SAF join engineering corps in south of city where they have been besieged by RSF forces since April
The Sudan armed forces (SAF) have advanced in Omdurman for the first time since the beginning of the war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April last year.
It is reported that the SAF in the Karari military area, north of Omdurman, have joined their peers in the engineering corps in the south of the city, where they have been besieged by the RSF since April.
Continue reading...Sanctions already imposed on Russia over Ukraine have not deterred the Kremlin. Will unconventional approaches work?
When Joe Biden met Vladimir Putin in 2021, the leaders staring at each other across the library of a Geneva lakeside villa, the US president warned there would be “devastating consequences” for Moscow if Alexei Navalny died in Russian custody.
Biden was reminded of those words on Friday following Navalny’s sudden, mysterious death in a Russian penal colony, and his response was to point out that the warning had been delivered three years ago and that, in the intervening time, Putin had “faced a hell of a lot of consequences”.
Continue reading...The suspension of a Congolese player for a gun gesture referring to conflict in DRC raises questions over goverment’s refugee policy
When a Congolese footballer made a brief gesture after scoring in an east African league match last weekend, it felt like little more than a talking point among the spectators.
Yet the gesture by midfielder Héritier Luvumbu at the game in Kigali has prompted a dramatic reaction from Rwanda that has renewed scrutiny of a regime accused of stoking the world’s deadliest conflict as it enters a volatile new phase.
Continue reading...The lack of medicine, food and water means thousands of people with asthma, kidney disease or diabetes are unable to treat or control their conditions
Four months of conflict in Gaza is jeopardising the health of thousands of people with chronic illnesses such as kidney disease, diabetes and asthma, doctors have warned.
The chronically ill are the hidden casualties of the war, as access to water, food and medicine is severely restricted, said Guillemette Thomas, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical coordinator for Palestine.
Continue reading...Views on what the future might hold at a pivotal moment for the country’s fractured pro-democracy movement
Western leaders have held Vladimir Putin responsible for Alexei Navalny’s death in prison, where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”.
Navalny’s death – a pivotal moment for the country’s fractured pro-democracy movement – sent waves of anger and despair through the ranks of his supporters in Russia and abroad.
Continue reading...Close-run race could see PP ousted and Ana Pontón of BNG installed as area’s first female and nationalist leader
Spain’s opposition conservative party faces the prospect of defeat in its leader’s home region, where it has governed for much of the past four decades, when voters in Galicia go to the polls on Sunday.
The People’s party (PP) won an absolute majority four years ago under the then regional president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who now leads the national party, but polls suggest its declining fortunes could open the door to a coalition of the Socialist party and the surging Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG).
Continue reading...US president joins world leaders in outrage at Putin critic’s death in Russian prison as EU says he was ‘slowly murdered’ by regime
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today that Russia’s penitentiary service was making all checks regarding the death of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but that he had no information about the matter, Reuters reports.
The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the country’s prison service has said, in what is likely to be seen as a political assassination attributable to Vladimir Putin.
Continue reading...Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay more than $350m in fines and barred him from running New York businesses for three years
Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’ father took the stand now, testifying about threats she faced at the home he lived in with her in 2019 and 2020, before she moved to a new place after people outside her house called her slurs and threatened her there.
John Floyd, Willis’ dad, was asked about her romantic relationships and how often he saw people she had dated, including special prosecutor Nathan Wade. He said he hadn’t met Wade until 2023, and a previous boyfriend he saw often in earlier years was a disc jockey. (Previous testimony from a former friend of Willis claimed the two started dating much earlier than they’d claimed.)
Continue reading...Activists decry ruling by top court as ‘a travesty of justice’ after two men sought to strike down colonial-era laws
A top court in St Vincent and the Grenadines has upheld laws that criminalize gay sex, in a blow to activists who have long decried the violence the LGBTQ+ community has faced on the conservative Caribbean archipelago.
The ruling on Friday by St Vincent’s high court stems from a 2019 case filed by two gay men from St Vincent who live in the UK and US. They sought to strike down colonial-era laws that call for 10 years in prison for anal intercourse and five years for “gross indecency” with another person of the same sex.
Continue reading...Florida deputy Jesse Hernandez resigned after opening fire when he thought sound of acorn hitting police cruiser was shot from gun
A Florida sheriff’s deputy mistook the sound of an acorn hitting his patrol cruiser for a gunshot and fired multiple times at the SUV where a handcuffed Black man was sitting in the backseat, officials said.
The man, who was being questioned about stealing his girlfriend’s car, was not injured during the 12 November shooting. He was taken into custody but released without being charged. The officer who initiated the shooting resigned.
