Category Archives: World News

UN staff on £1.5bn Iraq aid project ‘demanding bribes’

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Exclusive: whistleblowers allege large sums are being lost to corruption in Iraq as donors fail to track spending on postwar reconstruction

Staff working for the UN in Iraq are allegedly demanding bribes in return for helping businessmen win contracts on postwar reconstruction projects in the country, a Guardian investigation has found.

The alleged kickbacks are one of a number of claims of corruption and mismanagement the Guardian has uncovered in the Funding Facility for Stabilization, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) scheme launched in 2015 and backed by $1.5bn (£1.2bn) in support so far from 30 donors, including the UK.

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UN chief condemns ‘utterly unacceptable’ killing of Palestinians as Gaza toll passes 25,100 – as it happened

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A total of 25,105 Palestinians have been killed and 62,681 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

An estimated 178 Palestinians were killed and 293 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

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Ian Bailey, suspect in one of Ireland’s most notorious murders, dies aged 66

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Former journalist had lived in public eye for almost 30 years as prime suspect in 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier

Ian Bailey, an English former journalist who was the prime suspect in one of Ireland’s most notorious murders, has died near his home in Bantry, County Cork, at the age of 66. He suffered a heart attack on Sunday.

Bailey had lived in the public eye for almost three decades as the main suspect in the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a French filmmaker who was battered to death near her holiday home in West Cork.

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Egypt backs Somalia in dispute over Ethiopia-Somaliland deal

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Somalia mobilises regional support as Ethiopia considers recognising breakaway region to gain sea access

The president of Egypt, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, has expressed his support for Somalia in a dispute over an offer by the breakaway northern region of Somaliland to give land-locked Ethiopia access to its coast in exchange for recognition of its independence.

In his strongest statement yet on the issue at a press conference in Cairo alongside the president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Sisi said: “My message to Ethiopia is that trying to seize a piece of land to control it is something no one will agree to.”

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UN chief decries ‘unacceptable’ scale of Gaza deaths as 25,000 reported killed

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Territory’s health ministry says most casualties are women and children, and that thousands more may lie under rubble

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed 25,000 Palestinians, the health ministry in the territory has announced, as the UN chief described the scale of civilian killings as “heartbreaking and utterly unacceptable”.

Most of the casualties were women and children, the ministry said, and thousands more bodies were likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.

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Four of six aboard private jet survive crash in Afghanistan

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Rescue teams find charter ambulance flight from Thailand to Moscow after it disappeared from radar screens

Four people are reported to have survived after a private jet carrying out a medical evacuation from Thailand to Russia disappeared from radar screens and crashed in a remote and mountainous area of north-eastern Afghanistan on Saturday.

Russian aviation authorities said two passengers and four crew members were onboard the charter ambulance flight, which was travelling from Utapao airport, near Pattaya, to Moscow via India and Uzbekistan.

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Russia-Ukraine war: At least 25 killed in shelling at a market in Donetsk; fire at Russian liquefied natural gas producer – as it happened

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Local officials are now saying that at least 25 were killed in the strike; cause of fire at gas plant unknown but drones were reported in area

Further information has come in on claims by Russia that it had captured the small village of Krakhmalnoye in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine.

“The village of Krakhmalnoye in the Kharkiv region was liberated,” the Russian defence ministry said in its daily bulletin on operations in Ukraine, citing “successful active operations”, reports AFP.

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Exiled Rwandan who survived murder attempt condemns UK deportation plan

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Opposition politician Frank Ntwali says country is unsafe and Sunak’s pursuance of policy ‘quite bizarre’

A Rwandan opposition politician who narrowly survived an assassination attempt has condemned the UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Kigali.

Frank Ntwali, chair of the exiled Rwanda National Congress (RNC) movement, said the country was unsafe and that Rishi Sunak’s persistence with the policy was “quite bizarre”.

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Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk shopping area kills dozens, local officials say

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Russian-installed mayor and governor say another 20 people were injured in attack on occupied city in eastern Ukraine

At least 25 people have been killed after Ukrainian forces shelled a busy suburban shopping area in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, according to local officials.

Alexei Kulemzin, the city’s Russian-installed mayor, said Ukrainian artillery had fired on a bustling district where shops and a market are located. Denis Pushilin, the Russian-appointed head of the Donetsk region, said emergency services were working at the scene, adding that a further 20 people, including two children, had been injured in the strike on the suburb of Tekstilshchik.

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Cameron to be asked to clarify claim he took no decision over Israel arms sales

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Foreign secretary told MPs he had not made formal decision to continue, but papers reveal he recommended move

The chair of the foreign affairs select committee is writing to the foreign secretary, David Cameron, asking him to clarify his claim that he had not taken any formal decision to allow arms sales to Israel to continue amid the Gaza crisis.

Written evidence presented by the UK Department for Business and Trade shows the foreign secretary on 8 December recommended arms sales licences be allowed to continue when presented with three options: stopping arms sales, pausing them, or allowing them to continue.

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‘I’m not ready, brother’: US man to be put to death months after botched execution attempt

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Kenneth Smith, to be executed in Alabama by untested gas method, tells Guardian of nightmares from failed lethal injection

On Tuesday morning, Kenneth Smith will be moved within the Holman correctional facility in Alabama to the “death cell”, the bluntly named holding unit where condemned prisoners are placed two days before their appointed execution.

