Category Archives: World News

Palestinians desperate to flee Gaza pay thousands in bribes to ‘brokers’

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Fixers with alleged links to Egyptian intelligence are making a fortune in ‘fees’ from people hoping to exit through the Rafah crossing

Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes to brokers of up to $10,000 (£7,850) to help them exit the territory through Egypt, according to a Guardian investigation.

Very few Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing but those trying to get their names on the list of people permitted to exit daily say they are being asked to pay large “coordination fees” by a network of brokers and couriers with alleged links to the Egyptian intelligence services.

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Weather tracker: Western Canada and parts of US brace for cold snap

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Temperatures could be 10-15C below seasonal average in some areas, with Calgary and Edmonton experiencing low of -30C

Arctic air will sweep across western Canada and parts of the US early this week, leading to a cold snap that will probably last through the rest of this week and possibly beyond.

By Wednesday, temperatures in western Canada could be as much as 10-15C below the seasonal average. Minimum temperatures in Calgary and Edmonton could plummet as low as -30C by Friday, with some rural areas experiencing even lower temperatures. In contrast, temperatures on the east coast will be significantly above average, with Ottawa reaching highs of about 5C, almost 10C above the seasonal average. The cold spell will spread into northern and western parts of the US by Friday, with temperatures widely reaching 5-15C below average.

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Modi trip to Indian islands prompts Maldives row

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Maldivian envoy summoned and flights suspended after insults about Indian PM’s visit to Lakshadweep islands

A row has erupted between India and the Maldives after the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, visited the Indian islands of Lakshadweep to promote tourism.

The visit was perceived by some in the Maldives as an attempt to draw tourists away from the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, whose economy is heavily dependent on tourism.

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The numbers that reveal the extent of the destruction in Gaza

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From death tolls to destroyed buildings and lost hospital beds, these are the figures that cut through the fog of war

The situation in Gaza over the last three months has been so chaotic that much of the data available comes with some sort of asterisk: it might be incomplete, or out of date, or drawn from a source that is claimed to be unreliable.

But on even the most frequently disputed point – casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health – there are few plausible critiques of the broad scale of what is being shown. And in many cases, the numbers published by the UN, independent aid agencies and others are likely to be at the low end of the possible range. So it is reasonable to view the picture presented by these sources as a conservative account of the situation, rather than conclude that the reality is hopelessly occluded by the fog of war.

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‘Chaos’ in New Zealand as sea lion breeding season overlaps with summer holidays

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Animals have been popping up on golf courses and surfing contests in Dunedin as they reestablish a foothold on the south island

A growing population of sea lions in the New Zealand city of Dunedin is provoking “overlapping chaos” as their breeding season coincides with residents enjoying peak summer weather.

Two sea lions gave birth on a golf course, another swam alongside competitors in a surfing contest. Others have been spotted crossing roads as Dunedin’s sea lion “silly season”, which runs from mid-December to mid-January, is in full swing.

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‘It’s about being able to say goodbye’: Spanish graphic novel explores early Franco-era reprisals

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The Abyss of Forgetting chronicles a woman’s struggle to find remains of her father who was murdered after civil war

At the beginning of the new Spanish graphic novel El abismo del olvido (The Abyss of Forgetting), a murdered man climbs out of his grave, lights a cigarette and takes stock of the past eight decades. “When western archaeologists opened the tombs of ancient Egypt, it was said that the souls of their occupants had been freed after millennia of silence,” he says. “In a way, the same thing is happening to us. All we did was wait in silence for more than 70 years.”

José Celda – Pepe to his friends – was shot dead against a wall in the small Valencian town of Paterna at five in the afternoon on 14 September 1940. The 45-year-old farmer, whose body was buried in a mass grave, was one of the thousands of represaliados, or victims of reprisals, who were murdered by the Franco regime well after the end of the civil war in April 1939.

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Cave flood in Slovenia traps five people after heavy rain

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Teams of divers will make three-hour round trip to supply those trapped until they can be safely rescued

Five people have been trapped in a cave in central Slovenia since Saturday after heavy rains caused flooding, rescue workers have said.

A family of three adults with two guides had on Saturday morning begun a tourist visit to the Krizna Jama (Cross Cave), 50km south of the capital, Ljubljana.

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Hasina wins fifth term as Bangladesh PM after opposition boycotts vote

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Turnout reportedly as low as 40% after opposition party called general strike over ‘sham election’

Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has won office for a fifth term, in an election that was overshadowed by a ruthless crackdown on the opposition and low voter turnout.

The election commission announced in the early hours of Monday that Hasina’s ruling Awami League had won a fourth consecutive term, winning almost 75% of the seats. It will be her fifth term as prime minister as she had previously ruled between 1996 and 2001, before coming back to power in 2009.

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Israel says Gaza fighting could last a year, amplifying fears of regional war

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Comments from senior defence officials come during tour by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, intended to defuse tensions

Israeli defence officials and former senior intelligence officers have said they expect fighting in Gaza to continue for at least a year, raising the prospect of thousands more civilian casualties, a deepening humanitarian crisis and a continuing grave threat to regional stability.

In a briefing, R Adm Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said the centre and south of Gaza, where military efforts are now focused, was “dense and saturated with terrorists” with “an underground city of branching tunnels”.

