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By Wayne Cole SYDNEY Asian shares firmed on Monday as demand for tech stocks buoyed Japan's market, while

As the weather warms up and the nights get longer, there’s nothing better than a light and colourful summery feast in the garden, balcony, doorstep or basically any perch in the sun you can find. And there’s few who do it quite as well as Angela Clutton, author of Borough Market: The Knowledge. In her summer column for The Independent, she shares one of her all-time favourite salads: oregano-poached peaches, halloumi and hazelnuts. A mix of sweet and salty flavours, it’s simultaneously refreshing and completely beautiful on the plate. What’s summer without tomatoes? Terrible, that’s what. Clutton says the best seasonal toms need little more than olive oil and salt to bring out their supreme flavour and the salad options are inexhaustible. But one not to be missed is her Nicoise “bundles”. The classic Nicoise elements of anchovy, mayonnaise, capers and egg are piled abord little gem boats for ease of eating. Lastly, her labneh with watermelon, honey and mint is a recipe that straddles the boundary of sweet and savoury, perfect for those for whom dessert is not a priority. Her top tip is to always do more labneh than needed, as it’s such a useful thing to be able to reach for in the fridge. Equipped with these recipes, you’ll be dining al fresco – or faking it indoors if it, ahem, rains – all summer long. Oregano-poached peaches, halloumi and hazelnuts There are fresh herbs, there are dried herbs, and then there are frankly incredible dried herbs. Into that last camp fall dried herbs that are produced to exceptionally high standards and don’t just harness the flavour of the starting point, but elevate it. Those are the only dried herbs really worth having in your store cupboard. This recipe goes for poaching fresh peaches with dried oregano, which brings even more depth of flavour than fresh oregano would. Given the choice, I use one of the beautiful dried sprigs at Oliveology, but their ground oregano is lovely too. The poaching liquor is then reduced to a fragrantly sweet syrup for pouring over tender peach slices and fried halloumi, and finished with seasoned toasted nuts and mint. Perfect for a hot day. Serves: 2 as a main, 4 as a side or small plate Ingredients: 2 tsp dried oregano (or an Oliveology dried sprig) 1 tbsp honey 1 orange 2 peaches 40g skinned whole hazelnuts 1 tbsp fruity olive oil 6 sprigs of mint 225g halloumi Method: Pour 500ml water into a medium saucepan. Add the dried oregano (or oregano dried sprig), the honey and two broad strips of zest from the orange. Bring to the boil and, meanwhile, quarter and stone the peaches. Put them into the water, lower the heat to a simmer and sit a piece of baking paper on top. Simmer for 7-10 minutes until the peaches are fully tender. Use a slotted spoon to lift the peaches out and set aside. If their skins start to flake away as they cool, just peel them off. Strain the poaching liquor, discard the oregano and orange peel, then pour the poaching liquor back into the saucepan. Don’t worry if a few pieces of oregano are left in the liquid. Boil over a high heat for 10-15 minutes to reduce to a syrup – you are aiming for about 75ml syrup. While the poaching liquor reduces, toss the hazelnuts in the olive oil along with some salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper. Set a small dry frying pan over a low heat, then add the seasoned nuts and stir for 3 minutes or until they are just getting nicely toasted. Transfer to a bowl. Once they have cooled, roughly chop with the leaves from the mint sprigs. Cut the poached peach quarters into slices about 1cm thick. Once the syrup is almost sufficiently reduced, cut the halloumi into 1cm-thick slices. Set the same frying pan the nuts cooked in back onto the heat, then add the halloumi pieces turning each over after 2 minutes or so once they are browned. You might need to do this in two batches. Serve either on individual plates or on a large platter. Sit the halloumi on first, then arrange the peach slices prettily on top, scatter over the seasoned nut and mint mixture, and finish by spooning over your oregano-infused peach syrup. Niçoise bundles The classic niçoise salad is served here as individual bundles that are perfect for a summer lunch or starter. I’m giving you two versions: one layers up blitzed olives and capers with egg and an anchovy; for the other, flaked tuna sits on an olive bed with tarragon mayo. Their simplicity makes it important that each ingredient is chosen for maximum flavour. Perhaps especially the fish. I make these with (my favourite) Brindisa Ortiz anchovies and the same maker’s yellowfin tuna belly ‘ventresca, which in one bite of its long, tenderly rich hakes took me from thinking I didn’t really like tinned tuna to stockpiling it. Serves: 4 as a main or 8 as a small plate or starter Ingredients: 16 leaves of little gem lettuce and/or red chicory For the tarragon mayonnaise: 1 egg yolk, at room temperature 1½ tsp moscatel wine vinegar ¼ tsp English mustard powder 100ml sunflower oil 50ml mild olive oil 1 sprig of tarragon For the olive and tuna mix: ½ tsp raspberry vinegar 8 basil leaves 100g pitted black olives, drained weight 110g tinned yellowfin tuna For the egg, olive and anchovy mix: 2 hen’s eggs or 4 quail’s eggs 150g pitted black olives 2 tsp capers 1 garlic clove 7ml peppery olive oil, plus 1 tbsp for drizzling ½ lemon 8 anchovy fillets Method: Wash and dry the lettuce or red chicory leaves. For half of the little gem/chicory leaves: Make the mayonnaise by gently hand-whisking the egg yolk with a pinch each of salt and ground pepper. Stir in the vinegar and the mustard powder, then hand-whisk in both the oils — drop by drop to start with, then in a steady, thin stream — until you have a lovely thick, shiny mayonnaise. Check the seasoning, chop the tarragon leaves and stir through. Sprinkle a little raspberry vinegar, salt and pepper inside eight of the little gem / chicory leaves and line with a basil leaf. Chop the olives and sit them inside. Top with flaked tuna. Serve with the tarragon mayonnaise on top, or alongside to be spooned over. For the other half of the leaves: Hard-boil the 2 hen’s eggs (or 4 quail’s eggs) and set aside to cool. Put the olives, drained capers, peeled garlic, 75ml of olive oil and a good squeeze of lemon juice in a blender and blitz to a paste. Peel the hard-boiled eggs. Quarter them if hen’s, halve if quail’s. Spoon the oli relish inside the lettuce / chicory leaves, sit a piece of egg inside too and then over the top the whole anchovy fillet. Drizzle with the remaining olive oil. Serve the bundles on platters for people to help themselves, or portion up two of each type per person. Labneh with watermelon, honey and mint I like to serve this as part of a medley of salads on a hot day. Or – noting that it is really on the cusp of savoury or sweet – lean into the sweetness and hold back a little on the salt: as a dessert it is especially appreciated by anyone without a super-sweet tooth. Making your labneh is simplicity itself – it is, after all, just strained yoghurt – and a lovely thing to do, so long as you start at least six hours before wanting to eat it. Actually, every part of this recipe can be made ahead of time, chilled, then quickly assembled for serving at room temperature. Serves: 6 as part of a sharing feast Ingredients: 500g labneh made from 900g thick Greek yoghurt (see box) About 800g watermelon 2 tbsp olive oil ½ orange 1 tsp wild sumac 2 tbsp wild thyme honey Handful of mint Method: Spoon the labneh into a large serving bowl. Trim the ends of the watermelon and cut the fruit into triangles about 1cm thick. Mix the olive oil with the juice from the orange, half the sumac and a good pinch of salt. Get a griddle pan (or barbecue) good and hot, brush the watermelon pieces with the dressing and sit the pieces in a single layer in the pan (or on the grill). If using a griddle pan you will probably need to do this in two batches. Turn them over after a couple of minutes, when nicely charred underneath. Let the other side char, then lift the slices out to cool. Add any juices from the pan to your leftover oil, orange and sumac dressing. Whisk in the honey and the rest of the sumac. Add more salt. Sit the watermelon pieces on the labneh and pour over the dressing. Chop the mint and scatter over, then finish with a grinding of black pepper. You can visit Borough Market at 8 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1TL (020 7407 1002) or find more recipes online at boroughmarket.org.uk/recipes. Read More Three quick and easy vegan fakeaway recipes Budget Bites: Three light recipes that sing of summer What the hell is Scandinavian food? Lighter fish pie: Comfort food you won’t feel guilty for eating How to make Norwegian potato pancakes Rhubarb sticky buns for an idyllic Scandinavian afternoon tea

