Almost 6% of global workforce will be cut over next two years, including 12,000 white-collar professionals
Nestlé has said it will cut 16,000 jobs over the next two years as the owner of KitKat and Nescafé attempts to reduce costs and increase sales.
The Swiss-headquartered multinational said the cuts would include 12,000 white-collar professionals and 4,000 in its manufacturing and supply chain, close to 6% of Nestlé’s global workforce.
Continue reading...Since Alina Sarnatska’s first play premiered a year ago, she has documented wartime Ukraine with unflinching frankness
Eighteen months ago, Alina Sarnatska was serving as a combat medic on Ukraine’s frontline – including in the hellish battle for Bakhmut – and had barely been to the theatre.
Six months later, she was preparing to watch the premiere of her first play in Kyiv. Now Sarnatska, 38, has several dramas under her belt and is emerging as one of Ukraine’s most powerful voices in the theatre.
Continue reading...Esther Njoki says family has seen ‘big change’ under Labour, after long fight for justice over aunt’s 2012 death in Kenya
The niece of Agnes Wanjiru, who was killed in Kenya, said she hopes the former British soldier charged with her aunt’s murder will be extradited while the Labour government is still in power.
On her first trip outside Kenya, Esther Njoki travelled to London, where she was invited to parliament to meet the defence secretary, John Healey, whom she urged not to delay the potentially years-long extradition process.
Continue reading...Move marks escalation in Maduro pressure campaign as president says US mulling strikes on Venezuelan territory
Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in his administration’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government.
Trump further suggested he was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory, a dramatic step that would go beyond a series of recent lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean, which Democrats and United Nations experts have forcefully condemned as unlawful.
Continue reading...Outside the supreme court, protesters invoked the legacy of civil rights giants with a key Voting Rights Act plank at stake
Wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “We won’t Black down”, Wanda Mosley had made the trip from Atlanta. “I had to be here because the Voting Rights Act is on life support,” the 55-year-old explained. “Today the court will synthesise the arguments and decide if they’re going to kill it – or allow it to live.”
Mosley was among a few hundred protesters who gathered in warm October sunshine outside the supreme court on Wednesday. Inside the building, whose facade was obscured by scaffolding, justices were weighing arguments in a case involving Louisiana electoral districts and section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Continue reading...Destruction or ongoing control by Israeli forces means roads to areas worst hit by hunger are virtually impassable
Even if the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza opens on Thursday, NGOs face big challenges distributing supplies to Gaza City and its surroundings in the north, the areas worst hit by hunger, experts say.
Key roads are virtually impassable due to the massive destruction across the devastated territory – or are still controlled by Israeli forces. Any truck that breaks down is likely to be instantly looted.
Continue reading...Richard Bilodeau, 63, charged with two counts of murder in 1984 death of Theresa Fusco, 16, of Long Island
Four decades after prosecutors sent the wrong men to prison for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl from Long Island, New York, DNA obtained from a discarded straw has led to the indictment of a new suspect.
A Nassau county grand jury on Tuesday indicted Richard Bilodeau, 63, of Center Moriches, on two counts of murder in the death of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco, who disappeared after leaving her part-time job at a Lynbrook roller-skating rink in November 1984. Her nude body was found weeks after the assault, buried under leaves in a wooded area near the rink.
Continue reading...Family fears for 66-year-old’s life after assault while he was being transferred between prisons
Palestine’s most popular leader, Marwan Barghouti, was beaten unconscious by Israeli prison guards and his family fears for his life, his son has said, citing evidence given by former Palestinian detainees released this week as part of the ceasefire deal.
Arab Barghouti said his 66-year-old father was assaulted by eight guards on 14 September as he was being transferred between Ganot and Megiddo prisons.
Continue reading...German authorities issue 204 charges against 21-year-old suspect, alleged to be part of wider network of abusers
A man accused of luring children worldwide into a sadistic online abuse network has been charged by German prosecutors with hundreds of crimes, including murder, for the livestreamed death of a 13-year-old American.
Using the pseudonym “White Tiger”, the 21-year-old man from Hamburg is alleged to have victimised more than 30 children with online sexual abuse, manipulation and exploitation as a part of a virtual network of abusers known as “764”.
Continue reading...Jean Laprade ordered to pay $3,500 in legal saga of ‘hijacked planes’, Interpol red alerts and ‘inappropriate use’ of AI
A Quebec man has been ordered to pay C$5,000 (US$3,562) for submitting artificial intelligence hallucinations as part of his legal defense, a move the judge warned was “highly reprehensible” and threatened to undermine integrity in the legal system.
