Category Archives: World News

Most difficult global outlook since 1930s heralds end of US-led world order | Larry Elliott

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IMF has revised up growth forecasts but medium-term prospects remain poor as globalisation goes into reverse

The 2020s are almost halfway over and are on course to be the most difficult decade for the global economy since the 1930s. Every finance minister and central bank governor at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington last week knows that, even if they were not prepared to admit it publicly.

The IMF likes to look on the bright side. It revised up slightly its forecast for global growth and now thinks scarring from the coronavirus pandemic and the cost of living crisis will be less severe than it originally feared. Interest rates have risen without triggering the recessions that were predicted. A soft landing has been finessed. The performance of some countries – the US and India to take two examples – has been strong.

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Millions at risk of floods in China’s Guangdong province after heavy rain

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Officials urge municipalities to begin emergency planning after major rivers and reservoirs threaten to overflow

Major rivers, waterways and reservoirs in China’s Guangdong province are threatening to unleash dangerous floods, forcing the government to enact emergency response plans to protect more than 127 million people.

Calling the situation “grim”, local weather officials said sections of rivers and tributaries at the Xijiang and Beijiang river basins are hitting water levels in a rare spike that only has a one-in-50 chance of happening in any given year, the state broadcaster CCTV news said on Sunday.

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Ecuadoreans to vote in referendum on unprecedented security measures

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Sweeping security measures designed to empower police and armed forces against organised crime

Ecuadoreans will vote on Sunday in a referendum on a raft of unprecedented security measures designed to empower the police and armed forces in the fight against spiralling violence and organised crime.

Voters must accept or reject 11 questions, mostly about security, in the plebiscite, which is being seen as a test of support for Ecuador’s popular young president. Daniel Noboa who took office in November on the pledge to combat the surge in violent crime, put forward the poll to push through proposals to retake control of prisons and tame soaring homicide rates.

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Thai conscientious objector risks jail in rare refusal of military service

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Young men are forced to take part in conscript lottery, but the rich often avoid serving in army

Every April in Thailand young men take part in a lottery to determine whether they will be forced to do military service. Pull out a red card and you are drafted for up to two years. A black card means you are exempt.

When it was Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal’s turn to draw a card this month, he refused, making a rare protest as a conscientious objector. If prosecuted, it is believed he could become the first person in Thailand to be imprisoned for avoiding the draft through civil disobedience. The offence carries a maximum sentence of three years.

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Erdoğan urges Palestinian unity after meeting Hamas chief

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Turkish president says recent events between Iran and Israel should not allow Israel to ‘gain ground’ in Gaza

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged Palestinians to unite amid Israel’s war in Gaza following hours-long talks with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Istanbul on Saturday, his office said.

Erdoğan has failed to establish a foothold as a mediator in the Gaza conflict that has roiled the region, with the Hamas-run Palestinian territory bracing for a new Israeli offensive and a reported Israeli attack on Iran.

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Fighting rages at Myanmar’s border with Thailand as rebels target junta troops

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Thousands of civilians flee as resistance fighters fight to flush out soldiers holed up at eastern bridge border crossing

Fighting raged at Myanmar’s eastern border with Thailand on Saturday, both governments said, forcing 3,000 civilians to flee as rebels fought to flush out Myanmar junta troops holed up for days at a bridge border crossing.

Resistance fighters and ethnic minority rebels seized the key trading town of Myawaddy on the Myanmar side of the frontier on 11 April, a blow to a well-equipped military struggling to govern and facing a test of battlefield credibility.

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US to withdraw from Niger after security pact fails in strategic victory for Russia

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Biden administration to rethink counter-terrorism strategy after breakdown of pact allowing US forces on soil to fight jihadists

The US will withdraw more than 1,000 military personnel from Niger in a move that will force the Biden administration to rethink its counter-terrorism strategy and amounts to a strategic victory for Russia.

The decision comes a month after the west African country’s ruling military junta revoked a security pact with Washington that had allowed American forces on its soil to help fight jihadist terrorism.

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Hilary Cass warned of threats to safety after ‘vile’ abuse over NHS gender services review

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The paediatrician, who has been advised to stop using public transport, describes ‘straight disinformation’ about report

The doctor behind a landmark review of the NHS’s gender identity services for children and young people has said fears had been raised about her personal safety amid online abuse after the report’s release.

Dr Hilary Cass told the Times she wished to address the “disinformation” circulating about the findings and recommendations handed down by the Cass review when it was published on 10 April.

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Artwork commemorating Indigenous Australian history triumphs in Venice

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Prize for best national participation goes to Archie Moore, who becomes first Australian artist to win it

The artist Archie Moore has won the prestigious Golden Lion for best national participation at the 2024 Venice Biennale – the first time an Australian artwork has won the prize.

With this year’s theme of “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere,” Moore won the award for his artwork, kith and kin, at the Australia Pavilion. The work, which has involved the artist mapping a sprawling genealogy in chalk, concerns 65,000 years of Indigenous Australian history and nonlinear concepts of time and place. Below the vast family tree covering the dark walls and ceiling stands a white table covered in records of First Nations deaths, including those in police and prison custody.

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Middle East crisis – as it happened: US denies carrying out airstrikes in Iraq after explosion at military base

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‘The United States has not conducted air strikes in Iraq today,’ the US military’s Central Command said

Paul Scruton, Lucy Swan, Iona Serrapica and Alex Olorenshaw have created a visual guide to Friday’s events in Iran via graphics, video and satellite images.

