Category Archives: World News

‘They won’t accept us’: Roma refugees forced to camp at Prague train station

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Humanitarian crisis grows as Ukrainian Roma families stuck at Czech train station say they are not treated like other refugees

Prague’s central railway station seems a picture of normality amid warm spring sunshine and the return of legions of tourists, who had been largely absent at the height of Covid. On the platform one weekday morning, two German sightseers gaze curiously at the statue of Sir Nicholas Winton, the British stockbroker who helped 669 mostly Jewish children escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the second world war.

Yet just yards away, hundreds of Roma people are sheltering in the only place available to them since they joined the millions of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion.

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Nineteen students and two adults killed in Texas elementary school shooting

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  • Joe Biden calls for action to stand up to gun lobby after worst school shooting since Sandy Hook
  • The gunman, identified by Governor Greg Abbott as an 18-year-old man, died at the scene, reportedly killed by the police

A teenage gunman has killed at least 19 children and two adults after storming into an elementary school in Texas, officials have said, the latest bout of gun-fueled mass killings in the United States and the nation’s worst school shooting since Sandy Hook a decade ago.

The carnage began when the 18-year-old suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, shot his own grandmother, who is in a critical condition, authorities said.

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‘I saw an oncologist cry’: Tigray cancer patients sent home to die for lack of drugs

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Doctors call for international help as Ethiopia civil war leaves terminally ill being treated with paracetamol in Mekelle hospital

Doctors caring for cancer patients at the main hospital in Tigray say they have only two chemotherapy drugs left in date and are treating terminally ill people with expired medication and paracetamol. Eighteen months of war have left the sickest in society suffering agonising deaths, they say.

For the first time in 11 months, doctors at the Ayder referral hospital in Mekelle took receipt of an oral chemotherapy drug earlier this month as part of an airlift by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Until then, they had had only one, Doxorubicin, still in date.

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Half of UK’s butterfly species vulnerable to extinction as five join red list

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Time is running out to save 58 resident species, Butterfly Conservation warns

Half of Britain’s butterfly species are now listed as threatened with extinction after five more joined the new “red list” of endangered butterflies.

The increase in the number of species listed as “vulnerable” from nine in 2011 to 16 today is a warning that time is running out to save the 58 resident species, according to Butterfly Conservation, which compiled the red list from scientific monitoring data according to the criteria set out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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Sandy Hook families speak out after Uvalde school shooting

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Bereaved say it is ‘beyond time to take action’ on gun control in the wake of the killing of 19 children in Texas

The families of people killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting have pleaded for action on gun control in the wake of the killings at Robb elementary school in Texas.

Erica Leslie Lafferty, whose mother was killed in the massacre in Connecticut in 2012, said that it was “beyond time to take action” in the wake of the attack in Uvalde which has left at least 19 children and two adults dead.

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‘Death to the enemy’: Ukraine’s news channels unite to cover war

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State-backed broadcast has strategic and practical justifications but some see it as dangerous monopoly

In an age of social media and satellite television, the singular wartime news bulletin evokes images of families tuning in to the radio during the second world war. But in Ukraine, the state-backed broadcast has remerged, albeit with a 21st-century spin.

Shortly after Russia invaded, the country’s main TV channels started broadcasting the same content 24 hours a day, nicknamed the United News telemarathon. Each channel has a daily slot on the broadcast, which is shown simultaneously on all the channels.

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‘I’m never going back’: the high-profile Russian defectors rejecting war

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Gazprombank’s Igor Volobuyev and diplomat Boris Bondarev are among the Russian elite to oppose Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

Igor Volobuyev spent two decades working in the heart of the Russian business establishment, first for Gazprom and then for its affiliate Gazprombank, where until February this year he was vice-president.

Then Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine in late February, and Volobuyev decided he could no longer stand living in Russia. He packed a small rucksack of possessions and a stack of cash, and flew out of the country on 2 March, pretending he was going on holiday.

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Confusion in Lagos as passenger plane is towed along highway

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Rumours spread online that the aircraft had crashed, but authorities said it was simply being delivered to its new owner

A plane that was towed along the side of a busy expressway in Lagos on Tuesday night has caused widespread confusion and amusement to commuters – and rumours it had crashed – before Nigerian authorities said that it was being delivered to its new owner via the busy road.

Several videos of the aircraft posted on social media showed it at various points along the side of a major road, within a mile of the international and domestic airport terminals and plane storage facilities in the Ikeja area of Lagos.

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Six in 10 people in UK believe government ‘ignores rules’

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People in the UK and Poland rated their governments worst on matters of trust and legitimacy in an EU-funded study

People in the UK are more likely than those in other European countries to say that their government ignores rules, according to a large six-state survey, with ‘Partygate’ probably to blame.

The EU-funded study found that 62% of people in the UK think their government ignores rules and procedures, compared with an average of 44% and well above the next highest, Poland (50%), where the administration has been accused of authoritarianism.

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Brazil: at least 21 people killed during police raid in Rio favela

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Death toll puts the incident among Rio’s deadliest police operations in recent history

At least 21 people have been shot dead and seven wounded during a police raid on a Rio de Janeiro favela to capture the leaders of a drug-trafficking organization.

The deaths included a woman who was hit by a stray bullet in the exchange of gunfire between gang members and police in the Vila Cruzeiro favela.

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Monarch butterflies bounce back in Mexico wintering grounds

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Experts say 35% rise in acreage covered by migratory insects my reflect adaptation to changing climate

Mexican experts have said that 35% more monarch
butterflies arrived this year to spend the winter in mountaintop forests, compared with the previous season.

