Category Archives: World News

Danish authorities in rush to close security loophole in Chinese electric buses

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Investigation launched after discovery that Chinese supplier had remote access to vehicles’ control systems

Authorities in Denmark are urgently studying how to close an apparent security loophole in hundreds of Chinese-made electric buses that enables them to be remotely deactivated.

The investigation comes after transport authorities in Norway, where the Yutong buses are also in service, found that the Chinese supplier had remote access for software updates and diagnostics to the vehicles’ control systems – which could be exploited to affect buses while in transit.

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Japan deploys soldiers to contain surge in bear attacks in Akita

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Close encounters reported almost daily as bears intrude into residential areas and attack and sometimes kill people

Japan has deployed troops to the northern prefecture of Akita to help contain a surge in the number of bear attacks that have terrorised people in the mountainous region.

Unexpected encounters with bears are being reported almost daily in the lead up to hibernation season as the animals forage for food. The bears have been roaming near schools, train stations, supermarkets and even at a hot springs resort.

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Five injured after man ‘deliberately’ drives car into people on French island

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At least two people in intensive care and suspect arrested after pedestrians and cyclists hit on Île d’Oléron

Five people have been injured, two of them seriously, after a driver rammed into pedestrians and cyclists on Île d’Oléron, a popular tourist destination off France’s Atlantic coast, authorities have said.

The driver has been arrested and an investigation opened into attempted murder, the La Rochelle public prosecutor, Arnaud Laraize, said on Wednesday. France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said it was observing the case but was not so far involved.

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Global stock markets fall sharply over AI bubble fears

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Drop in US, Asia and Europe follows warning from bank bosses that market correction could lie ahead

Global stock markets have fallen sharply amid concerns that a boom in valuations of artificial intelligence (AI) companies could be rapidly cooling.

Markets in the US, Asia and Europe have fallen after bank bosses warned a serious stock market correction could lie ahead, after a run of record stock market highs led some companies to appear overvalued.

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Facebook’s job ads algorithm is sexist, French equality watchdog rules

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Regulator found ads for mechanics skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers targeted women

The French equalities regulator has ruled that Facebook’s algorithm for placing job adverts is sexist, after an investigation found that adverts for mechanic roles skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers were targeted at women.

The Défenseur des Droits watchdog said the Facebook system for targeted job ads treated users differently based on their sex, and constituted indirect discrimination. The regulator recommended that Facebook and its parent company, Meta, took measures to ensure adverts were non-discriminatory, giving the company three months to inform the French body of the measures.

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Return of Chinese astronauts delayed after spacecraft struck by debris

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The three astronauts from the Shenzhou-20 mission flew to the Tiangong space station in April, and were expected to return on Wednesday

The return to Earth of three Chinese astronauts has been delayed until an unspecified date after their spacecraft was apparently struck by a small piece of debris, according to Chinese state media.

The three astronauts from the Shenzhou-20 mission flew to the Tiangong space station in April, and were expected to return on Wednesday at the end of a six month mission. Their replacements, the crew of Shenzhou-21, had already arrived on the weekend.

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Canada budget adds tens of billions to deficit as Carney spends to dampen Trump tariffs effect

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Entitled ‘Canada Strong’ the 2025 budget envisions significant new defence spending, a reduction of the civil service and ‘generational investments’

A protracted trade war with the United States and a weakening domestic economy has forced Mark Carney to run a deficit tens of billions larger than initially forecast in his first-ever federal budget.

The spending plan, titled “Canada Strong” envisions significant new defence spending, a reduction of the country’s civil service and “generational investments” that would reshape the nature of the country’s economy.

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Typhoon Kalmaegi: death toll rises to 66 as widespread flooding hits central Philippines

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Among the 66 fatalities were six military personnel whose helicopter crashed on the island of Mindanao during a humanitarian mission

Typhoon Kalmaegi has left at least 66 people dead with 26 others missing in the central Philippines, many in widespread flooding that trapped people on their roofs and swept away scores of cars in a hard-hit province still recovering from a deadly earthquake, officials said.

Among the dead were six people who were killed in a separate incident when a Philippine air force helicopter crashed in the southern province of Agusan del Sur on Tuesday while en route to help provide humanitarian help to provinces battered by Kalmaegi, the military said without providing other details, including what could have caused the crash.

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Jamaica PM says hurricane Melissa caused damage equivalent to nearly one-third of GDP

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At least 75 people were confirmed dead across the Caribbean, including 43 in Haiti and 32 in Jamaica

Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness has said last week’s Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit the country’s shores, caused damage to homes and key infrastructure equivalent to roughly 28% to 32% of last year’s gross domestic product.

Holness told the Caribbean nation’s lower house the $6bn to $7bn estimate was conservative, based on damages assessed so far, and short-term economic output could decline by 8% to 13%.

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Hegseth announces another deadly US strike on alleged drug boat

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Pentagon secretary says two people killed in attack on boat in eastern Pacific, bringing total killed to 66 in 16 strikes

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced yet another deadly strike on a boat accused of ferrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, coming the same day an aircraft carrier began heading to the region in a new expansion of military firepower.

The attack Tuesday killed two people aboard the vessel, Hegseth said, bringing the death toll from the Trump administration’s campaign in South American waters up to at least 66 people in at least 16 strikes.