Justice Luc Morin of Quebec superior court levied the fine on Jean Laprade in a decision released on 1 October, capping a legal saga the judge said “contains several elements worthy of a successful movie script”, including a “hijacked plane passing through several complacent airports”, Interpol red alerts and the “inappropriate use of artificial intelligence” by Laprade.
Continue reading...Researchers say carbon emissions change in Queensland tropical rainforests may have global climate implications
Australian tropical rainforest trees have become the first in the world to switch from being a carbon sink to an emissions source due to increasingly extreme temperatures and drier conditions.
The change, which applies to the trees’ trunks and branches but not the roots system, began about 25 years ago, according to new research published in Nature.
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Continue reading...Ahmed al-Sharaa in effort to diversify alliances while Putin seeks to safeguard military interests in Syria
The Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, travelled to Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Vladimir Putin, marking their first meeting since the fall of the Kremlin ally Bashar al-Assad and his subsequent exile in Russia.
The talks underscored Moscow’s efforts to safeguard its military foothold in Syria and forge relations with the new rulers in Damascus, with both sides taking a pragmatic approach despite having been enemies only a year ago.
Continue reading...Two sides declare ceasefire after Islamabad carries out retaliatory strikes on Kabul and Kandahar province
Dozens of soldiers and civilians have been killed after fresh clashes broke out along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and Islamabad carried out retaliatory airstrikes on the Afghan capital, Kabul, and Kandahar province.
The two sides declared a ceasefire by Wednesday night after the latest outbreak of violence, which came after the deadliest cross-border clashes in years over the weekend.
Continue reading...Sébastien Lecornu may have lived to see another day, but this crise de régime could yet prove terminal for the Fifth Republic
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In October 2022, when Rishi Sunak moved into 10 Downing St, he became the fifth British prime minister to take up the office in six years.
Unleashed on the UK by Brexit, this was unprecedented political turmoil. So how might we describe what is happening in France, now on its fifth (or sixth, depending how you count) premier in two years – three of them in the past 10 months?
Continue reading...Parties blame each other after bill halted at last minute, as fears grow over voluntary service and lottery idea is vetoed
Germany’s ruling coalition is locked in a furious row over how to plug severe manpower gaps in the country’s military as it seeks to fulfil Nato obligations and prepare for the looming threat from Russia.
A scheme agreed by the governing parties over the summer under a plan laid out by the popular defence minister, Boris Pistorius of the Social Democrats (SPD), would have relied on voluntary recruitment to draw tens of thousands of young men to military service.
Continue reading...Odinga, who ran five times for presidency and had profound influence on Kenyan politics, has died in India
The veteran Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga, who ran five times for the presidency and had a profound influence on the country’s politics, has died aged 80 in India.
Odinga was in the southern city of Kochi for treatment. The Press Trust of India news agency reported that he had a cardiac arrest during a morning walk.
Continue reading...Fast-fashion retailer records 20% growth in sales and fees to $37bn but big hit is expected from US changes to import tax rules
Shein has reported a 20% rise in global revenues to $37bn (£27.7bn) but profits have fallen as the fast-fashion retailer faced increased costs, even before it felt the impact of recent changes to US tax laws.
The Singaporean parent company of the rapidly growing retailer said pre-tax profits had fallen by 13% to $1.3bn last year from $1.5bn in 2023 after an increase in selling and marketing costs, according to new accounts.
Continue reading...Habit of rising early for live streams growing rapidly, suggesting Brazil is testing ground for religious influencers
Psychologist Cláudia Rodrigues de Oliveira Barbosa, 54, needs to be at work by 7.40am, but she wakes up at 3.40am – not because she has a lengthy commute, but to watch a “dawn prayer” livestream on YouTube.
She is one of the millions of Brazilians who tune in to the 4am sermons of Catholic friar Gilson da Silva Pupo Azevedo, 38, known as Frei Gilson, who has recently averaged an impressive 2m daily views for each video.
Continue reading...The city – the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the west of the country – has withstood more than 500 days of attacks by paramilitary RSF
The besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher has been declared “uninhabitable” with new data indicating most homes are destroyed and critical levels of malnourishment among people trapped there.
The stark assessment comes as the city endures constant artillery and drone attacks, shoehorning its 250,000 starving people into a shrinking urban enclave.
Continue reading...Legislative change comes five years after treaty suspended in response to city’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists
Exiled Hong Kong dissidents say they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the city could put them in greater danger, saying Hong Kong authorities will use any pretext to pursue them.
An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to the government crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, and its imposition of a Beijing-designed national security law.
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