Category Archives: World News

Weakened Super Typhoon Ragasa heads towards Vietnam after battering China and Hong Kong

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Huge clear-up efforts start after storm leaves trail of destruction, with 25 reported dead in Taiwan and the Philippines

Huge clear-up operations were under way in southern China and Hong Kong on Thursday, after Super Typhoon Ragasa battered the region, causing widespread flooding and damaged roads.

Ragasa, the most powerful tropical cyclone so far this year, left a trail of damage across Hong Kong, which resumed international flights on Thursday but kept kindergartens and some schools closed. In the economic hub of Guangdong province in mainland China, where more than 2 million people were evacuated ahead of the super typhoon, crews used excavators to clear thousands of toppled trees and unblock roads.

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‘Tunnel vision’: how Israel is using archaeology for political ends

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Scientists say Netanyahu government and its US backers are trying to construct a history shorn of all complexity

When the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, visited Jerusalem this month, the itinerary his Israeli hosts laid on involved more archaeology than anything else. On his first day, Benjamin Netanyahu took Rubio underground to excavations near the Western Wall. On the second day, Israel’s prime minister gave his American visitor the honour of inaugurating a tunnel burrowed under a Palestinian district, along a Roman-era street nicknamed the Pilgrimage Road, in a “City of David” archaeological park established by an Israeli settler organisation.

Both events were intended to emphasise Jerusalem’s Jewish roots and its status, Netanyahu stressed, as “our eternal and undivided capital”.

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Yemen needs two-state solution as no prospect of ousting Houthis, says southern leader

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Aidarous al-Zubaidi says Houthis will not be dislodged by bombing and path to political settlement is blocked

Yemen needs its own two-state solution, the president of its Southern Transitional Council (STC) has said, warning that there is currently no prospect of dislodging the Iran-backed Houthis from power in the north.

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Aidarous al-Zubaidi told the Guardian: “The best solution for Yemen and the best path to stability is the two-state solution, whether by referendum or agreement. The reality on the ground is that there are two states militarily and economically.”

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‘Raring to go:’ the German remote-driving firm that hopes to make private car ownership redundant

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Europe has been slow to embrace robotaxis but Germany will allow remote-controlled rental cars from December

Having been summoned by a few clicks in an app, the electric car slows to a halt outside the former cargo hall of Berlin’s now defunct Tegel airport. No one is at the wheel, but upon a passenger stepping inside, a voice announces: “This is Bartek, I am your driver today. Please buckle up and we can be on our way.”

The car emits a friendly jingle, then makes its way to the former runway, where it performs a fault-free manoeuvre around a route marked by traffic cones.

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Former president Peter Mutharika defeats incumbent in Malawi presidential election

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Lazarus Chakwera, who presided over a multi-year economic crisis, concedes election after 85-year-old Mutharika wins 56.8% of vote

Malawians have voted in an 85-year-old former leader over an incumbent who presided over a multi-year economic crisis, high inflation, essential goods shortages, climate disasters and international aid cuts.

Peter Mutharika got 56.8% of the vote compared with 33% for Lazarus Chakwera, according to official results of the 16 September presidential election announced on Wednesday.

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‘Science demands action’: world leaders and UN push climate agenda forward despite Trump’s attacks

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Leaders unveil new targets to cut planet-heating pollution after Trump called climate crisis a ‘con job’

World leaders have unveiled new targets to cut planet-heating pollution at the United Nations, in a bid to spur fresh impetus to the beleaguered climate effort a day after Donald Trump called the crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated upon the world”.

A total of 120 countries and the European Union announced new goals to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in New York on Wednesday. The pledges most notably include one from China, the world’s leading emitter, which said it would cut emissions by 7-10% from its peak level by 2035.

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At least 20 people reported injured after drone strike on Israeli city of Eilat

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Two people seriously injured, says national ambulance service as military says drone was launched from Yemen

At least 20 people have been injured, two seriously, after a drone launched from Yemen hit Israel’s Red Sea resort city of Eilat on the border with Jordan and Egypt.

Police said the drone fell in Eilat’s city centre, causing damage in the area frequented by tourists.

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Supercentenarian gives scientists insight on secrets of healthy old age

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Tests on Maria Branyas Morera, who was world’s oldest person before she died last year aged 117, gave doctors a trove of discoveries

The nonagenarian actor Dame Joan Collins may have been on to something when she declared “age is just a number”.

The deepest dive yet into the biology of a supercentenarian has revealed that even extreme old age can be reached without the brain necessarily faltering or the usual illnesses mounting up.

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Italy’s far-right government revives holiday for saint at ‘core of our nation’s identity’

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Millions of Italian workers expected to get day off every 4 October in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi

Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government in Italy has revived a national holiday in honour of the country’s popular patron saint, Francis of Assisi, in a nod to “the very core of our nation’s identity”.

Millions of Italian workers are expected to get a day off each 4 October, the feast day of Saint Francis, after the lower house of parliament approved overwhelmingly a bill making it a public holiday. The measure will pass to the senate for the final nod.

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Vanuatu working toward UN vote aimed at fighting fossil-fuel industry influence

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Ralph Regenvanu, minister of climate change for the Pacific island nation, says step taken on ‘behalf of everybody’

Vanuatu is working on securing a UN vote to turn a landmark ruling on the climate crisis by the international court of justice (ICJ) into concrete political action that will fight the influence of the fossil-fuel industry and protect the globe from environmental catastrophe.

