Category Archives: World News

Israel says airstrikes in Syria are ‘message’ to protect Druze minority

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Syria says at least one civilian killed in latest strikes, while most Druze leaders rebuff Israeli protection

Israeli warplanes have carried out a series of airstrikes outside Damascus and across Syria, after warnings from Israeli officials that the country would intervene to protect the Syria’s minority Druze sect.

The airstrikes targeted a Syrian military site in the Damascus suburb of Harasta, as well as hitting unknown targets in Deraa province in south Syria and Hama province in north-west Syria. At least one civilian was killed and four people were injured as a result of the Israeli bombings late Friday night, according to Syrian state media.

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US designates two powerful Haitian gangs as terrorist groups

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Rubio calls Viv Ansanm and Gran Grif ‘threat to US national security’ and says support for groups could lead to charges

The United States has designated a powerful Haitian gang alliance, whose members have taken control of almost all the capital city as a “transnational terrorist group”.

The criminal coalition known as Viv Ansanm (Live Together), and another faction, the Gran Grif gang, which in October took responsibility for a shocking massacre of at least 115 people in the agricultural town of Pont-Sondé, were both covered by the move on Friday.

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AfD ‘extremist’ label sets up political high-wire act for Friedrich Merz

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Incoming chancellor must now decide whether to ban flourishing far-right party amid widespread discontent

The decision by Germany’s domestic spy agency to call the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party “extremist” amounts to the starkest move yet by authorities to try to stop the advance of the populist political force.

Friday’s classification by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) will open up the possibility for the security services to monitor the country’s largest opposition party, including by recruiting people to inform against it and enabling interception of its communications.

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Venezuela rejects UN ruling to refrain from holding election in disputed region

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Neighboring Guyana has also laid claim to the mineral rich Essequibo, and Venezuela plans to elect officials to govern it

Venezuela’s government has said it “categorically” rejected a ruling from the U N’s top court ordering the South American country to refrain from holding elections for officials who supposedly would oversee a resource-rich region in neighboring Guyana that both countries claim as their own.

The government of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, in a statement underscored its historical position to not recognize the jurisdiction of the international court of justice and asserted that international law does not allow the body to “interfere” or “attempt to prohibit” an election.

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King Charles to open Canada parliament as PM Carney reacts to Trump threats

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Liberal PM will also meet with US president on Tuesday amid tensions over threatened annexation and tariffs

King Charles has accepted an invitation to open Canada’s parliament on 27 May, in “an historic honour that matches the weight of our times”, the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said on Friday.

In his first news conference since an election dominated by Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty, the prime minister also confirmed he would meet the US president at the White House on Tuesday.

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Woman in Florida deported to Cuba says she was forced to leave baby daughter

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Heidy Sánchez says she was told her 17-month-old, who has health problems and is breastfeeding, couldn’t go with her

A mother deported to Cuba reportedly had to hand over her 17-month-old daughter to a lawyer while her husband, a US citizen, stood outside unable to say goodbye.

Heidy Sánchez was told she was being detained for deportation to Cuba when she turned up at her scheduled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) check-in appointment in Tampa, Florida, last week.

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Gaza humanitarian aid ship ‘bombed by drones’ in waters off Malta

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Freedom Flotilla Coalition claims Israel to blame for attack on unarmed civilian vessel in international waters

A ship carrying humanitarian aid and activists to Gaza has been bombed by drones and disabled while in international waters off Malta as it headed towards the Palestinian territory, its organisers have said.

“At 00:23 Maltese time, the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship came under direct attack in international waters,” the group said in a statement.

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UK sand eel fishing ban remains in place despite EU legal challenge

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Creatures make up the bulk of seabirds’ diet but are fished for commercial pig food

A ban on fishing for sand eels in UK waters will remain in place despite a legal challenge from the EU.

The small, silvery eels make up the bulk of the diet of seabirds, but they are fished for commercial pig food. A lack of sand eels means seabirds such as puffins can starve to death.

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Ugandan ​​activist​ asks HSBC to put ‘lives before profit’ as campaigners target bank’s AGM

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Patience Nabukalu, who has experienced climate-related flooding, joins protestors from around the world to deliver a letter to CEO Georges Elhedery criticising the financing of oil, gas and coal projects

At nine years old, Patience Nabukalu was devastated when her friend, Kevin, died in severe flooding that hit their Kampala suburb, Nateete, a former wetland. Witnessing deaths and the destruction of homes and livelihoods in floods made worse by extreme rainfall has had a profound impact on her.

She decided to try to bring about change – to do what she could to amplify the voices of those in the Ugandan communities worst affected by the climate crisis.

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China ‘evaluating’ US offer to engage in trade negotiations

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Comments come a week after Trump claimed talks were already taking place

Beijing is “evaluating” an offer from the US to engage in trade negotiations, the Chinese government has said, a week after Donald Trump claimed talks were already under way.

China’s commerce ministry said on Friday: “The US has recently taken the initiative on many occasions to convey information to China through relevant parties, saying it hopes to talk with China.”

