Category Archives: World News

Alarm over new law giving Paraguay powers to crack down on NGOs

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Activists condemn law and liken it to civil society crackdowns in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Hungary and Russia

Opposition parties and human rights organisations in Paraguay have condemned an “alarming” new law giving the government powers to shutter NGOs who fail to comply with onerous additional audits – and suspend their directors and staff for up to five years.

Amnesty International warned that the deeply controversial bill – signed into law by President Santiago Peña late on Friday – violated freedom of expression, and likened it to civil society crackdowns in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Hungary and Russia.

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Norway to ask ICJ for advisory opinion condemning Israel’s stance on Unrwa

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Draft resolution for UN general assembly seeks to protect the aid agency and allow it to keep functioning in Gaza

Norway is to seek an international court of justice (ICJ) advisory opinion condemning the Israeli government for ending cooperation with the UN Palestinian relief agency Unrwa.

The Israeli Knesset passed two bills last month banning Unrwa from Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli state contact with the agency, moves that would prevent it from delivering aid to Gaza, after allegations by Israel that members of Unrwa staff in Gaza were involved in the 7 October attacks by Hamas. The UN launched an investigation into the Israeli claims and fired nine Unrwa staff as a result.

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‘Total oppression’: West Bank children being killed at unprecedented rate

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Huge rise in attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers killed 171 children in year after 7 October

Mohammad was 12, a football-mad teenager who spent his days dreaming of a career on the pitch and his last minutes practising ball skills. Ghassan was 14, a quiet, generous teenager who ran errands for elderly relatives, with an adoring six-year-old brother who stuck to him like a shadow.

Both boys were shot dead this summer by Israeli soldiers, victims of an unprecedented surge in attacks on children in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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Arthur Frommer, budget travel guide innovator, dies aged 95

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Europe on 5 Dollars a Day author revolutionized leisure travel and built one of best-known names in travel industry

Arthur Frommer, whose Europe on 5 Dollars a Day guidebooks revolutionized leisure travel by convincing average Americans to take budget vacations abroad, has died. He was 95.

Frommer died from complications of pneumonia, his daughter Pauline Frommer said Monday.

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Colorado victims sue over attack at LGBTQ+ nightclub that killed five

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Suit accuses Club Q of lax security and says authorities’ ‘deliberate inaction’ enabled shooter to carry out attack

Two days shy of the second anniversary of a hate-fueled mass shooting at a queer nightclub in Colorado Springs, victims and mothers of those killed have filed lawsuits against the club for lax security and against the sheriff’s office for failing to trigger the state’s red flag law to disarm the shooter and ensure they could not purchase any more weapons.

“Club Q advertised itself as a ‘safe place’ for LGBTQIA+ individuals. But that was a facade,” read the two complaints, which contain allegations of negligence.

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35,000 arrive at New Zealand parliament to protest against controversial Māori treaty bill – as it happened

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The hīkoi has reached parliament, filling the grounds and swelling out into the surrounding roads and streets.

It is shoulder to shoulder, with people and flags stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction. The notorious Wellington wind is whipping the flags high, their flicks and pops adding to the cacophony.

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HK47: dozens of pro-democracy activists jailed in Hong Kong’s largest national security trial

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Members of ‘Hong Kong 47’ – charged in 2021 over involvement in pre-election primary – sentenced to between four and 10 years

Dozens of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy figures have been jailed – one for 10 years – in the territory’s largest national security trial, after a prosecution that has been widely criticised as politically motivated.

Those jailed are among 47 people, known as the “Hong Kong 47”, who were charged in 2021 under the punitive national security law (NSL) with conspiracy to commit subversion over their involvement in pre-election primaries held in 2020 before the Hong Kong general election. Most have already spent more than three years in jail, but none were released on Tuesday.

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Shuntaro Tanikawa, giant of Japanese poetry, dies aged 92

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The poet also wrote the lyrics for the Astro Boy theme song and translated Peanuts into Japanese

Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, poignant but conversational in its divergence from haiku and other traditions, has died aged 92.

Tanikawa, who translated the Peanuts comic strip and penned the lyrics for the theme song of the animation series Astro Boy, died on 13 November, his son Kensaku Tanikawa said on Tuesday. The cause of death, at a Tokyo hospital, was old age.

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Trump selects Fox News contributor Sean Duffy as transport secretary

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Former Republican congressman from Wisconsin was also a cast member on MTV’s The Real World: Boston

Donald Trump has named Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin,and former cast member of the MTV show The Real World, to serve as the secretary of transportation. He was also a co-host on Fox Business but left that role on Monday, according to Fox News Media.

Duffy served in Congress from 2011 until 2019. Before being elected to public office, he was district attorney for Ashland county, Wisconsin, from 2002 to 2008 and previously had a reality TV show role. Duffy was a cast member on The Real World: Boston in 1997 where he would meet his wife, Fox news contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy.

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Matt Gaetz ‘paid for sex’, says lawyer for two women who testified to House committee – as it happened

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The reported tension between Elon Musk and Boris Epshteyn as they vie for status in Donald Trump’s inner circle of un-elected influencers involves the tech entrepreneur, Musk, challenging lawyer Epshteyn on the merits of his suggestions for senior appointments in the incoming Republican administration, according to Axios.

