Category Archives: World News

Spanish airspace partially closed as Chinese rocket debris falls to Earth

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Huge chunk of Long March 5B rocket launched four days previously re-enters atmosphere

A hefty chunk of the massive rocket used to deliver the third module of China’s Tiangong space station has fallen back to Earth uncontrolled, triggering the closure of some of Spain’s airspace and leading to hundreds of flight delays.

Four days after blasting off from southern China, a large part of the Long March 5B (CZ-5B) rocket broke up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the south-central Pacific ocean at 10.01 UTC, according to European and US space authorities.

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Cop27 host accuses countries of making empty public pledges

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Egypt has expressed frustration at leaders making positive statements that are abandoned in negotiations

Governments meeting for vital climate talks have been accused of making positive commitments in public but denying them later in the privacy of the negotiating rooms by the Egyptian hosts of the summit.

Wael Aboulmagd, the Egyptian diplomat in charge of running the negotiations at the Cop27 UN climate summit, said: “Political statements and pledges are made in front of the cameras, but in the negotiating rooms it’s back to the adversarial approach. These [publicly positive positions] will not be of value until translated into the negotiating rooms, and that has not been the case so far.”

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Indigenous people in Peruvian Amazon detain tourists in oil spill protest

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About 70 people seized in protest at environmental damage from crude oil spillage into Cuninico River

Indigenous people in the Amazon in Peru have detained a group of Peruvian and foreign tourists, including UK and US citizens, in protest at a lack of government aid following an oil spill in the area.

“[We want] to call the government’s attention with this action, There are foreigners and Peruvians, there are about 70 people,” Watson Trujillo, the leader of the Cuninico community, told RPP radio.

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Finnish PM Sanna Marin cleared of misconduct over partying footage

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Official inquiry finds 'no reason to suspect PM of unlawful conduct or of neglect of her official duties’

An official inquiry has cleared Sanna Marin of misconduct after a leaked video showing the 36-year-old Finnish prime minister dancing exuberantly and drinking with friends and celebrities made headlines around the world.

Multiple complaints to the parliamentary ombudsman alleged that excessive alcohol consumption at the party in August would have made Marin, the world’s youngest head of government when she was elected in 2019, unable to carry out her official duties.

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US adds 261,000 jobs in October as unemployment rate rises slightly

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Final jobs report before midterms shows unemployment rate at 3.7%, a day after Federal Reserve announced further raise hike

The US economy added 261,000 jobs in October, the labor department announced on Friday in its last snapshot of the health of the employment market before next week’s midterm elections.

The latest report confirmed the remarkable strength of the US jobs market. The unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, still close to a 50-year low. The news comes after the Federal Reserve once again raised interest rates in a bid to slow investment and bring down inflation, a move that economists and the Fed predict will eventually cost jobs.

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Ukraine issues Crimean Bridge strike stamp on Russia’s Unity Day

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Postal service follows up April’s limited edition stamp celebrating attack on Russian flagship Moskva

Ukraine’s state postal service has issued a commemorative wartime stamp dedicated to the strike on the Crimean Bridge last month, which sparked celebrations across the country.

Its release has been timed to coincide with Russia’s Unity Day on 4 November.

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Stop Eritrea’s ‘war-funding diaspora tax’, say MPs and lords

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UK parliamentarians call for inquiry into 2% levy on Eritreans abroad, amid fears that it fuels Tigray war

A group of UK parliamentarians is calling for an urgent investigation into the collection of a “diaspora tax” by the Eritrean authorities, which they say could have helped fund war in neighbouring Ethiopia.

MPs and members of the House of Lords want the government to launch a “full, formal, and fully funded” public inquiry into the collection of the 2% tax in the UK, and take “robust action to stop the practice”.

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Japan makes squid farming breakthrough as wild catches plummet

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Scientists have long sought to farm the scarce seafood staple, but critics say animals are not suited to intensive methods

Scientists in Japan say they have developed a groundbreaking method of farming squid that could solve shortages of the seafood staple, amid warnings from environmental groups that aquaculture is incompatible with the animal’s welfare.

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) say their system produced a reliable supply of squid and has the potential to be commercialised.

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Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu comeback brings despair for leftwing parties

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Outgoing coalition suffers poor election result as some parties of the left lose voice in Knesset altogether

Israel’s leftwing and pro-Arab-rights parties have been left licking their wounds in the aftermath of this week’s election. When vote-counting finished on Thursday, the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right partners had won by a comfortable majority.

Last summer a broad coalition succeeded in their mutual desire to kick Netanyahu, leader of Likud, out of office. He is currently standing trial on corruption charges.

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UN nuclear inspectors shut down Russian ‘dirty bomb’ claim against Ukraine

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy says findings are ‘clear and irrefutable’ after IAEA finds no evidence of undeclared nuclear activities and materials

The UN nuclear watchdog has confirmed it found no sign of undeclared nuclear activity after inspecting three sites at Ukraine’s request in response to Russian allegations that work was being done on a “dirty bomb”.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of planning to use such a bomb – a conventional explosive device laced with radioactive material – and said institutes linked to the nuclear industry were involved in preparations, without presenting evidence. Ukraine’s government denies the accusation.