Jack Dorsey has said it is “critical to preserve the open internet” after Twitter owner Elon Musk announced controversial new “rate limits” for viewing tweets on the social media platform. The Twitter co-founder and former chief said “running Twitter is hard” after widespread backlash against Mr Musk’s temporary limits on the number of tweets people can read on the microblogging site. He, however, expressed hopes that the platform would build on “censorship-resistant open protocols” that would be “good for all, and critical to preserve the open internet”. Thousands of Twitter users took to the platform to report problems with the site over the weekend, with complaints of inability in retrieving tweets, missing timelines and disappearing followers. Reports of outages began flooding Down Detector, peaking on Sunday and extending to Monday. The backlash started after Twitter declared on Saturday that verified accounts were being limited to reading 6,000 posts a day. Mr Musk later said “rate limits” were increasing to “8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified”. He reasoned that the limits were being imposed to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. Many users expressed their frustration with the new move as they got a notification that said, “Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again”. Industry experts were also baffled at such a move by a social media company to put people off its platform, especially as Twitter has battled with retaining advertisers on the platform ever since Mr Musk took over last November. “Never have I seen a social network try so hard to put people off using a platform and to completely curtail any potential future for its business,” Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and industry analyst told PA, adding that the move was “yet another crazy decision by Elon Musk”. Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, said the new move could be “catastrophic” for Twitter’s ad business, that has already reeled from dwindling revenues. The company even roped in former NBCUniversal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino to be its new chief to repair relationships with advertisers who pulled away from the platform. The latest “reading limits”, according to Lou Paskalis, the founder of advertising consultancy AJL Advisory, “signals to the marketplace that he’s not capable of empowering her to save him from himself”. Mr Dorsey acknowledged that running Twitter was “hard”, adding that he trusted the team was “doing their best under the constraints they have”. “It’s easy to critique the decisions from afar... which I’m guilty of... but I know the goal is to see Twitter thrive. It will,” he said. It remains unclear how long the restrictions will last, as thousands continue to report about outages on the platform. Twitter did not reply to requests for comment as it had earlier this year changed its policy for interacting with reporters. Read More Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day, Elon Musk announces Pete Buttigieg blames severe weather for Fourth of July travel chaos Explosive devices and ‘Molotov cocktail-style object’ detonated in Washington DC Twitter limits number of tweets people can read in a day Heart transplant woman’s daughter twice saved her life using Alexa iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted

