Category Archives: World News

More than 100 container ships rerouted from Suez canal to avoid Houthi attacks

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Cape of Good Hope diversion adds 6,000 nautical miles and three or four weeks to delivery times and has driven up oil prices

More than 100 container ships have been rerouted around southern Africa to avoid the Suez canal, in a sign of the disruption to global trade caused by Houthi rebels attacking vessels on the western coast of Yemen.

The shipping company Kuehne and Nagel said it had identified 103 ships that had already changed course, with more expected to go around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

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Presidential candidates call for rerun of election in Democratic Republic of Congo

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Opposition complains of ‘obviously planned electoral fraud’ as vote is plagued by administrative chaos, delays and closed polling stations

Five Congolese opposition presidential candidates have jointly called for a rerun of the country’s general elections, saying a decision by the election commission to extend the ballot was unconstitutional.

After a day plagued by administrative chaos, delays and closed polling stations, electoral authorities said late on Wednesday that voting would continue on the following day in areas where voters could not cast ballots.

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End of era as Toshiba delists from Tokyo stock exchange after 74 years

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Electronics firm taken private in £11bn deal by consortium led by Japan Industrial Partners

Toshiba, the Japanese company synonymous with the country’s 20th-century dominance of electronics, has delisted from the Tokyo stock exchange after 74 years.

The manufacturer, associated in the UK with its 1980s “Ello Tosh, gotta Toshiba” advertising campaign, was taken private on Wednesday in an £11bn deal by a consortium of investors led by the private equity investor Japan Industrial Partners (JIP).

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Could new malaria drug give babies a better chance of survival?

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Trials are under way for a treatment for newborns and infants, who are often wrongly assumed to have immunity through their mothers

When Rose Akinyi’s baby, Jayla Joy, would not eat or stop crying one night, she thought her newborn had a stomach upset. She gave her some mild pain medication, but her condition grew worse.

“She was burning hot, so I removed her clothes and gave her [more pain medication],” said 30-year-old Akinyi, from Kisumu, a port city in western Kenya on Lake Victoria.

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Biden administration policy differences reportedly behind delay in Gaza ceasefire vote at UN

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Work continues on UN security council text of resolution that the US could at least abstain on, as Qatar says hostage talks have been ‘positive’

A vote on a Gaza ceasefire resolution was postponed for a second time at the UN security council on Tuesday, amid reported policy differences inside the Biden administration.

While diplomatic efforts struggled in New York in the pursuit of a formalised truce, there was a renewed push for a new hostage deal that would involve a short humanitarian pause in the fight to allow an exchange with Palestinian prisoners.

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France passes controversial immigration bill amid deep division in Macron’s party

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Strict new law contains so many hardline measures that the far-right Marine Le Pen has claimed it as an ‘ideological victory’

The French government is facing a political crisis after the health minister Aurélien Rousseau offered his resignation in protest over a hardline immigration bill.

Emmanuel Macron’s ruling centrist party was divided and soul-searching on Wednesday after a strict new immigration law was approved by parliament but contained so many hardline measures that the far-right Marine Le Pen claimed it as an “ideological victory” for her own anti-immigration platform.

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Gérard Depardieu accused of rape by Spanish journalist and author

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Ruth Baza, 51, said previous allegations against Depardieu provoked ‘flashes’ of memory of alleged 30-year-old assault

A Spanish journalist and author has filed a criminal complaint in Spain against Gérard Depardieu, claiming that the film star raped her nearly 30 years ago in Paris.

Ruth Baza, 51, told AFP she filed the complaint with Spanish police on Thursday, saying the alleged rape happened when she interviewed the actor in Paris on 12 October 1995, for the magazine Cinemania.

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Ex-Haitian senator gets life in prison for 2021 killing of country’s president

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John Joel Joseph, an opponent of the late president’s party, is third of 11 suspects charged for plotting to assassinate Jovenel Moïse

A former Haitian senator has been sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to kill Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, an assassination which caused unprecedented turmoil in the Caribbean nation.

John Joel Joseph is the third of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami to be sentenced in what US prosecutors have described as a plot hatched in Haiti and Florida to hire mercenaries to kidnap or kill Moïse, who was 53 when he was shot dead at his private home near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021.

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Zelenskiy and Putin each vow to press on to victory in Ukraine war

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Ukraine president seeks to boost morale after difficult year as Russian opponent claims to hold initiative

The leaders of Ukraine and Russia have struck a defiant tone and vowed to reach their military goals as the war heads toward its third year.

Speaking in Kyiv during his end-of-year press conference, Volodymyr Zelenskiy sought to boost the domestic mood and maintain western support that has been stuttering in recent weeks.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy says army has asked for up to 500,000 more troops to be mobilised — as it happened

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Ukraine’s president is speaking to the world’s media at an end-of-year press conference

Russian air defences downed a hostile drone near Moscow on Tuesday, the city mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said. No casualties were reported.

