Category Archives: World News

Thousands of migrants cross into Guatemala with slim hopes of reaching US

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The caravan from Honduras is the biggest since the pandemic hit Central America in March, triggering a rise in unemployment and poverty

Thousands of Honduran migrants hoping to reach the United States have entered Guatemala, testing the newly reopened frontier that had been shut by the coronavirus pandemic.

Authorities had planned to register the migrants as they crossed and offer assistance to those willing to turn back, but early on Thursday, the group pushed past armed guards without registering. By midday more than 3,000 migrants had crossed illegally, said Guatemalan officials.

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Delphine Boël: Belgian king’s daughter wins right to call herself princess

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Artist whose mother had affair with former king Albert II wins the right to use royal title and father’s surname

An artist who successfully fought a seven-year legal battle to prove she was the daughter of the former king of Belgium, Albert II, has won the right to be recognised as a princess.

The Brussels Court of Appeal has ruled that Delphine Boël, 52, had the right to her Royal father’s surname after a bitter battle for acknowledgement.

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Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait obituary

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Ruler of Kuwait for 14 years who was known as ‘the dean of Arab diplomacy’

The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, who has died aged 91, ruled his country for 14 years and acquired a reputation for being committed to peaceful dialogue and unity among other Gulf states known for their divisive quarrels in recent times. Discreet, mild-mannered and valuing his personal links with fellow monarchs, Sabah was known as “the dean of Arab diplomacy”.

Since 2017, however, when the younger, more assertive leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates boycotted their rival Qatar, he found it increasingly hard to play the role of regional mediator, but was still credited with having forestalled potentially disastrous military action. The war in Yemen, scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, was another nightmarish situation.

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Nazi shipwreck found off Poland may solve Amber Room mystery

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Polish divers locate Karlsruhe, which they hope holds treasure Nazis looted from Russia

Polish divers say they have found the wreck of a German second world war ship that may help solve a decades-old mystery about the whereabouts of the Amber Room, an ornate chamber that the Nazis looted from a tsarist palace in Russia.

Decorated with amber and gold, the room was part of the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg. It was last seen in Königsberg, then a Baltic port city in Germany but now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

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Covid crisis could force extra 2.5m girls into child marriage – charity

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Save the Children predicts worst rise in child marriage rates in 25 years as a result of pandemic

Up to 2.5 million more girls around the world are at risk of being forced into child marriage over the next five years as a result of the impact of Covid-19, according to a report by Save the Children.

The charity predicts the worst surge in rates of child marriage in 25 years, as the pandemic has shuttered schools and pushed poor families further into destitution.

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Brazil’s Amazon rainforest suffers worst fires in a decade

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  • Satellites record 61% rise in hotspots over September 2019
  • Scientist warns: ‘It could get worse if the drought continues’

Fires in Brazil’s Amazon increased 13% in the first nine months of the year compared with a year ago, as the rainforest region experiences its worst rash of blazes in a decade, data from space research agency Inpe has shown.

Satellites in September recorded 32,017 hotspots in the world’s largest rainforest, a 61% rise from the same month in 2019.

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Trump signals he won’t agree to rules changes for debates – as it happened

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From me and Joan E Greve:

In a memorable moment from the Republican National Convention, Guilfoyle rallied supporters in what Guardian Washington bureau chief David Smith described as “a high-octane audition for Evita – without an audience”.

She said that Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear” and later screamed, “Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for liberty and the American Dream: the best is yet to come!”

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British Virgin Islands commits to public register of beneficial owners

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Announcement follows years of tax evasion scandals involving BVI shell companies

The government of the British Virgin Islands has finally committed to introducing public registers of beneficial ownership for companies incorporated in the tax haven.

The announcement, made in the islands parliament, comes in the wake of years of tax evasion and money laundering scandals, in which shell companies incorporated in the territory regularly played a central role.

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Covid-19 live news: Madrid lockdown looms; Italy’s PM proposes extending state of emergency

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Africa approaching 1.5m cases across its 54 countries; Italy could extend government powers to January; record cases high in Ukraine

Sweden has registered its highest daily Covid caseload since June, with 752 new infections recorded on Thursday, though no new related deaths have been recorded.

The Scandinavian country has shunned lockdowns, leaving most schools, restaurants and businesses open throughout the pandemic. Thursday’s rise was the highest since 30 June, when the health agency recorded just over 800 new cases.

The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, has said infections in Russia’s capital are rising by about 2,000 a day, and ordered employers to transfer at least 30% of staff to remote work.

Writing on his blog, Sobyanin said the rate of Covid-19 hospitalisations was also rising by around 5,000 per week.

