Category Archives: World News

Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes dies aged 83

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Mendes, who popularised bossa nova among global audiences in the 1960s, had been suffering from the effects of long-term Covid, his family said

The Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes, who brought bossa nova to an international audience in the 1960s with his band Brasil ’66, has died aged 83 as a result of health challenges related to long-term Covid.

In a statement, Mendes’s family said he “passed away peacefully” in his home town of Los Angeles. “His wife and musical partner for the past 54 years, Gracinha Leporace Mendes, was by his side, as were his loving children. Mendes last performed in November 2023 to sold out and wildly enthusiastic houses in Paris, London and Barcelona,” they said. “For the last several months, his health had been challenged by the effects of long-term Covid.”

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Scholz pledges continued backing and says Germany ‘strongest supporter of Ukraine in Europe’ – as it happened

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German chancellor says country ‘will support Ukraine for as long as it takes’ as he meets Volodymyr Zelenskiy

Ukraine’s defence minister outlined the country’s priorities today.

Speaking at Ramstein airbase, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy raised concerns about western partners’ policies and the pace of deliveries.

Long-range capability. I’m glad that the US, the UK, and France are represented here. Thanks to our joint courage, we have implemented very important operations, in particular in Crimea.

These operations allowed us to return security to the Black Sea and our food exports. Now we hear that your long-range policy has not changed, but we see changes in the Atacms, Storm Shadows and Scalps –a shortage of missiles and cooperation.

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Daughter of French man who invited men to rape mother speaks of ‘descent into hell’

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Dominique Pélicot has admitted drugging his wife Gisèle and inviting strangers to abuse her over a decade

The daughter of a French man on trial for enlisting strangers to rape his drugged wife has described him as probably “one of the worst sexual criminals in the past 20 years”.

Dominique Pélicot, a 71-year-old retiree, has admitted to abusing his wife without her knowledge between 2011 and 2020, drugging her with sleeping pills and then recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her in her own home.

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‘We are freed in Gaza by sport’: shot putter flies Palestinian flag at Paralympics

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Fadi Aldeeb, who had a month to train in his old event, was sole Gaza-born athlete at either Paris Games

Fadi Aldeeb got the call just a month before the Paralympics began asking him to return to the shot put, an event in which he hadn’t competed in years, to be the sole Palestinian representative at the Paris Games.

“When they asked me, of course I said yes because this is my country,” said the 38-year-old wheelchair basketball player from Gaza. “This experience isn’t about me, I am the voice of millions of people, to show their goals, their hopes and their successes. This is my opportunity to show the world who we are.”

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Iran warns Russia against siding with Azerbaijan in border dispute

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Row may signal that newly elected Tehran government is willing to take tougher line with Moscow

Iran’s new reformist government has warned Russia against siding with Azerbaijan in a border dispute as concerns in Tehran persist over its relations with Moscow.

The Iranian foreign minister, Sayeed Abbas Araghchi, took the unusual step of upbraiding Russia after Moscow sided with Azerbaijan over its calls for a land corridor along the Armenia-Iran border that Tehran fears could limit its access to Europe and the wider world.

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Amsterdammers left bemused at plan to tackle flowerpot ‘jungle’

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Authorities in Dutch capital launch ‘Operation plant pot’, saying excessive pot placement threatens accessibility

Residents have reacted with bemusement at plans by authorities in Amsterdam to crack down on what it sees as a plague of messy plant pots.

In an approach named “Operation plant pot” by the local media, the Dutch capital’s central district is limiting residents to two pots with footprints no larger than 50cm by 50cm, made of “sustainable” material and placed against their front wall. Rogue gardens of pots in parking spots and under trees will be confiscated, according to the policy memo.

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Anglican group launches £7m project in Barbados to atone for slavery atrocities

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Funds will help communities living on the Codrington estate, which was home to two sugar plantations

An Anglican church group is to launch a £7m reconciliation project in Barbados to atone for the atrocities of transatlantic slavery and compensate descendants of enslaved people.

United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), a UK-based missionary organisation created in 1701 to convert people in the colonies to Christianity, will work with local and regional partners in the Caribbean to allocate money to education and entrepreneurial grants and historical research. It will also support land ownership among descendants of enslaved people.

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Weather tracker: Heat to ease in central and eastern Europe

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Cooler temperatures expected to replace record highs in Estonia, while China braces for Super Typhoon Yagi

Since the start of September, swaths of central and eastern Europe have experienced temperatures well above average, with some places up to 10C (50F) above the seasonal norm.

A date temperature record was set in Estonia on Wednesday, where it hit 29.8C in Haapsalu. The September peak in the country is 30.3C, reached on 1 September 1992.

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Venezuela’s opposition leader calls for global movement to ‘rescue’ country

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María Corina Machado wants struggle against Maduro’s ‘criminal tyranny’ to mirror anti-apartheid movement

The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has called for a global movement, similar to the international campaign against apartheid in South Africa, to help rescue her country from Nicolás Maduro’s “criminal tyranny”.

Speaking to foreign journalists as Maduro stepped up his post-election crackdown, Machado said she hoped Venezuela’s struggle for democracy would become “a world cause” just as South Africa’s did in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

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‘Reservoir of the resistance’: the Lebanese valley reviving its role in Hezbollah-Israel conflict

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Known for its wineries and Roman temples, and as the home of Hezbollah, the Beqaa has become a theatre of war again

On a recent morning near the town of Nabi Chit in Lebanon’s eastern Beqaa region, a dozen men were clearing away debris. Israeli jets had thundered through the valley a week earlier, the second such raid in three days. The explosions turned the night sky red, yellow and orange, and filled the air with the smell of dust and gunpowder.

