• Xi to review troops, military hardware at Tiananmen Square.
• Parade marks Japan’s WWII surrender anniversary on Sept 3.
• Belarus, Iran, Indonesia, Serbia leaders amongst attendants.

BEIJING: Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will attend a military parade in Beijing, marking the first public appearance of the two leaders alongside President Xi Jinping in a show of collective defiance amid Western pressure.

No Western leaders will be among the 26 foreign heads of state and government attending the parade next week with the exception of Robert Fico, prime minister of Slovakia, a European Union member state, according to the Chinese foreign ministry on Thursday.

Against the backdrop of China’s growing military might during the “Victory Day” parade on September 3, the three leaders will project a major show of solidarity not just between China and the Global South, but also with sanctions-hit Russia and North Korea.

Russia, which Beijing counts as a strategic partner, has been battered by multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with its economy on the brink of slipping into recession. Putin, wanted by the International Criminal Court, last travelled in China in 2024.

North Korea, a formal treaty ally of China’s, has been under United Nations Security Council sanctions since 2006 over its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Kim last visited China in January 2019.

Those attending the parade marking the formal surrender of Japan during World War II will include Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Iran’s President Masoud Pezashkian, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and South Korea’s National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, said Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hong Lei at a news conference.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic will also attend the parade.

The United Nations will be represented by Under-Secretary-General Li Junhua, who previously served in various capacities at the Chinese foreign ministry, including time as the Chinese ambassador to Italy, San Marino and Myanmar.

On the day, President Xi Jinping will survey tens of thousands of troops at Tiananmen Square alongside the foreign dignitaries and senior Chinese leaders.

The highly choreographed parade, to be one of China’s largest in years, will showcase cutting-edge equipment like fighter jets, missile defence systems and hypersonic weapons.

The Israeli military escalated its operations in and around Gaza City on Wednesday, targeting key areas amid ongoing tensions in the region. This military activity comes as U.S. President Donald Trump prepared to host a high-level meeting at the White House to discuss post-war strategies and reconstruction plans for the devastated Palestinian territory.

Officials highlighted the urgent need for coordinated efforts to address humanitarian challenges, restore infrastructure, and provide aid to civilians affected by the conflict, while also navigating the complex political and security dynamics in the region.

Israel is under mounting pressure both at home and abroad to end its almost two-year campaign in Gaza, where the United Nations has declared a famine.

Mediators have circulated a truce proposal which has been accepted by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Whose October 2023 attack triggered the devastating war. But Israel has yet to give an official response.

On the ground, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 24 people on Wednesday.

The Israeli military, which is preparing to conquer Gaza City, said troops were operating on the outskirts of the territory’s largest city .

“To locate and dismantle terror infrastructure sites”.

As aid groups have warned against expanding the Israeli offensive, the army’s Arabic-language spokesman.

Avichay Adraee, said on X that Gaza City’s evacuation was “inevitable”.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war.

In Jabalia, just north of Gaza City, resident Hamad al-Karawi said he had left his home after a message broadcast from a drone ordered people to evacuate immediately.

“We scattered out onto the streets with no place or home to take refuge in,” he told AFP.

The UN estimates that nearly a million people currently live in Gaza governorate, which includes Gaza City and its surroundings in the north of the territory.

Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the US president would host top officials at the White House later on Wednesday to thrash out a detailed plan for post-war Gaza.

“It’s a very comprehensive plan we’re putting together,” Witkoff told Fox News, without offering more details.

Trump stunned the world earlier this year when he suggested the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip.

Clear out its inhabitants and redevelop it as seaside real estate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the proposal which sparked a global outcry.

In Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood on Wednesday, residents reported heavy Israeli bombardment overnight.

“Warplanes struck several times, and drones fired throughout the night,” said Tala al-Khatib, 29.

“Some neighbours have fled… But wherever you flee, death follows you,” she said.

WASHINGTON: From a gold-plated White House to a grandiose revamp for the capital, Washington, Donald Trump is trying to leave an architectural mark like no American president has attempted for decades.

“I’m good at building things,” the former property magnate said earlier this month as he announced perhaps the biggest project of all, a huge new $200-million ballroom at the US executive mansion.

Trump made his fortune developing glitzy hotels and casinos branded with his name. Critics say the makeover Trump has given the White House in his second presidency is of a similar style.

Parts of it now resemble his brash Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, particularly the newly paved-over Rose Garden with its picnic tables and yellow and white umbrellas.

During Trump’s first term, the British style writer Peter York dubbed his style ‘dictator chic,’ comparing it to that of foreign autocrats.

But Trump has also recently unveiled a grand vision for the entire US capital.

And he has explicitly tied his desire to ‘beautify’ Washington to his recent crackdown on crime, which has seen him deploy troops in the Democratic-run city, where just two months ago he held a military parade on his birthday.

“This is a ratcheting up of the performance of power,” Peter Loge, director of George Washington University’s School of Media, told AFP.

“That’s what he does. Puts his name on bibles and casinos, so the logic makes complete sense. Except now he’s playing with lives, the reputation of the United States and a democratic legacy.”

Oval bling

Trump is far from the first president to carry out major renovations at the White House in its 225-year history.

Franklin Roosevelt oversaw the construction of the current Oval Office in 1934, Harry Truman led a major overhaul that ended in 1951, and John F Kennedy created the modern Rose Garden in 1961.

The White House Historical Association put Trump’s changes in context, saying the building was a “living symbol of American democracy, evolving while enduring as a national landmark.”

Its president, Stewart McLaurin, said in an essay in June that renovations throughout history had drawn criticism from the media and Congress over “costs, historical integrity and timing.”

“Yet many of these alterations have become integral to the identity of the White House, and it is difficult for us to imagine the White House today without these evolutions and additions,” he wrote.

Trump’s changes are nevertheless the furthest-reaching for nearly a century.

Soon after his return, he began blinging up the Oval Office walls with gold trim and trinkets that visiting foreign leaders have been careful to praise.

Then he ordered the famed grass of the Rose Garden to be turned into a patio. Trump said he did so because women’s high-heeled shoes were sinking into the turf.

After it was finished, Trump installed a sound system, and AFP reporters could regularly hear music from his personal playlist blaring from the patio.

Trump has also installed two huge US flags on the White House lawns, and a giant mirror on the West Wing colonnade in which the former reality TV star can see himself as he leaves the Oval.

‘Big beautiful face’

Billionaire Trump says he is personally funding those improvements. But his bigger plans will need outside help.

The White House said the new ballroom planned for the East Wing by the end of his term in January 2029 will be funded by Trump and other patriot donors.”

Trump, meanwhile, says he expects Congress to agree to foot the $2 billion bill for his grand plan to spruce up Washington.

On a trip to oil-rich Saudi Arabia in May, Trump admired the “gleaming marvels” of the skyline — and he appears intent on creating his own gleaming capital.

That ranges from a marble-plated makeover at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts to getting rid of graffiti and — ever the construction boss — fixing broken road barriers and laying new asphalt.

But Trump’s Washington plans also involve a crackdown by the National Guard that he has threatened to extend to other cities like Chicago.

He has repeatedly said of the troop presence that Americans would “maybe like a dictator” — even as he rejects his opponents’ claims that he’s acting like one.

Trump’s own face even looms above Washington streets from huge posters on the Labour and Agriculture departments.

“Mr President, I invite you to see your big beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labour,” Secretary of Labour Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Tuesday at a cabinet meeting.