Continue reading...Body of woman, 63, also found at house as police issue warrant for Miles Harford, 33, who owned funeral home that closed in 2022
The body of a woman who died in 2022 and the cremated remains of about 30 people were found at a rental house in Denver after the eviction of a former funeral home owner, Denver police said on Friday.
A warrant was issued for Miles Harford, 33, who owned Apollo Funeral and Cremation Service in Littleton, which has been closed since September 2022. The expected charges include abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate and theft of the money paid for the cremation.
Continue reading...Gun rights group and ex-leader Wayne LaPierre accused of being ‘caught with their hands in the cookie jar’ over lavish spending
A New York state jury on Friday began its deliberations in the civil corruption trial of the National Rifle Association and its former long-serving leader Wayne LaPierre.
Jurors started deliberating a day after a lawyer with the New York attorney general’s office said on Friday that the NRA and LaPierre were caught “with their hands in the cookie jar”, summarizing accusations that the gun rights group’s executives wildly misspent millions of dollars on private flights, vacations and other lavish perks.
Continue reading...Russian opposition leader’s death described as political assassination attributable to president
Western leaders have held Vladimir Putin directly responsible for the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, as the US president, Joe Biden, called it “yet more proof of Putin’s brutality”.
Navalny, 47, died while being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”.
Continue reading...Viktor Orbán under pressure as turmoil continues a week after the presidential pardon was revealed
Tens of thousands of people protested in Budapest on Friday at the biggest rally against Viktor Orbán’s government for years, after a sexual abuse case pardon by President Katalin Novák caused public uproar and led to her resignation.
The conservative Hungarian prime minister, who has been in power since 2010, has sought to defuse the week-long scandal that brought down two of his key political allies, the president and the former justice minister, Judit Varga, but it has continued to dominate domestic media.
Continue reading...Vice-president tells Munich gathering that the US is committed to ‘defend democratic values at home and abroad’
Speaking in Munich today, the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that “if we want a lasting peace, we must continue to provide Ukraine with weapons and ammunition.”
He addressed Nato’s push to invest more in defence.
This requires expanding our transatlantic industrial base to increase deliveries to Ukraine and refill our own stocks. And shifting from slow peacetime to the high tempo of conflict – to produce more at a higher speed.
This will help Ukraine, it will make Nato stronger, and it will provide more highly–skilled manufacturing jobs, including here in Bavaria, where Patriot missiles will be built at a new facility.
Continue reading...Wife of Alexei Navalny addresses hushed crowd of politicians and vows Putin will be brought to justice
A geopolitical conference turned deeply personal on Friday as senior officials from around the globe heard first-hand from Alexei Navalny’s wife hours after news broke of his reported death.
Yulia Navalnaya was in Germany for the Munich security conference, which brings together national leaders, foreign ministers and experts, when Russia’s prison service announced that Navalny had died in jail.
Continue reading...Amina Noor travelled from north London with the child to Kenya where the procedure was carried out in 2006
A woman who was found guilty of handing over a three-year-old British girl for female genital mutilation (FGM) during a trip to Kenya has been jailed for seven years.
Amina Noor, 40, was convicted last year of assisting a Kenyan woman to carry out the procedure overseas in 2006. The conviction was the first for assisting in such harm under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.
Continue reading...Perhaps he might have been able to coordinate from abroad a powerful anti-war movement. Instead he is silenced for ever
For years, Alexei Navalny remained clear on a key message: he was a Russian opposition politician and he was determined to stay in Russia. Exile, he believed, would lead to political irrelevance, and calling on Russians to oppose Vladimir Putin from the safety of the west would mark him as a hypocrite.
Navalny stuck to this belief as the political climate in Russia deteriorated and the space for dissent narrowed ever further, and even after he was poisoned with novichok in 2020, leading to his ill-fated decision to return early the next year.
Continue reading...RedBird IMI, which is majority-owned by the UAE vice-president, has invested in five media firms since its launch a year ago
The Abu Dhabi-backed company that is trying to take over the Telegraph newspapers has announced a £1.15bn deal to buy the production company behind Fleabag and the Traitors.
Under the deal, RedBird IMI, which is headed by the former CNN president Jeff Zucker, will take over London-based All3Media with the agreement of its owners Warner Bros, Discovery and Liberty Global.
Continue reading...Antiquities authority drops proposal for Menkaure pyramid after review prompted by international outcry
Egypt has scuttled a controversial plan to reinstall ancient granite cladding on the pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest of the three great pyramids of Giza, a committee formed by the country’s tourism minister said in a statement.
Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of the supreme council of antiquities, announced the plan last month, declaring it would be “the project of the century”.
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