Category Archives: World News

France sparks outcry with plan for prison wing near former penal colony

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Site in French Guiana once received prisoners who were sent to notorious Devil’s Island off the coast

French plans to build a maximum-security prison wing for drug traffickers and Islamic militants near a former penal colony in French Guiana have sparked an outcry among local people and officials.

The wing would form part of a $450m (£337m) prison announced in 2017 that is expected to be completed by 2028 and hold 500 inmates. The prison would be built in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, a town bordering Suriname that once received prisoners shipped by Napoleon III in the 1800s, some of whom were sent to the notorious Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana.

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Netanyahu vows to ‘take control’ of Gaza as UK, France and Canada threaten action against Israel

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Key allies call escalation ‘egregious’ and promise ‘concrete’ response if Israel does not end renewed offensive and allow aid into strip

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will “take control” of all of Gaza, as three key allies attacked his “egregious” escalation of the military campaign and blockade on humanitarian aid.

Britain, France and Canada attacked Israel’s expansion of its war as disproportionate, described conditions in Gaza as “intolerable” and threatened a “concrete” response if Israel’s campaign continues.

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US supreme court allows Trump to revoke protected status for Venezuelans

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Justices grant homeland security request to end temporary protected status while appeal proceeds in lower court

Donald Trump’s administration can end legal protections that have shielded about 350,000 Venezuelans from potential deportation, the supreme court ruled on Monday.

America’s highest court granted a request by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to revoke temporary protected status (TPS) for the Venezuelans while an appeal proceeds in a lower court.

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Reeves hopes hat-trick of deals shows Britain is open for business

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Impact of agreements on food, energy and defence may not be huge but chancellor believes it will draw investors to UK

Rachel Reeves joked to journalists after Monday’s EU-UK reset that trade deals were coming along “like buses”, given the agreements with India and the US that had also been sealed in the past fortnight alone.

The chancellor described the EU deal as the best that had been secured by any non-member country, but she was also keen to talk about the three successful negotiations as a package.

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EU reset deal puts Britain back on the world stage, says Keir Starmer

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UK prime minister heralds a ‘win-win’ but faces criticism for concessions on fishing rights

Keir Starmer has vowed his EU reset deal will deliver cheaper food and energy for British people, heralding a “win-win” as he sealed the high-stakes agreement with concessions on youth visas and fishing.

“Britain is back on the world stage,” the prime minister said after shaking hands on the deal with the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen in London. “It gives us unprecedented access to the EU market, the best of any country … all while sticking to the red lines in our manifesto.”

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Microsoft employee interrupts CEO’s keynote with pro-Palestinian protest

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Protester is engineer who worked on Azure software, which enabled Israeli surveillance of Palestinians

A Microsoft employee disrupted a keynote speech by the company’s chief executive with a pro-Palestinian protest at the company’s annual developer conference on Monday.

Joe Lopez, a Microsoft firmware engineer who worked on parts of the company’s cloud-computing platform, Azure, was escorted out the Build conference by security nearly immediately after he confronted Satya Nadella.

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Starmer’s post-Brexit reset offers clear benefits – but there is political risk too

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While getting UK-EU deal through parliament should be easy enough, cries of ‘betrayal’ may chime with some voters

There were two moments at the UK-EU summit where it felt as if a corner had truly been turned. It was not on agrifoods, nor youth mobility, defence or fishing.

When Keir Starmer said the UK had changed, the most symbolic evidence of that came in a press release from No 10 that set out the terms of the agreement brokered at Lancaster House.

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Village where Israelis and Palestinians live together to promote peace faces planned tax on funds

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Unique community in Israel appeals to UK for support after Knesset’s proposed 80% tax on its funding

An Israeli village where Jews and Palestinians live together to promote peace is in danger of losing vital overseas funding following Israeli government proposals to impose an 80% tax on foreign donations, residents have warned.

Leading figures from the unique community – Wahat Salam/Neve Shalom, which translates as “Oasis of Peace” – flew to the UK this week in a visit hosted by the Co-operative Group, which is calling for the UK government to support peace-building cooperatives worldwide with foreign and development policy.

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Israel says it will allow ‘basic’ amounts of food into Gaza after 10-week blockade – Israel-Gaza war live

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Israel imposed blockade on devastated Palestinian territory in early March, cutting off supplies of food, medicine, shelter and fuel

We are continuing the Guardian’s live coverage of developments in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel’s war on Gaza.

Israel decided on Sunday to resume the entry of a “basic quantity” of food into Gaza, after coming under increasing international pressure to lift its devastating blockade of the Strip, which had lasted for 10 weeks.

On the recommendation of the IDF and based on the operational need to enable the expansion of the military operation to defeat Hamas, Israel will allow a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population in order to make certain that no starvation crisis develops in the Gaza Strip.

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Runaway rice prices spell danger for Japan’s prime minister as elections loom

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Attempts to bring down the price of the Japanese staple have had little effect amid a cost-of-living crisis

Japan’s government is battling record-low approval ratings as consumers voice anger at soaring rice prices just weeks before key national elections.

Attempts to bring down the price of the Japanese staple have had little effect, prompting calls for a reduction in the consumption (sales) tax to ease the cost-of-living crisis.

