As the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit gathers momentum, bringing together leaders from 10 member states, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, an unexpected wave of online trolling has emerged — this time targeting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
A video clip showing Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif apparently rushing towards President Putin to shake hands went viral.(X)
Social media users began trolling Sharif when a short video clip from the summit showing PM Sharif apparently rushing towards President Putin to shake hands went viral.
In the clip, as Putin and Xi Jinping are walking side by side after the photo op, PM Sharif appears to come up from behind and hurriedly reaches out to shake Putin’s hand.
Follow SCO Summit live updates here.
Users also noticed and mocked that Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, who noticed Sharif’s approach towards President Putin, appeared to turn away.
The moment soon triggered a trail of trolling, with netizens mocking the Pakistani leader for what they call a “desperate” attempt to gain attention.
“While other leaders showed composure, Pakistan PM Shehabaz Sharif came running to Putin to shake his hand. Pathetic attention-seeking behaviour. Xi Jinping realised what Shehbaz was going to do, so he looked the other way and ignored him,” an X user wrote.
“Beggar tried to approach but Putin and Xi ignored him. Look at this ‘Beggar Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif’ trying to approach Xi and Russian President Putin,” another user said.
Also Read | Message to Trump? China’s Xi says world must oppose ‘bullying, cold war mentality’
Another wrote: “Pakistan PM insulted at SCO Summit by Host Xi himself,” implying diplomatic coldness, though there has been no official statement to substantiate such a claim.
“Desperate Shehbaz Sharif was looking for a handshake with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping simply ignored and walked past Shehbaz Sharif. Such an Embarrassment For the PM of a country always looking for money,” a user by the name of ‘Indian’ said.
Meanwhile, the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), established in 2001 to focus on security in Central Asia and the wider region, opened Monday in the port city of Tianjin.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday delivered his remarks at the 25th SCO Heads of State Council Summit and said that terrorism remains a challenge not just on country but all of the humanity.
He said that “double standards” over terrorism will not be acceptable.
Chinese leader pledges $280m in aid to members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation at summit in Tianjin.
Published On 1 Sep 20251 Sep 2025
Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged regional leaders to oppose “Cold War mentality” at a gathering of a security bloc that Beijing has touted as an alternative to the Western-led international order.
In a speech to attendees of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit on Monday, Xi said that member states are facing increasingly complicated security and development challenges as the world becomes “chaotic and intertwined”.
“Looking back, despite tumultuous times, we have achieved success by practising the Shanghai spirit,” Xi said.
“Looking to the future, with the world undergoing turbulence and transformation, we must continue to follow the Shanghai spirit, keep our feet on the ground, forge ahead, and better perform the functions of the organisation.”
Calling for an “equal and orderly multipolarisation” of the world, Xi said the bloc should work towards the creation of a “more just and equitable global governance system”.
The Chinese leader said Beijing would provide 2 billion yuan ($280m) in aid to member states this year and a further 10 billion yuan ($1.4bn) of loans to an SCO banking consortium.
“We must take advantage of the mega-scale market… to improve the level of trade and investment facilitation,” Xi said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko are among the more than 20 world readers attending the two-day SCO summit, which opened on Sunday in China’s northern city of Tianjin.
Established in 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation began as a grouping of six Eurasian nations – China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – but has since expanded to comprise 10 permanent members and 16 dialogue and observer countries.
Analysts say that China intends to use the gathering to promote an alternative to the United States-led global order and repair ties with India amid a shifting geopolitical environment under US President Donald Trump.
A base deep in the Swedish forest is part of Europe’s hope to compete in the space race
KIRUNA: Deep in the Swedish forest, where reindeer roam and scientists ski in winter, lies one of Europe’s hopes for a spaceport that can ultimately compete with the United States, China and Russia.
For decades, Europe has relied upon the US for its security among the stars. But the Trump administration’s “America First” policies, plus a commercial market that’s growing exponentially, has prompted Europeans to rethink their approach.
The state-owned Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden, is among the sites building out orbital rocket programs to allow Europe to advance in the global space race and launch satellites from the continent’s mainland.
“The gap is significant,” said Hermann Ludwig Moeller, director of the European Space Policy Institute. “I would argue that Europe, to be anywhere relevant in the next five to 10 years, needs to at least double its investment in space. And saying that it would double doesn’t mean that it would catch up by the same factor, because you can expect that other regions will also continue to step up.”
A European spaceport near the equator
Currently, Europe’s only space base capable of launching rockets and satellites into orbit is in sparsely populated French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America that’s roughly 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of the equator. Otherwise, Europe borrows NASA’s Cape Canaveral in Florida.
