Watch live as US secretary of defense Lloyd J. Austin makes opening remarks before he hosts an in-person Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) meeting at Ramstein US Air Base in Germany on Tuesday 19 September. The meeting of allies assisting Kyiv has been highly anticipated and comes as the United States explores the shipment of ATACMS longer-range missiles packed with cluster bombs to Ukraine. Ukraine has also been pushing Germany to send similar Taurus missiles that could give them the ability to cause significant damage deeper within Russian-occupied territory, but Berlin has repeatedly said it will only act in concert with Washington on arms deliveries. Ahead of the meeting, it was confirmed that German defence minister Boris Pistorius will not take part at the UDCG meeting due to Covid-19 infection.

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When John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars, was first published in 2012 it rose to the top of bestseller lists. The love story about two cancer stricken teenagers won the hearts of teenagers globally and was soon turned into a movie starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. Now the book, a favourite of older teenagers, has been moved to the adult section in a library in the suburbs of Indianapolis. Green took to X, formerly called Twitter, to voice his frustrations. “This is ludicrous. It is about teenagers and I wrote it for teenagers. Teenagers are not harmed by reading TFIOS. This is such an embarrassment to the city of Fishers,” he said. “I only have a small voice in these decisions, of course, but you won’t catch me alive or dead in Fishers, Indiana until these ridiculous policies are revoked,” he added. “Which I guess means no Top Golf or IKEA for a while.” At the local library, staff have spent hours rummaging through books and moving those that don’t comply with the board’s policy to the general section from the young adult section. Books have been targeted for language about sexuality and reproduction, profanity and criminal acts. This isn’t the first time one of Green’s books has irked administrators and parents. His book Looking for Alaska, also aimed at older teenagers, has become a regular feature on the American Library Association’s top 10 most challenged books, making the list in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2022, for being sexually explicit. In 2008, the author filmed a YouTube video titled “I Am Not A Pornographer” explaining that a school in Buffalo, New York was planning to teach Looking for Alaska to 11th graders. But some people, he said, found the book controversial so the school administrators gave parents the choice: their children could read the book or find an alternative. “But there were a few people who weren’t happy with this solution,” Green said in the clip. “These people didn’t actually have kids in the 11th grade, but no matter. They think that my book is pornographic, and that it will cause immoral thoughts and actions in children. These people believe that no one should be allowed to read the book, even those people whose parents signed the permission slip.” And now with book bans on the rise across America (2022 saw the highest number of attempted book bans), Green told The Independent earlier this year that these parent groups have rallied “to take over America’s school systems”. “There are attempts not just to ban books, but to ban entire subjects from high school curricula,” he said. “There are attempts to rewrite American history to better fit contemporary narratives around America’s purported greatness.” The book, a coming of age story with themes of loss and forgiveness, features a scene in which the main character Miles, receives oral sex from Lara, a friend. A few pages later, in a highly emotional scene, Miles kisses another character, Alaska. By juxtaposing the two scenes, Green said in the YouTube video, he attempts to show “that physical intimacy can never stand in for emotional closeness.” Yet, it’s these very scenes that have led to some seeking to ban the book. “It’s always a bummer to have your work read in bad faith,” Green told The Independent in an interview earlier this year. “It’s always a bummer when people read your work to find out what they hate about it, because that’s not, of course, why anyone writes.” Having this specific section read out of context, he adds, is “especially troubling,” because “removed from its context, it can’t do its work – which is to point out that the romantic encounter that Miles and Lara have is awkward and unfulfilling, precisely because they don’t have the emotional connection they need to have a fulfilling romantic encounter.” Read More John Green on book bans, bad faith, and the ‘history of folks trying to control what other folks can read’ Book bans in US schools increased by 28 per cent in the first half of the school year, says new report Texas county moves to restrict ‘explicit’ and ‘objectionable’ books at public libraries Tennessee educators file lawsuit challenging law limiting school lessons on race, sex and bias Jacqueline Wilson says censorship of children’s books is ‘a huge worry’ Biden reelection campaign offering joint meeting with Obama as ex-president enters 2024 fray early Biden wants to compensate New Mexico residents sickened by radiation during 1945 nuclear testing Trump campaign runs ad attacking Georgia DA who’s expected to indict him