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Russia-Ukraine war: ‘Even Russia can be brought back within the framework of international law’, Zelenskiy says – as it happened

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Ukrainian president says Moscow ‘aggression can be defeated’, in address to conference in Sweden

As of 1 January 2024, 3,428 educational institutions have been damaged and 365 destroyed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the education and science committee of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

The data, which has not been independently verified by the Guardian, was cited from saveschools.in.ua documents.

Michel plans to take up his seat in the European parliament mid-July if he’s elected, meaning EU leaders will have to agree quickly on a successor for his vacated council post.

If they don’t, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, whose country will take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in July, would lead the meetings – a broker-role normally undertaken by the European Council president.

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Two journalists have been killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

At least 113 Palestinians have been killed and 250 others injured over the past 24 hours in Israeli strikes on Gaza, the health ministry in Gaza said in a statement on Sunday, Reuters reports.

Sunday’s tally brings the death toll in Gaza to 22,835 Palestinians killed and 58,416 injured since 7 October, the statement added.

Israeli bombardment [claimed] civilian lives in the southern city of Khan Yunis and in the Rafah area near the Egyptian border, where many of the territory’s displaced people have sought refuge, AFP correspondents reported.

Relatives were mourning the dead at Khan Yunis’ European hospital, among them Mohamed Awad, who wept over the body of a 12-year-old boy and listed other family members killed.

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Michel sparks scramble to stop Orbán taking control of European Council

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President under fire after announcing he will run for election as MEP in June and will stand down if he wins

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has said he is running as an MEP in June’s European elections and will stand down if elected, sparking a race to replace him or risk the role reverting to Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

“I have decided to run in the European elections in 2024,” Michel told Belgian media late on Saturday. The former Belgian prime minister has served as chief of the EU Council, the group of government leaders of the 27 EU member states, since 2019.

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UK accused of hypocrisy in not backing claim of genocide in Gaza before ICJ

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Experts say submission to international court of justice on Myanmar six weeks ago makes stance ‘wholly disingenuous’

The UK is facing accusations of double standards after formally submitting detailed legal arguments to the international court of justice in The Hague six weeks ago to support claims that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group through its mass mistreatment of children and systematically depriving people of their homes and food.

The UK made its 21-page “declaration of intervention” jointly with five other countries, but it is not supporting South Africa as it prepares to try to convince the ICJ on Thursday that Israel is at risk of committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

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Two Cuban documentaries show effects of US sanctions on island nation

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Liz Oliva Fernández says the sanctions, imposed 60 years ago and upheld through Biden, have led to a ‘desperate situation’

A Cuban journalist is looking to spread awareness of the US trade embargo in two illuminating documentaries arriving in early 2024.

Liz Oliva Fernández says whenever she covered news or events on the island, be it the push for democratic reforms, or the private businesses springing up after the Castros loosened their grip on power, they always intersected with the sanctions.

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Blinken returns to Middle East and warns of risk war could spread

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US secretary of state begins visit to region as fears grow Israel could expand Gaza conflict to Lebanon

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has returned to the Middle East for the fourth time in three months as he warned Israel’s war against Hamas risked spreading throughout the region.

Recent intensifying violence between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, increasing attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and strikes by Tehran-linked groups on US bases in Iraq, have created an increasingly febrile atmosphere across the Middle East.

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Snookered by China? Masters tournament owner plots Asia expansion

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World Snooker and PDC World Darts owner Matchroom weighs up India and south-east Asia amid feared overreliance on China

The owner of the Masters snooker tournament is plotting an expansion trail across Asia after the pandemic exposed the company’s reliance on China, its chair has revealed.

Steve Dawson, the chief executive of World Snooker Ltd, told the Guardian it was considering staging tournaments in India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand, after its business was held back by three years of Beijing-imposed Covid lockdowns.

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Taiwan braces for ‘big deal’ presidential election as China’s shadow looms

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Corruption and the cost of living have trumped concerns about a belligerent neighbour in close race for the presidency

Deep in the mountains of Hsinchu county in north Taiwan, a few dozen residents of Smangus are holding their daily morning meeting in a weatherboard hut, overlooking the towering peaks nearby.

The remote Indigenous village, home to about 200 Atayal people, is preparing for Saturday’s presidential election. They take it very seriously, running their own polling station since 2008, and discussing candidates with all the residents.

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‘The mood is heating up’: Germany fears strikes will play into hands of far right

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Angry protests by farmers, hauliers and railway workers risk being exploited by populists such as Alternative für Deutschland

The symbolism that German farmers chose to express their discontent with the government in the first days of the new year was as unambiguous as it was ominous: by the side of rural roads across the country, there were sightings of makeshift gallows dangling traffic-light signs, a reference to the colours of the three governing parties.

The chilling sculptures are harbingers of unprecedented cross-sector protests and strikes hitting German roads and railways from Monday, and speak of a dramatic change of mood in a country long feted for its consensus-seeking approach to industrial relations, especially compared with its more traditionally strike-prone neighbour France.

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Polls open in Bangladesh election guaranteed to hand Sheikh Hasina a fifth term

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Already decimated by mass arrests, opposition parties have boycotted the ‘sham’ election, which will give victory to the ruling Awami League

Bangladesh began voting on Sunday in an election guaranteed to give a fifth term in office to rime minister Sheikh Hasina, after a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a “terrorist organisation”.

Hasina has presided over exceptional economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.

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