Category Archives: World News

Success of far-right AfD shows east and west Germany are drifting further apart

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Likely win in Thuringia and second place in Saxony highlight how eastern voters are asserting their own political identity

After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the former West German chancellor Willy Brandt predicted that reunification would finally allow “what belongs together to grow together”.

How optimistic that image of organic healing sounds 35 years on. Tonight’s historic election results from Thuringia and Saxony paint a picture of a Germany whose eastern and western regions are, if anything, drifting further and further apart.

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German state elections: Far right leads in Thuringia exit poll, centre-right ahead in Saxony – as it happened

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Exit polls show strong performance for far-right Alternative für Deutschland in both German state elections

The centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has taken a narrow lead in Saxony, with the far right Alternative für Deutschland following closely in second place, according to the first exit polls.

Saxony ZDF exit poll

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Pope Francis to set off on challenging 12-day Asia-Pacific tour

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Pontiff’s itinerary, including visits to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, reflects importance of Asia to Catholic church

Pope Francis is to embark on the longest, farthest and perhaps most challenging trip of his pontificate as he begins a 12-day Asia-Pacific tour that is expected to highlight environmental threats, emphasise interfaith dialogue and reinforce the importance of Asia for the Catholic church.

The 87-year-old will set off on Monday on a tour taking in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, a trip that will clock up more than 20,000 miles by air.

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Ukrainian drone attacks hit power stations and refineries in Russia

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Russia plays down overnight strikes as its forces make incremental gains in Donbas and launch missiles at Kharkiv

Ukraine has carried out one of its biggest ever drone attacks on Russia, with videos showing a series of explosions and fires at power stations and refineries including in Moscow.

Russia’s defence ministry played down the overnight strikes. It said it had intercepted and destroyed 158 unmanned enemy aerial vehicles. These were shot down over 15 regions, it claimed.

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Hostage deaths could pile pressure on Netanyahu to agree Gaza ceasefire

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Discovery of six bodies may trigger renewed protests as anger grows over prime minister’s handling of the crisis

Overnight, the rumours spread: the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had found bodies in Gaza. Everyone in Israel knew the corpses were likely to be hostages seized on 7 October. The grim details – how many, their identities, and how and when they died – slowly emerged during the early hours of Sunday, to mounting sorrow and fury across the country.

The bodies of six people kidnapped alive by Hamas – Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino – were found in a Rafah tunnel 20 metres underground, a kilometre away from where another hostage, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, was found in relatively decent health last week. Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American citizen, appeared in a Hamas video in April. It was clear from the footage that his left hand had been amputated.

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Afghan women sing in defiance of Taliban laws silencing their voices

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Women push back at law stating they must not sing or read aloud in public by posting videos of themselves singing

Afghan women, both inside and outside the country, have posted videos of themselves singing in protest against the Taliban’s laws banning women’s voices in public.

Late last month the Taliban published new restrictions aimed, it said, at combating vice and promoting virtue. The 35-article document, which includes a raft of draconian laws, deems women’s voices to be potential instruments of vice and stipulates that women must not sing or read aloud in public, nor let their voices carry beyond the walls of their homes.

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South African beauty queen crowned Miss Nigeria after nationality row

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Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, had been competing in South African competition, but withdrew after a xenophobic backlash

A former Miss South Africa contestant hounded over a nationality row was crowned Miss Universe Nigeria on Saturday, bringing to an end a difficult few weeks for the contender.

Born to a Nigerian father in South Africa, 23-year-old Chidimma Adetshina withdrew from the country’s competition “for the safety and wellbeing of my family” after a backlash that exposed anti-foreigner sentiment in South Africa.

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Protesters across Israel call for Netanyahu to agree hostage deal – as it happened

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Mass protests follow call for general strike by head of Israeli labour union after six hostages held by Hamas were recovered overnight

The Associated Press has put together a profile of the six hostages whose bodies were discovered by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Here’s a look at their lives:

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Israel confirms deaths of six hostages after IDF finds bodies in Gaza

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IDF says Hamas killed captives shortly before bodies found, as families’ group accuses Netanyahu of ‘abandoning’ abductees

Israel has confirmed the deaths of six more hostages taken in the 7 October attack by Hamas, saying they were killed by their captors shortly before their bodies were found on Saturday in a tunnel complex under Gaza.

“According to our initial estimation, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” a military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, told reporters in an early-morning briefing.

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How a little-known 17th-century female scientist changed our understanding of insects

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Maria Sibylla Merian’s beautiful and disturbing illustrations, which shaped how we look at the natural world, will be on show at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum

More than three centuries after she made a perilous transatlantic voyage to study butterflies, a rare copy of the hand-coloured masterwork by the great naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian is returning to Amsterdam.

The Rijksmuseum, which holds more than half-a-million books on art and history, last week announced it had acquired a rare first-edition copy of Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname (Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium), described as a high point of 18th-century book production when the Dutch Republic was “the bookshop of the world”.

