Dutch court sides with squatters of sanctions-hit Russian’s mansion

Ruling against Arkady Volozh in Amsterdam could set awkward precedent in Europe for rich Russians

Perched as it is in an upmarket neighbourhood overlooking the scenic Vondelpark, it is not hard to imagine why a Russian billionaire would have been interested in the 1879 five-storey Amsterdam property with a lush private garden.

That billionaire was Arkady Volozh, a co-founder of Russia’s biggest search engine, Yandex. He bought the £3m house in 2019, becoming one of the dozens of wealthy Russians who have invested in property in the Dutch capital.

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Ukraine’s power grid destroyed on a ‘colossal’ scale after Russian strikes, says energy chief – as it happened

Head of Ukraine’s power grid operator says almost no thermal or hydroelectric stations left unscathed by Russian attacks. This live blog is now closed

Russia has reiterated that it is not seeking a change of government in Ukraine.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said his country “does not intend the ‘special operation’ to change the government in Ukraine”, Sky News reports.

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Ukraine’s security service raids Russian-backed monastery in Kyiv

SBU and police swoop on suspected ‘subversive activities by Russian special services’

Ukraine’s SBU security service and police have raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”.

Located south of the city centre, the sprawling Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex – or Kyiv Monastery of the Caves – is the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox church that falls under the Moscow patriarchate, as well as being a Ukrainian cultural treasure and a Unesco World Heritage site.

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UK to be second weakest performer of world’s big economies next year – OECD

Most countries’ forecasts cut as Ukraine war prompts ‘largest energy crisis since the 1970s’

The UK will be the second weakest performer of the world’s big economies next year as the global economy continues to suffer the knock-on effects of the biggest energy shock in four decades, a leading international institution has warned.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said only Russia of the members of the G20 group of leading developed and developing nations would suffer a bigger contraction than Britain in 2023.

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Indonesia earthquake: many of those killed were schoolchildren, says official

Death toll of Java quake rises to 268, with dozens of schools affected, as rescuers race against time to find survivors

The death toll from the earthquake that struck Indonesia’s main island of Java on Monday has risen to 268, and many of the dead are schoolchildren, officials have said as rescuers raced against time to find survivors.

The quake, centred in the Cianjur region of West Java province, struck at a shallow depth of 6.2 miles (10km), triggering landslides and damaging buildings, including tens of thousands of homes and dozens of schools.

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Greta Thunberg’s charity donates £158,000 to Sami campaign

Indigenous people in Sweden are battling UK firm over plans for iron-ore mine on reindeer-herding lands

The charity founded in Greta Thunberg’s name has donated £158,000 to cover the legal costs of Indigenous people in Sweden’s Arctic north as they battle a British mining company over plans for an iron-ore mine on reindeer-herding lands.

Beowulf Mining, which has its headquarters in the City of London, was given approval in March by the Swedish government for excavation on an area used by the Sami community.

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How airstrikes by Israel, Turkey and Russia denote a new era in Syrian war

Regional interests remain very much at stake in conflict neither isolated, nor solely Syrian – though often forgotten

Over the plains of northern Syria, an approaching warplane usually makes a distinctive roar, allowing those on the ground to determine who it belongs to and whether there’s a need to hide.

But the past few days have been more onerous than ever for plane-spotters as the air forces of three countries have crisscrossed Syrian skies, bombing targets from the Mediterranean coast to the deserts of the east in the most comprehensive airstrikes in the past three years.

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Colombian government and leftist ELN guerrillas begin new peace talks

Negotiations in Caracas are part of President Gustavo Petro’s promise to bring ‘total peace’ and end nearly 60 years of civil war

Negotiators from the Colombian government and the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group have begun fresh peace talks, the first major step in President Gustavo Petro’s efforts to end nearly 60 years of war.

Petro, a former member of the M-19 insurgency who took office in August, has promised to bring “total peace” to Colombia by negotiating with rebels and crime factions involved in drug trafficking and illegal mining.

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Weather tracker: a week of unusual highs and lows for Europe

While Mediterranean countries basked in unseasonal warmth, parts of northern Europe were in the grip of premature cold

There were strong temperature contrasts across Europe over the past few days, with parts of the Mediterranean basking in unusual warmth while a blast of cold air from Siberia brought freezing conditions to northern parts of mainland Europe.

Greece and southern Italy saw temperatures peaking at 25C or 26C on Friday, around 7 degrees above the November average. Meanwhile, Poland, the Czech Republic and parts of Germany were up to 10 degrees colder than average over the weekend, with the temperatures remaining widely below zero through the day and dropping below -10C in places overnight. The warmth experienced by the Mediterranean transferred north-eastwards later in the weekend, across the Black Sea into southern and eastern Ukraine and south-west Russia. Temperatures across these regions have reached the low 20s Celsius in places, while northern and western parts of Ukraine are under the influence of the colder airmass, which had meant that they saw temperatures widely remaining below freezing.

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Malta drafts law allowing abortion if mother’s life or health at risk

Proposal follows outrage after pregnant US tourist was denied abortion despite partial miscarriage and threat to her health

Malta’s government has published a draft law that would ease the country’s strict abortion laws by allowing the termination of pregnancies if the mother’s life or health are at serious risk.