Smith knows the cell well. He knows its dimensions and the feel of the place. He knows that it sits only about 20 feet from the death chamber where, barring a last-minute reprieve, he will be escorted in handcuffs and leg irons on Thursday before being strapped to a gurney to await his fate.

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Israel’s actions in Gaza are not genocide, says UK’s chief rabbi

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Sir Ephraim Mirvis says use of the term is moral inversion designed to ‘tear open the still gaping wound of the Holocaust’

The chief rabbi has said using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza is an “increasingly frequent, disingenuous misappropriation of the term”.

Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the use of the term was a “moral inversion, which undermines the memory of the worst crimes in human history” and was designed to “tear open the still gaping wound of the Holocaust”.

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Gaza activist tells of beating and abuse in Israeli detention

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Human rights worker Ayman Lubbad is among the Palestinian prisoners claiming abuse in Israeli custody, where six have died

The Gaza-based human rights activist Ayman Lubbad has not seen his wife and three children for more than a month, since he was ordered to strip to his underwear in the street outside his home, then driven away with other Palestinian men for a week of abuse and detention.

He was tortured and humiliated, he said, giving one of various accounts of recent Israeli abuse of Palestinians in detention; at least six have died, and one autopsy report showed serious injuries, Haaretz newspaper reported.

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‘Tortuguita vive’: campaigners across US hail anti-Cop City activist killed by police

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Events in more than 30 cities mark ‘Day of the Forest Defender’, recognizing enduring impact of Manuel Paez Terán

At a gathering Thursday, the mother of an activist killed by police had a clear message on the first anniversary of their death: “I have news for you. Manuel is alive. Tortuguita vive!”

It was a message of celebration for the life of Manuel Paez Terán, also known as “Tortuguita”, that was being made in Atlanta and more than 30 cities across the US, a sign of the slain activist’s enduring impact on several movements, observers said.

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Battle on ‘third front’: Palestinians in West Bank vow to fight on after Israeli raids

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With the IDF now routinely using armed drones to watch and target militants, the worst wave of violence for almost 20 years is sweeping the West Bank

For days earlier this month, many of the young men of Nur Shams refugee camp on the outskirts of the town of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank were engaged in a potentially lethal race against time.

Scaling precarious ladders, they stretched between rooftops vast plastic sheets used in more peaceful times to collect the olive harvest. Soon, hundreds of metres of winding lanes were in deep shadow, the sun and the sky obscured. The hill behind the buildings, from which you can see the Mediterranean less than 20km away, was no longer visible.

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‘You will not replace us’: a deadly attack on a Slovakian gay bar – and its link to a fast-spreading racist ideology

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Fifteen months after two men were shot in Bratislava, evidence suggests the killer may have been helped by an unidentified US-based extremist

The October evening was warm and sunny. At about 7pm, two young men stepped out of the Tepláreň bar on Zámocká Street in the centre of Bratislava, to sit on a concrete bench and drink lemonade. Matúš, 23, had just arrived in the Slovakian capital to study Chinese. His 26-year-old friend worked in a local clothes shop and enjoyed anime, K-pop and dance.

Standing in an alcove a few metres away was Juraj Krajčík. The 19-year-old had been loitering for about half an hour, witnesses later said. Shortly after the two patrons of the Tepláreň sat down, Krajčík stepped forward, raised a .45-calibre handgun and fired several shots at them. Then he turned and ran, gun in hand.

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Zelenskiy slams Trump’s rhetoric on stopping the war as ‘very dangerous’

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Ukrainian leader invited Trump to Ukraine but says if he returns to White House he could make unilateral concessions to Russia

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, fears that if Donald Trump returns to the White House next year he could make unilateral concessions to Russia that override Ukraine’s interests and branded the former US president’s claims he could stop the war in 24 hours as “very dangerous”.

In an interview with the UK’s Channel 4 News, Zelenskiy said he was “stressed” that the former president “is going to make decisions on his own, without … I’m not even talking about Russia, but without both sides, without us.”

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Iran accuses Israel of killing Revolutionary Guards spy chief in Damascus

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Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says it has lost four members in strike on Syrian capital

A suspected Israeli strike killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ espionage chief for Syria and three other guard members on Saturday, Iran has said, in an attack that destroyed much of a multistorey residential building in Damascus.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said six people were killed in the Israeli strike on the upmarket Mazzeh neighbourhood in the Syrian capital.

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Netanyahu defies Biden, insisting there’s ‘no space’ for Palestinian state

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The Israeli leader is under pressure over course of the Gaza war but is doubling down on opposition to a two-state solution

Defiant Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on opposition to Palestinian statehood, deepening the divide with Israel’s closest international allies, as cracks in his wartime “unity” government became increasingly evident.

Anger with Netanyahu is also increasingly visible on the streets, even though there is broad public support for the war. On Saturday, protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Caesarea and Kfar Saba, some calling for bolder action to secure the release of hostages, and others demanding the prime minister step down.

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Tshisekedi sworn in for second term as DRC president after disputed poll

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Protests break out in two eastern cities as incumbent takes oath of office at stadium in Kinshasa

Félix Tshisekedi, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been sworn in for a second five-year term after a landslide victory his opponents have refused to recognise owing to widespread irregularities in the December general election.

Authorities have acknowledged there were problems but dismissed allegations the vote was stolen. The fractious standoff echoes previous electoral disputes that fuelled unrest in Africa’s second-largest country, with protests breaking out on Saturday in two eastern cities.

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