Category Archives: World News

Florida’s manatees are dying in record numbers – but a lawsuit offers hope

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US wildlife agency agrees to review protection for habitats after conservationists sue over mass die-offs from poor water quality

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has agreed to update critical habitat protections for manatees after legal pressure from environmental groups, as the animals continue to die in record numbers.

More than 1,000 manatees died in Florida last year, wiping out more than 10% of the state’s population, the deadliest year on record. The unusually high mortality rate for the threatened mammals has continued into 2022, with 562 deaths in the first five months.

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We’re almost out of ammunition and relying on western arms, says Ukraine

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Exclusive: Deputy head of military intelligence says it’s an artillery war now and ‘everything depends on what the west gives us’

Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now almost solely reliant on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay.

“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.

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‘Ironclad brothers’: what China wants from its role in Cambodia’s biggest naval base

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Analysis: reports the Chinese military will get exclusive use of part of Ream base have been denied, but experts say nature of the arrangement remains unclear

At a ceremony this week, Cambodian and Chinese officials proclaimed their friendship as they announced a new construction project. Holding spades decorated with red bows, they turned over soil to signal the start of building work at Cambodia’s biggest naval base, Ream. It will be expanded and renovated, thanks to a Chinese grant of an undisclosed sum – a development that has alarmed the US.

“China and Cambodia have become ironclad brothers,” said China’s ambassador to Cambodia, Wang Wentian, at the ceremony.

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Russian invasion is ‘Covid-22’ and arms are a vaccine, says Volodymyr Zelenskiy

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Ukrainian president pleads for more outside help in speech at gala to honour Time’s most influential people

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has compared Russia’s invasion to Covid and described weapons and sanctions as a vaccine, as Ukraine’s military position in Donbas worsens.

The Ukrainian president, speaking via video link at a gala to celebrate Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year, lobbied again for more outside help because “the Ukrainian military are dying on the battlefield”.

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Panel to connect Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in Capitol attack conspiracy

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Sources say investigators intend to show far-right militias coordinated in effort to storm US Capitol on January 6 last year

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is expected at its first hearing on Thursday evening to connect the far-right Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia groups in the same seditious conspiracy, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The move by the panel and chief investigative counsel Tim Heaphy would likely be one of the major revelations that comes from the hearing, which is expected to focus on the militia groups and how they made plans to storm the Capitol, the sources said.

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Ukrainian troops plead for more artillery to offset Russia’s firepower in Sievierodonetsk – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

Former Danish prime minister and former secretary general of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has been speaking on Sky News in the UK. He is currently running the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, which tomorrow will focus on the situation in Ukraine. He said:

The Ukrainian people are actually fighting on behalf of all of us, and we must stop Putin otherwise he will not stop. He will continue to conquer peaceful neighbours if he isn’t stopped in Ukraine.

Silence in Sievierodonetsk lasts only when guns are reloaded. Street fights continue in the regional centre.

Russians adhere to their primitive tactics: heavy artillery fire, then - attempts to break through. The same thing happened in the already destroyed Rubizhne and Popasna.

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Islamic State affiliate suspected of Catholic church massacre, Nigeria says

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Interior ministry believes Iswap was behind attack in Ondo state on Sunday that killed 40 people

Nigerian security officials suspect extremists from Islamic State’s affiliate in west Africa were behind an attack on a Catholic church last weekend that killed dozens.

Forty people are now thought to have died after gunmen stormed St Francis Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State, on Sunday, and 61 survivors are still being treated in hospital, according to local authorities. The total is double an earlier estimate.

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Britons sentenced to death after ‘show trial’ in Russian-occupied Ukraine

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Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner were captured while fighting in Ukrainian army

Pro-Russia officials have sentenced to death two British men and a Moroccan national captured while fighting in the Ukrainian army in Mariupol.

A court in Russian-controlled east Ukraine convicted Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner after a days-long process that observers have called a “disgusting Soviet era show trial” meant to imitate war crimes trials against Russian soldiers in Kyiv.

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Dom Phillips: sister of missing journalist still hopeful he will be found

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Sian Phillips joins London vigil for Briton and the Brazilian Bruno Araújo Pereira who have vanished in Amazon

The sister of a British journalist missing in the Amazon has said she still has hope he will be found.

Sian Phillips was joined by supporters at a vigil for her brother Dom Phillips, who has worked as a freelance correspondent for the Guardian, and the Brazilian Indigenous affairs official Bruno Araujo Pereira outside the Brazilian embassy in central London on Thursday.

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Irish exorcist calls for extra help for people oppressed by evil spirits

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Fr Pat Collins says there is urgent need for ‘deliverance ministry’ amid ‘crisis of meaning’ in Ireland

The appeal for help sounds like it was channelled from the TV show Stranger Things. “Exorcist: trained teams needed in parishes to fight evil spirits.”

