Campana Gallery is temporarily shut due to weaknesses in beams supporting floor above
The Louvre has temporarily closed one of its galleries as a precaution after an audit revealed structural weaknesses in some of the beams in the building.
The Campana Gallery, which houses nine rooms dedicated to ancient Greek ceramics, will be shut while investigations are conducted into “certain beams supporting the floors of the second floor” above it, a statement issued on Monday said.
Continue reading...President attempts to save face politically after pressuring Republicans to back off their pushes to release files
Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to back the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, an abrupt reversal, is a rare instance of the president being unable to tame his Maga base and being instead forced to accede to it.
Many Republicans are expected to support a vote in the US House this week to force the justice department to release the files. Once the measure passes, it would still need approval in the US Senate, where 13 Republican senators would need to join with all 47 Democrats to approve it.
Continue reading...Hasina sentenced in absentia by court in Dhaka over deadly crackdown on student-led uprising last year
Bangladesh’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Dhaka for crimes against humanity over a deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising last year.
A three-judge bench of the country’s international crimes tribunal convicted Hasina of crimes including incitement, orders to kill and inaction to prevent atrocities as she oversaw a crackdown on anti-government protesters last year.
Continue reading...Experts believe decision is designed to pressure Venezuela’s leader into stepping down with threat of military force
The US has said it will designate a putative Venezuelan drug cartel allegedly led by Nicolás Maduro as a foreign terrorist organization, as the Trump administration sent more mixed messages over its crusade against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader.
The move to target the already proscribed group, the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), was announced by Marco Rubio on Sunday. “Headed by the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro, the group has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated FTOs as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe,” the US secretary of state tweeted, generating excitement among hardline adversaries of Maduro who interpreted the announcement as proof Washington was preparing to intensify its push to force the South American dictator from power.
Continue reading...Mick Meaney made global headlines when he beat world record in 1968, but returned to Ireland penniless
They were known as burial artists – people who had themselves buried alive in macabre feats of endurance – and Mick Meaney resolved to be the best there ever was.
It was 1968 and the Irish labourer had barely a pound to his name but he believed that if he stayed underground in a coffin longer than anyone else the world would remember his name.
Continue reading...Abdalmonim Alrabea has appeared in hundreds of videos in which he expresses support for paramilitary group accused of committing genocide
A British citizen based in Sheffield appeared in a TikTok live broadcast laughing along while a notorious fighter from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group boasted about participating in mass killings in the city of El Fasher.
The video, broadcast on 27 October, is just one of hundreds posted to social media in which 44-year-old Abdalmonim Alrabea expresses support for the RSF and the ethnically targeted atrocities it has committed in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
Continue reading...Analysis shows small hike in populations of insect-eating species after 2018 ruling, but full recovery may take decades
Insect-eating bird populations in France appear to be making a tentative recovery after a ban on bee-harming pesticides, according to the first study to examine how wildlife is returning in Europe.
Neonicotinoids are the world’s most common class of insecticides, widely used in agriculture and for flea control in pets. By 2022, four years after the European Union banned neonicotinoid use in fields, researchers observed that France’s population of insect-eating birds had increased by 2%-3%. These included blackbirds, blackcaps and chaffinches, which feed on insects as adults and as chicks.
Continue reading...Strike comes as navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier arrives in Caribbean Sea and president says US may open talks with Venezuelan leader
The United States conducted another attack on an alleged drug trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific on Saturday, killing three people aboard, the Pentagon said on Sunday.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” the US Southern Command announced in a post on social media.
Continue reading...Trump administration has made Democratic-led city its latest target despite fierce objections from local leaders
A top border patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on Sunday as Charlotte residents reported a surge of encounters with federal immigration agents near churches and apartment complexes.
The Trump administration has made the Democratic-led city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement crackdown it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and the fact that crime rates in the city are steadily declining.
Continue reading...Move threatens to throw open parts of secretive legal battle on Channel island about ex-Chelsea owner’s wealth
The former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is making a claim of “conspiracy” against the government of Jersey after the crown dependency launched a criminal investigation into allegations of corruption and money laundering in connection with the original source of the oligarch’s wealth.
The latest move threatens to throw open parts of a secretive legal battle on the Channel island about the tycoon’s rise to become one of the world’s richest people, which emerged in September after a Switzerland federal criminal court ordered the release of a cache of Swiss banking records requested by the Jersey attorney general.
