Category Archives: World News

Court ruling to remove children of UK-Australian couple living in woods divides Italy

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Decision to remove children comes after they and their parents ate poisonous mushrooms and ended up in hospital

The decision by an Italian court to remove three children being brought up in the woods from their British-Australian parents has sparked a fierce debate in the country over alternative lifestyles.

Nathan Trevallion, a former chef from Bristol, and his wife, Catherine Birmingham, a former horse-riding teacher from Melbourne, bought a dilapidated property in a wooded area in Palmoli, in the central Italian region of Abruzzo, in 2021.

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Disarray over leaked US-Russia peace plan is ideal scenario for Putin

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Ukraine has been cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and faces threat of losing its most important ally

The Kremlin has barely lifted a finger in recent days. It hasn’t needed to.

The 28-point US-Russia peace proposal, leaked to the media last week, has thrown Washington, Kyiv and European capitals into disarray, creating precisely the conditions Vladimir Putin has long sought: a negotiating table sharply tilted in the Russian president’s favour, with Ukraine cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and the threat of losing its most important ally hanging over its head.

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Venezuela accuses US of using ‘narco-terrorism’ allegations to justify ‘regime change’

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Venezuelan group known as Cartel of the Suns designated as terrorist organization despite doubts over its existence

Venezuela’s government has accused the US of peddling “ridiculous hogwash” about its supposed role in sponsoring “narco-terrorism” as Washington continued to turn up the heat on Nicolás Maduro’s regime and leftwing European politicians warned South America faced being plunged into “a torrent of bloodshed”.

On Monday, the Trump administration officially designated a Venezuelan group known as the “Cartel de los Soles” (the Cartel of the Suns) a terrorist organization – despite widespread doubts over its actual existence.

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UK rejects Nigerian request to deport former politican jailed for organ trafficking

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Ike Ekweremadu serving prison sentence after being found guilty of conspiring to exploit a man for his kidney

The UK government has rejected a request by Nigeria to deport a former senior Nigerian politician convicted of organ trafficking.

Ike Ekweremadu, 63, a former deputy president of the Nigerian senate and ally of the former president Goodluck Jonathan, is serving a sentence of nine years and eight months after being found guilty in 2023 of conspiring to exploit a man for his kidney.

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Dharmendra, Bollywood’s ‘He Man’ and one of its most enduring stars, dies at 89

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India’s prime minister among those paying tribute to celebrated actor whose career spanned six decades

Dharmendra, one of the most enduring stars of India’s Bollywood cinema, has died at the age of 89.

Born Dharam Singh Deol, but later known as Dharmendra, he rose to fame in the 1960s and became one of the most celebrated and popular stars of Indian cinema in a career that spanned six decades.

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Udo Kier, German actor who starred in 200 films spanning Lars von Trier to Ace Ventura, dies aged 81

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Actor who appeared in My Own Private Idaho, Blade, Armageddon and Dogville, as well as Madonna music videos and video games, died on Sunday

Udo Kier, the German actor who appeared in 275 roles across Hollywood and European cinema, including multiple films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Gus Van Sant and Lars von Trier, has died aged 81.

Kier died on Sunday morning, his partner Delbert McBride told Variety. The actor died in hospital in Palm Springs, California, his friend the photographer Michael Childers announced on social media. No cause of death was given.

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‘An inner duty’: the 35-year quest to bring Bach’s lost organ works to light

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Musicologist Peter Wollny chanced upon the manuscripts in 1992 and authenticating them took half of his lifetime

The best fictional detectives are famed for their intuition, an ability to spot some seemingly ineffable discrepancy. Peter Wollny, the musicologist behind last week’s “world sensational” revelation of two previously unknown works by Johann Sebastian Bach, had a funny feeling when he chanced upon two intriguing sheets of music in a dusty library in 1992.

His equivalent of the Columbo turn, from mere hunch to unravelling a secret, would take up half his life.

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US and Ukraine promise ‘updated’ peace framework after criticism of pro-Russian points in original plan

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US-Ukraine statement comes hours after European countries propose their own alternative peace

The US and Ukraine said they had created an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war with Russia, hours after European countries proposed their own radical alternative that omitted some of the pro-Russia points made in an original US-backed document that was leaked last week.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, emerged from a meeting in Switzerland late on Sunday with a Ukrainian delegation led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, saying he was “very optimistic” about the progress of the talks. A joint statement between the two countries said that any eventual deal would “fully uphold” Ukraine’s sovereignty.

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Ukrainian refugee Danylo Yavhusishyn wows Japan to win his country’s first elite sumo title

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  • 21-year-old beats grand champion Hoshoryu

  • Wrestler uses ring name Aonishiki Arata

Danylo Yavhusishyn has become the first Ukrainian to win a sumo tournament in Japan.

The 21-year-old, who fled the war in Ukraine three years ago, won the Kyushu tournament after a tie-breaking victory over grand champion Hoshoryu from Mongolia.

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ICE detained teenaged US citizen during school lunch break, family says

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Christian Jimenez, Oregon high school senior, faces possible obstruction charges after traffic stop by immigration agents

Immigration officers detained a student at a high school in Oregon during his lunch break on Friday, according to the student’s family.

