At least 52 missing as military and rescue personnel searched for survivors
At least 25 people died and 52 were missing after five small rivers in central Venezuela flooded due to heavy rains, the government said.
The downpour on Saturday night swept large tree trunks and debris from surrounding mountains into the town of Tejerias, 67km south-west of the capital, Caracas, damaging businesses and farmland, according to the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez.
Continue reading...Janet Yellen’s comments come as figures show business activity declining across most UK regions
The world’s biggest oil-producing nations cutting production at a time of soaring energy costs is “unhelpful and unwise” for global economic growth, the US Treasury secretary has warned, amid intense pressure from sky-high inflation.
Ahead of meetings hosted by the International Monetary Fund in Washington this week, Janet Yellen said the move by Opec+ – the oil production cartel led by Saudi Arabia, plus Russia – risked undermining the world economy.
Continue reading...Vessel capsized in Ogbaru area of Anambra state, one of 29 to have experienced heavy flooding this year
The death toll from a boat accident in Nigeria’s south-eastern state of Anambra has risen to 76, the president has said.
The vessel capsized on Friday amid heavy flooding in the Ogbaru area of Anambra, according to officials on Saturday, when they said at least 10 people had died and 60 were missing.
Continue reading...Authorities shut all schools in Iranian Kurdistan as protests continue in cities and state TV is interrupted by apparent hack
Iranian schoolchildren were being arrested inside school premises on Sunday by security forces arriving in vans without licence plates, according to social media reports emerging from the country as protests against the regime entered their fourth week.
The authorities also shut all schools and higher education institutions in Iranian Kurdistan on Sunday – a sign that the state remains concerned about dissent after weeks of protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman.
Continue reading...The country’s total refinery output has been reduced by more than 60% over the past two weeks
Long tailbacks of vehicles continued to grow outside French service stations on Sunday as petrol supply was hit by pay strikes at refineries run by the oil giants, TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil.
The leftwing CGT union is leading a refinery workers’ strike for better pay during the cost-of-living crisis, and for a share of companies’ high profits.
Continue reading...Russian president claims Ukrainian special forces behind explosion on Kerch bridge
Vladimir Putin has blamed Ukraine directly for the blast at a vital bridge linking Russia and Crimea, describing the weekend attack as “act of terror” carried out by “Ukrainian secret services” amid growing expectation that the Kremlin plans an imminent and harsh escalation of its war.
“There is no doubt. This is an act of terrorism aimed at destroying critically important civilian infrastructure,” the Russian president said in a video released on Sunday night on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel about the explosion on the Kerch bridge, which occurred on Saturday.
Continue reading...Kunti Kamara charged with torture, cannibalism and complicity in crimes against humanity during civil war between 1989 and 1996
A former Liberian rebel commander will go on trial in Paris on Monday charged with acts of barbarity including torture, cannibalism, forced labour and complicity in crimes against humanity during the country’s first civil war more than 25 years ago.
It is the first trial in France of a non-Rwandan suspect accused of wartime atrocities since the special crimes against humanity tribunal was set up in Paris in 2012.
Continue reading...John Kirby says Biden’s warning about threat of a nuclear attack from Russia were not based on specific new information
The US military’s top spokesperson tamped down concerns of an imminent nuclear threat from Russia, days after Joe Biden warned of a potential nuclear “Armageddon”.
Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser this week, Biden talked bluntly about the threat of a nuclear attack from Russia. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” the president said. He added that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming” after invading Ukraine earlier this year.
Continue reading...In a now viral video of a 2016 interview, the Brazilian president claims he would eat human flesh
It was a shocking statement, even for a politician who has glorified torturers and called for rivals to be shot.
“I’d eat an Indian, no problem at all,” Jair Bolsonaro bragged to a foreign journalist in 2016, as he described a trip to an Indigenous community where he had purportedly been offered the chance to consume human flesh.
