Category Archives: World News

Bolivia to vote in presidential runoff that will turn it to the right

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End of almost two decades of leftist rule could revive ‘war on drugs’ in change of approach to coca cultivation

Bolivians go to the polls on Sunday in an election that, whatever the result, will mark a complete shift to the right after nearly 20 years under the rule of the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).

The country’s first-ever presidential runoff pits the centre-right senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira, 58, who won the first round in August, against the rightwing former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, 65, who in recent weeks has overtaken Paz Pereira in the polls.

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Israel has violated ceasefire 47 times and killed 38 Palestinians, says Gaza media office

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Authorities urge UN to intervene ‘to protect unarmed civilian populations’ after attack on bus that killed 11

Gaza’s media office has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire with Hamas 47 times since the truce came into effect in early October, killing 38 Palestinians and wounding another 143.

“These violations have included crimes of direct gunfire against civilians, deliberate shelling and targeting, and the arrest of a number of civilians, reflecting the occupation’s continued policy of aggression despite the declared end of the war,” reads the statement.

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Rafah border crossing to stay closed ‘until further notice’, says Israel

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Officials say reopening of gateway between Gaza and Egypt would depend on Hamas returning remains of dead hostages

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will stay closed “until further notice”, Israel has said, after the Palestinian embassy in Cairo said the territory’s sole gateway to the outside world would reopen on Monday.

The statement by Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said reopening Rafah would depend on how Hamas fulfils its ceasefire role of returning the remains of all 28 dead hostages. Israel’s foreign ministry earlier said the crossing would probably reopen on Sunday.

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US military to move survivors of strike on alleged drug boat in Caribbean to nearby countries

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Releasing them from US custody evades thorny legal issues regarding military detention of suspected drug smugglers

The Trump administration is moving to send the two survivors of Thursday’s strike in the Caribbean overseas rather than seek long-term military detention for them, four US officials and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday.

The source, who like the US officials spoke on condition of anonymity, said the survivors were being sent to Colombia and Ecuador.

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Egypt expected to lead global stabilisation force in Gaza, say diplomats

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Decommissioning Hamas weapons seen as major stumbling block, with British diplomats advising on process

A European and US-backed UN security council motion to give a planned international stabilisation force robust powers to control security inside Gaza is being prepared, with the strong expectation that Egypt will lead it, diplomats have said.

The US is pressing for the force to have a UN mandate without being a fully fledged UN peacekeeping force and will operate with the kind of powers given to international troops operating in Haiti to combat armed gangs.

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Man seeking asylum in Canada trapped at US Ice facility after he says he crossed border by mistake

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Canada isn’t helping to repatriate refugee applicant Mahin Shahriar, a 28-year-old Bangladeshi man, his lawyer says

A refugee applicant living in Canada is trapped at a US immigration detention facility after he says he mistakenly crossed the border, but his lawyer says Canada isn’t helping to bring him back.

Mahin Shahriar, 28, who came to Canada from Bangladesh in 2019, told the Canadian Press he accepted an invitation from a “friend” to visit a property near Montreal, which he now suspects was part of a broader human trafficking operation.

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Iran announces official end to 10-year-old nuclear agreement

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Tehran terminates 2015 deal under which sanctions were lifted in return for curbs on country’s nuclear programme

An international deal with Iran designed to keep the world safe from the spread of atomic weapons has officially ended, with Tehran announcing the termination of the decade-old agreement.

Iran said on Saturday that it was no longer bound by the 2015 agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which international sanctions were lifted in exchange for limitations on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

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Chen Ning Yang, Chinese-American physicist and Nobel laureate, dies at 103

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Renowned 1957 Nobel prize winner worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physics

Chen Ning Yang, one of the world’s most renowned physicists and a Nobel prize winner, died on Saturday in Beijing at the age of 103 after an illness, state media outlet Xinhua has reported.

Born in eastern China’s Hefei in Anhui province in 1922, Yang was a Chinese-American physicist who worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physics.

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Chemical linked to low sperm count, obesity and cancer found in dummies, tests find

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BPA, a synthetic chemical used in production of plastics, found in baby products made by three big European brands

A chemical linked to impaired sexual development, obesity and cancer has been found in baby dummies manufactured by three big European brands.

Dummies made by the Dutch multinational Philips, the Swiss oral health specialists Curaprox and the French toy brand Sophie la Girafe were found to contain bisphenol A (BPA), according to laboratory testing by dTest, a Czech consumer organisation. Philips said they had carried out subsequent testing and found no BPA, while Sophie la Girafe said the amount found was insignificant.

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German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds

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Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers

Mainstream parties are increasingly allowing the far right to set the agenda, researchers in Germany have found, describing it as a shortcoming that had unwittingly helped the far right by legitimising their ideas and disseminating them more widely.

The findings, published in the European Journal of Political Research, were based on an automated text analysis of 520,408 articles from six German newspapers over the span of more than two decades.

