Former first lady tells journalists her husband will be exonerated of profiting from drug trafficking
The former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández should be extradited to the US to face drug trafficking and weapons charges, a Honduran judge has ruled.
The supreme court of justice in Honduras tweeted on Wednesday that it had decided to grant the US extradition request.
Continue reading...Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says even with war in Ukraine, the world must not forget the crisis unfolding ‘out of sight’ in Ethiopia’s northern region
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged the world not to forget the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, saying that even amid the war in Ukraine there is “nowhere on Earth” where people are more at risk than the isolated region of northern Ethiopia.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, is from Tigray and has incurred the wrath of the Ethiopian government in the past after accusing it of placing the region under a de facto blockade. Prime minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has accused him of bias, and of spreading misinformation.
Continue reading...Inter-American Commission on Human Rights holds hearing on using Israeli spyware against journalists and activists
Senior human rights officials have repeated calls for a ban on the powerful Israeli spyware Pegasus until safeguards are in place to protect civilians from illegal hacking by governments.
Calls for a moratorium on the sale and use of the military-grade spyware were made on Wednesday at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) into widespread unlawful surveillance using Pegasus spyware against journalists and activists in El Salvador.
Continue reading...Ukraine is holding out in the heavily bombarded port city and even as thousands of people try to leave, others are arriving
After an airstrike flattened the school behind his house and artillery shells ripped apart a circle of neighbouring homes, Dmitry Yakhshyboyev went out to look for petrol.
His family, from seven-month-old son to parents in their 70s, had been cowering in their basement without heating, electricity or running water for two days, as Russian forces assaulted their village.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president receives standing ovation as he urges US to send more military aid and impose further sanctions
Joe Biden has denounced Vladimir Putin as a war criminal, delivering his sharpest rebuke yet of the Russian leader just hours after the Ukrainian president pleaded with Congress to provide more aid to his country.
“I think he is a war criminal,” Biden said of Putin on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, addressed the US Congress seated in a high-backed office chair with a plain white wall behind him and a prominently-displayed Ukrainian flag to his right.
He was neatly turned out with a trimmed beard and wearing what has become his characteristic combat-green tee shirt, since Russia invaded Ukraine last month and he was forced to shelter in a hidden bunker somewhere in Kyiv with his top team.
Continue reading...Analysis: Putin’s rhetoric remains uncompromising and analysts are sceptical negotiations will yield a lasting solution
As Russia has pursued its war with Ukraine, it has held parallel negotiations with Kyiv ostensibly seeking a peace deal from its own invasion of a neighbouring country.
Those talks, which appeared to be a sideshow to the continuing war, received an unexpected boost on Wednesday as both sides indicated that discussions had yielded some progress.
Continue reading...Government says 5,500 visas granted and 20,000 applications submitted
Thousands of Ukrainians are expected to arrive in the UK next week following criticisms of the slow progress of government schemes.
The refugees minister, Richard Harrington, told a parliamentary committee that sponsors who had identified someone who wished to come to the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme would be able to apply from 18 March.
Continue reading...PM accused of ‘trading blood for oil’ as he seeks increased Middle East output to lessen reliance on Russia
Boris Johnson has hinted Saudi Arabia could speed up oil production to help calm spiralling energy prices for Britons, as he praised the country for improving its human rights record despite three more people being executed during his visit.
With pressure rising at home over a cost of living crisis compounded by western countries trying to end their reliance on Russian imports, the UK prime minister made a dash to the Middle East to urge leaders to help stabilise oil prices by ramping up supply.
Continue reading...Relatives of the two Britons freed from Iran express gratitude as they head home
Iran’s release of the British-Iranian nationals Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been greeted with joy by their families, with Richard Ratcliffe saying: “Homecoming is a journey, not an arrival.”
Ratcliffe, who has been at the forefront of campaigning for his wife’s release since she was imprisoned in Tehran after going there to visit family, told broadcasters that there would have to be a recovery process, adding: “You can’t get back the time that’s gone.”
Continue reading...At its peak Monte Albán was home to 17,000 people, despite a lack of water supplies or fertile land
Greater equality than that experienced in other Mesoamerican cities may have been key to the successes of an ancient Zapotec community in Mexico which survived far longer than any contemporaneous metropolis, a new study suggests.