It quotes several unnamed sources, who’ve been giving accounts of the apparent strain between the two men bursting out into public rows, saying that Musk argues Epshteyn has too much sway over the names Trump is picking and considering for his cabinet and senior administration posts, while Epshteyn is “bristling” at Musk challenging him.

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Two telecoms cables in Baltic Sea severed, raising suspicions of sabotage

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Outages include 1,200km link between Germany and Finland and 218km cable between Lithuania and Sweden

Two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, have been severed, raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors.

The episode on Monday recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have probed as potentially malicious, including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Sea gas pipelines.

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Canada reportedly foils Iranian plot to kill former justice minister Irwin Cotler

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Tehran alleged to have targeted retired politician, 84, who is also human rights activist and critic of Iran

Canadian authorities foiled an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a former justice minister and rights activist who has been a strong critic of Tehran, the Globe and Mail newspaper has reported.

The 84-year-old was justice minister and attorney general from 2003 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2015 but has remained active with many associations that campaign for human rights around the world.

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Trump allies attack Biden for allowing Ukraine to use US missiles inside Russia

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President-elect’s surrogates accuse president of seeking to spark ‘world war three’ over decision to allow limited strikes

Allies of the president-elect, Donald Trump, have lashed out angrily at Joe Biden for his decision to permit Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to launch attacks inside Russia for the first time, in what the Kremlin has termed an “escalation” in the war.

Key Trump surrogates, including his son Donald Trump Jr, hardline congressional Republicans, and other backers have accused Biden of seeking to spark “world war three” before Trump’s presidential inauguration in January.

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Gaza ministry says 20 killed in anti-‘gang’ operation after looting of aid convoy

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Hamas-run interior ministry says it carried out security operation after armed looters hijacked almost 100 trucks

Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry has said that at least 20 people have been killed in an operation targeting “gangs” accused of looting trucks bringing aid into the war-torn territory which is facing the threat of famine.

Gunmen attacked and looted about 100 trucks carrying desperately needed supplies over the weekend, the biggest such attack during 13 months of war in the territory and new evidence of the growing power of Gaza’s criminal gangs.

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Keir Starmer to restart UK-India talks after previous negotiations stalled

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Whisky and migration thwarted earlier deal but UK PM hopeful of reaching agreement with Narendra Modi

Keir Starmer is to restart the aborted UK-India trade talks in the new year after an agreement stalled amid disagreements over whisky tariffs and migration.

No progress has been made on the deal since early this year after the last round of talks concluded. As prime minister, Boris Johnson promised a swift deal, but Rishi Sunak was said to be deeply uneasy with some of the provisions that had been negotiated by his predecessor. Talks were put on hold in March while both countries prepared for general elections.

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Tens of thousands march on NZ parliament in protest against Māori treaty bill

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Police say about 42,000 people gathered at parliament in the last stage of the nine-day protest in opposition to the Treaty of Waitangi bill

A protest march estimated to be one of the largest in New Zealand history arrived at parliament on Tuesday, flooding the grounds with song in a display of unity against a controversial bill seeking to reinterpret the country’s founding treaty between Māori and the crown.

Police said around 42,000 people took part in the march, in what was likely New Zealand’s largest-ever protest in support of Māori rights.

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No-show Joe: G20 leaders take group photo without Biden

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US president arrived for photograph with other world leaders – but found they had gone ahead without him

Joe Biden headed for a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro at his final summit as US president on Monday – only to find they had already taken the picture without him.

Frustrated US officials blamed “logistical issues” for the blunder which meant that Biden missed out on the shot, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers.

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UK expected to give Ukraine Storm Shadow missiles to strike inside Russia

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Move follows US president Joe Biden’s agreement to supply similar American long-range Atacms weapon

Britain is expected to supply Storm Shadow missiles for use by Ukraine on targets inside Russia, now that the US president, Joe Biden, has agreed to do the same for the similar American long-range Atacms weapon.

Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, while diplomatic sources briefed they expected other European countries to follow the US lead.

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Gisèle Pelicot rape trial: children tell of ‘devastation’ caused by their father

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Couple’s two sons and daughter beg Dominique Pelicot to reveal if other family members were abused

Gisèle Pelicot’s children have described their “devastation” to learn that their father had drugged their mother and invited dozens of men to rape her, begging him in court to tell the truth about whether he had abused other members of the family.

David Pelicot, 50, the couple’s oldest son, told the court in Avignon on Monday that he believed his sister Caroline Darian, 45, when she said she felt certain that she too had been drugged and abused by Dominique Pelicot, after photos were found on his computer of her asleep in bed in underwear that she did not recognise as her own.

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Letting Ukraine fire missiles into Russia unlikely to have decisive effect

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Military and political consequences of allowing Kyiv to use Atacms missiles remain uncertain

It has taken an election defeat in the US and the arrival of 10,000 North Koreans in Ukraine for Joe Biden to finally relent. After two years of asking, Ukraine’s army has been given permission to use US long-range Atacms missiles to strike against targets inside Russia. The military and political consequences remain uncertain.

Russia has been able to bomb targets across all of Ukraine throughout the war. On Sunday it attacked key sites across the country’s power network, forcing Kyiv to implement national electricity rationing as a result of the damage caused. Some missiles were aimed as far west as Lviv and at sites near the border with Moldova, and an energy crisis is closer as a result.

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