“They hit Nabi Chit because our village is the mother of the resistance,” said Mohammed al-Moussawi, an ardent supporter of Hezbollah, the Shia militant group, political party and social movement known here as the resistance. He stood on the ground-floor terrace of his house in front of a pile of rubble and a twisted metal awning. The windows were blown out, the facade pockmarked with shrapnel.

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Algeria election to take place amid ‘steady erosion of human rights’

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Abdelmadjid Tebboune set for second term as president after changed poll date is expected to favour him

Algeria goes to the polls on Saturday in a presidential election being held in the context of what rights groups have called “a steady erosion of human rights” under the president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who is expected to win a second five-year term.

As many as 24 million people are eligible to vote in the north African country in a process moved forward by three months.

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‘I couldn’t say no’: anger grows over topless medical exams in Japan schools

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Parents and campaigners have called on education and health authorities to end the practice of requiring children to strip off for school health checks

“My chest was completely exposed and I felt embarrassed,” writes a Japanese girl after undergoing an annual health checkup at her middle school. Another says: “Before the exam our teacher told us we would have to lift up our tops and bra … I didn’t want to do it but I couldn’t say no.”

The testimony from two 13-year-olds, seen by the Guardian, is typical of the discomfort – and in some cases trauma – felt by children attending schools in Japan that can require boys and girls as young as five – and as old as 18 – to strip to the waist during health examinations.

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China says it is ending foreign adoptions, prompting concern from US

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US diplomats seeking clarity for hundreds of families in the process of international adoption

The Chinese government is ending its international adoption programme, and the US is seeking clarification on how the decision will affect hundreds of American families with pending applications.

At a daily briefing on Thursday, Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, said Beijing was no longer allowing intercountry adoptions of children from China, with the only exception for blood relatives to adopt a child or a stepchild.

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Russian TV presenter charged with violating US sanctions and money laundering

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Dimitri Simes, who had contacts in Donald Trump’s orbit, charged as White House targets Kremlin influencers before US presidential elections

US investigators have indicted a prominent Russian state television personality and his wife for violating sanctions and money laundering as the White House targets Kremlin influence operations ahead of the US presidential elections.

Dimitri Simes, a television presenter and producer for Russia’s state-owned Channel One, was charged with receiving over $1m (£759,000) in compensation, a personal car and driver, a stipend for a flat in Moscow, Russia, despite the television station’s designation in 2022 by the US’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. He and his wife, Anastasia, were charged with money-laundering to hide the proceeds of his work for Channel One.

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Michel Barnier vows to address feelings of ‘anger’ and ‘injustice’ as France’s new PM

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Rightwing prime minister promises ‘new era’, saying priorities will be education, security and controlling immigration

Michel Barnier, France’s new rightwing prime minister, has vowed to address the nation’s feelings of anger, abandonment and injustice, promising a “new era” and a break with the past.

Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, took office hours after Emmanuel Macron appointed him to form “a unifying government in the service of the country” – an attempt to put an end to two months of political paralysis after a snap election.

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Clock is ticking again for Michel Barnier, France’s anorak-wearing, spreadsheet-loving new PM

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A councillor at 22, now country’s oldest premier in modern history, the former Brexit negotiator must win over a divided parliament

He calmly but firmly negotiated the UK’s departure from the EU after years of British squabbling over Brexit, and he prefers consensus to political punch-ups. But Michel Barnier faces his toughest challenge yet as France’s new prime minister amid the country’s biggest political crisis in decades.

The discreet rightwinger, 73, known for his sensible anoraks, love of spreadsheets and his ever-present briefing dossiers wedged under his arm, is facing a baptism of fire in a deeply divided French political landscape.

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Munich police kill man who opened fire near Israeli consulate

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‘Antisemitism and Islamism have no place here,’ Scholz says after incident also close to Nazi documentation centre

There is “no place” in Germany for antisemitism or Islamist extremism, the German chancellor has said after police in Munich shot dead a man carrying a “long-barrelled gun” following an exchange of fire near the Israeli consulate.

In a joint statement, the Bavarian state police and prosecutors said they believed the man had been planning a terrorist attack “involving the consulate general of the state of Israel”.

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Fugitive former mayor Alice Guo arrives in Philippines after deportation from Indonesia

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Arrest warrant was issued for Guo, who is accused of having links to Chinese criminal syndicates, after she failed to appear before a Senate inquiry

Alice Guo, a fugitive former mayor of a town in the Philippines accused of having links to Chinese criminal syndicates, has arrived back in the Philippines after she was deported from Indonesia.

Guo, whose case has gripped the Philippines, was the subject of an arrest warrant after she failed to appear before a Senate inquiry investigating financial scams and human trafficking found to be taking place at a sprawling compound in her town, Bamban, in Tarlac province.

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Woman tells trial of husband who invited men to rape her: ‘I was sacrificed on altar of vice’

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Gisèle Pélicot says French police saved her life when they investigated husband, who drugged her and enlisted men to rape her

A French woman whose husband has admitted drugging her and inviting more than 80 men to rape her over the course of a decade has said she “was sacrificed on the altar of vice” and treated “like a rag doll”.

Gisèle Pélicot, 72, said “police saved my life” when they investigated her husband, Dominique Pélicot’s, computer in November 2020, after a security guard caught him filming up the skirts of women in a supermarket near their home in a village in southern France.

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Madrid moves to ban app-rented e-scooters over safety concerns

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Lime, Dott and Tier Mobility licences to be cancelled from October due to issues with circulation and parking

Madrid will ban e-scooters rented through mobile apps after the city’s three licensed operators failed to implement limits on their clients’ circulation or to control their parking, the Spanish capital’s mayor has said.

José Luis Martínez-Almeida said on Thursday the licences of Lime, Dott and Tier Mobility would be cancelled from October, adding that the city had no plans to grant new licences to any other operators.

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