Category Archives: World News

Far-right AfD’s vote triples in elections in German bellwether state

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Party takes 16.5% of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, behind governing CDU and Social Democrats

Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has more than tripled its support in local elections in the country’s most populous state, a poll seen as Friedrich Merz’s first significant electoral test since he took office as chancellor four months ago.

According to exit poll results from North Rhine-Westphalia, Merz’s Christian Democrats won with 34% – about the equivalent of its historically worst result in the same poll in 2020 – while the AfD secured 16.5%.

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Rubio in Israel for talks to limit diplomatic damage over Qatar strikes

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US secretary of state says Trump ‘not happy’ about Israeli attack that targeted Hamas officials in Doha for Gaza talks

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has held talks in Israel with Benjamin Netanyahu aimed at limiting the diplomatic damage to both countries by Israel’s attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders in Qatar, its continued demolition of Gaza, and the accelerated expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli prime minister took Rubio on a tour of the Western Wall, where both men placed written prayers between the stones, before taking his American visitor underground to view archeological excavations.

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Russian drone incursion into Poland ‘was Kremlin test on Nato’

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Polish minister says Moscow sought to gauge reaction without starting war as Romania reports new incursion

Poland’s foreign minister has said the Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace was an attempt by the Kremlin to test Nato’s reactions by incremental escalations without prompting a full-scale response, as Romania became the second Nato country to report an incursion in a matter of days.

Radosław Sikorski confirmed that while the drones that entered Poland last week were capable of carrying ammunition, they were not loaded with explosives. “Interestingly, they were all duds, which suggests to me that Russia tried to test us without starting a war,” Sikorski told the Guardian in Kyiv.

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Brother of Briton jailed in India asks why UK border police are stopping him

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Gurpreet Singh Johal wants to know if stops are linked to his efforts to find out whether UK intelligence played a role in sibling’s arrest

The brother of Jagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh jailed in India, has written to the Home Office to ask why he is being repeatedly stopped at the airport by British border police.

Gurpreet Singh Johal, a Labour councillor in Dumbarton, asked if it was linked to his legal efforts to discover whether British intelligence played a role in his brother’s arrest eight years ago.

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Romania says Russian drone incursions pose ‘new challenge’ to Black Sea security

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Country’s defence ministry condemns ‘irresponsible actions’ after drone entered its airspace on Saturday

Romania has strongly condemned the entry of a Russian drone into its airspace during an attack on neighbouring Ukraine, saying Moscow’s actions pose a “new challenge” to Black Sea security.

Poland had already denounced the intrusion of Russian drones into its airspace last week, calling on Moscow to avoid further “provocations”. Polish fighter jets scrambled on Saturday in response to fresh Russian drone strikes just over the border in Ukraine.

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Medics in southern Gaza sound alarm over wave of newly displaced Palestinians

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Doctors at Nasser medical complex say it will not be able to cope with large numbers of people fleeing Gaza City

Doctors and medical staff at the largest hospital still functioning in Gaza say they will be overwhelmed by a wave of new wounded and sick patients if hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee the north of the devastated territory in the face of an intensifying Israeli offensive.

Dr Mohammed Saqr, the director of nursing at the Nasser medical complex near Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, said there were not enough staff to cope with even existing demand and that supplies of medicine and fuel were running low.

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Brazilian musician identified as victim of 1976 killing by Argentina military

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The bossa nova pianist Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior went out for cigarettes after a concert in Buenos Aires – a forensic team has finally revealed his fate

Early on 18 March 1976, Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior, a Brazilian pianist who had played alongside some of Latin America’s greatest musicians, disappeared from the streets of Buenos Aires.

For nearly 50 years, his fate has remained a mystery, sparking desperate searches, raising suspicions of government complicity, and inspiring international documentaries. Now the mystery has been solved, with forensic scientists formally identifying Tenório Júnior’s body – and confirming he was a victim of Argentina’s bloody dictatorship.

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UN condemns reported Haitian village massacre by armed gangs

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Fishing village of Labodrie reportedly set on fire after killing of a gang leader in sign of rising violence outside capital

The UN secretary-general has condemned the reported killing of at least 40 people during an attack by armed gangs in a fishing village north of Haiti’s capital.

Media in Haiti widely reported that the attack took place on Thursday night in Labodrie. It is another sign of escalating gang violence that has spread outside the capital.

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Oscar-winning Palestinian says home in West Bank raided by Israeli soldiers

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Director Basel Adra reports his property was stormed while he was at a hospital with relatives injured in settler attacks

Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra has said that Israeli soldiers have conducted a raid at his West Bank home, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.

Israeli settlers attacked his village on Saturday, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told the Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.

