Category Archives: World News

‘It is a time of witch hunts in Israel’: teacher held in solitary confinement for posting concern about Gaza deaths

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Meir Baruchin, who was fired and jailed for criticising the military, says that many who agree with him are afraid to go public

An unlikely charge of intent to commit treason landed Meir Baruchin, a grey-haired, softly spoken history and civics teacher, in the solitary confinement wing of Jerusalem’s notorious “Russian Compound” prison in early November.

The evidence compiled by police who handcuffed him, then drove to his apartment and ransacked it as he watched, was a series of Facebook posts he’d made, mourning the civilians killed in Gaza, criticising the Israeli military, and warning against wars of revenge.

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‘Black snow’: sugarcane burning makes our lives hell, Florida locals say

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Fire and ash from burning cane fields has worsened health near Lake Okeechobee, US’s largest sugar-growing region

Pastor Steve Messam was driving to a service on Christmas morning when he looked to the sky and watched the first flakes starting to fall. Lighter at first, then thicker and more frequent, not quite a blizzard, but enough to leave a coating on the porch and parking lot of his First Church of God in South Bay, Florida.

This was, however, no picturesque winter holiday scene – just a regular day during harvesting season in the nation’s largest sugar-growing region. The “black snow”, as locals call it, is ash from burning sugarcane fields. Studies have blamed the smoke generated by the fires, sometimes dozens a day, for respiratory problems and increased mortality among the poor, mostly immigrant population of the rural area south of Lake Okeechobee known as the Glades.

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‘We are ready for a war’: Somalia threatens conflict with Ethiopia over breakaway region

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Somaliland hoped to be recognised as a country after port deal with landlocked Ethiopia - but move has sparked fury in Somalia

Somalia is prepared to go to war to stop Ethiopia recognising the breakaway territory of Somaliland and building a port there, a senior adviser to Somalia’s president has said.

A memorandum of understanding signed on 1 January allowing landlocked Ethiopia to develop a naval base on Somaliland’s coast has rattled the Horn of Africa, one of the world’s most volatile regions.

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Vote counting starts in key Taiwan election amid threats from China

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Beijing has criticised frontrunner Lai Ching-te as a ‘separatist’ as it seeks to intimidate self-ruling island

Vote counting got under way on Saturday in Taiwan’s presidential election, held under the shadow of threats from China that choosing a leader it disapproves of could set the stage for war on the self-ruled island.

Beijing criticised frontrunner Lai Ching-te, the current vice-president, as a dangerous “separatist” in the days leading up to the poll and, on the eve of the vote, its defence ministry vowed to “crush” any Taiwanese independence attempts.

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Children living near green spaces ‘have stronger bones’

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Bone strength is set in childhood so better park access could prevent fractures in older people, study finds

Children with more green space near their homes have significantly stronger bones, a study has found, potentially leading to lifelong health benefits.

Scientists found that the children living in places with 20-25% more natural areas had increased bone strength that was equivalent to half a year’s natural growth.

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How Italy turned on influencers in the wake of a charity Christmas cake scandal

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With a fraud investigation into Chiara Ferragni under way, she and fellow social media stars are under sharp scrutiny

Chiara Ferragni amassed a fortune through incessant selfie-taking as part of a marketing strategy that included imparting pearls of wisdom to her millions of online followers on how to be “effortlessly cool”.

But now the influencer – one of Italy’s most powerful – is struggling to maintain her own prestige after a scandal over a Christmas cake triggered a fraud investigation, leaving her empire teetering on the edge in what has become a cautionary tale for other social media stars.

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US launches fresh strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, military says

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Bombing comes after Houthis threaten retaliation and anti-ship ballistic missile is fired at vessel in Red Sea

The US has carried out fresh strikes on Yemen, a day after a first raid triggered mass protests in the country’s capital and other Middle Eastern countries voiced concern that the attacks could trigger further unrest in the region.

The strike, carried out by the USS Carney early on Saturday, targeted a Houthi rebel radar site in Yemen and was a “follow-on action” on a target “associated with strikes taken on Jan 12 designed to degrade the Houthi’s ability to attack maritime vessels”, the US military said in a statement on Twitter.

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Former Suriname dictator missing after failing to turn himself in to prison

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Wife of Dési Bouterse, sentenced last month to 20 years for 1982 killings of opponents, says ‘he’s not going to turn himself in’

Surinamese authorities are searching for ex-president Dési Bouterse after he failed to turn himself in to start a prison sentence for involvement in the murder of 15 political opponents in 1982, the prosecutor general’s office said on Friday.

Bouterse was ordered this week to report to jail, but his wife, Ingrid Bouterse-Waldring, told journalists outside their home early on Friday: “He’s not going to turn himself in.”

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Myanmar junta and armed rebels agree ceasefire

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China mediates truce that would halt months of conflict that has displaced half a million people in country’s north

Myanmar’s military and an alliance of armed ethnic minority groups have announced a China-mediated ceasefire after months of conflict that has posed the biggest threat to the junta since it seized power in 2021.

Fighting has claimed hundreds of lives and displaced more than half a million people since October, when the alliance launched an offensive against the junta.

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E Jean Carroll lawyer warns Trump plans to turn damages trial into ‘circus’

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Letter accuses ex-president of intending to ‘sow chaos’ next week, while Trump ordered to pay New York Times nearly $400,000

Donald Trump’s legal woes continued to mount as a lawyer in an upcoming defamation case asked a judge to ensure the former president does not disrupt imminent legal proceedings – and, in a separate issue, he was ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in legal fees to the New York Times.

