Parts of the structure are younger than expected while an east wind blows the whole thing across the desert, researchers find
They are impressive, mysterious structures that loom out of deserts on the Earth and are also found on Mars and on Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.
Experts from universities including Aberystwyth in Wales have now pinpointed the age of a star dune in a remote area of Morocco and uncovered details about its formation and how it moves across the desert.
Continue reading...National broadcaster says it agreed to make changes after request from country’s president
Israel has agreed to revise the lyrics of its potential submission to the Eurovision song contest after organisers took issue with verses that appeared to reference Hamas’s 7 October attack.
The contest, which will take place from 7 to 11 May in the Swedish city of Malmö, can disqualify contestants deemed to have breached its rules on political neutrality. Kan, Israel’s national broadcaster, is tasked with choosing the country’s entry.
Continue reading...Turnout was low for first ballot since Hamas’ 7 October attack, with security a high priority for voters
Local elections in Israel, delayed by the war in Gaza, have returned gains for Ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties after low turnout in most areas.
The municipal votes were expected to serve as an indication of public opinion after the 7 October Hamas attack and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip. Just under 50% of the seven million eligible voters turned up to polling stations, and rightwing and religious parties allied with the Likud, the party of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were more successful in mobilising their bases.
Continue reading...Israel indicated to have provisionally accepted six-week hostage and truce deal, but Palestinian official says: ‘We’re not there yet’
A Hamas delegation was in Cairo on Sunday for talks on efforts to broker a ceasefire in the war in Gaza after indications that Israel had provisionally accepted a six-week phased hostage and truce deal before the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Qatari and US mediators also arrived in the Egyptian capital on Sunday, according to the state-linked Al Qahera News.
Continue reading...Over 100 officers joined operation, which will continue despite setback, as part of hunt for Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg in Germany
The renewed German police hunt for two alleged members of the Red Army Faction, previously known as the far-left militant Baader-Meinhof gang, who have been on the run for more than 30 years, will continue after an operation in Berlin failed to find the suspects.
Special armed police units launched raids in the Markgrafendamm area of Berlin at 7.30am on Sunday in a search for Ernst-Volker Staub, 69, and Burkhard Garweg, 55.
Continue reading...Destroyer Caio Duilio, part of the EU shipping protection force, took out weapon when it came within four miles of the vessel
An Italian warship participating in the EU naval protection force in the Red Sea was forced to shoot down a Houthi missile on Saturday in a rare engagement by the country’s navy, which has largely avoided direct action since the second world war.
The incident came as Houthi officials vowed to continue to attack British ships after the UK-owned Rubymar sank on Saturday having taken on water for a fortnight after being hit by one of the group’s missiles.
Continue reading...Boat carrying 10 other children between seven and 13 years old, along with girl’s pregnant mother, father and three siblings, sank
A seven-year-old girl has died in a canal close to Dunkirk after a makeshift boat carrying 16 people from northern France to the UK capsized, the prefecture in France’s Nord department said.
The boat, which was carrying 10 other children between seven and 13 years old along with the girl’s pregnant mother, her father and three of her siblings, sank with all onboard entering the water.
Continue reading...Taken from her home on 7 October with three of her children, Chen Almog-Goldstein recalls being held captive by Hamas
Chen Almog-Goldstein refuses to forget her eldest daughter’s last moments. Yam, 20, was gasping for breath, having been shot in the face by Hamas gunmen, who minutes earlier had killed her father.
Almog-Goldstein, 49, did not see Yam or her husband, Nadav, again because she and her three surviving children were bundled into a car and abducted. During the seven-minute journey across the border into Gaza on 7 October, their two captors smiled and took photographs of the traumatised mother and children.
Continue reading...Regional prosecutor says he received reports of deaths in three northern settlements as jihadist violence flares
About 170 people were “executed” in attacks on three villages in northern Burkina Faso a week ago, a regional prosecutor has said, as jihadist violence flares in the junta-ruled country.
