Category Archives: World News

Alleged Wagner Group fighters accused of murdering civilians in Ukraine

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Belarusian pair are first international mercenaries to face war crimes charges since invasion began

Two alleged Wagner Group fighters from Belarus have been accused of murdering civilians near Kyiv, making them the first international mercenaries to face war crimes charges in Ukraine.

Ukrainian prosecutors late on Tuesday released the names and photographs of eight men wanted for alleged war crimes – including murder and torture – in the village of Motyzhyn. Several are believed to have fought in Syria.

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‘It seems this heat will take our lives’: Pakistan city fearful after hitting 51C

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Residents of Jacobabad say loss of trees and water facilities makes record-breaking temperatures unbearable

Muhammad Akbar, 40, sells dried chickpeas on a wheelbarrow in Jacobabad, and has suffered heatstroke three times in his life.

But now, he says, the heat is getting worse. “In those days there were many trees in the whole city and there was no shortage of water and we had other facilities so we could easily beat the heat. But now there are no trees or other facilities including water, due to which the heat is becoming unbearable. I’m scared that this heat will take our lives in the coming years.”

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Russian assault on eastern Ukraine threatens to encircle Sievierodonetsk

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Zelenskiy calls situation in Donbas ‘extremely difficult’ as Russia tries to carve up Ukrainian-held territory

Russian forces have launched fresh assaults on towns in eastern Ukraine, with the city of Sievierodonetsk increasingly in danger of being totally encircled.

The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said delays in arrival of western arms to the frontline had left Kyiv “catastrophically short of heavy weapons”.

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Xi Jinping defends China’s human rights record to visiting UN commissioner

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Leader warns against using issue as ‘excuse to interfere in internal affairs of other countries’ as Michelle Bachelet goes to Xinjiang

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has spoken with the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, as she visited the Xinjiang region, warning against the politicisation of human rights as an “excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries” and defending his government’s record.

It comes amid renewed defensiveness in Beijing after the publication of a significant data leak from Xinjiang’s security apparatus, including mugshots of thousands of detained Uyghurs and internal documents outlining shoot-to-kill policies for those who try to escape.

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Egypt says climate finance must be top of agenda at Cop27 talks

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Host of November’s summit wants focus to be on ‘moving from pledges to implementation’

Financial assistance for developing countries must be at the top of the agenda for UN climate talks this year, the host country, Egypt, has made clear, as governments will be required to follow through on promises made at the Cop26 summit last year.

Egypt will host Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in November. The talks will take place in the shadow of the war in Ukraine, as well as rising energy and food prices around the world, leaving rich countries grappling with a cost-of-living crisis and poor countries struggling with debt mountains.

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Médecins Sans Frontières condemned for ‘profiting from exploitative images’

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Medical charity criticised for using images that ‘endanger and exploit children’ amid row over photos from DRC identifying child rape survivor

Doctors, photographers, human rights activists and academics have written to Médecins Sans Frontières to raise concerns that the medical charity is exploiting the trauma of vulnerable patients to promote its work.

In an open letter to the international president and MSF board, almost 50 signatories, who include current and former staff, allege that the aid organisation has commissioned, published and allowed the sale of photographs that endanger and exploit vulnerable black people, including children.

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New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern responds to Texas school shooting

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Prime minister says after 2019 Christchurch massacre, country made a ‘pragmatic’ decision to get guns off streets: ‘We saw something that wasn’t right and we acted’

New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern says her country’s swift change to gun laws after the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch was a “pragmatic” response, where “we saw something that wasn’t right and we acted on it”.

The prime minister was speaking as her visit to the United States coincided with the mass killing of 19 children at a school in Uvalde, Texas.

Ardern appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which was filmed shortly after the Uvalde shooting. “When I watch from afar and see events such as this today, it’s not as a politician. I see them just as a mother,” an emotional Ardern said. “I’m so sorry for what has happened here.”

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North Korea fires suspected ICBM amid signs of preparation for nuclear test

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South Korea calls launches ‘grave provocation’ and detects experiment that suggests forthcoming nuclear test

North Korea has fired three ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, including one believed to have long-range capabilities, the South Korean military has said, a day after Joe Biden ended his first presidential visit to Asia.

Hours after the missile tests, South Korea said it had detected signs North Korea had conducted an experiment with a detonation device in preparation for a possible nuclear test, according to Yonhap news agency.

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‘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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