Category Archives: World News

Primetime January 6 hearing shows set-piece TV can still pack a punch

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First of public Capitol attack hearings delivered precision and panache – and a narrative arc designed for maximum effect

It was one of the more unexpected takeaways of the night: in the age of six-second videos and frenetic social media posts around the clock, primetime set-piece television can still land a punch.

The first of the public hearings from the US congressional committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington by extremist supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January last year was delivered with all the choreographed panache of an old-school TV spectacular or the Super Bowl.

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Home Office misled refugees about UN involvement in Rwanda plans, court told

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Letters to asylum seekers assured them UNHCR was ‘closely involved’ in deportation scheme, high court hears

The United Nations refugee agency has made a dramatic intervention to try to halt Priti Patel’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

In a late submission of evidence, the UNHCR claimed the home secretary misled refugees over the organisation’s support for the plan. The agency has also said the scheme failed to meet the required standards of “legality and appropriateness” for transferring asylum seekers from one country to another.

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Knee problem forces Pope Francis to cancel Africa trip

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Pontiff, 85, had planned to visit Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan in early July

Pope Francis has scrapped a trip to Africa owing to an ongoing problem with his knee, raising further scrutiny about the 85-year-old pontiff’s health.

The Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said the planned visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan in early July had been cancelled “at the request of his doctors in order not to jeopardise the results of the therapy that he is undergoing for his knee” and would be rescheduled to a later date.

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Indigenous groups scour forests and rivers for Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

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Indigenous activists have been searching for the missing pair since just hours after they vanished, with support from armed members of the military police

Warm rain lashed the speedboat as it barrelled south towards the spot where Binin Matis’s mentor vanished without a trace.

“He was like a father to me,” said the 31-year-old Indigenous leader as his vessel advanced to the U-shaped bend where Bruno Pereira was last seen. “Now he’s gone, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

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China calls theory that Covid originated in Chinese lab ‘politically motivated lie’

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WHO report has said origins of virus are still unknown and recommended further investigation

China has repeated its assertion the theory that the Covid-19 pandemic began with a leak from a Chinese laboratory is “a politically motivated lie”, after the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended continued investigations this week.

“The lab leak theory is totally a lie concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes, which has nothing to do with science,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing on Friday.

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Australian soap opera Neighbours wraps up filming after 37 years

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Show shared final photo of cast and crew on final day of filming when ‘tears were shed’

Neighbours has shared a final photo of its cast and crew after filming wrapped on the last scene of the long-running Australian soap opera.

The show’s executive producer revealed tears were shed on the final day of filming but feels its 37-year run is an “incredible achievement” that should be celebrated.

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Cholera warning from Mariupol mayor – as it happened

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This blog is closed. You can catch up on the week in Ukraine here. Live coverage will resume later.

The UK’s foreign secretary Liz Truss will raise the case of Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, the two British men sentenced to death by a pro-Russian court in occupied Ukraine, when she speaks to Ukraine’s foreign secretary Dmytro Kuleba later today, PA Media reports.

Truss has already called it a “sham judgement” and insisted it has “absolutely no legitimacy”.

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Xi Jinping says ‘persistence is victory’ as Covid restrictions return to Shanghai and Beijing

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Both cities back on high alert, with new lockdowns in Shanghai , and the shutdown of entertainment venues in Beijing

Xi Jinping has reiterated China’s commitment to zero-Covid, declaring “persistence is victory”, as Shanghai and Beijing were hit with new lockdowns, shutdowns, and mass testing drives just a week after the cities celebrated the easing of restrictions.

In response to China’s worst outbreak of the pandemic, Shanghai spent months under an arduous and strict citywide lockdown, while Beijing authorities imposed localised lockdowns, venue and public transport shutdowns, and work-from-home orders. In the last week both had begun easing restrictions, with authorities praising the containment of the community outbreaks of the Omicron variant.

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Home Office tried to ‘sanitise’ staff education module on colonialism

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Disagreements have led to delay in course rollout as civil servants think empire material ‘too controversial’

Civil servants have attempted to “sanitise” a Home Office teaching module on race, empire and colonialism, according to those involved in devising a mandatory course on British history for the department’s 36,000 employees.

Disagreements have led to a year-long delay in the rollout of the project, which was due to be launched in June 2021. Home Office civil servants are understood to be nervous that some of the proposed material addressing issues of race, colonialism and empire is “too controversial” and have urged academics to tone down some of the content.

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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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