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African nations hit by mpox still waiting for vaccines – despite promises by the west

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Last week’s planned rollout of doses faces further delays as campaigners complain of greed and inequality

None of the African countries affected by the outbreak of a new variant of mpox have received any of the promised vaccine, pushing back a rollout that had been planned for last week.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been at the centre of an outbreak of the new clade 1b variant, with 18,000 suspected cases and 629 deaths this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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Oregon: drug possession to be a crime again as decriminalization law expires

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First-in-nation trial comes to an end, as new law gives those caught with hard drugs option of charges or treatment

Oregon’s first-in-the-nation experiment with decriminalizing drugs will expire on Sunday as a new law taking effect will once again make it a crime to possess small amounts of hard drugs.

The new recriminalization law, HB4002, will give those caught with illicit drugs – including fentanyl, heroin and meth – the choice to either be charged with possession or treatment, which includes completing a behavioral health program and participating in a “deflection program” to avoid fines.

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Seven people killed and dozens injured in Mississippi bus crash

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Siblings among those killed as police say bus left Interstate 20 near Bovina in western Mississippi and flipped over

Seven people have been killed and dozens more injured in western Mississippi after a commercial bus overturned on Interstate 20, according to the state’s highway patrol.

Six passengers were pronounced dead at the scene and another died at a hospital, according to a news release. The bus was traveling west on Saturday morning when it left the highway near Bovina in Warren county and flipped over, police said. No other vehicle was involved.

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US rapper Fatman Scoop dies after collapsing on stage mid-performance

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New York-born artist, 53, known for collaborating with Missy Elliott, was performing in Connecticut on Friday

The US rapper Fatman Scoop has died after he collapsed mid-performance during a free concert in Connecticut on Friday night, according to reports.

The New York-born artist, whose real name is Isaac Freeman III, was headlining the so-called Green & Gold Party in Hamden, Connecticut, when he had what was described as a medical emergency. He was seen in a video posted on X to have collapsed behind the DJ booth after urging concertgoers to “make some noise”.

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Elizabeth Warren condemns Trump for ‘changing his tune’ on IVF

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Democratic senator says Republican nominee trying to have it ‘both ways’ and adapting position to his audience

The US senator Elizabeth Warren has accused Donald Trump of trying to have it “both ways” with in vitro fertilization (IVF), two days after the former president vowed to force health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments if he is elected in November.

Speaking on MSNBC, Warren said Trump was simply adapting his positions according to what he perceived his audience’s preference to be.

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Three people dead after small plane crashes in Oregon town

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Officials say two people on board Cessna plane that struck row of townhouses, displacing families and causing fire

Three people were dead after a small plane crashed into a row of townhouses on Saturday morning in a neighborhood east of Portland, setting the homes ablaze, authorities told KATU-TV.

Officials earlier in the day had said the plane was carrying two people and that at least one resident had been unaccounted for.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that a twin-engine Cessna 421C came down at about 10.30am local time near the Troutdale airport.

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‘There was no mercy, even on children’: trauma in the West Bank after Israeli raids

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Israel accused of using a 10-year-old girl as a human shield as it carried out its devastating attack on the occupied Palestinian territory

When Israeli soldiers arrived at the modest house along an alleyway in Nur Shams camp on Wednesday night, they sent the women and four of the children out into the street, but kept hold of Malak Shihab.

They took the muzzle off their dog and it went straight up to the slight 10-year-old girl and sniffed her. Terrified, she pleaded to be with her mother, but the soldiers seemed to have just one phrase in accented Arabic: “Open the doors.”

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‘Written in the stars’: Norwegian princess and California shaman tie the knot, with Netflix in waiting

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Unconventional marriage of Princess Märtha Louise and Durek Vellet celebrated with three-day schedule of events and a documentary to follow

She is the clairvoyant daughter of one of Europe’s longest-serving monarchs; he is a self-styled sixth-generation shaman from California. The wedding of Princess Märtha Louise of Norway to Durek Verrett on Saturday on Saturday afternoon wasn’t your conventional royal affair, but that didn’t stop spectators lining the overcast streets of Geiranger in the hope of catching a glimpse of the bride.

The eldest daughter of Crown Prince Harald and Queen Sonja, 52-year-old Märtha Louise is fourth in line to the Norwegian throne. She married Verrett, 49, in a traditional church of Norway ceremony attended by royals and celebrities at the four-star Hotel Union in a small village beneath the Geiranger fjord.

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Russia-Ukraine war: five killed after Russia targets Chasiv Yar in Donetsk – now closed

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Official says strike hit a house and a high-rise building, killing five young men

The US has decided against a proposal to deploy American contractors to Ukraine to maintain Western military equipment, including F-16 fighter jets.

A Wall Street Journal report carried by Euromaiden stated that the Biden administration elected not to send contractors due to safety concerns, after Ukraine lost the first F-16 fighter jet it received from Western allies earlier this month.

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