It is, however, the splash headline in this week’s Irish Catholic, Ireland’s biggest-selling religious newspaper.

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Ex-soldiers ‘inspired by psychic to fight in Yemen’ go on trial in Germany

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Achim Allweyer, 52, and Arend-Adolf Gräss, 60, allegedly tried to form paramilitary unit to join civil war

Two former German soldiers have gone on trial accused of attempting to form a paramilitary group to fight in Yemen’s civil war after being inspired by a psychic.

Achim Allweyer, 52, and Arend-Adolf Gräss, 60, took steps to set up what prosecutors say amounted to a “terrorist organisation” after receiving “messages from a fortune teller that they understood as binding instructions for action”, according to the indictment read out at Stuttgart’s higher regional court on Thursday.

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Scientists make ‘slightly sweaty’ robot finger with living skin

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Japanese innovation thought to have potential to ‘build a new relationship between humans and robots’

Japanese scientists have developed a “slightly sweaty” robotic finger covered in living skin in an advance they say brings truly human-like robots a step closer.

The finger, which was shown to be able to heal itself, is seen as an impressive technical feat that blurs the line between living flesh and machine. But scientists were divided on whether people would warm to its lifelike anatomy or find it creepy.

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Huge mystery spill detected in Baltic off Swedish coast

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Coastguard checking ships’ routes and says samples being sent for analysis

A massive spill of an unknown substance has been detected in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden, the country’s coastguard said on Thursday.

Covering a surface area of 30 sq miles (77 sq km) in both Swedish and Finnish waters, the spill was detected on Wednesday in the Bothnian Sea.

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Javari valley: the lawless primal wilderness where Dom Phillips went missing

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The largest refuge for Indigenous tribes living in isolation is also a hotspot for poachers and illegal loggers and a major smuggling route for cocaine traffickers

In Brazil’s far west lies an immense swath of rainforest and rugged terrain reachable only by snaking brown rivers. Wedged alongside the border with Peru, the Javari valley is nearly the size of Portugal, and is the largest refuge for Indigenous tribes living in isolation from the outside world.

“The Javari is one of the last true bastions of primal wilderness in the Amazon – and in the world,” said Scott Wallace, author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes.

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Berlin crash driver had history of paranoid schizophrenia, authorities say

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Mayor says incident where teacher died and 14 children were injured was probably deliberate

A 29-year-old man who killed a teacher and injured 14 children after driving his car into a crowd in Berlin on Wednesday had a history of suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and was probably intending to kill or injure, German authorities say.

“There are no clues pointing to a terrorist motivation behind this deed, and we can also rule out that it was an accident”, said the spokesperson for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, Sebastian Büchner. “It was probably a deliberate act.”

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US Palestinian mission renamed and now reports directly to Washington

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Move comes after former president Donald Trump outraged Palestinians by closing consulate in 2018

The US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in Jerusalem has been redesignated and will report directly to Washington “on substantive matters”, indicating an upgrade in ties before a planned visit by the US president, Joe Biden.

What had been called the Palestinian Affairs Unit (PAU) was renamed the US Office of Palestinian Affairs (OPA) under the move. Before becoming the PAU, it had been the US consulate in Jerusalem and a focus of Palestinian statehood goals in the city.

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Reliance Industries and Apollo Global Management in £5bn bid for Boots

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Mukesh Ambani teams up with US private equity fund, with Walgreens expected to retain minority stake

The Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries has teamed up with the US private equity fund Apollo Global Management to make a £5bn bid for the UK’s Boots chain.

The US group Walgreens, which has controlled the pharmacy and beauty retailer since 2012, is expected to keep a minority stake under the deal.

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Rape used ‘systematically’ during Lebanon’s civil war, report finds

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Levels of torture and sexual violence used by combatants against women and girls during the 15-year conflict shocked investigators

The full scale of the rape, torture and killing of women and girls during Lebanon’s civil war has been revealed after survivors were interviewed about their experiences for the first time in over 30 years.

Testimonies gathered by the human rights organisation Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), documented in a new report, provide evidence of systematic violence against Lebanese and Palestinian women and girls by government forces and militias during the 15-year war, which began in 1975. The conflict saw more than 100,000 people killed and 1 million displaced.

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Dom Phillips: editors around world urge Bolsonaro to do more to find missing journalist

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Media organisations call on Brazil’s president to step up efforts to find Phillips and Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira

Editors and journalists from some of the world’s biggest news organisations have written to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, to ask that he “urgently step up and fully resource the effort” to find missing British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira.

Led by the Guardian and the Washington Post, two newspapers for whom Phillips worked as a freelance correspondent, editors from at least 20 major media and press freedom organisations signed the open letter that was published on Thursday.

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