You can take a look at it here:

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Gaza death toll passes 34,000 as Israel and Iran missile strikes grab global attention

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Grim milestone comes as G7 leaders urge Netanyahu not to press ahead with Rafah invasion

The death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza climbed to more than 34,000 on Saturday, with the majority of victims women and children, including at least six killed by an overnight airstrike on a house in Rafah.

The latest grim milestone comes as hope of a ceasefire has dimmed, and global attention has shifted to the dangerous exchange of missile and drone strikes between Iran and Israel.

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Israel is fighting on four fronts – but the defeat may come at home

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The IDF is embroiled in simultaneous conflicts with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and in the West Bank – but hadn’t reckoned on the social and political divisions this would cause

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, described the conflict Israel was engaged in as a “multi-front war” earlier this month.

Israeli forces were fighting Hamas inside Gaza and engaged in daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah on the northern border with Lebanon. A low-level conflict, mainly consisting of airstrikes, was continuing with Iranian-backed forces in Syria. Israel had also been targeted – albeit ineffectively – by drones fired by the Houthis in Yemen.

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Tens of thousands protest against Canary Islands’ ‘unsustainable’ tourism model

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Organisers say 50,000 turn out to call for limit on tourist numbers, saying model makes life unaffordable and puts strain on resources

Tens of thousands of people are protesting across the Canary Islands to call for an urgent rethink of the Spanish archipelago’s tourism strategy and a freeze on visitor numbers, arguing that the decades-old model has made life unaffordable and environmentally unsustainable for residents.

The protests, which are taking place under the banner “Canarias tiene un límite” – The Canaries have a limit – are backed by environmental groups including Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologists in Action, Friends of the Earth and SEO/Birdlife.

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US House to vote on long-delayed foreign aid bills – including Ukraine support

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Ukraine aid component threatens to throw the Republican party into disarray – and endangers the speakership of Mike Johnson

The US House of Representatives will finally vote on Saturday on a series of foreign aid bills, bringing an end to a months-long standoff in Congress led mostly by Republicans who refuse to support funding Ukraine’s ongoing military defense against Russia’s invasion.

House members will hold separate votes on four bills that represent $95bn in funding altogether – including roughly $26bn in aid for Israel, $61bn for Ukraine, $8bn for US allies in the Indo-Pacific region and $9bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians in war zones, such as Gaza.

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Daring, audacious – but who did it? LA $30m cash heist has it all except clues

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The robbery from a GardaWorld warehouse on Easter Sunday was like something from a movie – and police appear to be puzzled by how it went down

It was a Tinseltown heist that belonged in a movie.

A gang of audacious thieves struck at night, dodged security measures like ghosts in the night and disappeared with a staggering $30m in cash in a record-breaking robbery that played out for real on Los Angeles’s streets, not the fevered script of a thriller writer.

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‘Media firestorm’: Israel protest at professor’s home sparks heated free-speech debate

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Pro-Palestinian students interrupted a dinner held by a top free speech defender at Berkeley. A polarized and very public controversy has followed

During a dinner for students that the dean of the University of California, Berkeley law school held in his house’s backyard earlier this month, a woman wearing a hijab and checkered Palestinian scarf suddenly stood up with a microphone and amplifier. What followed lasted only a couple of minutes, but has led to a fierce debate about the limits of free speech, drew death threats to those involved, and created a “media firestorm,” as the dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, has put it.

Some short and chaotic viral videos illustrate part of what happened. One of them shows the woman, Malak Afaneh, as she gives a Ramadan greeting; she is accompanied by a small group of other student protesters. As Afaneh begins reading a speech about the Israel-Gaza war, Chemerinsky and his wife, the law professor Catherine Fisk, quickly cut Afaneh off.

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Tory MP from slave-owning family set to gain £3m from sale of former plantation

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Caribbean historians want Richard Drax to pay reparations – but now Barbados plans to buy his land for homes

The Conservative MP under fire for his ancestors’ role in Caribbean slavery is in line for a multimillion-pound payout from the Barbados government.

Despite threats to make Richard Drax pay reparations and seize his family’s plantation – described by one historian as a “killing field” of enslaved Africans – the government is now planning to pay market value for 21 hectares (about 15 football pitches) of his land for housing.

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Explosion hits base of Iranian-aligned Iraqi army unit

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Officials report casualties with some citing air strike on former anti-Isis unit known as Hashed al-Shaabi, which is now part of Iraq’s regular military

An explosion has hit an Iraqi military base housing pro-Iranian paramilitaries, according to security sources.

The explosion on Friday night was at the Calso base, where former pro-Iranian paramilitary group Hashed al-Shaabi – now integrated into the regular army – is stationed, an interior ministry source and a military official told Agence France-Presse.

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Oxford shuts down institute run by Elon Musk-backed philosopher

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Nick Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute closed this week in what Swedish-born philosopher says was ‘death by bureaucracy’

Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers. The Future of Humanity Institute, dedicated to the long-termism movement and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism, closed this week after 19 years of operation. Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artificial intelligence. He had also boosted the ideas of its leader for nearly a decade on X, formerly Twitter.

The center was run by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish-born philosopher whose writings about the long-term threat of AI replacing humanity turned him into a celebrity figure among the tech elite and routinely landed him on lists of top global thinkers. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla chief Musk all wrote blurbs for his 2014 bestselling book Superintelligence.

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MoD accused of ‘go-slow’ with half of £900m Ukraine fund unused

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Delays mean just £404m of the money donated by nine countries has been committed or spent

More than half of a £900m military fund for Ukraine run by the British Ministry of Defence has not been used because of bureaucratic delays in handing out contracts.

The UK-led International Fund for Ukraine counts nine countries among its donors. Critics claim its provision of weapons to the frontline has been slow.

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