Category Archives: World News

Election result marks dangerous new turn in Israel’s rightward shift

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Israeli politics has been shifting rightwards for decades, but this new coalition could go further than any before

An hour after the election exit polls predicted a comeback for former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night, Israel’s Channel 13 switched from vote count drama to its satirical late-night current affairs show, Wonderful Country.

The host was immediately joined by a comedian sporting round glasses, a yellow tie, white kippah and bulging fake belly, made up to look like the country’s new political kingmaker, the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir. Brandishing a pistol – as Ben-Gvir did recently in a Palestinian neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem – he danced his way across the set before taking a seat.

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TikTok tells European users its staff in China get access to their data

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Privacy policy update confirms data of continent’s users available to range of TikTok bases including in Brazil, Israel and US

TikTok is spelling out to its European users that their data can be accessed by employees outside the continent, including in China, amid political and regulatory concerns about Chinese access to user information on the platform.

The Chinese-owned social video app is updating its privacy policy to confirm that staff in countries, including China, are allowed to access user data to ensure their experience of the platform is “consistent, enjoyable and safe”.

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Russia will rejoin UN grain corridor from Ukraine in humiliating U-turn

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Moscow’s climbdown comes two days after large convoy of ships moved record tonnage despite warnings

The Kremlin has said it will rejoin the UN-administered grain export corridor from Ukraine, after pulling out over the weekend following a drone attack on Russian warships in the port of Sevastopol.

Moscow’s humiliating climbdown came two days after a large convoy of ships moved a record amount of grain in defiance of Russia’s warnings that it would be unsafe without its participation, and after high-level diplomatic contacts between Turkey – one of the guarantors of the scheme with the UN – and Russia.

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Britain is targeting Albanians to excuse policy failures, says country’s PM

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Edi Rama urges ministers to ‘stop discriminating’ after Suella Braverman’s ‘Albanian criminals’ comments in Commons

The Albanian prime minister has accused Rishi Sunak’s government of using his country’s citizens as scapegoats for failed immigration policies after critical comments by Suella Braverman about Albanian asylum seekers.

Edi Rama wrote that the UK was falsely targeting Albanians “as the cause of Britain’s crime and border problems”. In a series of tweets, he called for the UK to “fight the crime gangs of all nationalities and stop discriminating [against] Albanians”.

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UK investigation to examine human rights abuses in Kazakhstan

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Commission to focus on detention of journalist and political leader Zhanbolat Mamai after nationwide protests

The state of human rights in the vast, mineral-rich central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan, including the continued detention of opposition leaders, is to be formally examined by senior UK parliamentarians including the former director of public prosecutions Lord MacDonald.

He will lead an independent investigation into the detention and treatment of Zhanbolat Mamai, the leader of the unregistered opposition Democratic party in Kazakhstan.

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Contraband handbags, diamonds and vodka auctioned off by French government

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‘Extraordinary sale’ of 350 lots seized by customs is valued collectively at about €1m

France’s finance ministry is auctioning off customs contraband in an “extraordinary sale” featuring platinum bars seized en route to the UK, designer handbags, valuable historic coins, several collections of uncut diamonds and 2,016 bottles of vodka.

The 350 lots – valued collectively at about €1m – also include a Volkswagen Golf stopped at France’s border with Spain and found to contain 480kg of cannabis resin.

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Supply fears as China lockdown hits world’s largest iPhone factory

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Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, from which many workers have fled, now under seven-day Covid lockdown

Chinese authorities have announced a seven-day coronavirus lockdown in the area around the world’s largest iPhone factory, stoking concern that production will be severely curtailed ahead of the Christmas period.

Foxconn’s plant in Zhengzhou, which employs about 200,000 people, produces the majority of Apple’s new phones, including the new iPhone 14.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Russia to rejoin Black Sea grain deal; Moscow to summon UK ambassador over Sevastopol drone strike – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv, has given an update on the situation in his western region of Ukraine. He said that aside from one air alert, the night was quiet. In the last 24 hours, he said that 100 people arrived in the region on evacuation trains from the east of the country, and that 544 people departed for Poland.

The pro-Russian authorities in the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), one of the areas of occupied Ukraine that Russia has claimed to annex, have reported that two civilians were killed and two others injured overnight by shelling from Ukrainian forces. The claims have not been independently verified. The DPR is recognised as a legitimate authority by only three UN member states: Russia, Syria and North Korea.

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Migos’s record label rails at ‘senseless violence’ that killed rapper Takeoff

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Atlanta-based Quality Control issues statement speaking of ‘monumental loss’, as Houston police appeal for any of 40 people at scene to come forward

Migos’s Atlanta-based record label Quality Control has shared a statement on the fatal shooting of their rapper Takeoff. “It is with broken hearts and deep sadness that we mourn the loss of our beloved brother Kirshnik Khari Ball, known to the world as Takeoff,” the label wrote on Instagram. “Senseless violence and a stray bullet has taken another life from this world and we are devastated. Please respect his family and friends as we all continue to process this monumental loss.”

At a press conference, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and police chief Troy Finner responded to the shooting, asking any of the supposedly 40 people who were present on the scene to come forward with details.

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Headless bodies and deadly bombs: cartel violence escalates in Ecuador

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On Tuesday, President Guillermo Lasso announced a curfew under a new state of emergency in Guayas and Esmeraldas regions

The week began with the discovery of two headless bodies, left dangling from a pedestrian bridge. Then prison guards were taken hostage by inmates, nine car bombs detonated in two coastal cities and five police officers were shot dead.

