Category Archives: World News

Janjaweed militia blamed for attacks that left at least 200 dead in Darfur

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Death toll likely to rise, say witnesses to indiscriminate attacks on Kreinik and El Geneina by Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces

At least 200 people are now known to have died in West Darfur in the latest attack on civilians and local forces blamed on Janjaweed militia.

Darfur, the semi-arid western region of Sudan where a vicious civil war erupted in 2003, has seen a new outbreak of fighting over the past few months as rival groups clash over water and grazing land, shortages of which are being exacerbated by the climate crisis.

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Ukraine apologises after backlash over Hirohito image in anti-fascism video

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Wartime emperor removed from video on Russia’s invasion, which also featured Hitler and Mussolini, after angry reaction from Japan

Ukraine’s government has apologised after it included a photograph of Japan’s wartime emperor, Hirohito, in an anti-fascism video alongside images of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Officials removed Hirohito from the video after pressure from the Japanese government, which has imposed sanctions on Russia, provided $300m (£235m) in loans for Ukraine and accepted hundreds of refugees.

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Jeff Bezos questions China’s influence over Elon Musk’s Twitter

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Amazon founder raises concerns after Tesla boss strikes $44bn deal to buy social media platform

Jeff Bezos has questioned whether China will lean on Elon Musk’s Tesla business to quell criticism of Beijing on Twitter.

The world’s second richest man posted a tweet raising concerns over potential Beijing influence on Twitter several hours after the Tesla chief executive, and current holder of the No 1 wealth spot, reached a $44bn (£34bn) deal with the Twitter board to buy the influential social media platform.

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Three endangered Sumatran tigers found dead in traps in Indonesia

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Investigation underway to find cause of death of two female and one male tiger in East Aceh, caught in traps often used to catch wild boar

Three endangered Sumatran tigers have been found dead after being caught in traps on Indonesia’s Sumatra island.

One female tiger was found dead, her head almost severed and a snare still stuck in her leg, near a palm oil plantation in Indonesia’s East Aceh district on Sunday. Five hundred metres away, the bodies of a male and female tiger were also found, both with leg injuries, according to local police chief Hendra Sukmana.

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Disney is refusing to cut LGBTQ scene in Doctor Strange 2, Saudi Arabia says

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Official denies Marvel film is banned but says kingdom ‘still trying’ to get Disney to cut 12 seconds referring to lesbian character with two mothers

Saudi Arabia has asked Disney to cut “LGBTQ references” from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness before it can be screened in the kingdom, an official said on Monday – but denied earlier reports that the film has been banned.

Disney has so far declined the requested edits to the Doctor Strange sequel, slated for release around the world next week. The cuts amount to “barely 12 seconds” in which a lesbian character, America Chavez, played by the actor Xochitl Gomez, refers to her “two moms”, according to Nawaf Alsabhan, Saudi Arabia’s general supervisor of cinema classification.

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Spanish royal palace reveals personal assets of King Felipe VI to be €2.6m

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Felipe renounced inheritance from his father, Juan Carlos, who abdicated after financial scandals

Spain’s royal palace has unveiled King Felipe VI’s personal wealth for the first time, saying it amounted to €2.6m (£2.2m).

The announcement late on Monday came as Spain’s leftist government said it would pass a decree to “strengthen the transparency, accountability, efficiency” of the scandal-hit royal household “in line with the principles that have presided” during Felipe’s reign.

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Trump to be fined $10,000 a day after New York judge finds him in contempt – as it happened

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A New York judge on Monday held former president Donald Trump in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents in the state attorney general’s civil probe into his business practices, Reuters reports.

The decision relates to Trump’s non-compliance in a case brought by New York state attorney general Letitia James.

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Pentagon chief’s Russia remarks show shift in US’s declared aims in Ukraine

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Defense secretary Lloyd Austin said he ‘wants to see Russia weakened’ – a sign Washington now defines its goals differently

The US defense secretary’s declaration that Washington wanted to see Russia weakened militarily and unable to recover quickly, marks a shift in Washington’s declared aims underlying its military support for Ukraine.

At a press conference in Poland after a surprise visit to Kyiv, Lloyd Austin was asked if he would now define US goals differently from those set out soon after the Russian invasion. In response, he started out with the established administration line about helping Ukraine retain its sovereignty and defend its territory.

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Texas death row prisoner Melissa Lucio granted stay of execution

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Mexican American woman, 52, who was due to be put to death on Wednesday, wins time for court to consider new evidence

The Texas court of criminal appeals has issued a stay of execution for Melissa Lucio, the Mexican-American woman who was set to be judicially killed within 48 hours, ordering a lower court to consider new evidence of her innocence in the death of her two-year-old daughter Mariah.

The court issued its order on Monday as the final clock was ticking on Lucio’s transfer to the death chamber. She would have been the first Hispanic woman executed by Texas.