Continue reading...‘What I have lived, the youth is living now,’ says Marjane Satrapi, whose graphic novel depicted girl’s life in 1979 Islamic revolution
The creator of Persepolis, the acclaimed graphic novel depicting the childhood of an Iranian girl during and after the 1979 Islamic revolution that was made into an Oscar-nominated movie, has said today’s protesters are “beautiful and inspiring”.
History was repeating itself in the protests sweeping across the country, Marjane Satrapi told the Guardian. “What I have lived, the youth is living now. My hope is that the situation will go towards something beautiful that is called freedom and democracy.
Persepolis book art will be auctioned on 19-25 October as part of Sotheby’s online 20th century art/Middle East sale. The works will be exhibited in Sotheby’s London galleries from 21 October
Continue reading...Medical NGOs and activists have said that calling in military intervention risks escalating brutal Port-au-Prince violence
Medical NGOs and civil society groups in Haiti have warned that the government’s plan to request foreign military intervention to restore order will only cause more bloodshed in the beleaguered nation.
On Friday, the government formally authorized the prime minister, Ariel Henry, to request “specialised armed forces” to take back control of Port-au-Prince from the hundreds of gangs who have tightened their grip over the capital in recent weeks.
Continue reading...Russian president blames Ukrainian special services for ‘destroying critically important civilian infrastructure’
Ukraine’s ministry of defence has posted pictures of the missile strike on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.
The tweet adds that if Ukrainian military forces “had modern anti-missile systems, we could have prevented such tragedies”.
Zaporozhye again. Again merciless strikes on civilians. In residential buildings, just in the middle of the night. There are already 12 dead. 49 injured in hospital, 6 of them children.
The absolute meanness of all. Absolute evil.
Continue reading...Businessman Robert Tsao bankrolls a people’s militia on the island – inspired by the example of Ukraine – to defend against invasion
On a sleepy Sunday morning 50 anonymous young men and women have wandered into a nondescript Taipei office for training with Kuma Academy. The one-day course includes cross-strait geopolitics and strategy, invasion scenarios, and disinformation. Later, they’re taught the difference between the opposing armies’ uniforms, and how to tie a tourniquet.
The citizen warriors are being trained with a 1bn Taiwan dollar (£28m) donation from businessman Robert Tsao. He made global headlines last month when he pledged the money to train “three million people in three years” and 300,000 sharpshooters for a civilian militia. The “warrior” training would be in conjunction with the academy, a volunteer civilian training organisation that launched in 2021.
Continue reading...Experts to assess extent of damage as limited traffic appears to resume on key bridge and Vladimir Putin orders extra security for infrastructure
Russian divers are to examine the extent of the damage caused by a powerful blast on Russia’s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea, a hated symbol of Russian occupation and key logistics link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine.
Russian news agencies quoted the deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, as saying the divers would start work on Sunday at 6am (0300 GMT), with a more detailed survey above the waterline expected to be complete by the end of the day.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin orders extra security around Kerch bridge in Crimea as limited traffic starts to resume
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will hold a meeting of his security council on Monday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has said. It comes after an explosion on Saturday caused the collapse of part of a bridge linking the Crimean peninsula with Russia.
Ukrainian authorities have revised the death toll from the Russian shelling of Zaporizhzhia down from 17 to at least 12. The blasts blew out windows in adjacent buildings and left at least one high-rise apartment building partially collapsed. In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, the city council said 17 were killed but later revised that down to 12. The city council secretary, Anatoliy Kurtev, said rockets struck the city overnight, and that at least 20 private homes and 50 apartment buildings were damaged. At least 40 people were admitted to hospital and dozens more were being treated for moderate to light injuries, Kurtev posted on his Telegram channel.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has vowed that those who ordered and issued the “merciless” strikes in Zaporizhzhia will be held responsible. In a post on his Facebook page, he said the attack was “evil” and that everyone involved in the incident “will be held accountable”.
The blasts that killed at least 12 people in Zaporizhzhia came from six missiles launched in Russian-occupied areas of the wider region, the Ukrainian air force has said. The Zaporizhzhia region is one of four Russia claimed as its own this month, but the regional capital remains under Ukrainian control.