The proposed change in the law follows an outcry over the treatment of a pregnant American tourist in June, a case that sparked headlines worldwide.

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Trump in apparent Twitter snub after Musk lifts ban – as it happened

Speaking of Trump and lawyers, another of his former top White House officials is going to South Carolina’s high court to stop a subpoena from a Georgia prosecutor looking into meddling in the state’s 2020 election, Politico reports:

The appeal to South Carolina’s supreme court by Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff for his final months in the White House, is the latest development in his lengthy battle to resist the summons from Fanni Willis. She’s the district attorney in Fulton county, which contains most of Atlanta, and has empaneled a special grand jury to look into attempts by Trump’s allies to interfere in Joe Biden’s election victory in the state.

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Elon Musk rules out conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s return to Twitter

Twitter boss says he has ‘no mercy’ for those who capitalise on deaths of children, citing loss of son in 2002

Elon Musk has said he will not reinstate the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Twitter, saying he has “no mercy” for people who capitalize on the deaths of children for personal fame.

Twitter permanently suspended the accounts of Jones and his Infowars website in September 2018 for violating the platform’s abusive behavior policy.

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Ukraine to begin evacuations in Kherson and Mykolaiv regions as winter sets in

Move comes amid fears war damage to infrastructure too severe for civilians in newly liberated areas to survive

Ukraine is to evacuate civilians from recently liberated areas of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, amid fears that the damage to infrastructure caused by the war is too severe for people to endure the winter.

Residents of the two southern regions, which were shelled regularly by Russian forces in the past months, have been advised to move to safer areas in the central and western parts of the country, said Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk.

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Zelenskiy urges Nato to protect nuclear sites from ‘sabotage’ as Russia warns of risk of accident – as it happened

Ukrainian president makes appeal to Nato members; Russia’s state-run atomic energy agency warns of risk of nuclear accident. This live blog is now closed

Ukrainian soldiers fire an artillery at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine.

Italy’s government will ask parliament to pass a new law on military and civilian supplies to Ukraine throughout 2023, defence minister Guido Crosetto said in an interview.

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South African court paroles killer of anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani

Janusz Waluś murdered head of communist party in 1993, risking outbreak of political violence before first multiracial elections

South Africa’s top court has ordered the release on parole of the man convicted of assassinating anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani, a murder that threatened to plunge the country into political violence before its transition to democracy.

Janusz Waluś, 69, killed Hani, a hugely popular leader of the Communist party, a year before South Africa’s first multiracial elections. He was sentenced to life in prison and his applications to be released on parole have been rejected by several justice ministers.

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‘A little bit of deja vu’: Canada’s Greens turn to ex-leader in bid to revive fortunes

Elizabeth May, who led party between 2006 and 2019, to replace Annamie Paul, who quit following 2021 electoral rout

When Canada’s Green party wanted fresh leadership, it turned to a Princeton educated lawyer and adviser at the international criminal court who became the first Black and Jewish woman to ever lead a federal party in Canada.

But after less than a year of legal feuds, infighting and an electoral rout Annamie Paul stepped down, calling her time as leader “the worst period of my life”.

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BBC’s Alex Scott wears rainbow armband for England World Cup match

Pundit opts to wear OneLove armband in apparent gesture of solidarity with LGBTQ+ people in Qatar

The BBC pundit Alex Scott wore a rainbow armband as she presented coverage of England’s first match of the Qatar World Cup, in an apparent gesture of solidarity with LGBTQ+ people in a country where same-sex relationships are illegal.

Her decision to wear the OneLove armband – which officially represents a stand against all forms of discrimination – came hours after the England and Wales teams decided not to wear the same armbands after being informed that players could receive yellow cards for breaching Fifa rules on clothing.

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Earthquake on Indonesia’s main island of Java kills at least 162 people

Rescue operation under way after magnitude-5.6 quake triggers landslides and causes buildings to collapse

At least 162 people have been killed after a magnitude-5.6 earthquake struck Indonesia’s main island of Java, triggering landslides and causing buildings to collapse.

The US Geological Survey said the quake, which struck late in the afternoon, was centred in the Cianjur region of West Java province at a depth of 6.2 miles (10km).

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Gunmen kidnap more than 100 people in north-west Nigeria

Children among those seized from villages and farms, say residents

More than 100 people, including women and children, were abducted when gunmen raided four villages in Nigeria’s north-western Zamfara state on Sunday, the information commissioner and residents said.

Kidnapping has become endemic in north-west Nigeria as roving gangs of armed men seize people from villages, highways and farms and demand ransom money from their relatives.

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Iran players stay silent for anthem in apparent support for protests

World Cup footballers did not sing before match against England in apparent show of support for protesters back home

Not a single member of the Iranian team sang their country’s national anthem at the start of their World Cup match with England, in an attempt to distance themselves from their government.

One official on the touchline sang, only serving to highlight his isolation, but there was heavy booing of the anthem by the large Iranian crowd inside the stadium.

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