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Investigation opened into claims of abuse on Dutch version of The Voice

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Accusations of ‘sexually transgressive behaviour’ and abuse of power cast shadow over original version of popular talent show

Dutch prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into sexual abuse allegations around the talent show The Voice of Holland, saying four suspects are under investigation.

Accusations of “sexually transgressive behaviour” and abuse of power rocked the Netherlands in January, in the country’s first major #MeToo scandal.

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Russia bombs five railway stations in central and western Ukraine

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Casualties unknown after morning airstrikes fell within an hour of each other, say officials

Five railway stations in central and western Ukraine were hit by Russian airstrikes in the space of an hour on Monday, as the war ground on relentlessly in the south and east of the country.

Oleksander Kamyshin, the head of Ukrainian Railways, said five train stations came under fire, causing an unspecified number of casualties, as most of Ukraine was placed under an unusually long air raid warning for two hours on Monday morning.

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Spectre of polio returns to haunt Pakistan as baby boy is left paralysed

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First case in a year sparks fears of new outbreak despite success of national programme to wipe out the disease

Pakistan has confirmed its first case of polio after more than a year, damaging the country’s hopes of eradicating the virus. Health officials have announced that a baby boy in North Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan, is paralysed after contracting polio.

Dr Shahzad Baig, a coordinator with the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme, confirmed the “deeply saddening” case.

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Canada: increase in asylum seekers after Covid restrictions blocked border entry

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Numbers ticking up again after Canadian border police had refused entry to all asylum seekers to try to stop Covid spread

Snowy northern winters tend to see a drop in asylum seekers crossing from the United States into Canada at Roxham Road in Quebec. Not this past winter.

In December, the number of asylum seekers entering Canada outside formal land border crossings reached its highest point since August 2017, government statistics show.

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Mali jihadists claim capture of fighter from Russia’s Wagner group

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Islamist group says it captured mercenary from Kremlin-linked private security firm

A jihadist group in Mali claims to have captured a fighter from the Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenary group reportedly fighting Islamist militants in the west African country.

“In the first week of April, [we] captured a soldier of the Russian Wagner forces in the Segou region in central Mali,” the GSIM (the Group to Support Islam and Muslims) said in a statement sent to AFP overnight.

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Hong Kong’s Human Rights Press Awards scrapped over security law fears

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Foreign Correspondent’s Club’s decision sparks outrage from journalists and resignations from press freedom committee

Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club has scrapped its annual human rights press awards just days before it was due to announce winners, out of fear it would violate the city’s wide-ranging national security law.

The decision sparked a number of resignations from the club’s press freedom committee, and public criticism from journalists and former award winners, who described the move as sad, and evidence that it could no longer serve in its mission to defend the press.

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Russia-Ukraine war: about 15,000 Russian troops killed since start of invasion, says UK; Nato is ‘in essence engaged in war with Russia’, says Lavrov – live

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UK defence secretary says, alongside death toll, Russians have lost over 2,000 armoured vehicles; Russian foreign minister says western weapons are a ‘legitimate target’

The visit of US secretary of state Antony Blinken and US defence secretary Lloyd Austin to Kyiv had been kept tightly under wraps in advance for security reasons. Some images from the meeting have been sent to us via the newswires.

The US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has just been speaking to the media at the Poland-Ukraine border. He has been meeting officials from Ukraine. He told reporters:

Our focus in the meeting was to talk about those things that would enable us to win the current battle and also build for tomorrow. We talked about security force assistance. And we talked about training.

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Large fires break out at Russian oil depots near Ukraine border

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Russian state media reports fires at civilian and military depots in Bryansk, which are potentially an act of sabotage by Kyiv

Large fires broke out early on Monday at two oil depots in the Russian city of Bryansk near the border with Ukraine, in a potential act of sabotage by Kyiv.

Russian state media said the first fire occurred at a civilian facility in Bryansk holding 10,000 tons of fuel, followed by a second fire at a military fuel depot holding 5,000 tons.

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Germany’s SPD calls on Gerhard Schröder to quit party over Russia links

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Former chancellor says he has no intention of resigning his seats on boards of Russian energy firms

The co-leader of Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD) has urged the former chancellor Gerhard Schröder to hand in his party membership after he made clear in an interview that he had no intention to resign from his seats on the boards of Russian energy companies over the war in Ukraine.

Schröder, who was Germany’s head of government from 1998 to 2005, presides over the board of the Russian oil company Rosneft and is chairman of the shareholder committee of pipeline company Nord Stream.

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Evidence some Ukrainian women raped before being killed, say doctors

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Forensic specialists carrying out autopsies north of Kyiv say they ‘still have hundreds of bodies to examine’

Forensic doctors carrying out postmortem examinations on bodies in mass graves north of Kyiv say they have found evidence some women were raped before being killed by Russian forces.

“We already have a few cases which suggest that these women had been raped before being shot to death,” said Vladyslav Pirovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor who with a team of coroners has carried out dozens of autopsies on residents from Bucha, Irpin and Borodianka who died during Russia’s month-long occupation of the area.

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