Category Archives: World News

Irish pro-Palestine activists embrace ‘Paddystinian’ term as badge of honour

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Believed to have originated as an insult by Israel supporters, neologism is now used to campaign against war in Gaza

The term was coined to disparage Ireland’s solidarity with Palestine but has been adopted as a badge of honour that now adorns T-shirts, hoodies, pins and social media bios: welcome to Paddystine, home of the Paddystinians.

Irish activists have embraced the neologism as a galvanising term to campaign against Israel’s war in Gaza and to pressure the Irish government to do more to end the conflict.

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North Korea detains three over warship launch accident, state media reports

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Kim Jong-Un vowed to punish those found responsible for ‘criminal’ damage to new 5,000-tonne naval destroyer

North Korea has detained three people over an accident that occurred during the launch of a new warship this past week, state media reported early on Sunday.

Pyongyang has said that “a serious accident occurred” at Wednesday’s launch ceremony in the eastern port city of Chongjin for a newly built 5,000-tonne naval destroyer, in which sections of the bottom of the vessel were crushed.

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Israeli soldiers accused of widespread use of human shields in Gaza – as it happened

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In its latest humanitarian update on Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) called for more aid in Gaza to meet the “massive needs” of the territory.

Ocha said “the small amounts of supplies being allowed into the Gaza Strip are nowhere near enough to roll back the extreme deprivation that Gaza’s population is facing”.

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Israeli soldiers accused of widespread use of human shields in Gaza – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

In its latest humanitarian update on Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) called for more aid in Gaza to meet the “massive needs” of the territory.

Ocha said “the small amounts of supplies being allowed into the Gaza Strip are nowhere near enough to roll back the extreme deprivation that Gaza’s population is facing”.

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Israeli soldiers accused of widespread use of human shields in Gaza – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

In its latest humanitarian update on Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) called for more aid in Gaza to meet the “massive needs” of the territory.

Ocha said “the small amounts of supplies being allowed into the Gaza Strip are nowhere near enough to roll back the extreme deprivation that Gaza’s population is facing”.

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Record number of Americans are seeking residency in UK, according to Home Office

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Nearly 2,000 applications for British citizenship submitted since since January, when Donald Trump took office

During the 12 months leading up to March, more than 6,000 US citizens have applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely – the highest number since comparable records began in 2004, according to data released on Thursday by the UK’s Home Office.

Over the period, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship – with more than 1,900 of the applications received between January and March, most of which has been during the beginning of Donald Trump’s second US presidency.

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Israel investigates use of Palestinians as human shields by its forces in Gaza

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IDF says practice ‘strictly prohibited’ after report of incidents quoting both Palestinians and Israeli troops

Israel is investigating “several cases” involving soldiers who have forced Palestinians to act as human shields in Gaza, sending them into buildings and tunnels to check for bombs and gunmen.

“The use of Palestinians as human shields, or otherwise coercing them to participate in military operations, is strictly prohibited in IDF [Israel Defense Forces] orders,” the Israeli army said in a statement.

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Any trade deal with US must be based on ‘respect not threats’, says EU commissioner

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Maroš Šefčovič’s remarks come after pace of talks prompted Trump to propose 50% tariff on goods from bloc

The European Union’s trade chief has struck a defiant tone after Donald Trump threatened to place a 50% tariff on all goods from the bloc, saying any potential trade deal between Brussels and Washington must be based on “respect not threats”.

The US president made his announcement after voicing frustration with the pace of progress on a trade agreement with the EU. The new rates would come into effect from 1 June.

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Hush over Hollywood: why has it become so hard to make films in Los Angeles?

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The drop in productions is causing alarm – can Tinseltown halt the exodus and reclaim its spot as the home of movie-making?

When Adam Scott was working on the hit TV show Parks and Recreation in the early 2010s, the Los Angeles studio where the show was filmed was packed – “every stage was filled and working”.

These days, he told his former co-star Rob Lowe in a much-discussed recent podcast conversation, “it’s quiet over there” – in part because “it’s just too expensive to shoot here”.

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Russia launches one of biggest drone attacks on Kyiv since start of war

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Attack occurs hours after Russia and Ukraine begin prisoner exchange in deal seen as first step towards ceasefire

Russia has launched a large-scale drone and missile attack on Kyiv, injuring 15 people in one of the biggest assaults on the Ukrainian capital since the beginning of the war more than three years ago.

The attack came in waves, with Russia launching 14 ballistic missiles and 250 drones in the early hours of Saturday, although Ukrainian forces shot down six missiles and stopped most of the drones before they reached Kyiv.

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UK employees work from home more than most global peers, study finds

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Exclusive: Staff in Britain now average 1.8 days a week of remote working, above global average of 1.3 days

UK workers continue to work from home more than nearly any of their global counterparts more than five years after the pandemic first disrupted traditional office life, a study has found.

