Category Archives: World News

In Venezuela’s ‘darkest hours’, will peace prize boost opposition or backfire?

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María Corina Machado’s Nobel award puts focus on country but analysts doubt it will produce democratic change

In March 2019 as a nationwide blackout plunged Venezuela into darkness, hundreds of citizens huddled on a basketball court in the city of Maracaibo to hear their leader promise to guide them out of the gloom.

“We are, quite literally, living through our darkest hour. But these are also the brightest of times,” María Corina Machado told supporters as they used mobile phones to illuminate the night.

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China warns US of retaliation over Trump’s 100% tariffs threat

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Beijing says it will act if US president doesn’t stand down, while investors brace for trade war turmoil

Beijing has told the US it will retaliate if Donald Trump fails to back down on his threat to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports as investors brace for another bout of trade war turmoil.

China’s commerce ministry blamed Washington for raising trade tensions between the two countries after Trump announced on Friday that he would impose the additional tariffs on China’s exports to the US, along with new controls on critical software, by 1 November.

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Cameroon’s 92-year-old president set for another term as country goes to polls

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Paul Biya, in power since 1982, has brushed off calls to retire but is rarely seen in public

Cameroon goes to the polls on Sunday for a presidential election with Paul Biya, already the world’s oldest head of state at the age of 92, the favourite to win an eighth term in power in the central African country.

A fractured opposition of 11 candidates is standing against Biya, who, despite his advanced age and declining health, has dismissed calls for him to retire.

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Heavy clashes erupt along Pakistan-Afghanistan border

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Escalation comes after Pakistani airstrike in Kabul, with Taliban launching reprisals against military posts

Intense clashes erupted along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Saturday night after an attack by the Taliban on Pakistani military posts.

This escalation comes after a Pakistani airstrike in Kabul this week, as reported by security officials from both nations.

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Agencies prepare to bring aid to starving people in Gaza as ceasefire appears to hold

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Unicef says ‘humanitarian crisis continues’ and expects to scale up aid deliveries on Sunday

Aid agencies are preparing to bring large amounts of vital aid to starving people in Gaza this weekend, as a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas appeared to be holding.

“We have received signals that tomorrow will be the day that the scale-up [in aid deliveries] begins in earnest under the ceasefire,” said Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for the UN agency for children, Unicef.

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Zelenskyy urges Trump to use Gaza ceasefire momentum to broker peace in Ukraine

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Ukrainian leader discussed request for Tomahawk cruise missiles in phone call with US president

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urged Donald Trump to use the momentum of the Gaza ceasefire to broker peace in Ukraine, as the two leaders spoke by phone on Saturday.

Trump and Zelenskyy discussed Ukraine’s request for the US to allow the delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles to bolster Kyiv’s ability to conduct long-range strikes inside Russia, among other issues, according to Axios.

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Militia strikes kill at least 60 in Sudan displacement camp, says El Fasher group

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Drone and artillery strikes by RSF paramilitary group hit Dar al-Arqam shelter in western city, says resistance committee

Militia drone and artillery strikes have killed at least 60 people at a displacement shelter in the besieged city of El Fasher in western Sudan, a local activist group has said.

The Resistance Committee for El Fasher said the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group hit the Dar al-Arqam displacement centre, which is in the grounds of a university.

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Democrats refuse to fold over shutdown as Republican outrage builds

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Party sticks to its guns on healthcare and says it’s willing to hold out – much to the delight of its progressive supporters

When he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown with reporters from a closely read political newsletter this week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he was relishing his standoff with the Republicans.

“Every day gets better for us,” he told Punchbowl News. As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republicans believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an array of concessions on healthcare and other issues.

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Tony Blair met Jeffrey Epstein in No 10 on advice of Peter Mandelson, documents reveal

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National Archives papers show how then MP pushed for 2002 meeting between PM and ‘young and vibrant’ financier

Sir Tony Blair met Jeffrey Epstein in Downing Street while he was prime minister after a recommendation by Peter Mandelson, newly released papers from the National Archives show.

Epstein visited Blair on 14 May 2002, after the suggestion by Lord Mandelson to the prime minister’s then chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.

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Unease at slow pace of change in Nepal one month on from gen Z protests

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Promised crackdown on corruption is not happening fast enough for many who saw government toppled within a day of protests

Prakash Bohora was one of the first of Nepal’s gen Z protesters to feel the sting of a police bullet. Like thousands of other young people, he had taken to the streets of the capital last month to protest against corruption and a draconian ban on social media.

He had no idea that day in Kathmandu would escalate into what is now described as Nepal’s gen Z revolution, which saw the toppling of the government within a day, the dissolution of parliament and appointment of a new interim prime minister, the anti-corruption hardliner Sushila Karki, by the end of the week.

