Almost the entire Dutch railway network was shut down Tuesday as workers affected by soaring inflation and staff shortages went on strike to demand better pay and working conditions.

Staff at the railway company NS stopped work for the day in the central Netherlands region that acts as a hub for almost all train lines, halting trains across the country. An exception was the line linking Amsterdam with the busy Schiphol Airport that returned to service after a strike shut it down on Monday.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday that his country is well-prepared to tackle a possible energy shortage because of Russia's squeeze on European gas supplies, even as fears grow about the juggernaut of rising prices that will likely hit consumers across the continent this winter.

Scholz spoke at the start of a two-day government retreat, attended also by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, which will focus on the impacts of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on the energy supply in Europe.

Sri Lanka's new government plans Tuesday to present an amended budget for the year that slashes expenses and aims to provide relief to people hit hard by the country's economic meltdown.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, will present the budget in Parliament, which will voted on it after a debate.

Taiwan's president told the self-ruled island's military units Tuesday to keep their cool in the face of daily warplane flights and warship maneuvers by rival China, saying that Taiwan will not allow Beijing to provoke a conflict.

China has kept up military pressure on Taiwan in the weeks following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei in early August. Beijing initially retaliated with large military drills in the waters and skies near Taiwan. It fired missiles over the island, some of which landed in Japan's economic zone, considered a serious escalation, while also sending warships and planes toward the island in large numbers.

European Union ministers on Tuesday debated ways to ramp up weapons production, boost military training for the Ukrainian armed forces and inflict heavier costs on Russia, with no end in sight to a war that has ground on since February.

"We are depleting our stocks. We are providing so many capacities to Ukraine that we have to refill our stocks," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in the Czech capital, Prague, where he is chairing two days of talks between the bloc's defense and foreign ministers.

The familiar ingredients of a warming world were in place: searing temperatures, hotter air holding more moisture, extreme weather getting wilder, melting glaciers, people living in harm's way, and poverty. They combined in vulnerable Pakistan to create unrelenting rain and deadly flooding.

The flooding has all the hallmarks of a catastrophe juiced by climate change, but it is too early to formally assign blame to global warming, several scientists tell The Associated Press. It occurred in a country that did little to cause the warming, but keeps getting hit, just like the relentless rain.

An influential Iraqi cleric called on his supporters to withdraw Tuesday from the capital's government quarter, where they have traded heavy fire with a rival pro-Iran coalition in a serious escalation of a monthslong political crisis gripping the nation.

In a televised speech, Muqtada al-Sadr gave his supporters an hour to leave — and minutes later some could be seen abandoning their positions on live television. Iraq's military immediately announced an end to curfews across the country, further raising hopes that there might be an end to the street violence.

A cup of tea just got a bit more relaxing.

Tea can be part of a healthy diet and people who drink tea may even be a little more likely to live longer than those who don't, according to a large study.

Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) -- more than twice as much as previously forecast — according to a study published Monday.

That's because of something that could be called zombie ice. That's doomed ice that, while still attached to thicker areas of ice, is no longer getting replenished by parent glaciers now receiving less snow. Without replenishment, the doomed ice is melting from climate change and will inevitably raise seas, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

Above all, there was shock. That's the word people use when they remember Princess Diana's death in a Paris car crash 25 years ago this week.

The woman the world watched grow from a shy teenage nursery school teacher into a glamorous celebrity, who comforted AIDS patients and campaigned for land mine removal couldn't be dead at the age of 36.