In March, Isar Aerospace launched the first test flight of its orbital launch vehicle from the Andøya Spaceport, another site that’s part of Europe’s efforts to expand its presence in space, on an island in northern Norway.
While the rocket crashed into the sea 30 seconds after liftoff, the private German aerospace company had largely ruled out the possibility of the rocket reaching orbit on its first complete flight and deemed the short journey a success.
Moeller believes a successful orbital launch from continental Europe could occur within the next year, though he won’t guess where.
Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom also are among the countries seeking to be part of Europe’s spaceport portfolio.
Elsewhere on Earth, India — active in space research since the 1960s — has launched satellites for itself and other countries and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014. After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole in 2023 in a historic voyage to uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold reserves of frozen water. The mission was dubbed a technological triumph for the world’s most populous nation.
New Zealand also has a growing and active launch industry, and Australia is working to develop its commercial space industry.
Northern Europe’s geography
Esrange and Andøya date back to the 1960s and much of their space-bound appeal stems from their far-north geography on Earth.
Esrange, for example, is owned and operated by the Swedish Space Corporation and based more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. The space center’s 30-plus antennas can more easily communicate with satellites orbiting the North Pole compared to infrastructure that’s near the equator.
Most important, perhaps, is its size. The base itself encompasses 6 square kilometers (2.3 square miles), where experts conduct Martian lander parachute tests, suborbital rocket launches and stratospheric balloon experiments.
But its key selling point is Esrange’s rocket landing zone: 5,200 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) of birch, pine and spruce trees spread north across the Swedish tundra, nearly to the Norwegian and Finnish borders.
The territory is uninhabited besides the Sami Indigenous reindeer herders who sometimes pass through, and the space center alerts them before any tests occur. The emptiness of the landscape allows scientists to launch and easily recover material for further study.
“The rocket motor will just fall freely into the ground, which means that you need to see to it that no people are in the area,” Mattias Abrahamsson, business development director for the science division at Esrange, said during a recent tour. “We have to see to it that it’s not more dangerous to be in that area, if you want to pick berries or hunt or fish or anything like that, than if you’re in a street in New York or in Stockholm or anywhere.”
Andøya’s remote location on a Norwegian island, meanwhile, means rockets can safely crash down into the sea without risking harm to humans.
Security and defense
During his first week in office earlier this year, US President Donald Trump announced his $175 billion “Golden Dome” missile defense system to protect America from long-range missiles.
If successful, it would mark the first time the US would place weapons in space that are meant to destroy ground-based missiles within seconds of launch. It follows China’s 2021 groundbreaking launch of a warhead system that went into orbit before reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
Europe currently, however, does not have the same capacities and has for decades banked on the US for its security and defense. But US Vice President JD Vance, during a speech in February at the Munich Security Conference, warned Europe against continuing to rely upon America and urged officials to “step up in a big way” to provide for the defense of the continent.
Vance’s remarks, as well as concerns over former Trump ally and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s politics potentially impacting Ukraine’s dependence on his Starlink satellite system in its war with Russia, alarmed European leaders.
It became increasingly clear to them that the continent must have its own space ecosystem, with its “own capabilities to really be able to react with (its) own means and under (its) own control,” Moeller said.
Space as a commercial industry
Beyond the space race between global superpowers, commercial companies are taking to the skies. Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin, among others, have proven that space isn’t limited to governmental agencies like NASA, and that there’s a lot of money to be made in the solar system.
The number of satellites in space is expected to skyrocket in the next five years. And the Swedish Space Corporation, with its burgeoning orbital launch and rocket test division at Esrange, is among those seeking to capitalize on those dollars.
Ulrika Unell, the division’s president, said satellites in space are crucial to life on Earth. She wants everyone, beyond astronauts and scientists, to consider how they are impacted by what’s orbiting hundreds of kilometers (miles) above the globe.
“I would ask them to think about, when they go around with their mobiles and they use all this data every day: Where does it come from? How is it gathered?” she said. “So space is more and more an asset for the whole society.”
(Reuters) -A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Wayne Cole.
It’s been a resistant start to September with much of Asia in the red and Wall Street on holiday, leaving S&P 500 futures flat in what is typically a bad month for the market. European share futures have hardly budged, but China’s market remains well supported by a tide of liquidity looking for a home in a low-yield world.
Chinese blue chips climbed more than 10% last month, helped in part by talk Beijing was pushing firms to develop a home-grown alternative to Nvidia’s AI chips.
Hong Kong shares of Alibaba jumped almost 19% in the biggest one-day rise since early 2022 on optimism over its cloud business. There were also reports DeepSeek had opted for Huawei chips to train some of its AI models.