In the first of those two cases, a lawyer for E Jean Carroll – a columnist who last year won a $5m jury award against Trump for sexual abuse – urged a judge to take strong measures to ensure Trump does not “sow chaos” when a new jury considers next week if he owes even more in damages.

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Hundreds of thousands expected at weekend protests in London after Yemen strikes

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Saturday’s march for Gaza ceasefire as part of global day of action will be followed by static rally for Israel on Sunday

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to gather in London over the weekend in protest against the war in Gaza as the conflict widens to Yemen.

On Saturday, protesters are expected to gather at Bank Junction at midday as part of a global day of action involving 30 countries, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said.

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‘This used to be a calm place’: killing continues in Ecuador’s week of chaos

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As cartels and crime syndicates flock to Ecuador for cocaine trade profits, its murder rate has soared, with a TV station assault the crescendo of a week of bloodshed

Political upheaval and street protests, gun battles and floods. José Luis Calderón has seen it all during his 23 years as one of Guayaquil’s top television journalists. Never had the Ecuadorean reporter been the story himself.

That changed just after lunch last Tuesday when the 47-year-old reporter heard shouts and the sound of people running in the corridors of TC Televisión, the channel where he works. “At first … we thought it was a fight,” he remembered. But as the yelling intensified, it became clear it was not.

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Italy refuses to extradite priest accused of murder and torture to Argentina

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Rev Franco Reverberi is accused of crimes against humanity during country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s

Italy’s justice minister has refused Argentina’s request to extradite a priest accused of crimes against humanity during the country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Rev Franco Reverberi, 86, who served as military chaplain during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime, faces charges related to the alleged murder in 1976 of the 20-year-old political activist José Guillermo Berón, and his alleged participation in torture.

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‘Parthenon of Macedonia’: site where Alexander the Great was proclaimed king reopens

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Thousands flock to see the Palace of Aigai, the largest surviving classical Greek building, after 16-year reconstruction completed

For 2,170 years it had lain in ruins: a palace that symbolised the golden age of antiquity, three times bigger than the Parthenon, unprecedented in architectural ambition, unparalleled in beauty.

It was here in 336BC that the king of ancient Macedonia, Philip II, was murdered; and here in the great peristyle – or columned courtyard – around which its banqueting halls coalesced that his 20-year-old son, Alexander the Great, would be proclaimed king, a moment that would change the course of history.

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Houthis show resolve that western strikes will be hard pushed to shake

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With Palestinian plight supercharging movement, restraint may only come with regional pressure on resources

The near-official slogan of the Houthi movement is: “God is the Greatest / Death to America / Death to Israel / A curse upon the Jews.” Crowds of supporters in the group’s northern Yemen strongholds have been chanting it for more than 20 years, ever since the phrase was brought back from Tehran at the turn of the century, when it was first directed at the then Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

So those who claim the Houthis are not serious in attempting to block Israeli-linked trade in the Red Sea underplay the extent to which the defence of Palestine is a foundational principle of the Houthi movement, and highly popular among Yemeni people. The rebel stance over the past two months has afforded this relatively obscure Shia group a status in recent weeks that even Hezbollah in Lebanon cannot claim. They are deeply authoritarian, but skilled mobilisers of popular opinion.

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Cholera cases soar globally amid shortage of vaccines

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Resurgence classified as grade 3 emergency by WHO, with southern Africa and Haiti among those hardest hit

Cholera cases soared last year, according to preliminary data from the World Health Organization, which recorded 4,000 cholera deaths and 667,000 cases globally.

The numbers surpassed that of 2022, and the WHO has classified the global resurgence of cholera as a grade 3 emergency, its highest internal health emergency level.

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‘Unacceptable’: Biden denounced for bypassing Congress over Yemen strikes

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Critics on left and right furious that president failed to seek congressional approval for strikes against Houthi militants

A bipartisan chorus of lawmakers assailed Joe Biden for failing to seek congressional approval before authorizing military strikes against targets in Yemen controlled by Iranian-backed Houthi militants, reigniting a long-simmering debate over who has the power to declare war in America.

The US president announced on Thursday night that the US and the UK, with support from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Bahrain, had launched a series of air and naval strikes on more than a dozen sites in Yemen. The retaliatory action was in response to relentless Houthi attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza.

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‘The situation is dire’: winter heaps misery on displaced people of Gaza

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For those living out in open, lack of clothes, blankets and firewood is exacerbated by harsh winds and rain

Harsh winter weather is making life even more difficult for hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza, many of whom fled their homes months ago without warm clothes or blankets.

Some could not carry much and others did not think they would need to prepare for months of war, stretching into the coldest months of the year.

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BAE Systems in line for potential windfall from Kazakhstan airline flotation

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Air Astana, which is 49% owned by the British defence firm, announces plans to float on London stock market

Kazakhstan’s national airline has announced plans to float on the London stock market, bringing a potential windfall to BAE Systems, which has been an investor for more than two decades.

Air Astana, which is 49% owned by the British defence company, hopes to list in London and Kazakhstan and raise $120m (£94m). The airline, which is majority owned by the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund, did not say how much of the company would be floated and is yet to confirm an expected valuation range.

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Israel accuses South Africa of ‘profound distortion’ at ICJ genocide hearing

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Israeli legal team calls South African accusation of genocidal acts in Gaza ‘a partial and deeply flawed picture’

Israel has accused South Africa of presenting a “profoundly distorted” view of hostilities, “barely distinguishable” from that of Hamas, as it presented its defence at the international court of justice in The Hague against accusations of genocide.

A day after South Africa argued that it had committed genocidal acts in Gaza with intent from “the highest levels of state”, Israel said on Friday that was a “partial and deeply flawed picture”.

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