Continue reading...Survivors group had called on firm Felzmann to ‘show some basic decency’ and halt ‘cynical and shameless’ event
Poland’s foreign minister said on Sunday that an “offensive” auction of Holocaust artefacts in Germany has been cancelled, relaying information from his German counterpart, after complaints from Holocaust survivors.
Radosław Sikorski made the comments on X, saying he and German foreign minister Johann Wadephul “agreed that such a scandal must be prevented”.
Continue reading...Iran’s foreign minister says it has had requests to reopen negotiations, which collapsed after nuclear site bombings
Tehran is willing to restart nuclear talks with Washington as long as it is treated with “dignity and respect”, Iran’s foreign minister has told the Guardian.
Abbas Araghchi said only diplomacy worked, and disclosed fresh requests had come from intermediaries to reopen negotiations with the Trump administration. He said Iran did not have any undeclared nuclear sites, and Tehran could not yet allow the UN nuclear inspectorate to visit bombed nuclear sites for security reasons.
Continue reading...Gardaí appeal for witnesses and Simon Harris pays tribute to first responders after two-vehicle collision on Saturday
Ireland is in mourning after a road crash killed five people in their early 20s and left three other people injured.
The two-vehicle collision happened at about 9pm on Saturday on a road near Dundalk in County Louth.
Continue reading...Zelenskyy says Nataliia Khodemchuk is victim of ‘new tragedy caused by Kremlin’, four decades after disaster
The widow of the first Soviet engineer to die in the Chornobyl nuclear power plant explosion was killed on Friday in Russia’s massive drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Nataliia Khodemchuk as the victim of a “new tragedy caused by the Kremlin”, nearly four decades after her husband, Valerii, was killed inside Chornobyl’s nuclear reactor number four.
Continue reading...Voters face seemingly extreme choice between communist and rightwing frontrunners, who both promise to fight foreign gangs
Chileans began voting for a new president and parliament on Sunday, in a contest expected to favour the hard right as candidates play on popular fears over organised crime and immigration.
It is the first of an expected two rounds of presidential elections, as polls show none of the candidates clearing the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff scheduled for 14 December.
Continue reading...Clashes erupt between protesters and riot police in the capital as rallies take place in cities across the country
At least 120 people were injured as thousands of gen Z protesters took to the streets of Mexico City and across the country to voice their anger at corruption and the drug violence that claims tens of thousands of Mexican lives each year.
Saturday’s rallies, which took place in dozens of cities from Tijuana in the north to Oaxaca in the south drew large crowds, with some demonstrators carrying the One Piece pirate flag that has become a global symbol of the youth movement.
Continue reading...Africa CDC says at least nine cases have been detected of Ebola-like illness, which kills up to 80% of those infected
Ethiopia has confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the south of the country, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has said.
The Marburg virus is one of the deadliest known pathogens. Like Ebola, it causes severe bleeding, fever, vomiting and diarrhoea and has a 21-day incubation period.
Continue reading...Bangkok had earlier said it was suspending ceasefire, accusing Cambodia of laying landmines along the border
The US has put pressure on Thailand to recommit to a ceasefire with Cambodia, warning trade talks could be halted as Washington seeks to keep a Donald Trump-brokered truce agreement from falling apart.
Earlier this week, Thailand said that it was suspending the ceasefire deal, accusing Cambodia of laying fresh landmines along the border, including one it said wounded a Thai soldier on patrol, who lost a foot in the explosion.
Continue reading...Natalie Boucly says supplies are ready but only about half of what is needed is getting into territory
Israel is breaching international law by continuing to impose restrictions on aid flows into Gaza, where the population remains critically short of food and life-saving goods as winter sets in, a senior official at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.
In an interview during a recent visit to Brussels, Natalie Boucly, an Unrwa deputy commissioner general, said the whole world – including the EU and US – needed to increase the pressure on Israel’s government to ensure the unrestricted flow of aid into Gaza.
Continue reading...Katrín Jakobsdóttir and her co-author want the 350,000 people who speak the language to fight for its future
Iceland’s former prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, has said that the Icelandic language could be wiped out in as little as a generation due to the sweeping rise of AI and encroaching English language dominance.
Katrín, who stood down as prime minister last year to run for president after seven years in office, said Iceland was undergoing “radical” change when it came to language use. More people are reading and speaking English, and fewer are reading in Icelandic, a trend she says is being exacerbated by the way language models are trained.
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