UK employees now average 1.8 days a week of remote working, above the international average of 1.3 days, according to the Global Survey of Working Arrangements (G-SWA), a worldwide poll of more than 16,000 full-time, university-educated workers across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa that began in July 2021.

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Indian troops shoot dead Pakistani man crossing frontier, officials say

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Incident next to Gujarat border occurs weeks after four-day conflict between countries

Indian border troops have shot dead a Pakistani man they say crossed the international frontier and did not stop when challenged.

The shooting occurred two weeks after conflict erupted between the two nuclear-armed countries that led to four days of violence and more than 70 people being killed before a ceasefire was agreed.

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Indian troops shoot dead Pakistani man crossing frontier, officials say

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Incident next to Gujarat border occurs weeks after four-day conflict between countries

Indian border troops have shot dead a Pakistani man they say crossed the international frontier and did not stop when challenged.

The shooting occurred two weeks after conflict erupted between the two nuclear-armed countries that led to four days of violence and more than 70 people being killed before a ceasefire was agreed.

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Trump’s Russia sanctions refusal leaves Europe with few options but to wait

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Frustration is growing amid increasing signs US could wash its hands of Ukraine, but some observers counsel patience

Gen Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s somewhat estranged special envoy on Ukraine, is said by some US diplomats to like to joke that the president did indeed say he would solve the Ukraine crisis in 24 hours, he just never specified which 24 hours.

Dark humour may be all that is left to Europeans as they absorb not just Trump’s refusal to impose the promised “bone-crushing sanctions” over Russia’s rejection of a 30-day ceasefire but also the increasing signs that the administration will wash its hands of Ukraine and instead focus on forging a new economic partnership with Russia.

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‘Alarming’ rise in regional internet censorship in China, study finds

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Tens of millions of internet users in China’s Henan denied access to five times more websites than usual

China’s authorities appear to have implemented an enhanced version of the country’s internet censorship regime in the central province of Henan, subjecting tens of millions of residents to even stricter controls on access to information than people in the rest of the country.

A research paper published this month by Great Firewall Report, an internet censorship monitoring platform, found that internet users in Henan, one of China’s most populous provinces, were, on average, denied access to five times more websites than a typical Chinese internet user between November 2023 and March 2025.

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Sperm from cancer-risk donor used to conceive at least 67 children across Europe

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Case of man carrying rare genetic variant fuels calls for limit on number of children that can be fathered by one donor

The sperm of a man carrying a rare cancer-causing mutation was used to conceive at least 67 children, 10 of whom have since been diagnosed with cancer, in a case that has highlighted concerns about the lack of internationally agreed limits on the use of donor sperm.

Experts have previously warned of the social and psychological risks of sperm from single donors being used to create large numbers of children across different countries. The latest case, involving dozens of children born between 2008 and 2015, raises fresh concerns about the complexity of tracing so many families when a serious medical issue is identified.

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Trump signs executive orders to spur US ‘nuclear energy renaissance’

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President aims to construct new nuclear reactors as he implements his own energy policies and undoes Joe Biden’s

Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Friday intended to spur a “nuclear energy renaissance” through the construction of new reactors he said would satisfy the electricity demands of data centers for artificial intelligence and other emerging industries.

The orders represented the president’s latest foray into the policy underlying America’s electricity supply. Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office over and moved to undo a ban implemented by Joe Biden on new natural gas export terminals and expand oil and gas drilling in Alaska.

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Georgian man extradited to US to face charges over poison-candy terror plot

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Officials say Michail Chkhikvishvili is the leader of a neo-Nazi group that promotes violence against minorities

The leader of an eastern European neo-Nazi group has been extradited to the United States from Moldova following his arrest last summer for allegedly instructing an undercover federal agent to dress as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to Jewish children and racial minorities, prosecutors said.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 21-year-old from the republic of Georgia, was arraigned on Friday before a federal judge in Brooklyn on multiple felonies, including soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence.

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Four men guilty of Kim Kardashian jewellery heist in Paris

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Three pensioners and a man in his 30s jailed as four others convicted of related charges

Four men have been found guilty of breaking into a luxury residence in Paris and stealing jewellery worth millions of euros from the American reality TV star Kim Kardashian when she attended fashion week in 2016.

Three pensioners and one man in his 30s were convicted of carrying out the armed heist, which was thought to be the biggest robbery of an individual in France in 20 years. Four other people were found guilty of assisting in the plot or related charges. Two people were acquitted of accusations they handed out information about Kardashian’s whereabouts.

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Twelve injured after woman stabs people at Hamburg train station

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Police say six victims critically wounded in attack by 39-year-old assailant in Germany’s second-largest city

German police have arrested a woman after at least 12 people were injured in a knife attack at the main station in the northern city of Hamburg.

Some of the injured sustained life-threatening injuries in the stabbing, emergency services said, although the exact number remained unclear.

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