On that same day, 25 February, separate attacks on a mosque in eastern Burkina and a Catholic church in the north left dozens more dead.
Continue reading...Russian drone crashed into nine-storey residential building in Odesa on Saturday. This live blog is now closed
It is 2.30pm in Ukraine. Here is a summary of events
The bodies of a mother and baby found in the rubble of a missile-hit apartment block in Odesa on Sunday have brought the death toll from Saturday’s strike to 10. Two babies and a toddler are amongst those found dead following a Russian drone strike on a nine-storey apartment block in Odesa on Saturday, according to briefings from officials.
Five people were injured overnight by Russian shelling in Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. A “massive missile attack” on a residential area of Myrnohrad injured two women aged 50 and 33 and a 37-year-old man, Donetsk Oblast’s regional prosecutor’s office posted on Telegram. It said a Russian missile strike in a residential area of Pokrovsk at 6.30 on Sunday morning also left two women with shrapnel wounds.
People are still queueing up to place flowers on Alexei Navalny’s grave in Moscow’s Borisovskoye cemetery. The pile of floral tributes is growing despite state intimidation as Russians pay tribute to the late opposition leader.
Turkey believes it is time for ceasefire talks to start in Ukraine, its foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said at a press conference on Sunday. Fidan said: “A dialogue for a ceasefire (in Ukraine) should start. That doesn’t mean recognising the occupation (by Russia), but issues of sovereignty and ceasefire should be discussed separately.”
The wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, one of Russia’s most high profile political prisoners, says it has taken two years to secure a meeting with the UK government, despite him being a British citizen. Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year sentence in a Siberian jail and his wife Evgenia told The Observer she met David Cameron on Friday.
Ukraine’s border with Poland remains blocked at all six checkpoints to trucks because of protests by Polish farmers about the import of grain from Ukraine, according to local reports. State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said on national television that around 2,400 trucks had been waiting to pass the border as of Sunday, according to a report in The Kyiv Independent.
Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula early on Sunday, with unconfirmed reports of powerful explosions near the port of Feodosia. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched 38 drones and that its air defences destroyed all of them. It did not say whether any damage or casualties resulted from the attack in a statement on its Telegram channel.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on the west to rapidly deliver more air-defence systems as a wave of Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes killed at least 11 people. “Russia continues to hit civilians,” the Ukrainian president posted on social media on Saturday. Eight were confirmed dead, including a child and a baby, after an overnight drone strike on an apartment block in the southern port city of Odesa, a regional official said. Zelenskiy said in his post: “We need more air defences from our partners. We need to strengthen the Ukrainian air shield to add more protection for our people from Russian terror.”
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a purported recording of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin. A German defence ministry believed a conversation in the air force division was “intercepted”, a ministry spokesperson said. The recording apparently showed German officials discussing striking Crimea and delivery of long-range missiles to Kyiv.
Continue reading...Nominated candidate of eight-party coalition takes office after gathering of national assembly
Shehbaz Sharif has been appointed prime minister of Pakistan after a vote that was riddled with allegations of rigging and irregularities.
Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) party, was the nominated candidate of a new eight-party coalition that was formed after no single party managed to win an outright majority in the election on 8 February.
Continue reading...Prime minister Anwar Ibrahim said Malaysia would reopen the investigation if there was compelling new evidence
Malaysia is willing to reopen an investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 if there is compelling new evidence, prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has said.
Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers, vanished from air traffic radar on 8 March 2014. Its disappearance sparked the largest ever search operation but the fate of the plane has never been resolved and it remains one of the greatest aviation mysteries.
“We have taken the position that if there is a compelling case, evidence that it needs to be re-opened, we’re certainly happy to reopen,” Anwar told a press conference in Melbourne. He was speaking on the sidelines of a summit of Australia and the Asean grouping of Southeast Asian nations.