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At least £64bn of property in England and Wales is hidden behind opaque trusts

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Campaigners say secretive ownership structures are becoming the ‘go-to vehicle for kleptocrats’

The owners of nearly a quarter of a million properties in England and Wales worth a combined £64bn are hidden behind opaque trusts, according to research that prompts concern that such structures are the “go-to vehicle for kleptocrats” stashing money in Britain.

The government introduced a register of property held through offshore vehicles in August 2022, revealing a string of unknown owners, including high-profile figures such as Lewis Hamilton and James Dyson, as well as sanctioned Russians, Gulf royals and the Chinese state.

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Campaigners seek help amid search for victims of Argentina’s military dictatorship

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Families of the ‘disappeared’ say kidnapped children may be living across Europe

Women whose relatives were murdered and disappeared under Argentina’s military dictatorship will meet EU officials in Brussels on Monday to seek support for expanded DNA testing to identify missing children.

A delegation from the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a campaigning group, will denounce efforts by the far-right president, Javier Milei, to dismantle the search for missing persons. They will seek support for continuing their efforts to find the children of the disappeared who were illegally adopted, many of whom may be in Europe.

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Train hits pedestrians in Ohio, killing at least two

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Fremont emergency crews search the Sandusky river near Miles Newton Bridge for at least one missing person

Two people were killed, police said, and at least one person was missing after pedestrians were struck by a train on Sunday evening in northern Ohio, authorities said.

The incident occurred at around 7pm in Fremont, near Lake Erie between Toledo and Cleveland, WTOL-TV reported.

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Centrist Nicuşor Dan defeats far-right rival in Romanian presidential election

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Results show Bucharest mayor taking 54.2% of vote in presidential race, with far-right rival George Simion on 45.8%

The centrist mayor of Bucharest, Nicuşor Dan, is set to win Romania’s pivotal presidential election with 99% of votes counted, according to official figures showing the pro-EU independent eight points clear of his far-right rival, George Simion.

The figures from Romania’s central election authority showed Dan, who had cast the second round vote as a battle between “a pro-western and an anti-western Romania”, on 54.2%, while Simion, a self-professed Trump admirer, had 45.8%.

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Centre-right party wins Portuguese election as far right makes record gains

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Incumbent Democratic Alliance, led by caretaker prime minister Luís Montenegro, falls well short of majority

Portugal’s incumbent, centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) has won the country’s third snap general election in three years – but once again fallen well short of a majority – as the underperforming socialists were left vying for second place with the far-right Chega party, which took a record 22% of the vote.

By midnight on Sunday, with 99% of the votes counted, the AD – led by the prime minister, Luís Montenegro – had won 32.1% of the vote and taken 86 seats in Portugal’s 230-seat assembly, leaving it far shy of the 116 needed for a majority. The Socialist party (PS) had taken 23.4% of the vote t0 Chega’s 22.6%, and the two were tied on 58 seats each.

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Israel’s military announces start of ‘extensive’ new ground operations in Gaza – Israel-Gaza war live

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Israeli ground forces supported by air force in new offensive despite peace talks in Qatar

In an earlier post, we reported on the dire situation at the Indonesian hospital, which is reportedly under siege by Israeli forces.

Now Gaza’s health ministry has said that all public hospitals in the north of the territory were “out of service”.

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Mexican navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge, killing two sailors

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Twenty-two crew members injured, 11 of them critically, with nine in stable condition, Mexican government says

Two sailors from the Mexican navy were killed and another 11 critically hurt when a sailing ship taking part in a promotional tour in New York City collided with the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said.

The crash happened on Saturday night when the Cuauhtémoc – an academy training vessel with 277 people on board who shares a name with the last Aztec ruler – lost power and struck the bridge. Eyewitness videos showed dozens of sailors in ceremonial uniforms spread across yardarms shortly before the collision, which snapped the Cuauhtémoc’s three masts.

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Pope Leo XIV holds inaugural mass at St Peter’s Square

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy and JD Vance among 150,000 present as Leo says he wants Catholic church to be ‘leaven of unity’

Pope Leo XIV said he wanted the Catholic church to be a “small leaven of unity” in a time of “too much discord and too many wounds”, during his inaugural papal mass attended by world leaders including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the US vice-president, JD Vance.

Calling for more love and unity, Leo said the church’s “true authority” was the charity of Christ. He said: “It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did.”

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Cooking the books? Fears Trump could target statisticians if data disappoints

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Proposed rule change could pave way for president to fire economists whose figures prove politically inconvenient

Summarizing his befuddlement with numbers, Mark Twain observed that there were “lies, damned lies and statistics”.

The acerbic phrase later become so deeply embedded in popular consciousness that it once formed the title to an episode of The West Wing, NBC’s portrayal of a fictitious US president played by Martin Sheen.

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US credit rating downgrade could add to pressure on government debt

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Loss of Moody’s triple-A rating comes amid concerns about fiscal trajectory and widening budget deficit

US government debt may come under more pressure this week after the credit rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its top-notch triple-A credit rating.

Moody’s dealt a blow to Washington last Friday, when it downgraded the US and warned about rising levels of government debt and a widening budget deficit. Moody’s cut its credit rating on the US by one notch to Aa1 from Aaa, becoming the last of the big three agencies to downgrade the US.

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