Category Archives: World News

Fani Willis criticizes ‘wild and reckless’ speculation in conflict of interest claims by former Trump staffer – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. You can read our full report and explainer below:

Joe Biden has welcomed another month of strong job creation, pointing out that the US has added almost 15m jobs since he was sworn in.

Responding to today’s strong non-farm payroll report, showing 353,000 new jobs were created in January, he says:

America’s economy is the strongest in the world.

Today, we saw more proof, with another month of strong wage gains and employment gains of over 350,000 in January, continuing the strong growth from last year. Our economy has created 14.8m jobs since I took office, unemployment has been under 4% for two full years now, and inflation has been at the pre-pandemic level of 2% over the last half year. It’s great news for working families that wages, wealth, and jobs are higher now than before the pandemic, and I won’t stop fighting to lower costs and build an economy from the middle out and bottom up. I’ll continue to stand in the way of efforts by congressional Republicans to enact massive tax giveaways for the wealthy and big corporations; cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; and raise costs for American families.

It’s looking like early to mid-February, as a rough estimate, and subject to modifications. But that’s the working plan now.

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Italian minister investigated over alleged art theft quits

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Vittorio Sgarbi, who denies allegations over painting, cites separate antitrust investigation in resignation

An Italian art critic who was recently placed under investigation over allegations that a 17th-century painting in his possession was stolen from a castle more than a decade ago has resigned as a junior culture minister.

“I am resigning with immediate effect as undersecretary of the government and will inform [the prime minister, Giorgia] Meloni in the next few hours,” Vittorio Sgarbi said on the sidelines of a conference in Milan.

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What does Biden’s order against Israeli settlers mean and why did he do it now?

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Some see the US president’s executive order imposing sanctions on settlers who violently attack Palestinians as a bid to win support

Was Joe Biden’s announcement of unprecedented US sanctions against Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine a sign of political weakness at home, or of a newly found willingness to assert American influence over Israel?

The president signed the executive order imposing financial and travel sanctions on settlers who violently attack Palestinians shortly before a campaign rally in the swing state of Michigan, where the largest Arab American population in the country has rounded on Biden over his largely blanket support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

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Dying man tells police he was on Japan’s most wanted list for 50 years

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Now deceased man said he was Satoshi Kirishima who was allegedly member of radical group in 1970s that bombed Japanese firms

A dying man in a Japanese hospital told police that he was one of the country’s most wanted fugitives and had been on the run for nearly 50 years for being part of a radical group that carried out bombings in the 1970s, police have said.

After receiving a tip, police went to the hospital near Tokyo last week to question the 70-year-old man. He told them he had terminal cancer and wanted to die under his real name, Satoshi Kirishima, instead of his alias, and disclosed previously unknown details about the bombings, police said.

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Judge throws out case against Greta Thunberg and other London protesters

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Court rules not enough evidence provided to prove defendants failed to comply with section 14 order at anti-fossil fuel rally

Greta Thunberg and four others charged with public order offences over a protest in London have been cleared after a judge ruled that they had no case to answer.

Thunberg was charged alongside Christofer Kebbon, Joshua James Unwin, Jeff Rice and Peter Barker with “failing to comply with a condition imposed under section 14 of the Public Order Act”.

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Raccoon plunges parts of Toronto into darkness after mishap at power utility

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Mammal ‘made contact with equipment’, disrupting a subway line and shutting off water in latest escapade of city’s ‘trash pandas’

A lone Toronto raccoon was able to cut power to nearly 7,000 people in the city’s downtown core on Thursday night, highlighting the fraught coexistence between residents of Canada’s largest urban centre and the divisive “trash pandas”.

Hydro One, Ontario’s power utility, said a raccoon “made contact with equipment” at a downtown station on Thursday night, plunging swaths of the city in darkness. The loss of power also temporarily disrupted service on a key subway line and shut off water. Toronto’s fire service said the power outage also left residents trapped inside elevators.