Community representatives say a ‘good sendoff’ is a religious necessity, but others say it introduces a competitive element
The latest addition to Ballyhaunis cemetery in Ireland’s County Mayo towers over neighbouring headstones in a blaze of white marble and ornamentation. Rose-wreathed pillars frame a tableau of statues showing Jesus, angels, cherubim and biblical scenes, including an engraving of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
Marble tablets express bereavement in gold letters, a photo of the deceased gazes from a carved stone bench and lanterns with diamond-shaped bulbs and electric sensors flank the central slab.
Continue reading...Israel ‘more or less’ accepts deal on hostage release and Gaza aid, but Hamas stuck on ‘category of vulnerable hostages’
Israel is reported to be close to accepting a six-week ceasefire proposal for Gaza, a senior Biden administration official told several US news outlets on Saturday, two days after more than 100 Palestinians died while attempting to access aid trucks in the territory.
The official said that there is a “framework deal” and Israel has “more or less accepted” a ceasefire to allow for the release of Hamas-held hostages in Gaza and to allow aid into the territory that has been devastated by four months of bombardment, killing more than 30,000 people.
Continue reading...Conservatives expected to remain firmly in charge after parts of media claim ‘election boycott campaign’ has failed
The turnout in Iran’s parliamentary elections appears to have dropped to 41%, a record low, but according to the official figures, not quite to the levels of mass abstention that some surveys had predicted.
Polls closed at midnight on Friday, six hours later than planned due to what officials claimed was a second surge in polls in the evening, but Tehran’s middle class stayed away, fewer than 24% of the 8 million eligible to vote bothering to do so.
Continue reading...Delivering by parachute is risky and inefficient – and other options could open up if the west were to expend more diplomatic capital
Half an hour before Rishi Sunak launched his assault on British extremism, the foreign secretary, David Cameron issued his own strong statement.
Cameron said the killings of more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza as crowds gathered around aid trucks on Thursday were horrific and required an investigation and accountability. He said the halving of the number of aid trucks entering Gaza in the past month was “completely unacceptable” and that Israel had an “obligation” to ensure significantly more humanitarian aid reached the territory.
Continue reading...Archaeologists fear more than 2,000 carved figures in Vingen could be destroyed when digging begins
One of the largest and most significant sites of rock art in northern Europe is under “catastrophic” threat.
The Vingen carvings, in Vestland county, Norway, are spectacular, and include images of human skeletons and abstract and geometric designs. Even the hammer stones, the tools used by the ancient artists to create their compositions, have survived.
Continue reading...Officials say a British-registered cargo ship hit in a missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has sunk in the Red Sea. This blog is now closed.
The US will start airdrops of food and emergency supplies into Gaza in the next few days, Joe Biden has announced, amid UN warnings of famine and after Israeli troops opened fire on Gazans seeking food aid.
The use of airdrops is a spectacular but inefficient way of delivering aid, and Friday’s announcement suggests that Biden had given up on being able to persuade Israel in the near future to coordinate a large-scale ground-based relief effort under the threat of mass starvation across Gaza.
Continue reading...Navalny’s mother visits dissident’s grave day after thousands attended funeral in Moscow; three killed and eight injured after Russian drone attack on apartment block in southern port city, authorities say
The German defence ministry is checking whether a confidential videoconference on the Ukraine war had been wiretapped after a recording was posted on Russian social media, in a potentially huge embarrassment for Berlin.
The head of Russia’s state-backed RT channel, Margarita Simonyan, on Friday posted a 38-minute audio recording of what she claimed were German army officers discussing striking Crimea.
Continue reading...A lecturer doing his PhD on a British Council scholarship in York is frightened for his wife and two small children who are under Israeli bombardment
When Bassem Abudagga heard in 2022 that he had won a British Council scholarship to do his PhD in Britain, he was elated. “I was so proud,” he recalls. “It is what every academic in Palestine hopes for: to gain a qualification from the UK.
“It felt like a turning point for my career, my future, my family. It would shift my prospects to a completely different place.”
Continue reading...