Category Archives: World News

White House seeks to delay decision on Prince Mohammed immunity over Khashoggi murder

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Request comes after Biden returns from Saudi trip in which he claims to have raised journalist’s murder with crown prince

The Biden administration asked a US judge for a 60-day extension before it formally weighed in on whether Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, ought to be granted sovereign immunity in a case involving the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Department of Justice said in a filing before a US district court that it had initiated a “decision-making process” about whether it would file a statement of interest in the case but that it would not be able to comply with the court’s requested deadline of 1 August.

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West Virginia to resume abortions after judge blocks enforcement of ban – as it happened

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Jody Hice, a Georgia congressman who believes the baseless theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, has been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating efforts to disrupt the results of the polls in the state, Politico reports:

In May, Hice lost his bid for the Republican nomination for Georgia secretary of state to Brad Raffensperger, who famously rejected Trump’s appeals to swing the state’s election results in his direction.

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Costs of Ukraine war pose tests for European leaders – and things may get worse

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Analysis: Vladimir Putin claims time is on his side, but he will have only one shot at making a gas cutoff count

Desperate efforts in Italy to prevent the fall of Mario Draghi’s government are only the latest political firestorm in Europe tied to Vladimir Putin’s tests of the west’s powers of endurance. Draghi’s foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, suggested it will be Putin who celebrated the fall of another western government if Draghi does not survive a confidence vote in parliament on Wednesday.

“A boat without a rudder goes adrift,” said Ferruccio Resta, the president of the Conference of Italian University Rectors – a metaphor that could apply, to Putin’s satisfaction, to much of Europe as governments come under growing pressure over the perceived domestic cost of the war in Ukraine.

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Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, known for giant urban sculptures, dies aged 93

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The Swedish-born artist, who turned objects such as baseball bats, saws and clothespins into giant sculptures, died in Manhattan

Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, who turned the mundane into the monumental through his outsized sculptures of a baseball bat, a clothespin and other objects, has died at age 93.

Oldenburg died Monday morning in Manhattan, according to his daughter, Maartje Oldenburg. He had been in poor health since falling and breaking his hip a month ago.

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Folly or art? Catalonian town buys labyrinthine Espai Corberó for €3m

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In need of repair, futuristic yet surreal complex built by artist Xavier Corberó is to become public space

Like a three-dimensional De Chirico painting or an Escher staircase to nowhere, the labyrinthine Espai Corberó near Barcelona defies architectural logic, being designed “without plans, obeying only space and poetry”.

“It’s not my home, it’s a place I made with the help of patrons and buyers as a home for my sculptures,” the artist Xavier Corberó told the art magazine AD shortly before his death at 81 in 2017.

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Russia’s Gazprom tells European buyers it cannot guarantee gas supplies

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Force majeure declared in letter to customers concerns supplies via Nord Stream 1 pipeline, says source

Russia’s Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of “extraordinary” circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the west over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Dated 14 July, the letter from the Russian state gas monopoly said it was declaring force majeure on supplies, starting from 14 June.

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Libyan PM makes alliance with ex-enemy to cement ceasefire

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Prospect of Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Khalifa Haftar burying differences may be welcomed by UN

Libya’s prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, has made an unexpected alliance with his former enemy, the eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar, in a bid to cement a fragile ceasefire and end a months-long oil blockade.

Less than three years ago, Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) besieged Tripoli in a failed attempt to capture the capital. On Monday, in a highly symbolic gesture, LNA’s chief of staff, Abdulrazek al-Nadoori, was invited to visit the city for talks.

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Ranil Wickremesinghe: wily fox who is Sri Lanka’s new president

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Profile: Six-time PM may be unacceptable to many of the same protesters who forced out predecessor

There are few who have been stalwarts of Sri Lankan politics in the last half-century quite like the man often referred to as “the fox”.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, 73, who gained his nickname for his apparently wily ability to repeatedly resurrect his political career, has been prime minister six times since he first entered politics in 1977, though he has famously never completed a term.

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How a conservative US network undermined Indigenous energy rights in Canada

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Internal documents explain why oil and gas interests would benefit from a key Indigenous declaration being ‘defeated’

A US-based libertarian coalition has spent years pressuring the Canadian government to limit how much Indigenous communities can push back on energy development on their own land, newly reviewed strategy documents reveal.

The Atlas Network partnered with an Ottawa-based thinktank – the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) – which enlisted pro-industry Indigenous representatives in its campaign to provide “a shield against opponents”.

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Send us a man to do your job so we can sack you, Taliban tell female officials

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As economy collapses, women from Afghanistan’s finance ministry say they have been asked to suggest male relatives to replace them

The Taliban have asked women working at Afghanistan’s finance ministry to send a male relative to do their job a year after female public-sector workers were barred from government work and told to stay at home.

Women who worked in government positions were sent home from their jobs shortly after the Taliban took power in August 2021, and have been paid heavily reduced salaries to do nothing.

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Ghana reports first cases of deadly Ebola-like Marburg virus

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No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg, which can spread from infected animals such as bats

Two cases of the deadly Marburg virus have been identified in Ghana, the first time the Ebola-like disease has been found in the west African nation.

Earlier in the month, blood samples taken from two people in the southern Ashanti region suggested they had the Marburg virus.

