbreak but said it didn't constitute a PHEIC. Tedros reconvened the committee in order to provide the latest information, he has said.
The PHEIC designation comes from the International Health Regulations created in 2005, and it represents an international agreement to help the prevent and respond to public health risks that have the potential to spread around the globe.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes the regulations as "a legally binding agreement of 196 countries to build the capability to detect and report potential public health emergencies worldwide. IHR require that all countries have the ability to detect, assess, report, and respond to public health events."
There are two ongoing public health emergencies: polio, which began in 2014, and Covid-19, starting in 2020.
Four other PHEICs have been declared since the regulations were put into place: H1N1 influenza from 2009 to 2010; Ebola from 2014 to 2016 and from 2019 to 2020; and the Zika virus in 2016.
Currently, the US is reporting over 2,800 probable or confirmed monkeypox cases in 44 states, DC and Puerto Rico, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Globally, there are over 16,500 cases reported in 74 countries.
Monkeypox is a much less severe cousin of the now-eradicated smallpox virus. It is endemic to parts of West and Central Africa and is usually contracted from a rodent or small mammal.
The monkeypox virus can spread through contact with body fluids, sores or items such as clothing and bedding contaminated with the virus. It can also spread from person to person through respiratory droplets, typically in a close setting, according to the CDC.
Anyone who has had contact with someone with a monkeypox-like rash, or who has had contact with someone who has a probable or confirmed case of monkeypox, is at high risk for infection. A large number of cases this year have been in men who have sex with men, and public health officials are focusing their prevention efforts in this group.
- Source: CNN
World Athletics Championships: Shericka Jackson wins 200m gold with Dina Asher-Smith third
A delighted Dina Asher-Smith won 200m world bronze to return to the major championship podium after a year of personal and physical pain.
Jamaica's Shericka Jackson took gold in the second-fastest time in history, winning in 21.45, only 0.11 seconds off the 34-year-old world record.
Jackson's compatriot Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who won 100m gold earlier in the week, was second in 21.81 seconds.
Asher-Smith's 2021 Olympics campaign was wrecked by a hamstring injury.
The 26-year-old's grandmother, who she was especially close to, died earlier this year.
Asher-Smith sunk to the track after the finish, wreathed in smiles before embracing her mother Julie by the trackside.
"I don't think we have ever been in World final with that kind of talent," she told BBC Sport.
"I knew I just had to run as fast as my legs would carry me and really pray and hope it would be enough to get on the podium.
"I am so happy to made the podium in an era where everyone is running so fast."
She added that the death of her grandmother had "knocked me for six".
"She had been ill for some time and was such a bedrock of my family. I used to spend every day at her house as a child.
"For a long time athletics was at the back of my mind, my brain has been everywhere.
"It has been a really tough mental challenge to get through this season."
Jackson, who failed to make the 200m semi-finals at the Tokyo Olympics after easing up too early in her heat, has been in spectacular form this season.
The 28-year-old is the fastest in the world this year and qualified fastest for the final.
She came off the turn behind Fraser-Pryce, but the former 400m specialist had the speed to reel in her compatriot and ended the race just short of Florence Griffith Joyner's 1988 world record.
Jackson succeeds Asher-Smith as world champion, but the Briton's win in Doha in 2019 was against a weaker field.
American Brittany Brown's silver-medal winning time three years ago would not even have earned a place in the final in Eugene.
Asher-Smith took the final place on the podium ahead of raft of high-quality rivals, with Olympic champion Elaine Thompson-Herah and US collegiate champion Abby Steiner among those left in her wake.
- Source: BBC
Ukraine and Russia set to sign food crisis deal TODAY to unblock grain exports
Ukraine and Russia are set to sign a deal Friday to unblock grain exports and relieve a global food crisis, as a critical Russian gas pipeline to Europe reopened.