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German spy agency labels AfD as ‘confirmed rightwing extremist’ force

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Upgrade from ‘suspected’ threat will mean greater surveillance of party that came second in last election

Germany’s domestic intelligence service has designated the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the biggest opposition party, as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force, meaning authorities can step up their surveillance as critics call for it to be legally banned.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) previously considered the anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin party a “suspected” threat to Germany’s democratic order, with three of the AfD’s regional chapters in eastern statesand its youth wing classed as confirmed extremist.

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Gaza blockade: a Palestinian widow, her children and a cupboard that is almost bare

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Ibtisam Ghalia and her four children are just one of the families living on brink of starvation with no sign of an end to blockade

Every day, Ibtisam Ghalia and her four children count their remaining stocks of food. These are meagre: a kilo or so of beans, a bag of lentils, a little salt, some herbs, spices, and enough flour for half a dozen flatbreads cooked on a griddle over a fire of wood splinters, waste plastic and cardboard.

In the two months since Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, stopping food, medicine, fuel and anything else from entering the devastated territory, Ghalia’s “cupboard” has slowly diminished.

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Syria calls Israeli air strikes on Damascus a ‘dangerous escalation’

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Benjamin Netanyahu says strikes intended to deter Syria’s new leadership from any hostile move against the Druze

Syria’s new rulers have angrily denounced raids launched by Israel’s air force against unidentified targets near the presidential palace in Damascus, warning of a “dangerous escalation”.

Israeli officials said the attacks were intended to send a message to the Syrian government after days of bloody clashes near Damascus between pro-government militia forces and fighters from the Druze minority sect.

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Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

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President says neither NPR nor PBS ‘presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events’


Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for NPR and PBS, accusing the news outlets of being biased.

NPR and PBS are only partly funded by the US taxpayer and rely heavily on private donations.

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Why is Trump ending the ‘de minimis’ tariff loophole on low-value imports?

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Goods worth less than $800 will be subject to 120% levy meaning prices on Chinese exports will probably increase

At one minute past midnight on Friday, eastern time, a US tariff exemption that has fuelled the rise of companies such as Shein and Temu, and stocked the wardrobes of millions of Americans with cheap fast fashion and other household goods, closed. As part of Donald Trump’s flurry of tariffs on China, the US is closing a loophole that allowed low-value goods to be shipped into the US without paying any import fees. The “de minimis” loophole, known by the Latin phrase for “of little importance”, was “a big scam going on against our country”, the US president said on Wednesday. “We put an end to it.”

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As Australia heads to the polls, big parties brace for rise of independents

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The soft, undecided and swinging voters are at an all-time high in Australia, while support for the centre-left Labor and conservative-leaning Coalition is low

More than 18 million Australians will head to the polls this Saturday to choose between the incumbent centre-left Labor party and its conservative-leaning Liberal/National Coalition challenger.

But about one in three voters will brush off the major contenders – led by the current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the opposition leader, Peter Dutton – in favour of someone else altogether, in an election marked by a cost of living crisis and the spectre of Donald Trump.

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Soviet-era spacecraft expected to plunge uncontrolled to Earth next week

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Kosmos 482, weighing 500kg, was meant to land on Venus in the 1970s but it never made it out of orbit because of a rocket malfunction

A Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land on Venus in the 1970s is expected to soon plunge uncontrolled back to Earth.

It’s too early to know where the half-ton mass of metal might come down or how much of it will survive re-entry, according to space debris-tracking experts.

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Trump officials ask supreme court to help strip legal status from Venezuelans

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Justice department calls on court to hold judge’s order against ending temporary protected status for 300,000

The Trump administration asked the US supreme court on Thursday to intervene and assist in its attempt to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants in the US, a move that would clear the way for their deportation.

The justice department asked the supreme court justices to put on hold a federal judge’s order from March that halted the decision of the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to terminate the temporary legal status that previously was granted to some Venezuelans.

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MPs urge David Lammy to intervene as British man remains in jail in India

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Jagtar Singh Johal’s hopes of being freed on bail have been dashed for now despite being cleared of charges in one case

Hopes that Jagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh man held in an Indian jail for seven years, would be released on bail were dashed on Thursday when his case was deferred by the Indian supreme court possibly until after the summer, prompting calls from MPs for the UK to intervene.

The foreign secretary, David Lammy, is due to meet Johal’s brother again next week.

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DoJ civil rights division suffers severe personnel reduction under Trump

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More than 250 lawyers have left or been reassigned since January as critics fear ‘end of the division as we’ve known it’

More than 250 attorneys in the justice department’s civil rights division have either left, been reassigned, or accepted a buyout offer since January , according to an estimate provided to the Guardian by people familiar with the matter. The significant decrease in personnel underscores how Donald Trump is gutting the arm of the federal government responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws.

About 235 attorneys in the division’s civil enforcement sections have accepted buyouts or have quit the justice department and roughly another 20 have been reassigned or detailed to do other work within the agency, including handling public records requests and internal agency complaints.

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