In an effort spearheaded by the tiny Pacific island nation, the ICJ issued a rare unanimous advisory opinion in July, which clarified that all states are required under international law to protect the climate, prevent further harms and have a duty to cooperate.

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Horror film digitally altered in China to make gay couple straight

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Viewers outraged after same-sex wedding scene changed in Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie

An Australian horror film featuring a scene with a same-sex wedding was reportedly digitally altered for release in mainland China, transforming the gay couple into a heterosexual one, provoking outrage from viewers who spotted the change.

The critically acclaimed film Together, starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, was released in selected cinemas in China on 12 September. It follows the journey of a young couple who move to the countryside and encounter mysterious and grotesque changes to their bodies.

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Super Typhoon Ragasa: 17 killed in Taiwan and Hong Kong battered as storm hits China

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Chinese businesses and schools shut and residents in high-rises ordered to evacuate as storm makes landfall on Guangdong coast

Fierce winds, pounding rain and high seas battered Hong Kong as Super Typhoon Ragasa headed into southern China after causing a lake to burst in Taiwan, killing at least 17 people.

Hong Kong experienced widespread damage on Wednesday, including fallen trees and flooding in many areas, with the storm surge smashing the glass doors of an upmarket hotel and flooding its lobby, according to footage circulating online.

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‘We are at our limit’: Gaza’s last hospitals overwhelmed as thousands flee south

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‘Not enough of anything’, says surgeon, as Israel’s assault forces injured, sick and hungry people to leave Gaza City

The few remaining hospitals and clinics in central and southern Gaza are being overwhelmed by a “tsunami” of injured and sick patients fleeing a new Israeli offensive in the north of the devastated territory, medics say.

At both Nasser medical complex, in the southern city of Khan Younis, and field hospitals in al-Muwasi, the coastal “humanitarian zone” designated by Israel, staff are struggling to cope with large numbers of new arrivals forced out of Gaza City in the north of the devastated Palestinian territory.

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Colombia’s Petro urges ‘criminal process’ against Trump for Venezuelan strikes

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At UN, Gustavo Petro says ‘poor young people’ died in US strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats off Caribbean coast

Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro addressed the UN general assembly Tuesday to call for a “criminal process” to be opened against counterpart Donald Trump for US strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean.

Petro said unarmed “poor young people” died in the strikes that Washington said were part of a US anti-drug operation off the coast of Venezuela, whose president Washington accuses of running a cartel.

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Trump says he believes Ukraine can regain all land lost to Russia since 2022 invasion

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US president claims Russia is in ‘big economic trouble’ as he calls for Nato countries to stop imports of Russian oil

Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv.

The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble in a post on Truth Social after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York.

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Is Copenhagen drone incursion further evidence of Russian interest in allied airspace?

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Sudden boldness of Kremlin is new territory for Nato, which is enhancing air policing over eastern Europe with extra fighter jets

It is disturbingly easy to shut down a commercial airport, as last night’s events in Copenhagen show. Three large drones, Danish authorities said, flew close enough to the runway to force the airport to close for four hours in an incident that inevitably raises wider questions about the security of the skies above Nato countries at a time when Russia has already shown it is willing to test the integrity of alliance airspace.

Videos published by local media show what appears to be relatively large but unidentified craft with green lights near the Danish capital. The drones came in from multiple directions and left in a similar fashion, suggesting, Danish police said, they were operated by a “capable actor”, one with an understanding of how to pilot drones in such a way as to maximise nuisance and cause alarm.

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Trump calls for nations to close borders and expel foreigners in UN speech: ‘Your countries are being ruined’

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US president accuses European countries specifically of ‘destroying your heritage’ by allowing migration

Donald Trump took the stage at the United Nations general assembly hall for the first time in six years to launch a full-on assault on the world body, which he described as a feckless, corrupt and pernicious global force that should follow the example of his own leadership.

In an inflammatory speech on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Trump called for countries to close their borders and expel foreigners, accused the UN of leading a “globalist migration agenda”, and told national leaders that the world body was “funding an assault on your countries”.

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Brazil’s president says in UN speech that democracy can prevail over ‘would-be autocrats’

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South American leftist Lula takes indirect swipes at Trump in speech and warns that global threat of ‘anti-democratic forces’ persists

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, has launched an impassioned defence of his country’s democracy, claiming the recent conviction of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had shown the world how “would-be autocrats” could be brought to heel.

Speaking at the opening of the United Nations general assembly in New York, Lula hailed Brazil’s successful effort to repel “an unprecedented attack” from Bolsonaro’s extreme right movement. On 11 September, the former paratrooper was sentenced to 27 years in jail for trying to stage a military coup after he lost the 2022 election to Lula.

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Quebec’s police watchdog to investigate killing of 15-year-old boy by officers

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Police opened fire within seconds after responding to a report of masked teens, according to a resident

The head of Quebec’s police watchdog said it will investigate the death of a 15-year-old boy who was shot dead by officers, revealing that the only weapon recovered from the scene of the fatal shooting belonged to the police.

At a rare news conference on Tuesday, Brigitte Bishop, director of the province’s office of independent investigations, said her unit would conduct an “impartial” investigation into the death of Nooran Rezayi.

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‘Guess what?’ Macron phones Trump after US president’s motorcade blocks his car

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Bemused French president forced to take unscheduled 30-minute trek through the streets of New York

Emmanuel Macron had to walk half an hour by foot through New York after his speech to the United Nations on recognising Palestine as a state.

Video footage shows him getting out of his car to talk to police officers after they stop his vehicle to make way for the expected arrival of the motorcade of Donald Trump, the US president.

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