But there was no respite in the conflict on the ground, with Russian artillery on Thursday pounding Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv, already scarred by weeks of shelling.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was due to arrive in Turkey on Thursday for the grain deal signing ceremony at Istanbul's lavish Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus Strait.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted that the agreement will be signed in Istanbul on Friday under the auspices of the Turkish leader, Guterres and Ukrainian and Russian delegations.
The first major agreement between the warring sides since Russia's February invasion of its neighbour comes with global food prices soaring and people in some of the world's poorest countries facing starvation.
The five-month war is being fought across one of Europe's most fertile regions by two of the world's biggest grain producers.
Up to 25 million tonnes of wheat and other grain have been blocked in Ukrainian ports by Russian warships and landmines Kyiv has laid to avert a feared amphibious assault.
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko told AFP that Kyiv's delegation would only accept solutions that guarantee the security of its southern regions, the position of its forces in the Black Sea and the safe export of its agricultural products.
The United States welcomed the deal but urged Russia to implement it in good faith.
'We should never have been in this position in the first place,' said State Department spokesman Ned Price, accusing Russia of 'weaponising' food.
In more good news for global markets, Russia on Thursday restored critical gas supplies to Europe through Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline after 10 days of maintenance.
However, suspicion lingered that the Kremlin would trigger an energy crisis on the continent this winter. European Union states have accused Russia of squeezing supplies in retaliation for Western sanctions over the war.
Germany, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, had feared that Moscow would not reopen the pipeline after the scheduled work and accused Moscow of using energy as a 'weapon'.
The resumption of gas supplies came a day after the European Commission unveiled emergency measures to circumvent Russian energy 'blackmail'.
Klaus Mueller, head of Germany's energy regulator, said that by late morning gas flows were on track to return to 40 percent of the pipeline's capacity - the same reduced level as before the maintenance work.
Despite efforts within the bloc to reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies, Moscow's closest EU ally, Hungary, announced Thursday it was seeking to increase gas deliveries from Russia.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would 'consider' Budapest's request for more gas this year after his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto visited Moscow Thursday.
The news comes after prosecutors said three people had been killed and 23 more injured in a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv.
'The enemy is firing chaotically and brutally at the city. Stay in shelters!' regional governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on social media.
In Kramatorsk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting, a school that Ukrainian officials said was being used as a food aid storage point was also struck.
Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24 and the war has left thousands dead, forced millions to flee their homes and raised fears of a nuclear disaster.
Moscow accused Ukrainian forces Thursday of having fired on Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which is in Russian-controlled territory, and claimed a 'catastrophe' was avoided 'by luck'.
Ukraine - without responding to the allegations - said Russia was storing heavy weapons and ammunition at the Zaporizhzhia plant and that any accident there could lead to a crisis worse than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Some 15,000 Russians have died in the invasion, the US and British spy chiefs said, as they assessed that President Vladimir Putin was suffering far greater losses than expected.
Richard Moore, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, said Thursday that the 15,000 dead was 'probably a conservative estimate' and marked a 'very bloody nose' for Putin, who had expected quick victory.
In an exclusive interview with AFP, Alexander Lukashenko, the strongman leader of Belarus and close Kremlin ally, meanwhile urged Moscow and Kyiv to relaunch negotiations to avoid a nuclear escalation.
'Further (ahead) lies the abyss of nuclear war. There's no need to go there,' said the leader of Belarus, which was used by Russian troops in February as a launching pad to attack Ukraine.
Western powers have stepped up arms supplies to Ukraine but President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked for more and speedier deliveries.
Britain became the latest country Thursday to announce it is re-upping military supplies with artillery, 'hundreds of drones and hundreds more anti-tank weapons' for Ukraine in the coming weeks.
Russia has warned about arms supplies and said they mean Moscow will no longer be focused only on wresting control of the east Ukraine regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, which have been partially controlled by pro-Moscow rebels for years.
In its latest package of sanctions this week, the EU imposed an embargo on Russian gold imports and froze assets at Russia's largest bank.
The bloc followed up Thursday with asset freezes and visa bans on 10 Syrians, accusing them of recruiting mercenaries to fight for Russia.
- Source: AFP