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As the U.S. government built its latest stretch of border wall, Mexico made a statement of its own by laying remains of the Berlin Wall a few steps away. The 3-ton pockmarked, gray concrete slab sits between a bullring, a lighthouse and the border wall, which extends into the Pacific Ocean. “May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges,” reads the inscription below the towering Cold War relic, attributed to Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero and titled, “A World Without Walls.” For Caballero, like many of Tijuana's 2 million residents, the U.S. wall is personal and political, a part of the city's fabric and a fact of life. She considers herself a migrant, having moved from the southern Mexico city of Oaxaca when she was 2 with her mother, who fled "the vicious cycle of poverty, physical abuse and illiteracy.” The installation opened Aug. 13 at a ceremony with Caballero and Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s former foreign secretary who is now a leading presidential candidate. Caballero, 41, is married to an Iranian man who became a U.S. citizen and lives in the United States. She and their 9-year-old son used to cross the border between Tijuana and San Diego. Since June, Caballero has lived in a military barracks in Tijuana, saying she acted on credible threats against her brought to her attention by U.S. intelligence officials and a recommendation by Mexico's federal government. Weeks earlier, her bodyguard survived an assassination attempt. Caballero said that she doesn't know who wants to kill her but suspects payback for having seized arms from violent criminals who plague her city. "Someone is probably upset with me,” she said in her spacious City Hall office. Shards of the Berlin Wall scattered worldwide after it crumbled in 1989, with collectors putting them in hotels, schools, transit stations and parks. Marcos Cline, who makes commercials and other digital productions in Los Angeles, needed a home for his artifact and found an ally in Tijuana's mayor. “Why in Tijuana?" Caballero said. “How many families have shed blood, labor and their lives to get past the wall? The social and political conflict is different than the Berlin Wall, but it's a wall at the end of the day. And a wall is always a sphinx that divides and bloodies nations.” President Joe Biden issued an executive order his first day in office to halt wall construction, ending a signature effort by his predecessor, Donald Trump. But his administration has moved ahead with small, already-contracted projects, including replacing a two-layered wall in San Diego standing 18 feet (5.5 meters) high with one rising 30 feet (9.1 meters) and stretching 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) to the ocean. The wall slices through Friendship Park, a cross-border site inaugurated by then-U.S. first lady Pat Nixon in 1971 to symbolize binational ties. For decades, families separated by immigration status met through barbed wire and, later, a chain-link fence. It is a cherished, festive destination for tourists and residents in Mexico. At an arts festival in 2005, David “The Human Cannonball” Smith Jr. flashed his passport in Tijuana as he lowered himself into a barrel and was shot over the wall, landing on a net on the beach with U.S. border agents nearby. In 2019, artist Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana covered the Tijuana side of the wall with paintings of adults who moved to the U.S. illegally as young children and were deported. Visitors who held up their phones to bar codes were taken to a website that voiced their first-person narratives. Cline said he was turned away at the White House when he tried delivering the Berlin Wall relic to Trump and then trucked it across the country to find a suitable home. He said the piece has found “its second life” at the Tijuana park alongside the colorful paintings on the border wall that express views on politics and immigration. The U.S. government has gradually restricted park access from San Diego over the last 15 years in a state park that once allowed cross-border yoga classes, religious services and music festivals. After lengthy consideration, the Biden administration agreed to keep the wall at 18 feet for a small section where some access will be allowed. Dan Watman of Friends of Friendship Park, which advocates for cross-border park access, said the 60-foot (18.3-meter) section that will remain at the lower height is only a token gesture. “The park on the Mexican side has become sort of a one-sided party,” he said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that it anticipates replacing the “deteriorated” two-layer barrier by November and that the higher one under construction ”will provide much needed improvements." The Berlin Wall installation has gotten rave reviews from visitors. Sandra Flores, 55, who vacationed from the Mexican port city of Mazatlan, drew parallels between the Berlin slab and the U.S.-built wall. “It's a little less severe here than it was in Germany but it's a wall that divides nations, lives, social and economic lives and everything related to the United States,” she said. Lydia Vanasse, who works in the financial sector in San Diego and lives in Tijuana, said the relic took her back to her 20s when the Soviet empire fell and Germans were suddenly allowed to move freely. “San Diego and Tijuana are sister cities," she said. “The wall separates us, but we are united in many ways. It would be better if there wasn't a wall.” Direct criticism of any U.S. president or policy has been rare. Tijuana's mayor said she understands the need for the U.S. to enforce borders and she has warm relations with U.S officials, including Ken Salazar, the ambassador to Mexico. She said Salazar asked her to evict migrants who camped with hopes of getting asylum in the U.S. and blocked access to a U.S. border crossing in 2022. She heeded his recommendation. Any failures at the border are a collective responsibility of governing nations, the mayor said. “We are against violence, we are against family separation, we are against division, and that's what the wall represents,” she said. ___ Associated Press video journalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributated to this report. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide AI project imagines adult faces of children who disappeared during Argentina's military dictatorship Tribe getting piece of Minnesota back more than a century after ancestors died there Students criticize the University of North Carolina's response to an active shooter emergency