Two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, had restricted flights, a measure often taken during drone attacks.

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‘It surprised the scientists’: Grindavík residents in limbo after powerful eruption

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Grindavík residents had been preparing to spend Christmas back at home after being evacuated

Until just after 10pm on Monday, when the earth opened up and spat out an otherworldly 4km-long wall of lava, Sígrún Ísdal had been planning to spend Christmas at home in Grindavík with her family. Like many residents of the fishing town on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula, who were all evacuated on 10 November, she had been preparing to move back after more than a month spent in the limbo of temporary accommodation.

Ísdal, who works at Grindavík sports centre, had even been in the town briefly on Monday evening to pick up a few possessions, as residents have recently been allowed to do. “There was just good weather and I didn’t see anything,” she said.

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US announces naval coalition to defend Red Sea shipping from Houthi attacks

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Egypt and Saudi Arabia notably absent from Operation Prosperity Guardian as more shipping companies forgo route

The US has announced the creation of an enhanced naval protection force operating in the southern Red Sea in an attempt to ward off mounting attacks from Yemen’s rebel Houthis on merchant shipping.

Britain said it would be among the countries participating but notable absentees were Arab nations Egypt and Saudi Arabia while analysts speculated that shipping would continue to be disrupted and attacks continue.

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Palestinian casualties in Gaza near 20,000 with nearly 2m people displaced

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UK and Germany demand ‘sustainable ceasefire’ as Israel’s military campaign enters 11th week

Israeli forces killed 25 people in bombings in southern Gaza, hit a refugee camp in the north and raided one of the area’s last operating hospitals, as Palestinian casualties in the territory climbed towards 20,000.

The death toll from airstrikes and grim conditions for nearly 2 million people displaced from their homes with little access to food, clean water or sanitation is fuelling growing international anger, even among Israel’s close allies.

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Greece to legalise papers for thousands of migrants to counter labour shortage

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Legislation comes at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is fuelling far-right support across Europe

Thousands of migrants are to have their papers legalised in Greece as part of efforts to curb an acute labour shortage that is hitting key sectors of an otherwise resurgent economy.

In a move that has thrown his centre-right party into turmoil, the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, pushed through legislation on Tuesday regularising the status of about 30,000 unregistered labourers.

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French couple lose court case over rare African mask worth millions

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Couple sold mask to dealer for €150 in 2021 before it was sold to unidentified buyer for €4.2m

A French couple who sold an “extremely rare” African mask for €150 only to discover it was worth millions have had a request to cancel the artefact’s sale thrown out in court.

The couple, in their 80s, sold the wooden mask in September 2021 to a secondhand goods dealer as part of the sale of a number of antiquities including African artefacts that they had kept in their secondary home in southern France.

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Campaigners call on EU leaders to veto ‘costly and cruel’ changes to migration law

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Human rights organisations demand ‘more access to legal aid, asylum, medical and social support for people in need’

Proposed changes to the EU’s migration laws risk weakening human rights and could leave the bloc with an “ill-functioning, costly and cruel system”, more than 50 human rights organisations have said as negotiations over the plans enter the final stretch.

In an open letter published on Monday, 57 organisations – describing themselves as “people who see and work with the stark consequences of political choices” – said the package of new laws would “mirror the failed approaches of the past and worsen their consequences”.

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Indian government accused of attack on democracy as 141 MPs suspended

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Opposition politicians excluded from rest of winter session for protesting against parliament security breach

More than 140 Indian opposition politicians have been suspended from parliament, the largest number in history, after protesting against a recent security breach at the parliamentary premises.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government was accused of a direct attack on democracy and creating “anarchy” after 141 MPs from 11 different opposition parties, who sit in the lower and upper houses of parliament, were suspended for the rest of the winter session.

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Businessman who tried to buy Sheffield United accused of ‘elaborate’ fraud

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US watchdog sues Dozy Mmobuosi for allegedly faking documents and making up companies out of ‘thin air’

A Nigerian businessman who appeared to be closing in on a takeover of the Premier League football club Sheffield United is being sued by the US financial watchdog for a fraud, in which he is alleged to have faked documents and made up companies out of “thin air”.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Monday it had filed charges against Dozy Mmobuosi, claiming he inflated his companies’ financial performance by hundreds of millions of dollars to defraud investors.

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DUP talks about post-Brexit trading have ended, Northern Ireland secretary says

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Chris Heaton-Harris says it is time to restore devolved government, in comments that appeared to surprise DUP leader

Talks with the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) over post-Brexit trading arrangements have ended and it is time to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland secretary has said.

The announcement by Chris Heaton-Harris on Tuesday appeared to surprise and discomfit the DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who said the party still had concerns and that talks would continue.

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