The string of horrifying attacks across Ecuador this week would once have been unthinkable, but this kind of bloodletting is now becoming almost routine in the Andean country, as gang violence escalates to levels never seen before.

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Denmark election result keeps Social Democrats at the helm

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Mette Frederiksen, the incumbent PM, can form government though may face dilemma over picking leftwingers or moderates as partners

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has won a nail-biting election that gave her left-leaning bloc a one-seat majority in parliament – but her pledge to build a broad left-right coalition may mean she struggles to form a stable government.

Exit polls on Tuesday night had suggested Frederiksen’s five-party “red” bloc would lose its majority in the 179-seat parliament, but as the last votes were counted early on Wednesday it became clear that it had secured 87 seats in mainland Denmark.

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British-Egyptian hunger striker may die in prison, Nobel laureates warn world leaders attending Cop27

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Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been on hunger strike for six months and will refuse water from 6 November, the first day of the climate summit

The majority of living Nobel prize for literature laureates have called on world leaders attending the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt this week to help free thousands of political prisoners in the country, including the writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah who is six months into a hunger strike and “at risk of death”.

The letter, organised by Abd El-Fattah’s UK publishers Fitzcarraldo Editions and Seven Stories Press, has been signed by 13 Nobel prize for literature winners: Svetlana Alexievich, JM Coetzee, Annie Ernaux, Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elfriede Jelinek, Mario Vargas Llosa, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka and Olga Tokarczuk.

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Australia delivers police vehicles and rifles to Solomon Islands in ‘game-changer’ donation

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Handover ceremony comes after turbulent year when Pacific country signed controversial security agreement with China

Australia has announced the donation of police vehicles and 60 MK18 rifles to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) in a move described as a “game changer” for Australia’s relationship with Solomon Islands police.

The announcement comes after a turbulent year in the relationship between Australia and Solomon Islands, particularly on the question of security, after the Pacific country signed a controversial and secretive security agreement with China.

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Netanyahu thanks voters as rightwing bloc extends Israeli election lead

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Prime minister Yair Lapid says nothing final until ‘last envelope is counted’ as Likud’s rightwing coalition partners see support surge

Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked voters for a “huge vote of confidence” as his rightwing religious bloc extended its lead with about 87% of all votes counted in the country’s fifth election in four years.

The former prime minister’s Likud party appears to have added one seat to the 30 it held in the last Knesset. But a surge in support for his new far-right allies, the Religious Zionists, and what appears to be a poor showing for two pro-Arab rights parties and the leftwing Meretz party, means the scandal-plagued former leader is at present the most likely candidate to be able to form a coalition government in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election.

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Germany calls for ‘precautionary pause’ before deep-sea mining industry starts

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Berlin urges International Seabed Authority to prioritise nature as it debates rules and warns seabed mining may ‘destroy ecosystems’

Germany has called for a pause in the controversial deep-sea mining industry, saying not enough is known about the likely impacts of digging up the ocean floor for metals.

While other nations, including Spain and New Zealand, have previously called for a temporary halt to any exploitation of deep-sea metals, Germany, the world’s fourth biggest economy, is the most significant nation to voice its opposition to date. The country holds two of the 22 licences for exploration of the seabed.

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Filep Karma: West Papuan independence campaigner found dead on beach

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Friends of twice jailed human rights activist call for independent inquiry after body found in damaged wetsuit at Base G beach, Jayapura

The human rights campaigner Filep Karma – one of West Papua’s most famous former political prisoners – has been found dead on a beach in Jayapura, sparking calls for a full and independent inquiry into his death.

Twice jailed for raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag banned by Indonesia, 63-year-old Karma was one of the most prominent and influential campaigners for West Papuan independence.

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Girl, 4, forced to sail from Tunisia to Sicily on migrant boat without parents

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Girl became separated from parents and disembarked on island of Lampedusa after 26 hours at sea

A four-year-old girl who was separated from her parents as they tried to board a migrant boat from Tunisia to Italy was forced to make the journey across the Mediterranean without them.

The girl, referred to as Linda by Italian authorities, disembarked on the island of Lampedusa on 17 October after 26 hours at sea on a crowded wooden boat carrying a further 70 asylum seekers from Tunisia.

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Egyptian regime criticized as climate activist arrested in run-up to Cop27

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Concern over country’s human rights record after Indian Ajit Rajagopal arrested on walk to raise awareness about climate crisis

The arrest of an Indian climate activist by Egyptian security forces has renewed alarm about the regime’s dire human rights record as it prepares to host the Cop27 UN climate summit.

Ajit Rajagopal, an architect and activist from Kerala in south India, was arrested on Sunday afternoon shortly after setting off on an eight-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh as part of a global campaign to raise awareness about the climate crisis.

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North Korea missile crosses maritime border with South for first time

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One missile landed close to South Korean territorial waters, south of the Northern Limit Line, military chiefs in Seoul say

North Korea fired at least 10 missiles off its eastern and western coasts on Wednesday morning, with one landing in waters further south than ever before, according to the South Korean military, which shortly after responded by firing missiles over a maritime border.

The unprecedented number of launches was confirmed after earlier reports of three short-range ballistic missiles fired off North Korea’s eastern coast, leading to a rare air raid warning being issued on a remote South Korean island.

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Bolsonaro breaks election silence but refuses to recognise Lula’s victory

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Former president’s chief of staff indicates his administration is ready to begin transition process

Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has broken his almost two-day silence over his defeat in Sunday’s presidential election – but refused to congratulate or recognize the victory of his rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

After Bolsonaro had delivered his message, however, his chief of staff indicated that his administration would not contest the election result.

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