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Nigerian traditional monarch shot dead and wife kidnapped from palace

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Police launch investigation after attack on home of Oba Aremu Olusegun Cole in south-western Kwara state

Gunmen killed a Nigerian traditional monarch and kidnapped his wife after raiding his palace, police said, as outrage grows over a spate of abductions across the country.

Attackers stormed the palace of Oba Aremu Olusegun Cole in south-western Kwara state, shot him dead and abducted his wife and another person on Thursday.

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Mafia boss who escaped prison using bedsheets recaptured in France

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Marco Raduano broke out of high-security wing of a prison in Sardinia in February 2023

A notorious mafia boss who escaped from a high-security prison in Italy last year using bedsheets has been recaptured in France, according to authorities in both countries.

Marco Raduano, recognized as dangerous on Europol’s list of most wanted criminals, was captured in Bastia on the French island of Corsica, authorities said on Friday.

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DRC’s worst floods in decades leave tens of thousands in temporary shelter

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People in affected areas say they are still waiting for government help after more than 300 deaths and widespread devastation

Tens of thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are living in temporary accommodation and waiting for government help after the country experienced its worst flooding in six decades.

More than 300 people have died and 280,000 households in more than half the country have been forced to leave their homes since heavy rains started at the end of November. More than 1,500 schools, 267 health centres, 211 markets and 146 roads have been damaged.

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Russia finds ‘errors’ in paperwork of candidate hoping to stand against Putin

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Election commission finding could disqualify anti-war Boris Nadezhdin from running

Russia’s elections commission has said it found “dead souls” among the more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Boris Nadezhdin, the sole anti-war candidate in next month’s presidential election, in a sign that he could be disqualified from a carefully managed ballot meant to deliver victory for Vladimir Putin.

Nadezhdin, a veteran politician who has associated with Kremlin insiders and the opposition to Putin, has been waging a last-minute campaign to get on the ballot for the election, with thousands of Russians standing for hours in the freezing cold to add their signature in his support.

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Paris residents set to vote on plan to triple parking charges for SUVs

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Green campaigners hope to win landmark vote, which is being watched closely by other cities such as London

Green activists in Paris are making a final push to win a landmark vote tripling parking charges for SUVs in a move aimed at tackling air pollution that is being closely watched by other cities such as London.

Paris residents will be asked to vote on Sunday for or against a special parking tariff for heavy, large and polluting SUVs parked by non-residents, as the French capital aims to target rich, out-of-town drivers entering the city in order to tackle climate breakdown and air pollution.

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Israel and Hamas closer to ceasefire deal amid warning over Gaza children

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Qatar says Hamas ‘received proposal positively’, while Unicef says 17,000 Gaza children left unaccompanied

Israel and Hamas appear to be inching closer towards a deal for a ceasefire and a release of some of the hostages still being held by the militant group in Gaza, while the UN children’s agency has warned that 17,000 children have been left without families or been separated from them by the conflict.

Qatar, which has been mediating between Israel and Hamas, indicated that the militant group had given its initial support for a deal after weeks of delicate and secretive negotiations.

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Middle East crisis: UN agency calls Rafah a ‘pressure cooker of despair’ as Israel says offensive will move into city – as it happened

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Defence minister Yoav Gallant’s announcement comes despite presence of more than 1 million civilians in city

Saudi Arabia would be willing to accept a political commitment from Israel to create a Palestinian state, rather than anything more binding, in a bid to get a defence pact with Washington approved before the US presidential election, three sources have told Reuters. The news agency reports:

Months of US-led diplomacy to get Saudi Arabia to normalise relations with Israel and recognise the country for the first time were shelved by Riyadh in October in the face of mounting Arab anger over the war in Gaza.

But Saudi Arabia is increasingly keen to shore up its security and ward off threats from rival Iran so the kingdom can forge ahead with its ambitious plan to transform its economy and attract huge foreign investment, two regional sources said.