That may have sparked some profit taking in Japanese chip group Advantest, which dived 9.1%, giving back some of the near-50% gains made in the past three months. AI-focused investor SoftBank Group also dropped 6% and contributed to a 2% loss for the Nikkei.
Chinese investors might also be encouraged that President Trump is running into legal challenges to his tariff policies. While the levies remain in place pending an assumed appeal to the Supreme Court sometime in October, the ruling could lead trading partners to drag their feet on negotiations with the White House.
Indeed, of the trade “deals” supposedly already agreed, few if any have been signed or ratified – more concepts of a plan for a framework of a deal. Talks with Japan have hit a stumbling block over rice, while negotiations with South Korea are bogged down despite the recent leaders’ meeting.
Markets seem to be assuming the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will find a way for trump to keep the tariffs in place. Were the judges to actually uphold the appeals court ruling, then presumably many of the deals would be defunct and Trump’s leverage for new ones greatly diminished.
Treasury would also have to repay the more than $100 billion collected, which, since it is likely being spent, will have to be borrowed. Apart from it being a logistical nightmare, the money would go to the importers who paid the tariffs, not the American consumers who paid higher prices.
Would the importers roll back any price hikes to pre-tariff levels, or keep them up to fatten margins? And what happens to the $3 trillion or more the taxes were supposed to bring in to cover tax cuts?
Who knew trade law could be so much fun?
Key developments that could influence markets on Monday:
Eighty thousand people landed in Stradbally this weekend for three days of music, culture and craic on the Co Laois estate, meaning that Ireland’s biggest arts and culture festival got even larger. Here’s our pick of some pluses and minuses of Electric Picnic 2025.
HIGHS
Chappell Roan
She came, she played, she conquered. On Friday night the pop star was thinking big, delivering true spectacle and showing the value of live instrumentation. Backed by her all-woman band, Roan performed her 80-minute typhoon of a set in part from a Disney villain’s Gothic castle complete with blood-red sunsets and flying dragons. Playing in front of a huge crowd on the final date of her European tour, the singer made her fantasy world real.
[ Chappell Roan review: good luck to the rest of the Electric Picnic line-up following this performanceOpens in new window ]
Kneecap
Chappell Roan was going to be a hard act to follow – but Kneecap rose to the challenge by giving an equally electric performance on Saturday afternoon, when they played the festival’s main stage for the first time. If you were right up at the front, the mosh pit was a thrill, the set exhilarating, Mo Chara’s words riveting. An absolute Electric Picnic highlight.
[ Kneecap review: Rap trio give a performance for the ages at Electric PicnicOpens in new window ]
Kneecap bring the crowds out at Electric Picnic despite the rain. Video: Alan Betson & Nadine O’Regan
The weather
Forecasts for the biggest weekend in Irish music were predictably grim, billed as three days of wet and breezy weather. Festivalgoers were pleasantly surprised by the sun that shone for much of Friday. Saturday and Sunday were patchy but still better than the predicted washout. While it wasn’t good, it wasn’t dreadful. In Ireland anyway, that’s something.
Chatty celebrities
It was surreal to talk to the American comedian Rosie O’Donnell, one of Ireland’s newest residents, while she was chilling out by the main stage, happily chatting to everyone she encountered. A very EP experience. We also spotted Lewis Capaldi, the US TikToker Brittany Broski and even, floating around after his Saturday-night set, Fatboy Slim.
Electric Picnic 2025: Lewis Capaldi on Saturday. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire
Trenchtown
Trenchtown Dub Club spins reggae vinyl from 4.20pm to 4am every day of the festival. The songs play from beginning to end, the selection is great and the sound system is booming. A muddy, joyful atmosphere.
Joost Klein
The Netherlands’ exiled Eurovision act from 2024 played the 3 Music Stage on Saturday to a packed tent, with many groups gabber-dancing in sync. Klein finished his set, which was full of fun, chaos and energy, with an ode to Riverdance.
Glitterball campsite
Despite being used as a bit of an overflow (see Lows, below), the new Glitterball campsite was an absolute win. Enough room for everyone, enough showers so you weren’t queuing for ages and a respectful clientele. Being able to book which festival site you want to pitch your tent in, as the festival offered this year, may be the forward.
Good vibes and good manners
The atmosphere around the site was warm and friendly – not a given at every festival.
Croí
Electric Picnic 2025: chilling at Croí on Sunday. Photograph: Alan Betson
Electric Picnic’s “harmonious hub of music, movement and meditative activities” is a lovely, human antidote to some of the Scooter-style DJ thumpy-thumpy going on around it. The craic there was mighty.