Reuters reports that the White House said it would continue to arm Ukraine but declined direct comment on an explosion that damaged Russia’s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea. National security spokesman John Kirby told ABC’s This Week programme: “We don’t really have anything more to add to the reports about the explosion on the bridge. What I can tell you is that Mr Putin started this war, and Mr Putin could end it today, simply by moving his troops out of the country.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is being accompanied by the destruction and pillaging of historical sites and treasures on an industrial scale, Ukrainian authorities said. In an interview with the Associated Press, Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artefacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums. The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, the minister added.
Ukraine has recaptured more than 1,170 sq km (450 sq miles) of land in its southern Kherson region since launching the start of its counterassault against Russia in late August, a military spokesperson said. Ukraine achieved success with its offensive in the north-east, but its drive in the south to wipe out a Russian foothold on the west bank of the vast Dnieper River has taken longer, Reuters reports. Southern military command spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said that Ukraine was making progress on the Kherson front, but that a lot needed to be done to secure newly recaptured territories.
The damage from Saturday’s explosion on the Kerch bridge in Crimea could have a “significant” impact on Russia’s “already strained ability to sustain its forces” in southern Ukraine, the latest UK intelligence update says. The Ministry of Defence said the blast “will likely touch President Putin closely” for reasons including that it came hours after his 70th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was a childhood friend. The ministry said the bridge’s rail crossing had played a key role in moving heavy military vehicles to the southern front during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...Blast early on Saturday causes road bridge to collapse and engulfs rail bridge in flames
The parliamentary leader of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party has stopped short of claiming that Kyiv was responsible for the Kerch bridge explosion but appeared to cast it as a consequence of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea and attempts to integrate the peninsula with the Russian mainland.
“Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire. The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode,” David Arakhamia, the leader of the Servant of the People party, wrote on Telegram.
Continue reading...Tehran authorities ‘shaken to core’ as demonstrations grow and death toll mounts
The mother of a 16-year-old Iranian girl, Nika Shakarami, who died during protests that continue to sweep the country, has rejected official claims that her death was caused by falling from a building and insisted she was beaten to death by regime forces.
Nasreen Shakarami said authorities refused to notify the family about her daughter’s death for 10 days and then removed Nika from the morgue, burying her in a remote village without the family’s consent. Her mother says records of Nika’s death show her skull was severely damaged and her injuries were consistent with being struck repeatedly on her head.
Continue reading...Ukrainians relish show of Russian vulnerability after explosion on supposedly untouchable 18-mile prestige structure
An explosion has crippled the heavily guarded bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland, a hated symbol of Russian occupation and key logistics link for Russian troops in southern Ukraine, in the latest heavy blow to Vladimir Putin after weeks of military humiliation.
The Kerch bridge was a personal prestige project for the Russian president, and the hit came the day after his 70th birthday. The blast destroyed the road into Crimea and left the railway link in flames.
Continue reading...Tokyo says North Korea’s seventh round of weapons tests in two weeks may have been launched from submarine
North Korea has fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters, the latest of its recent barrage of weapons tests, a day after Pyongyang warned the redeployment of a US aircraft carrier near the Korean peninsula was inflaming regional tensions.
South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement that it detected two missile launches between 1.48am and 1.58am on Sunday local time from the North’s eastern coastal city of Munchon. It added that South Korea’s military has boosted its surveillance posture and maintains a readiness in close coordination with the US.
Continue reading...Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s new standards put pressure on the UK to extend its animal welfare laws to fisheries
One of the world’s leading organisations for farmed seafood is to introduce new welfare rules after accepting fish can feel “pain, stress and anxiety”.
The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), which oversees a global certification scheme for farmed fish, is consulting on new draft welfare standards, including more humane slaughter practices. The ASC provides certification labelling for British supermarket fish, from sea bass to smoked salmon.
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