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Chicago TV journalist pushed to ground and arrested during Ice raid, then later released

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Witnesses call arrest of video editor Debbie Brockman, a US citizen, by masked federal agents ‘absolutely horrifying’

A video editor and producer for Chicago’s WGN television station was arrested by masked federal agents on Friday morning, and later released, during an Ice raid on the city’s North Side, as shown in videos shared widely on social media.

Videos show Debbie Brockman being violently forced to the ground by two agents before she is handcuffed and put in a van. A local resident filming the incident asks her name while she is face down on the street being handcuffed.

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Nineteen people feared dead after blast at Tennessee munitions plant

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Police chief calls explosion near Bucksnort, south-west of Nashville, ‘devastating’ and says ‘we have some deceased’

Nineteen people are missing and feared dead following a huge explosion at a military munitions plant in Tennessee.

The powerful blast ripped through the explosives manufacturing plant in rural Tennessee on Friday morning, rattling homes miles away and bringing emergency services to the scene, authorities and residents said.

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Trump threatens 100% China tariffs as Beijing restricts rare-earth exports

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President accuses China of ‘very hostile’ moves and says additional tariffs could come on 1 November ‘or sooner’

Donald Trump has threatened to impose additional US tariffs of 100% on China from next month, accusing Beijing of “very hostile” moves to restrict exports of rare earths needed for American industry.

Wall Street fell sharply after the US president reignited public tensions with the Chinese government, and raised the prospect of another acrimonious trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

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Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado wins Nobel peace prize

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Opponent of Maduro regime receives award and praise for keeping ‘flame of democracy burning’

The Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize for her dogged struggle to rescue the South American country from its fate as “a brutal, authoritarian state”.

Machado, 58, a conservative often described as Venezuela’s Iron Lady, has spent the last year living in hiding after her political movement was widely believed to have beaten the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in the July 2024 presidential election.

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Hamas will be disarmed, Netanyahu vows after ceasefire begins

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In combative speech, Israeli prime minister says Gaza will be demilitarised ‘the easy way or the hard way’

Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his pledge to force Hamas to disarm in a defiant and combative speech on Friday just an hour after a ceasefire began in Gaza.

In a televised address, Israel’s prime minister said he had resisted intense domestic and international pressure to achieve his aim of ensuring “the security of Israel”, and he lambasted his critics and reiterated a threat to return to war if necessary.

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Man jailed for at least 23 years for murdering Syrian boy in Huddersfield

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Alfie Franco, 20, stabbed Ahmad Al Ibrahim after taking ‘petty exception’ to teenager brushing past his girlfriend

A man has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 23 years for murdering a teenage Syrian refugee after he brushed past his girlfriend in Huddersfield town centre.

Leeds crown court heard how Alfie Franco, 20, stabbed Ahmad Al Ibrahim, 16, shortly after Ibrahim brushed past Franco’s girlfriend in April. He was found guilty of murder on Thursday.

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Macron summons parties for crunch meeting in frantic effort to appoint PM

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All parties except National Rally and La France Insoumise called on by president to show ‘collective responsibility’

Emmanuel Macron has summoned the leaders of several political parties to his office to demand they show “collective responsibility” as he attempts to appoint a new prime minister amid a deepening political crisis.

All political parties except Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which is the biggest single opposition party, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftwing La France Insoumise were called to the meeting at the presidential palace before Macron’s self-imposed deadline to name a new prime minister by Friday night.

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DRC says EU’s minerals deal with Rwanda is ‘obvious double standard’

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Brussels urged to impose stronger sanctions against Rwanda, as it has in response to Russia for its war in Ukraine

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has accused the EU of “an obvious double standard” for maintaining a minerals deal with Rwanda to supply Europe’s hi-tech industries when it deployed a far-wider sanctions regime in response to the war in Ukraine.

Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, the DRC foreign minister, urged the EU to levy much stronger sanctions against Rwanda, which has fuelled the conflict in eastern DRC, describing the bloc’s response to violations of DRC territory as “very timid”.

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Peru lawmakers vote to oust president Dina Boluarte over crime crisis

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Congress leader José Jerí sworn in as interim president as majority of lawmakers initiate impeachment against Boluarte

Lawmakers in Peru have voted to remove the president, Dina Boluarte, whose term has been marked by protests and accusations of failing to stem crime.

Boluarte refused to appear before Congress on Friday for an overnight hearing after a majority of lawmakers, including some once loyal to her, voted to initiate impeachment proceedings.

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Tsunami warning for Philippines and Indonesia after 7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes Mindanao

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Warnings of possible hazardous waves within 300km of the quake’s epicentre were issued after the powerful quake

A tsunami warning has been issued for the Philippines after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck the Mindanao region on Friday, with the local seismology office saying damage and aftershocks were expected.

The US Tsunami Warning System and Philippine seismology agency both issued tsunami warnings, saying hazardous tsunami waves were possible for coasts located within 300km (186 miles) of the earthquake’s epicentre.

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