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Dick Cheney’s role in ‘war on terror’ may have paved way for Trumpism

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Former US vice-president a key figure in expanding White House’s power and ‘corrupting the intelligence-policy relationship’ to sell Iraq war

Dick Cheney, who has died aged 84, came to be seen as a moderate in his later years for his staunch opposition to Donald Trump, but he also stands accused of paving the way for Trumpism by undermining the independence of the intelligence agencies and US adherence to international law.

As George W Bush’s second-in-command in the “war on terror” declared after the 9/11 attacks, Cheney made himself one of the most powerful vice-presidents in US history, and was a key protagonist in the push to invade Iraq, as well as the use of torture on suspected al-Qaida members detained without charge in the CIA’s offshore “black sites”.

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Sudan civil war spiralling out of control, UN secretary general says

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António Guterres calls for the violence to end but there appears little appetite for ceasefire proposed by US

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said the war in Sudan is spiralling out of control as he called for a halt to the fighting and an end to the violence.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which are reportedly backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized El Fasher in Darfur last week after a near 18-month siege. Some of its soldiers have posted videos of civilians being shot, including in the town’s maternity hospital.

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Brazil to seek independent inquiry into deadly police raid that killed 121 people

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Brazilian president Lula called police assault on two of Rio’s largest clusters of favelas ‘disastrous’ and a ‘massacre’

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said his government will seek an independent investigation into what he called a “disastrous” police “massacre” that left at least 121 people dead.

Four officers and at least 117 others were killed when police launched a major assault on two of Rio’s largest clusters of favelas, the Complexo do Alemão and the Complexo da Penha, early last Tuesday to execute 100 arrest warrants.

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Sheinbaum denies reports US will send troops to Mexico: ‘It’s not going to happen’

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President says she’s repeatedly rejected such offers from Trump for US to confront Mexico’s powerful drug cartels

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has flatly denied reports that the United States is planning to send troops into Mexico to confront the country’s powerful cartels, noting that she had repeatedly rejected such offers from Donald Trump.

“It’s not going to happen,” Sheinbaum said during her daily morning news conference on Tuesday. “We do not agree with any process of interference or interventionism.”

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Munich’s surfers left stunned after famed river wave vanishes

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Eisbach wave in the Bavarian city had been a surfing magnet for decades but disappeared after a cleanup

A standing wave in a Munich stream that has been a surfing magnet for more than four decades has vanished, leaving urban surfers high and dry.

Water levels in the Eisbach (“ice brook”) dropped last week for annual cleanup work along the streambed.

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Teenager taken to Ghana away from UK ‘gang culture’ to stay for now, court rules

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Boy had sought court order to force his return, after parents took him on trip to Ghana and returned without him

A British teenager whose parents left him in Ghana, fearing he was at risk from “gang culture” in the UK, should stay there until at least the end of his GCSE exams, a judge sitting at London’s high court has ruled.

The boy took legal action against his parents, seeking a court order that would force his return, after they enrolled him in a boarding school and arranged for him to live with extended family in Ghana without telling him.

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Friedrich Merz says Syrians no longer have reason for asylum in Germany

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Chancellor suggests deportations could begin ‘in the near future’ as government seeks to counter rise of AfD

Syrians no longer have reason to be granted asylum in Germany after the end of their country’s civil war, according to Friedrich Merz, who said they will instead be encouraged to return to help with the reconstruction of their homeland.

During Syria’s 14-year civil war, Germany took in more refugees than any other country in the EU, but the chancellor and others in his coalition cabinet argue that the situation has changed since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government 11 months ago.

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Spain grants citizenship to descendants of civil war’s International Brigades

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About 32,000 volunteered to fight Franco dictatorship, including 2,500 men and women from Britain and Ireland

The Spanish government has granted citizenship to 170 descendants of volunteers in the International Brigades in recognition of their fight against fascism during the Franco dictatorship that followed the civil war.

An estimated 32,000 volunteers from around the world joined the anti-fascist brigades during the civil war, including approximately 2,500 men and women from Britain and Ireland, of whom 530 were killed.

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Manslaughter inquiry opened after death of worker in Rome tower collapse

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Contractor was trapped for 11 hours under fallen masonry at medieval landmark near the Colosseum

Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation over the death of a worker trapped when a medieval monument in central Rome partly collapsed.

Octav Stroici, 66, was rescued on Monday night after 11 hours under fallen masonry but died of his injuries at the city’s Umberto I hospital. Romanian foreign affairs officials, who said he came from their country, thanked rescuers for their efforts to save him during a long, complex and delicate operation.

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As criticism grows, is UAE ready to walk away from Sudan’s RSF militia?

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After mass killings in El Fasher and four years on from a coup, UAE now admits its Sudan policy has gone wrong

The United Arab Emirates’ diplomatic machine is for the first time admitting to mistakes in its Sudan policy after suffering reputational damage over its support for the Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese paramilitary group that has carried out mass killings in El Fasher since it captured the city late last month.

Speaking in Bahrain on Sunday, Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s senior diplomatic envoy, said the UAE and others had been wrong not to impose sanctions on the instigators of the 2021 coup – led jointly by the RSF and the army – that overthrew Sudan’s transitional civilian government.

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