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Beauty queens Miss Puerto Rico and Miss Argentina marry in a secret ceremony

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Fabiola Valentín and Mariana Varela posted a video highlighting their two years together and their courthouse wedding

The former pageant queens Miss Puerto Rico and Miss Argentina have revealed a romantic secret: not only have they been in a relationship, but last weekend they tied the knot.

After two years together, Fabiola Valentín of Puerto Rico and Mariana Varela of Argentina posted an Instagram reel celebrating their romance.

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Chuck Schumer insists Democrats can hold or expand Senate majority – as it happened

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In Pennsylvania, Chris McGreal reports that a major pro-Israel group is facing criticism for backing Republicans who denied the 2020 election, but not a Democratic candidate who would make history if elected:

More than 240 Jewish American voters in Pittsburgh have signed a letter denouncing the US’s largest pro-Israel group for backing extremist Republican election candidates while spending millions of dollars to oppose a Democrat who would be Pennsylvania’s first Black female member of Congress.

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Russian ambassador claims UK involved in drone attack on Black Sea fleet

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Andrei Kelin says Britain ‘too deep in this conflict’ as speculation grows over Russian withdrawal from Kherson region

The Russian ambassador to the UK has claimed UK special forces were involved in a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow’s Black Sea fleet.

Andrei Kelin told Sky News: “We perfectly know about [the] participation of British specialists in [the] training, preparation and execution of violence against the Russian infrastructure and the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. We know that it has been done.”

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Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow says UK ‘too deep’ in war and claims special forces involved in drone attack

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Russian ambassador to UK accuses Britain of being over-involved in war

Reuters reports that the British ambassador arrived at the Russian foreign ministry on Thursday morning, according to local reports. Deborah Bronnert was summoned to discuss Moscow’s claims that Britain was involved in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea.

Electricity supply has been restored to everybody in the Kyiv region after Monday’s Russian bombardment of energy facilities, according to the region’s governor, Oleksiy Kuleba.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me on martin.belam@theguardian.com

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Nuclear attack on US or allies would end Kim regime, says defense secretary

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Lloyd Austin makes remark while Kim Jong-un’s government in Pyongyang has in recent days mounted a number of missile tests

The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said on Thursday any nuclear attack on the US or its allies by North Korea would “result in the end of the Kim regime”.

Kim Jong-un’s government in Pyongyang has in recent days mounted a number of missile tests. The South Korean military said a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday may have ended in failure. Japan called the launch “outrageous and absolutely intolerable”.

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Imran Khan shooting is latest incident in Pakistan’s violent political history

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From the assassination of its first PM in 1951, the country has suffered waves of brutal sectarian conflict and murders

Last month, Pakistan summoned the US ambassador in Islamabad for a dressing down after President Joe Biden described the south Asian country as “one of the most dangerous nations in the world”. Biden was apparently referring to Pakistan’s combination of nuclear weapons and apparent instability. He might have been talking about the threat faced by the country’s own politicians instead.

On Thursday, the former prime minister Imran Khan was shot when his anti-government protest convoy came under attack in the east of the country, in what his aides said was a clear assassination attempt. The 70-year-old did not appear to be seriously injured but the incident underlines once again how politics in Pakistan is inseparable from violence.

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Israel’s Yair Lapid congratulates Benjamin Netanyahu on election victory

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Longest serving prime minister, who is still facing corruption charges, is expected to lead far-right coalition

Israel’s prime minister, Yair Lapid, has called Benjamin Netanyahu to offer his congratulations on the opposition leader’s election win following the conclusion of vote counting in this week’s election.

Netanyahu, the chair of the conservative Likud party and Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is expected to begin an unprecedented third term as PM after holding coalition negotiations with his religious and far-right allies on forming a government.

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‘Get ready’: Trump’s third White House run appears a matter of when not if

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Flurry of reports suggests former president will move swiftly after midterms, as soon as 14 November – but who will challenge him?

As the midterm elections loom and Republican hopes of retaking Congress rise, it appears to be a matter of when, not if, Donald Trump will announce his third White House run.

The former president has trailed another campaign ever since his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a contest Trump refused to concede, pursuing the lie about electoral fraud which fueled the deadly attack on Congress and his second impeachment.

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Spanish minister urges Sunak to commit to climate crisis fight

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Teresa Ribera says she was ‘hugely surprised’ and saddened by PM’s initial refusal to go to Cop27 summit

The Spanish government has urged Rishi Sunak to demonstrate a clear commitment to fighting the climate emergency, describing the British government’s flip-flopping over the prime minister’s attendance of the forthcoming Cop27 summit as “sad” and “surprising”, given the UK’s global reputation and its current presidency of the conference.

Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, also said the “absurd”, heel-dragging political debate over climate change in the UK was “surprising and disappointing”.

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Sebastian Kalinowski: couple jailed for murdering teenage son

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Agnieszka Kalinowska and Andrzej Latoszewski sentenced to 39 years for torturing boy to death

A woman and her partner have each been sentenced to 39 years in prison for the “horrific” murder of 15-year-old Sebastian Kalinowski.

Agnieszka Kalinowska, 36, and Andrzej Latoszewski, 38, were convicted at Leeds crown court in July of murdering Kalinowska’s son at their home in Huddersfield in a prolonged campaign of physical abuse amounting to torture.

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