Experts say the rise may reflect the butterflies’ ability to adapt to more extreme bouts of heat or drought by varying the date when they leave Mexico.

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FBI says it foiled Islamic State sympathizer’s plot to kill George W Bush

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Bureau says in warrant that Ohio man Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab planned assassination out of revenge for Iraq war

The FBI claims an Islamic State sympathizer living in Ohio plotted to assassinate George W Bush, but confidential informants helped federal agents foil the plan, according to court records.

Details of the alleged scheme to kill the former president are laid out in a warrant that the FBI obtained in March to search the accused operative’s cellphone records, a 43-page document that was only unsealed in recent days.

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Cruelty of Canada’s residential schools ‘unimaginable’, governor general says

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Mary Simon, first Indigenous person to hold post, attends service at Kamloops school to honor thousands of children who died

Canada’s governor general has described the country’s residential schools as places of unimaginable cruelty, in a eulogy to honour the thousands of Indigenous children who died while attending the institutions.

“Today, we make ourselves heard across the country. Although it is hard, we are telling Canadians and the world about our wounds and pain,” Mary Simon, the Queen’s representative in Canada, told hundreds gathered on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian residential school.

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Male Afghan TV presenters mask up to support female colleagues after Taliban decree

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#FreeHerFace campaign gathers force as high-profile men rebel against crackdown on face coverings in Afghanistan

Male TV presenters in Afghanistan are wearing face masks on screen to show solidarity after the Taliban issued an order that all women on news channels must cover their faces.

In a protest dubbed #FreeHerFace on social media, men on Tolo News wore masks to mimic the effect of the face veil their female colleagues have been forced to wear after a Taliban crackdown.

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Afghan female judge awarded prestigious human rights prize

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Fawzia Amini advocates for rights of Afghan women and girls from London hotel room she’s been stuck in for nine months

One of Afghanistan’s top female judges has been honoured with an international human rights award while she continues her work to advocate for her country’s women and girls from a London hotel.

Fawzia Amini, 48, fled Afghanistan last summer after the Taliban takeover of the country. She had been one of Afghanistan’s leading female judges, former head of the legal department at the Ministry of Women, senior judge in the supreme court, and head of the violence against women court.

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FBI seeks arrest of man claiming to be North Korea ‘special delegate’

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Spaniard alleged to have conspired with cryptocurrency expert to help Pyongyang evade US sanctions

The FBI has issued an arrest warrant for a Spanish man who claims to be a “special delegate” working for the government of North Korea, accusing him of recruiting a cryptocurrency expert in an attempt to help Pyongyang circumvent US sanctions.

Alejandro Cao de Benós, a 47-year-old Spanish national who describes himself as Pyongyang’s special delegate for the committee for cultural relations with foreign countries, is alleged to have conspired with Virgil Griffith, a US cryptocurrency expert, to “illegally provide cryptocurrency and blockchain services to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)”.

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Sudan security forces clash with protesters against military coup

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Police open fire on demonstrators as protest organisers detained in fierce crackdown by regime

Security forces in Sudan have mounted a fierce crackdown in recent days to crush remaining unrest, six months after a coup that brought a military regime to power in the unstable strategic country.

Police fired teargas and shotguns at protesters as thousands took to the streets in the capital, Khartoum, and twin city of Omdurman on Monday. The violence followed a similarly harsh response to demonstrations over the weekend. In all, 113 people have been injured and one killed in recent days, according to doctors.

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‘The US is completely insane’: David Cronenberg on Roe v Wade at Cannes film festival

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The Canadian director made the comments at a press conference for his latest body horror film Crimes of the Future

David Cronenberg, director of Crash, The Naked Lunch and A History of Violence, has said that “the US is completely insane”.

Speaking to the press at the Cannes film festival premiere of his new film Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg referred specifically to attempts to overturn Roe v Wade. “In Canada … we think everyone in the US is completely insane. I think the US has gone completely bananas, and I can’t believe what the elected officials are saying, not just about Roe v Wade, so it is strange times.”

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Rwanda plan challenged over alleged failure to identify risks for LGBTQ+ refugees

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Pre-action letter questions Home Office claims that east African country is ‘generally safe’

Priti Patel’s plan to send refugees on a one-way ticket to Rwanda is being legally challenged over the government’s alleged failure to identify risks facing vulnerable groups such as LGBTQ+ people.

A pre-action letter sent to the Home Office on behalf of the pressure group Freedom from Torture questions government claims that the east African state is “generally a safe country” for refugees.

The government’s claim that Rwanda is “generally” a “safe third country” is irrational.

It relies upon apparent pre-determination or bias.

The home secretary has breached her duty not to induce breaches of the European convention on human rights by her agents.

Removing asylum seekers to Rwanda is beyond Patel’s legal authority because it is contrary to the refugee convention.

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Albanese insists ‘we will determine our values’ after Chinese premier reaches out to new PM

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Prime minister in Tokyo says no ‘serious person’ had believed Coalition line that a Labor government would adopt a softer approach towards Beijing

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says his government will not bend to demands from China to reset the strained relationship despite overtures from Beijing in the wake of Labor’s election win.

Speaking after a meeting of the quadrilateral security dialogue (Quad) in Tokyo on Tuesday, Albanese confirmed the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, had sent a congratulatory letter to him following Saturday’s election win. The letter was first reported by Chinese state media Xinhua on Monday.

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