LOWS
Strong headliners, weaker satellite stages
In 2024 the main headliners, announced at the last minute, felt lacklustre. This year’s top billing of Chappell Roan, Hozier, Fatboy Slim, Sam Fender, Kings of Leon and Becky Hill provided something for everyone. In contrast, the smaller stages had less interesting line-ups, with fewer up-and-comers and hidden gems.
[ Hozier doesn’t go full Bono but there’s plenty of politics in epic Electric Picnic performanceOpens in new window ]
Food and drink prices
From €10 for a curry cheese chips to €18 for a halloumi pitta and €20 for a burger and chips, some of the prices were eye-watering. They almost made the drinks, at €7-€9 for a pint or about €12 for a rum and Coke, look like good value.
Signage
Mindfield was probably amazing. But we’ll never know because we couldn’t find it.
Tent speakers
Way too many people seemed to have brought Bluetooth speakers so they could share their music with the campsite at all hours. Death Grips are great, but 6am isn’t the right time. When those people finally went to sleep, the MK fans took over.
Campsite overflow
This year’s crowd was 5,000 up on the 75,000 music fans who attended in 2024 – and you could feel the difference. Plenty of festivalgoers who had reserved pitches in one of the specialist areas, such as the Gaeltacht, Eco or gender-inclusive Glitterball campsites, were annoyed when Electric Picnic opened them up as overflow sites.
Influence of temperature on the rate of epoxidation
The temperatures needed to be adjusted started at 55 °C, 65 °C, and lastly, 75 °C. Data were collected during the experiment based on the observations made. RCO was calculated using the weight of the sample taken and the amount of hydrogen bromide used. As shown in Fig. 1B, the RCO changed over time. Specifically, at a temperature of 55 °C, the RCO reading increased significantly until the twentieth minute, after which it immediately decreased. Then, for a temperature of 65 °C, the optimum RCO had already been achieved at the tenth minute, and the RCO reading slowly decreased by two points below the optimum RCO achieved just then. Lastly, at a temperature of 75 °C, the same as the previous temperature, the optimum RCO was reached for the tenth time, and the temperature then moderately decreased.
Vegetable oil in situ epoxidation typically requires temperatures below 70 °C, as high temperatures during epoxidation lead to excessive epoxy ring-opening events. Furthermore, peroxy acids can explode at a temperature of 80–85 °C and easily break down when heated; however, as this epoxide mixture contained sulphuric acid as the catalyst, the ideal temperature needed to be slightly higher than the standard range of temperature for epoxidation, which was from 50 to 80 °C since the catalyst did react together with a peracid that would facilitate formation regarding an active epoxidizing species. The long-term stability of the produced epoxide was not extensively addressed in this study. Oxirane groups are sensitive to moisture, heat, and acidic conditions, which can promote spontaneous ring-opening and degradation over time22. To preserve epoxide stability, storage under low temperatures, in dry conditions, and away from light or acidic environments is recommended.
Influence of hydrogen peroxide on the corn oil molar ratio
For the last parameter, the molar ratio of hydrogen peroxide was investigated. Hydrogen peroxide was used to react with formic acid during the epoxidation process to form a peracid, specifically peroxyformic acid. For the previous experiment, the ratio of hydrogen peroxide used was 1:1; however, for this parameter, the ratio would change to 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 molar ratios. Based on Fig. 5, the highest yield of RCO was achieved at the twentieth minute, with a molar ratio of 1.5, and it subsequently decreased significantly thereafter. The highest RCO yield achieved in this parameter was approximately 43%; meanwhile, for the other molar ratios of 0.5 and 1.0, the RCO yields achieved were around 32% and 19%, respectively. At a molar ratio of 1.0, the graph fluctuated slightly.
In Fig. 2, the graph of the 1.5 molar ratio of hydrogen peroxide immediately decreased after it passed the highest epoxidation yield. This likely occurred due to the instability of the oxirane ring and may also be attributed to the side reaction that resulted from the excess hydrogen peroxide. This result was also quite contradictory to the finding from23, which, according to the data, obtained a larger proportion of RCO when the hydrogen peroxide concentration was raised. The oxirane ring showed poor stability at the lowest mole ratio of 1:1 between hydrogen peroxide and oleic acid.
Fig. 2
Effect of hydrogen peroxide on the molar ratio of the corn oil epoxidation rate of corn oil.