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Nephew of jailed Hotel Rwanda dissident hacked by NSO spyware

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Latest findings suggest Rwandan government has deployed surveillance campaign against relatives of Paul Rusesabagina

The mobile phone of a Belgian citizen who is the nephew of Paul Rusesabagina, a jailed critic of the Rwandan government made famous by his portrayal in Hotel Rwanda, was hacked nearly a dozen times in 2020 using Israeli-made surveillance technology, according to forensic experts at The Citizen Lab.

The findings follow earlier revelations by the Guardian and other media partners in the Pegasus Project, an investigation of Israel’s NSO Group, that Rusesabagina’s daughter, a dual American-Belgian national named Carine Kanimba, was under near-constant surveillance by a client of NSO Group from January to mid-2021, when the hacking attack was discovered by researchers at Amnesty International’s security lab.

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Russian shelling leaves six dead in eastern Ukraine, reports say – 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

Reuters has a quick snap that Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has instructed the military to prioritise destroying Ukraine’s long-range missile and artillery weapons, according to a defence ministry statement.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has claimed that Russia is using the private military company Wagner in Ukraine to reinforce its frontline forces, but that losses they have sustained are likely to be impacting their effectiveness.

Russia has used private military company Wagner to reinforce front-line forces and to mitigate manning shortfalls and casualties.

Wagner has almost certainly played a central role in recent fighting, including the capture of Popasna and Lysyschansk. This fighting has inflicted heavy casualties on the group.

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China banks told to bail out property developers as mortgage boycotts threaten economy

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Intervention comes as thousands of homebuyers refuse to make mortgage repayments in deepening property sector crisis

Chinese banks have been told to bail out struggling property developers to help them complete unfinished housing projects and head off the growing mortgage strike that threatens to seriously damage the economy.

With thousands of homebuyers banding together to refuse to keep up with mortgage instalments on unfinished apartments bought off the plan, regulators have stepped up efforts to encourage lenders to extend loans to qualified real estate projects.

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Farnborough airshow to focus on cleaner flying and potential fighter jet deal

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Manufacturers to emphasise their efforts to reduce environmental impact of planes

Low-emission air travel and a potential deal for Japan to help build the UK’s next-generation Tempest fighter jet are set to take centre stage at the annual Farnborough airshow this week.

Executives from global aerospace manufacturers and airlines will gather at the airport in Hampshire after a four-year gap. The show, which begins on Monday, normally happens every two years but was cancelled in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, as the aviation industry faced potential collapse.

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France braces for record temperatures as wildfires rage across Europe

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Thousands evacuated as above 40C forecast for some French regions on Monday and more lives lost in soaring heat in Spain

France was bracing on Monday for the peak of the heatwave gripping the country, with crushing temperatures expected from the Mediterranean, as wildfires continued to rage across Europe.

Forecasters have put 15 departments in France on the highest state of alert for extreme temperatures, including Gironde in the south-west, where wildfires have already wrought havoc.

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Zelenskiy fires Ukraine’s spy chief and top state prosecutor

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SBU’s Ivan Bakanov and war crimes prosecutor Iryna Venediktova sacked after their officials found to be collaborating with Russia

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has fired the head of Ukraine’s powerful domestic security agency, the SBU, and the state prosecutor general, citing dozens of cases of collaboration with Russia by officials in their agencies.

Sunday’s abrupt sackings of SBU chief Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of Zelenskiy, and the prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, who played a key role in the prosecution of Russian war crimes, were announced in executive orders on the president’s website.

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Sudan: scores of people killed in tribal clashes in Blue Nile state

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Fighting between the Hausa and Birta ethnic groups broke out last week over the killing of a farmer

The death toll from days of tribal clashes in the southern Sudanese state of Blue Nile has climbed to at least 65 people, according to a senior health official.

Around 150 people have been injured in the fighting between the Hausa and Birta ethnic groups, the state’s health minister, Gamal Nasser al-Sayed, said.

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Russia is preparing for the next stage of its offensive in Ukraine, military officials say – 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

Today is the anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Donetsk in 2014, which killed 298 people onboard, including 196 Dutch nationals and 38 Australians.

With the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, this year’s anniversary has hit the international community even harder. Russia denied involvement in the downing of MH17, despite the findings of an international investigation that found multiple witnesses who saw an anti-aircraft missile launcher that had secretly crossed into Ukraine from Russia in the hours before it shot down the commercial flight.

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Bernie Sanders condemns Joe Manchin for sabotaging president’s agenda

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Senator also rebukes Biden for Saudi Arabia trip: ‘I don’t believe we should maintain a warm relationship with a dictator like that’

Bernie Sanders harshly criticized prominent fellow Democrats on Sunday, accusing his Senate colleague Joe Manchin of sabotaging the president’s agenda and rebuking Joe Biden for traveling to Saudi Arabia last week.

During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Sanders interrupted host Martha Raddatz when she said Manchin had “abruptly pulled the plug” on supporting a scaled-back version of a spending bill that is crucial to Biden’s agenda. Manchin said he would not support provisions in the bill that increase spending to combat climate change and close tax loopholes. Democrats cannot pass the bill without Manchin’s support in a US Senate that is divided 50-50, with vice-president Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker in the event one is needed.

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