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Farmers face ‘lasagne of different measures’, Belgian leader says after protests block border crossings – as it happened

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Prime minister says blockades by protesting farmers at Dutch-Belgian border ‘have been stopped’

Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo arrived in Place du Luxembourg just as a bronze statue that was felled in the protests yesterday was being taken away.

The statue, which weighed 200kg, was taken into a van by half a dozen men, as the clean-up in the square continues.

I think, by now, all governments have basically seen them, the Flemish government, the federal government – yesterday also the president of the [European] Commission.

We’ve shown that we’re able to come up with steps in the right direction. For some measures, we need more time to elaborate. And there’s a real willingness to go forward.

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Kenya gas explosion kills at least three and injures hundreds

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More than 280 taken to hospital after truck blast on gas storage site that had unsuccessfully applied for permit to operate

A lorry loaded with liquid petroleum gas cylinders exploded and set off a late-night inferno that burned homes and warehouses in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, killing at least three people and injuring more than 280. The death toll is expected to increase.

At least 24 people were critically injured, the Kenya Red Cross said, after a huge fireball erupted from the gas depot. Some gas cylinders were thrown hundreds of metres, sparking several separate fires.

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Mark Zuckerberg to receive $700m from Meta dividends

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Facebook’s parent company to pay out to shareholders as it reports $40bn revenues for final quarter

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is expected to receive $700m (£549m) a year in dividends.

On Thursday, Meta announced it would pay its first-ever quarterly dividend to investors since Facebook floated on the stock market in 2012, after beating Wall Street expectations with $40bn in revenues for the final quarter last year.

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Still in ruins: the 2023 Turkish earthquake – then and now

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A 7.8-magnitude quake hit southern Turkey and northern Syria on 6 February 2023, killing more than 40,000 people and erasing entire cities. Then and now photographs show the scale of devastation and the enormity of the reconstruction

Over 65 nightmarish seconds of the pre-dawn hours of 6 February 2023, the ground swallowed swathes of entire cities across south-east Turkey resulting in more than 50,000 deaths.

Bridges collapsed, roads and airport tarmacs cracked and millions of lives across 11 Turkish provinces were upturned by the time the rest of the country woke up, stunned.

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Three girls die after FGM rituals in Sierra Leone

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Children’s parents and those who performed the procedure are in police custody, according to local reports

Police in Sierra Leone are investigating the deaths of three girls who underwent female genital mutilation (FGM).

Adamsay Sesay, 12; Salamatu Jalloh, 13; and Kadiatu Bangura, 17, died during initiation ceremonies in the country’s North West province last month, according to local reports.

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‘It’s unfathomable’: speed hump saboteurs join Italy’s pro-car vandals

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First cameras were torn down by someone calling themselves Fleximan – now traffic calming measures are being targeted

Renzo Bergamini, the mayor of Gualtieri, was on his way to buy the newspapers on Tuesday morning when he noticed something was amiss with one of the two speed humps positioned on the town’s ring road.

“I saw that the sections of the hump were slightly misaligned,” he said. “The bolts had been unscrewed.”

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A year on from the East Palestine toxic train derailment, what’s changed? – podcast

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A year ago on 3 February a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in a small village on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania. A few days after the derailment, officials decided to vent and burn the chemicals it was carrying to prevent an explosion.

Those still living in East Palestine and the surrounding communities have been told the air they breathe is safe, but many aren’t confident in what they’re being told.

So what led to the derailment? What’s changed in terms of legislation to make sure this kind of accident doesn’t happen again? And how are residents coming together to advocate for their safety and that of fellow Americans in the future?

The Guardian’s fossil fuels and climate reporter, Dharna Noor, travelled to East Palestine to see for herself what’s changed in the 12 months since the disaster

Archive: ABC News, CBS News, NTSB, NBC News, SMART Union, WFMJ, WKYC, WTRF

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