Influence of catalyst loading on the rate of epoxidation
In this experiment, sulphuric acid was used as the catalyst, and the weight of sulphuric acid was measured to determine the ideal amount of catalyst needed to reach the highest epoxidation yield. Based on Fig. 3, the graph for the catalyst loading of 3 g of sulphuric acid shows that the RCO yield reached its highest point, exceeding 70%. As the graph decreased, the RCO values remained the same at the twentieth and thirtieth minutes, indicating that the duration required to reach a lower point was longer than for other amounts of catalyst loading. For the 6 g and 9 g of sulphuric acid, the RCO yield didn’t achieve its high value, and both graphs just moderately went down after barely reaching their optimum point. Too many catalysts wouldn’t help the experiment reach its ideal RCO value; yet, the best amount proven in this experiment was only 3 g of sulfuric acid.
However, this finding contradicts the statement that the reaction time required to obtain the maximal conversion of oxirane value decreased when the acid concentration was raised from 1 to 2 g. Additionally, it was noted that glycol production increased as the acid concentration rose. Higher oxirane cleavage and a proportionally lower oxirane value were seen when the catalyst loading was raised to 3%. Therefore, a 2 g loading of sulphuric acid produced the best conversion to oxirane. As for the corn oil used in the experiment, the amount of sulphuric acid needed was the lowest among the others, which was only 3 g of catalyst. Too much sulphuric acid could lead to an oxirane ring opening and produce an unintended epoxide24. In this study, corn oil, a renewable and biodegradable resource, was used as the raw material, promoting bio-based feedstocks and supporting waste reduction initiatives. However, a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) and waste management evaluation would be necessary for future work to thoroughly assess the environmental benefits of using corn oil for epoxide production.
Fig. 3
Effect of catalyst loading on epoxidation rate of corn oil.
FTIR characterization
Figure 4 shows the FTIR spectra show clear differences between the corn oil before and after epoxidation. A strong peak near 1650 cm¹ is observed in the original corn oil, which corresponds to the C = C stretching vibration from unsaturated fatty acids. After epoxidation, the intensity of this peak decreases, indicating that the double bonds have reacted. A new absorption band appears around 820–850 cm-1 in the epoxidized sample, assigned to the C–O–C stretching of the oxirane group, confirming the formation of epoxide structures. Small changes are also seen in the C–H stretching region between 2850 and 2950 cm¹, suggesting slight modifications in the fatty acid chains. Overall, the FTIR results provide supporting evidence for successful epoxidation, complementing the wet chemical analysis for RCO determination25.
Fig. 4
FTIR spectra of corn oil and epoxidized corn oil.
Kinetic modelling of epoxidation of corn oil
The ideal reaction conditions for the epoxidation process were determined using kinetic modeling with MATLAB software; the reaction rate values, k, are listed in Table 2. For every chemical, the experimental data’s reaction rates, k, match the initial concentration. For the reaction rate (:{k}_{11}) The rate was a second slower than (:{k}_{12}). This was because the reaction only formed performic acid and its byproduct, water. The rate constant k11 (0.043 mol L-1 min-1) represents the epoxide formation, while k12 (12.53 mol L-1 min-1) reflects the consumption rate of intermediates in a secondary reaction pathway. The significantly higher value of k12 suggests that this step is much faster, which may impact the overall epoxide yield if not controlled.
The constants k2 (0.110 mol L-1min-1) and k3 (0.066 mol L-1min-1) correspond to the rates of epoxide formation and degradation through ring-opening, respectively. The lower value of k3 indicates a slower degradation rate, which is beneficial for preserving the oxirane content. The R2 value of 0.85 indicates a reasonable agreement between the experimental and simulated data, demonstrating the model’s ability to capture the reaction kinetics, though some minor discrepancies remain. The low sum of error (0.14) also supports the model’s reliability in describing the process. These results highlight the efficiency of the epoxidation process while identifying areas where further model refinement could enhance predictive accuracy.
Table 2 Rate constant for epoxidation and ring opening of epoxide.
Figure 5 illustrates a notable discrepancy between the simulation and the OOC experiment. The simulation graph was quite low, with its highest point only reaching below 0.6 OOC. Meanwhile, the experiment graph showed that the OOC could reach a higher value, almost 0.8, yet after the twentieth minute, it significantly decreased. This could be happening because of the purity of the solutions used or the efficiency of the epoxidation reaction. The deviations between the simulation and experimental results, especially near the peak oxirane content, are mainly due to simplified modeling assumptions that do not fully capture side reactions and oxirane degradation in linoleic acid-rich corn oil. Secondary ring-opening reactions, oxirane instability, and minor experimental variations may also contribute to the discrepancies. While the model predicts the overall trend well, the observed gaps highlight the need for more detailed kinetic mechanisms in future work.
Fig. 5
Comparison of the oxirane content between experiment and simulation.