Pakistan’s key stock gauge surged by the most in over three years on Monday after the nation clinched

By Stefanno Sulaiman and Fransiska Nangoy JAKARTA Indonesia's annual inflation rate in June eased to 3.52%, settling into

Asian shares are mostly higher after a rally on Wall Street driven by reports that showed inflation abating, assuaging fears over the threat of a recession

President Vladimir Putin will participate this week in his first multilateral summit since an armed rebellion rattled Russia, as part of a rare international grouping in which his country still enjoys support. Leaders will convene virtually on Tuesday for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security grouping founded by Russia and China to counter Western alliances from East Asia to the Indian Ocean. This year’s event is hosted by India, which became a member in 2017. It's the latest avenue for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to showcase the country’s growing global clout. The group so far has focused on deepening security and economic cooperation, fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, tackling climate change and the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021. When the foreign ministers met in India last month, Russia's war on Ukraine barely featured in their public remarks but the fallout for developing countries on food and fuel security remains a concern for the group, analysts say. The forum is more important than ever for Moscow, which is eager to show that the West has failed to isolate it. The group includes the four Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in a region where Russian influence runs deep. Others include Pakistan, which became a member in 2017, and Iran, which is set to join on Tuesday. Belarus is also in line for membership. “This SCO meeting is really one of the few opportunities globally that Putin will have to project strength and credibility," said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute. None of the member countries has condemned Russia in UN resolutions, choosing instead to abstain. China has sent an envoy to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, and India has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. For Putin personally, the summit presents an opportunity to show he is in control after a short-lived insurrection by Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. “Putin will want to reassure his partners that he is very much still in charge, and leave no doubt that the challenges to his government have been crushed,” said Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. India announced in May that the summit would be held online instead of in-person like last year in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where Putin posed for photographs and dined with other leaders. For New Delhi at least, the optics of hosting Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping just two weeks after Modi was honored with a pomp-filled state visit by US President Joe Biden would be less than ideal. After all the fanfare Modi received from American leaders on his recent visit, “it would have been too soon (for India) to be welcoming Chinese and Russian leaders,” Kugelman said. India’s relationship with Moscow has stayed strong throughout the war; it has scooped up record amounts of Russian crude and relies on Moscow for 60% of its defense hardware. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have aggressively courted India, which they see as a counterweight to China’s growing ambitions. A key priority for India in the forum is to balance its ties with the West and the East, with the country also hosting the Group of 20 leading economies' summit in September. It's also a platform for New Delhi to engage more deeply with Central Asia. “India glorifies in this type of foreign policy where it’s wheeling and dealing with everybody at the same time,” said Derek Grossman, an Indo-Pacific analyst at the RAND Corporation. New Delhi, observers say, will be looking to secure its own interests at the summit. It will likely emphasize the need to combat what it calls “cross-border terrorism” — a dig at Pakistan, whom India accuses of arming and training rebels fighting for independence of Indian-controlled Kashmir or its integration into Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies. It may also stress the need to respect territorial integrity and sovereignty — a charge often directed towards its other rival, China. India and China have been locked in an intense three-year standoff involving thousands of soldiers stationed along their disputed border in the eastern Ladakh region. Analysts say China, seeking to posture itself as a global force, is becoming a dominant player in forums like the SCO, where interest for full membership from countries like Myanmar, Turkey and Afghanistan has grown in recent years. “The limitation with the SCO is that China and Russia are trying to turn it into an anti-Western grouping, and that does not fit with India's independent foreign policy,” said Madan. The SCO could also prove challenging for Washington and its allies in the long run. “For countries uncomfortable with the West and their foreign policies, the SCO is a welcome alternative, mainly because of the roles Russia and China play. ... I think that highlights just how relevant and concerning this group could be for a number of Western capitals, especially if it keeps expanding," said Kugelman. Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary China downplays Wagner group rebellion to support Russia India’s prime minister bestowed with Egypt’s highest state honour India cannot get tied down to exclusive relationships, says Jaishankar

Supermarkets already ban take-home bags but now thin bags used for vegetables will be outlawed too.

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. unveiled a target to boost revenue from business flows between Greater China and Southeast Asia

In Wha Kim spends her lunch break introducing Peterborough pupils to Korean language and culture.

A much-feared backup of U.S. passport applications has snarled summer plans for would-be travelers around the world

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is now expecting a higher default rate for Chinese high-yield property dollar bonds, as