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Belgium prime minister attends concert of Israeli conductor axed by festival

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Bart De Wever travelled to Essen, Germany to hear performance conducted by Lahav Shani, the music director of the Israel Philharmonic

Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, has said he attended a concert by a German orchestra that was uninvited from a Belgian festival to show support for its Israeli conductor.

The cancellation of a planned performance at the Flanders festival Ghent by the Munich Philharmonic over concerns about its Israeli future chief conductor, Lahav Shani, has triggered a storm of criticism and accusations of antisemitism.

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Billion-dollar coffins? New technology could make oceans transparent and Aukus submarines vulnerable

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Quantum sensing, satellite tracking and AI are part of an accelerating arms race in detection that should prompt a re-evaluation of Australia’s defence strategy

Military history is littered with the corpses of apex predators.

The Gatling gun, the battleship, the tank. All once possessed unassailable power – then were undermined, in some cases wiped out, by the march of new technology.

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Poland deploys planes due to threat of drone strikes in nearby Ukraine

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‘Preventive operations’ included putting air defence systems on high alert and followed serious Russian incursion earlier in the week

Polish and allied aircraft have been deployed in a “preventive” operation in Poland’s airspace because of a threat of drone strikes in neighbouring areas of Ukraine, and the airport in the eastern Polish city of Lublin was closed, authorities have said.

The alert on Saturday lasted about two hours. On Wednesday multiple Russian drones had crossed into Poland, prompting Nato to send fighter jets to shoot them down, underlining long-held concerns about the expansion of Russia’s more than three-year war in Ukraine.

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Ukraine drone starts fire at one of Russia’s largest oil plants

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Head of Bashkortostan region reports second drone shot down and minor damage to Bashneft’s Ufa refinery

A Ukrainian drone has crashed into one of Russia’s largest oil-refining complexes, sparking a fire and causing minor damage, a Russian official has said.

The complex, which belongs to Russian oil company Bashneft, lies on the outskirts of the central Russian city of Ufa about 870 miles (1,400km) from the frontline in Ukraine.

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Universities around the world cut ties with Israeli academia over Gaza war

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Educational bodies from Europe to South America are boycotting Israeli institutions, though Universities UK said it did not support the action

A growing number of universities, academic institutions and scholarly bodies around the world are cutting links with Israeli academia amid claims that it is complicit in the Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 63,000 people have been killed in the territory – the majority of them civilians – with the true toll likely far higher. UN-backed experts have confirmed parts of Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble, are now in a “man-made” famine.

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British ice dancer and same-sex skating partner to compete in Finland after rule change

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Mille Colling and Emma Aalto given go-ahead to compete in qualifier for national championships next month

A British ice dancer and her skating partner are to become Finland’s first same-sex team to take part in a competition after a rule change by the country’s skating federation.

Millie Colling, 20, who was born in Gateshead and moved to Finland at the age of six, and Emma Aalto, 19, will compete in a qualifier for the national championships next month after pressing for an amendment to the rules to allow them to enter as a team.

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Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning move

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President tells Fox News ‘the radicals on the left are the problem’ and refuses to seek common way forward

Donald Trump has declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions in the wake of the assassination of his close associate, the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, preferring to cast “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as the sole problem.

In an interview on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, the US president was asked what he intended to do to heal the wounds of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” he was asked by the show’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who commented that there were radicals operating on the left and right of US politics.

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Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar shatters Gulf’s faith in US protection

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The attack in Doha upended a decades-old assumption – and left Arab leaders questioning how much they can still rely on Washington

On Thursday, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, led a funeral at the state mosque. Flanked by officials in white thobes, he prayed over six caskets – one draped in a Qatari flag and five bearing Palestinian flags.

Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Doha on Tuesday, which also killed a Qatari officer, marked an unprecedented moment for the Gulf kingdom. The attack undercut the assumption that has underpinned Qatari foreign policy for three decades and reverberated across the Arab region: be useful to the United States, and it will protect you.

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‘We took the gloves off’: ex-IDF chief confirms Gaza casualties over 200,000

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Retired general Herzi Halevi says ‘not once’ had legal advice constrained Israel’s military decisions in the strip

A former Israeli army commander, Herzi Halevi, has confirmed that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured in the war in Gaza, and that “not once” in the course of the conflict were military operations inhibited by legal advice.

Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.

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Brazilians take to the streets to celebrate Bolsonaro conviction

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Indigenous groups and other minorities praise verdict while US officials issue warnings of possible sanctions

• Operation World Cup: the murder plot at the heart of Brazil’s trial of the century

• Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years for plotting military coup in Brazil

Thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets to rejoice at Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for plotting a coup, as progressive politicians celebrated the historic move and rightwing figures linked to Donald Trump responded with anger and threats.

Chile’s leftwing president, Gabriel Boric, led regional congratulations of the decision to jail Bolsonaro for 27 years for leading a criminal organisation that sought to seize power after the far-right populist lost the 2022 election.

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