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Angela Merkel to meet Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Berlin

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Announcement comes as EU leaders try to resolve dispute over Belarus sanctions

Angela Merkel has announced plans to meet the Belarusian opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, as EU leaders gathering at a Brussels summit seek to untangle a dispute that has delayed sanctions against Belarus’s authoritarian government.

In a speech in the Bundestag on Wednesday, the German chancellor expressed her admiration for the women protesting against the Belarusian regime “If you see the courage of the women on display in the streets there, for a life of freedom and free of corruption, then I can only say: I admire that,” she said.

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Human rights lawyers sue Trump administration for ‘silencing’ them

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Exclusive: group claims executive order targeting the international criminal court has led them to halt work on war crimes cases

Prominent US human rights lawyers are suing the Trump administration over an executive order they say has gagged them and halted their work pursuing justice on behalf of war crimes victims around the world.

As a result of the order in June threatening “serious consequences” for anyone giving support to the work of the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, the lawyers say they have had to cancel speeches and presentations, end research, abandon writing ICC-related articles and dispensing advice and assistance to victims of atrocities.

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Russia says it and Turkey urge end to hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh

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Russia says two countries’ foreign ministers have found common ground after French journalists injured during shelling

Russia and Turkey’s foreign ministers have agreed to the need for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to a Russian statement, opening the door to a possible end to fighting in the breakaway region.

The potential breakthrough was at odds with an earlier statement by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who hours earlier had called for a full Armenian withdrawal from the area – which is legally Azerbaijani territory but administered by ethnic Armenians – and condemned international efforts to resolve the conflict.

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Brexit: EU launches legal action against UK for breaching withdrawal agreement

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UK put on formal notice over internal market bill, which ministers admit breaks international law

The EU has launched legal action against the UK after Boris Johnson failed to respond to Brussels’ demand that he drop legislation that would overwrite the withdrawal agreement and break international law.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, announced that the UK had been put on formal notice over the internal market bill tabled by the prime minister last month.

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Madrid region performs U-turn and says it will obey Covid lockdown rules

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Self-governing Spanish region warned by central government that new measures are legally binding

The regional government of Madrid, the area of Spain hardest hit by the second wave of the coronavirus, has said it will obey new lockdown restrictions imposed by the central government but plans to appeal against them in court.

Efforts to tackle the spread of the virus in and around the capital have been hindered by political intransigence as the Madrid region engages in a standoff with the central government.

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Chrissy Teigen and John Legend speak of ‘deep pain’ of losing baby

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US model and TV presenter was pregnant with third child when taken to hospital with complications

Chrissy Teigen has said she and husband John Legend are “shocked” and in “deep pain” after losing their baby during pregnancy.

The US model and TV presenter had been taken to hospital because of excessive bleeding.

Teigen, 34, later wrote in a statement on social media: “We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before.

“We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions. It just wasn’t enough,” she wrote on Wednesday night.

Teigen shared the news with a black-and-white picture showing her crying while sitting in a hospital bed.

pic.twitter.com/iBFKYtYwi2

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Japan: man admits nine murders after contacting suicidal people via Twitter

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In case that has shocked country and led to new Twitter rules, Takahiro Shiraishi assaulted and strangled victims

A 29-year-old man has pleaded guilty in a Tokyo court to all charges related to killing and dismembering eight young women and one man in 2017, in a case that has shocked the country.

Takahiro Shiraishi told the court he had contacted women via Twitter and other social media platforms who had expressed suicidal thoughts. He then took them to his apartment in Zama, about 25 miles (40km) south-west of Tokyo, where he sexually assaulted them, robbed some and strangled them.

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Former England boxer turns pro after winning fight with Home Office

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Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who was trafficked as a child and has won right to stay in UK, signs with top promoter

The former England amateur boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz, who won his 16-year legal battle with the Home Office for the right to remain in the UK, is launching his professional career after being signed by MTK Global, one of the world’s largest boxing management agencies.

Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has spent his adult life struggling to establish his nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.

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Alexei Navalny says he believes Vladimir Putin was behind poisoning

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Russian opposition figure poisoned with nerve agent says he has no ‘other versions’ of how crime was committed

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny says he believes Vladimir Putin ordered intelligence agencies to poison him, possibly to avoid a “Belarusian scenario” of civil unrest.

Navalny, who is recovering in Germany after falling ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow in August, told the news magazine Der Spiegel that the use of the rare nerve agent novichok meant the assault on his life would have been ordered from the top.

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Irish court rules Subway bread is not bread

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The US chain’s sandwiches do not meet definition of bread or a staple food, Supreme Court rules in tax case

The Irish Supreme court has ruled that the bread served at Subway – a US sandwich food chain with branches in more than 100 countries – cannot be defined as bread.

Under Ireland’s Value-Added Tax Act of 1972 it cannot even be defined as a staple food, according to the Irish Independent, because it contains too much sugar.

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