The ruins of Monte Albán – which include pyramids, canals and a ballgame court – sit on a semi-arid hilltop above the city of Oaxaca. At its peak the city, founded in 500BC, was the administrative and religious capital for the Zapotec people, and home to 17,000 people, despite a lack of water supplies or fertile land.
Continue reading...Tsunami warning cancelled after quake cut power to 2m homes and damaged some buildings
A powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Fukushima in north-east Japan on Wednesday evening, leaving four dead, and plunging more than 2m homes in the Tokyo area into darkness.
The region was devastated by a deadly 9.0 quake and tsunami 11 years ago that also triggered nuclear plant meltdowns, spewing massive radiation that still makes some parts uninhabitable.
Continue reading...Prosecutors have launched a series of criminal cases including one involving an alleged attempt to smear a congressional candidate
US prosecutors have accused Chinese government agents of trying to spy on and intimidate dissidents living in the United States, including a congressional candidate, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in New York.
The US justice department convened a Washington news conference to detail the accusations in a series of criminal cases.
Continue reading...Armando Linares López gunned down six weeks after mourning the murder of a colleague in the same city in Michoacán state
The murder crisis gripping Mexican journalism has claimed another life after a journalist was gunned down in the conflict-stricken state of Michoacán just six weeks after he announced the murder of a colleague.
Armando Linares López, the director of a news website called Michoacán Monitor, was reportedly shot at least eight times on Tuesday afternoon outside his home in the city of Zitácuro. He is the eighth Mexican journalist to be killed in 2022, compared with nine in the whole of last year.
Continue reading...Jonathan and Diana Toebbe are accused of trying to sell secrets to Brazil, which cooperated in an FBI operation against them
The country that an American spy couple tried to sell nuclear submarine secrets to last year has been revealed to be Brazil.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe, a suburban couple who lived in Annapolis, Maryland, were arrested last October and charged with attempting to sell the design of US nuclear-powered submarines to someone they thought was a representative of a foreign power – but who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.
Continue reading...Sharon Lee Gallegos, found partially buried in a wash in 1960, was allegedly abducted from her grandmother’s New Mexico house
A little girl whose burned remains were found over 60 years ago in the Arizona desert has finally been identified.
The Yavapai county sheriff’s office said Tuesday the girl had been identified as four-year-old Sharon Lee Gallegos of New Mexico.
Continue reading...Abu Zubaydah, tortured at CIA ‘black sites’ in six different countries, has right to sue UK government
UK intelligence services who allegedly asked the CIA to put questions to a detainee who was being tortured in “black sites” were subject to the law of England and Wales and not that of the countries in which he was being held, the court of appeal has ruled.
The three appeal judges were asked to decide whether Abu Zubaydah, who was subjected to extreme mistreatment and torture at secret CIA “black sites” in six different countries, has the right to sue the UK government in England.
Zubaydah had no control whatever over his location and in all probability no knowledge of it either.
His location was irrelevant to the UK intelligence services and may have been unknown to them.
The claimant was undoubtedly rendered to the six countries in question precisely because this would enable him to be detained and tortured outside the laws and legal systems of those countries.
Continue reading...Women fear use of sexual violence as a ‘tactic’ against those protesting the coup, after attack on 18-year-old in Khartoum
Demonstrations took place across Sudan on Tuesday in protest at the alleged gang-rape of a teenager by security forces.
The 18-year-old said she was attacked in Khartoum on Monday by up to nine men dressed in the uniforms of the security forces involved in dispersing regular protests held across Sudan since October’s military coup.
Continue reading...Interior minister says government, faced with major crisis before April presidential election, open to talks
Paris could offer “autonomy” to Corsica, the French government has said, suggesting the state might be willing to loosen its historic, centralised grip on the Mediterranean island as it struggles to calm violent protests.
“We are ready to go as far as autonomy – there you go, the word has been said,” the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, told the regional newspaper Corse Matin before a two-day visit, that comes after two weeks of rioting in which a hundred people were injured and public buildings and police were attacked with homemade explosive devices.
Continue reading...The UK government released $530m of its debts to Iran, ahead of Tehran’s release of two British-Iranian prisoners, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The prisoners are Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who had been detained by Iran for six years, and Anousheh Ashouri.
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