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Trump says he has commuted sentence of George Santos in federal fraud case

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Former Republican US representative walks free after being sentenced in April to more than seven years in prison for deceiving donors and stealing identities of 11 people

Donald Trump announced on Friday he had commuted the sentence of George Santos, the disgraced former New York representative and serial fabulist who had been sentenced to more than seven years in prison after a short-lived political career marked by outlandish fabrications and fraudulent scheming.

Santos left the Federal Correctional Institution Fairton in New Jersey just hours later and was “on his way home”, his attorney Joseph Murray told Agence France-Presse by phone late on Friday.

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Trump claims Maduro willing to give ‘everything’ to ease US tensions

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President says Venezuelan counterpart ‘doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States’

Donald Trump used an expletive to threaten the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Friday, claiming that the leftist autocrat had offered major concessions to appease the US.

The US president was speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday during a meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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US has seized survivors of attack on alleged narco-sub in Caribbean

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In the six attacks on similar vessels launched by Trump, this is the first where any survivors have been reported

The US has seized survivors of a military strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean, the first since Donald Trump began launching deadly attacks in the region last month, according to officials in Washington.

Trump later confirmed the attack, telling reporters that the targeted vessel was a narco-submarine.

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Broken promises and political crises: how Emmanuel Macron fell from French favour

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The president is seen to have accelerated the financial crisis, social inequalities and the rise of the far right

Three French governments have collapsed in less than a year, and the political crisis looks likely to continue, overshadowing Emmanuel Macron’s last 18 months in power and his domestic legacy.

This week, the latest minority government narrowly survived its first vote of no-confidence. But it remains the weakest cabinet in decades and could be toppled at any moment if opposition parties join together to oust it. France now faces a brutal two-month battle in parliament to achieve what once seemed the most basic element of governance: passing a budget.

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Infectious diseases in Gaza ‘spiralling out of control’, says WHO – as it happened

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UN official says: ‘Whether meningitis … diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, we’re talking about a mammoth amount of work’. This live blog is closed

We’ve got a bit more from the UN’s World Food Programme on the situation in Gaza.

WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa told a media briefing in Geneva that, from Saturday until Wednesday, around 230 trucks with 2,800 tonnes of food supplies crossed into Gaza.

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Giorgia Meloni condemns Italian union leader for ‘Trump courtesan’ remark

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Prime minister says CGIL head is ‘clouded by resentment’ and accuses the left of hypocrisy towards women

Giorgia Meloni has condemned the boss of Italy’s biggest trade union after he referred to the prime minister as the “courtesan” of Donald Trump.

Maurizio Landini, the leader of CGIL, which organised several pro-Palestinian protests before the Gaza ceasefire deal, made the remarks on TV on Tuesday, the day after world leaders, including Meloni, met in Egypt for a Middle East peace summit.

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Bank shares lead global market fall amid jitters over US private credit

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Signs of credit stress send markets in Europe and Asia down, while investors turn to safe haven assets

European stock markets fell on Friday and gold hit a record high after two US regional banks said they had been exposed to millions of dollars of bad loans and alleged fraud.

Signs of credit stress rattled markets across Europe and Asia. In London the FTSE 100 fell 0.9%, Germany’s Dax fell 1.8%, Italy’s FTSE Mib fell 1.5%, the Ibex in Spain was off 0.3% and France’s Cac 40 dropped 0.2%.

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Gaza aid still critically scarce, say agencies, as Israel delays convoys

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UN urges opening of all crossings with aid deliveries at less than half of agreed frequency, as WHO issues disease alert

Aid remains critically scarce in Gaza one week into the ceasefire, humanitarian agencies have warned, as Israel delays the entry of food convoys into the territory. The Israeli government and Hamas continue to trade blame over violations of the truce.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday that it had brought about 560 tonnes of food a day on average into Gaza since the ceasefire began, but it was still below what was needed.

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Italian investigative journalism TV host targeted in bomb attack near Rome

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Rudimentary but powerful device detonates outside home of Report presenter Sigfrido Ranucci in Campo Ascolano

A prominent Italian investigative journalist has been targeted in a bomb attack, with the rudimentary but powerful device almost destroying his car and damaging a neighbour’s home.

Sigfrido Ranucci, who hosts Report, an investigative programme aired by the state broadcaster, Rai, said the explosion happened about 20 minutes after he returned to his home in Campo Ascolano, close to Rome, on Thursday night.

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Mango founder’s son becomes alleged suspect in fashion tycoon’s death

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Spanish media report Jonathan Andic’s status has changed from witness of father’s fatal ravine fall

The family of Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion chain Mango, have insisted on his son’s innocence after media reports suggested he was a potential suspect in the billionaire’s death.

Andic died last December, aged 71, after apparently falling 100 metres down a ravine while hiking at Montserrat, near Barcelona, with his son, Jonathan. His death prompted tributes from politicians, journalists and the fashion world.

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