Seventeen-year-old Christian Jimenez, a US citizen and senior at McMinnville high school, was driving his father’s vehicle around 12.30pm during lunch when agents from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stopped him, his older brother, Cesar Jimenez, told Oregon Live.

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Hezbollah chief of staff killed in Beirut airstrike, Israeli military says

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Militant group confirms Haytham Ali Tabatabai was killed in attack that dramatically escalates tensions in the region

Israel targeted one of Hezbollah’s most senior military commanders in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, dramatically escalating tensions with the group almost exactly a year after a ceasefire ended 14 months of clashes.

The Israeli military said several hours after the attack that Haytham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s chief of staff, was killed in the strike in Lebanese capital.

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Many prominent Maga personalities on X are based outside US, new tool reveals

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Users posing as rightwing Americans are operating internationally, per the platform’s transparency feature

Many of the most influential personalities in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement on X are based outside of the US, including Russia, Nigeria and India, a new transparency feature on the social media site has revealed.

The new tool, called “about this account,” became available on Friday to users of the Elon Musk-owned platform. It allows anyone to see where an account is located, when it joined the platform, how often its username has been changed, and how the X app was downloaded.

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Jair Bolsonaro claims ‘psychotic attack’ made him tamper with ankle monitor

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Brazil’s former president says he took a soldering iron to electronic tag as he was hallucinating that it was bugged

Brazil’s far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro has claimed he took a soldering iron to his electronic ankle monitor after having a substance-induced “psychotic attack” that caused him to hallucinate that the device was bugged.

Bolsonaro made the claim during a custody hearing on Sunday, 24 hours after he was arrested at his home in the capital, Brasília, amid suspicions he was planning to abscond to a foreign embassy to avoid being sent to jail to serve a 27-year sentence for masterminding a failed coup.

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Cyril Ramaphosa closes G20 summit after US boycott and handover row

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South African president bangs gavel after rejecting plan from US, which hosts next meeting, for him to hand over to junior official

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, closed the G20 summit in Johannesburg by banging a gavel, having rejected a US proposal for him to hand over to a relatively junior embassy official for the next summit in Florida in a year’s time.

South Africa presented the two-day event as a triumph for multilateralism but it was marred by a boycott by the US, which has repeatedly accused South Africa of discriminating against white-minority Afrikaners, a claim that has been widely discredited.

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French winemakers ‘battle for survival’ as minister prepares for crisis talks

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Vineyard owners say sales slump, Trump tariffs and worst harvest in 70 years have put producers in danger of closure

French winemakers are often accused of viewing the glass as half empty. Dire warnings about the state of the sector – one of the three pillars of the country’s economy – are a hardy perennial blamed on everything from geopolitics to a drop in the number of drinkers.

Before a crisis meeting with the agriculture minister on Monday, vineyard owners say an unprecedented series of setbacks, including some of the worst harvests in 70 years, has left many of them on their last legs.

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Gaza hospitals running out of supplies as airstrikes continue, medics say

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‘Severe lack’ in territory where Israeli strikes have killed more than 50 people and injured over 100 in recent days

Hospitals in Gaza are running out of essential supplies, with new waves of Israeli airstrikes killing more than 50 people and injuring more than 100 in recent days, medical and aid workers in the devastated Palestinian territory have said.

Medics told the Guardian on Sunday that stocks of gauze, antiseptics, thermometers and antibiotics were running low.

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Why Trump’s lavish Saudi courtship leaves Israel on the back foot

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Pageantry and trillion-dollar promises reveal how Washington’s loyalties may be tilting toward the Gulf

The White House welcome bestowed on the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was the most lavish of the Trump presidency, and a gaudily clear statement of its foreign policy priorities.

It was billed as a mere working visit, but it was more extravagant than any previous state visit. The president greeted the prince on the south lawn, the White House’s biggest stage. There were uniformed men on horses bearing flags and a flypast of fighter jets.

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Trump says Ukraine deal is not ‘final offer’ as officials gather for Geneva summit

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US president signals potential room for adjustments after Zelenskyy says proposals force Ukraine to choose between national dignity and losing the US

Donald Trump said on Saturday that his “peace plan” was “not my final offer”, after a furious backlash from Ukrainians who described it as reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler.

The US president told reporters during brief remarks at the White House: “We’d like to get to peace. It should’ve happened a long time ago … we’re trying to get it ended, one way or the other we have to get it ended.”

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Security fears rise in Nigeria after more than 300 schoolchildren kidnapped

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Christian group revises up number of students and teachers missing after one of country’s largest mass abduction

Gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 students and teachers in one of the largest mass kidnappings in Nigeria, a Christian group said on Saturday, as security fears mounted in Africa’s most populous nation.

The early Friday raid on St Mary’s co-educational school in Niger state in western Nigeria came after gunmen on Monday stormed a secondary school in neighbouring Kebbi state, abducting 25 girls.

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Jair Bolsonaro arrested after tampering with ankle tag ‘out of curiosity’

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Brazilian ex-president says he used soldering iron on device and is now in custody over fears he was going to abscond

Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has claimed he tried to damage his electronic ankle monitor “out of curiosity” after he was arrested at his villa owing to suspicions he was poised to abscond.

In a video released by the supreme court, Bolsonaro – who was recently sentenced to 27 years in prison for masterminding a military coup – can be heard admitting to a security official that he had used a soldering iron to tamper with the black tag.

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