Category Archives: World News

US man deported from Bali after 11 years in prison for ‘suitcase murder’ of then girlfriend’s mother

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Tommy Schaefer released early from 18-year sentence for 2014 murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack during luxury holiday

Indonesia has freed and deported a US man after he spent 11 years in prison for the premeditated murder of his then girlfriend’s mother on the tourist island of Bali.

Tommy Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the 2014 murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, the mother of Heather Mack, during a luxury holiday in a case that became known as the Bali suitcase murder.

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Members of Iran’s elite accused of hypocrisy over children’s lives in west

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Opposition campaigners claim top figures in regime use state wealth to fund lifestyles counter to those they preach

Members of Iran’s ruling elite have been accused of brazen hypocrisy by allegedly using the state’s wealth to help to fund their adult children’s lives in the west while presiding over growing economic misery and repression at home.

Opposition campaigners made the accusation against some of the clerical regime’s most powerful figures as a military confrontation with the US appears increasingly likely. Donald Trump has deployed a vast armada in the Middle East and confirmed he is considering strikes.

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Japan to deploy missiles to island near Taiwan by 2031, says defence minister

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Surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of shooting down aircraft and ballistic missiles, will be located on Yonaguni, Japan’s westernmost island

Japan will deploy missiles to a tiny island near Taiwan within five years, its defence minister has said, in a move that is likely to inflame tensions with China.

The surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of shooting down aircraft and ballistic missiles, will be located on Yonaguni – Japan’s westernmost island – by March 2031, Shinjiro Koizumi said.

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South Korea’s birthrate rises for second year with experts saying ‘echo boomers’ behind boost

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Rebound in the country – which has been having demographic crisis – said to be partly because of 3.6 million born between 1991 and 1995 having children

South Korea recorded 254,500 births in 2025, the largest annual increase in 15 years, driven largely by a temporarily enlarged generation – known as “echo boomers” – now in their early thirties, alongside marriage rates recovering from Covid-era delays.

The country’s fertility rate – the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – rose to 0.80 from 0.75 last year, returning to the 0.8 range for the first time since 2021, according to provisional figures released by South Korea’s ministry of data and statistics on Wednesday.

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Marco Rubio briefs US lawmakers on Iran as Trump uses State of the Union to threaten nuclear programme

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Secretary of state makes rare briefing to so-called ‘gang of eight’ as US deploys largest force of aircraft and warships to Middle East since 2003

Marco Rubio delivered a rare briefing to top US lawmakers on Iran, just a few hours before Donald Trump used his State of the Union address to say that Tehran would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Amid the largest deployment of aircraft and warships to the Middle East since the 2003 buildup to the Iraq war, Trump said he wanted to solve the confrontation with Iran through diplomatic means while claiming that Tehran was seeking to develop ballistic missiles that could reach the US, without providing further details.

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Floods and landslides in Brazil kill at least 30 after record rainfall

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Firefighters search for 39 people missing in debris after river burst and houses were swept away

Three firefighters pulled a man’s body from the mud amid the rubble of houses swept away in a landslide in south-eastern Brazil, where 30 people died and 39 were still missing on Tuesday after torrential rains.

A river in the state of Minas Gerais burst its banks and streets became raging currents of brown water after an overnight downpour in a region that has seen record rain this month.

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Spanish engineer reports flaw in ‘smart’ vacuums after gaining control of 7,000 devices

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Sammy Azdoufal alerted New York-based outlet the Verge after he took control of DJI Romo devices around the world

A Spanish software engineer reportedly contacted a New York-based tech outlet recently to reveal he had remotely taken control of about 7,000 vacuums worldwide, in the process shedding light on a broad vulnerability with smart products, according to a cybersecurity expert.

The Verge reported that the situation came to light when Sammy Azdoufal was trying to reverse-engineer his new DJI Romo vacuum so that he could control it with his Playstation 5 gamepad.

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Armed police flood Iran’s universities to crush student protests

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Campus clashes provide uneasy backdrop to third round of talks on nuclear programme in Geneva

Plainclothes police and security forces, many of them armed, have tried to flood Iran’s remaining open universities in an attempt to crush a fourth day of student protests against the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

Running battles were reported on some campuses, with videos showing fistfights between the Basji state-backed militia and students at the University of Science and Technology in Tehran. Pick-up trucks with machine-guns were photographed parked outside the University of Tehran, with demonstrations also in Mashhad.

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Royal Artillery under fire after denying access to looted Asante treasure

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‘Extraordinary’ golden lamb’s head pillaged in 1874 from what is now Ghana remains hidden in officers’ mess

The Royal Artillery is facing criticism after it emerged they are refusing public access to an “extraordinary object” looted by the British army in the 19th century from the Asante people in modern-day Ghana.

The glistening golden ram’s head would seemingly be worthy of any museum, but it remains hidden within the regiment’s mess at Larkhill in Wiltshire.

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Destitute survivors of south-east Asia’s cyberscam farms an ‘international crisis’

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Not enough support for freed victims, say aid agencies, with growing numbers sleeping on the streets, unable to travel home without passports or money

Charities and aid workers have called for urgent international government support for victims of south-east Asia’s deadly scam compounds, following a damning report by Amnesty International.

The numbers of survivors of cyberscam “farms” left destitute and abandoned on the city streets of Cambodia and Myanmar is an “international crisis”, according to the research published in January.

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BTS comeback show sells out immediately as 260,000 fans set to descend on Seoul

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Booking system freezes and screens crash amid rush of fans trying to secure tickets to 21 March free concert

Tickets for BTS’s comeback concert in central Seoul were snapped up almost immediately on Monday night, with authorities expecting an estimated 260,000 fans to descend for the K-pop group’s first full performance in nearly four years.

At one point, more than 100,000 people flooded the booking website when sales opened at 8pm for the free concert at Gwanghwamun square on 21 March, causing screens to crash and booking systems to freeze.

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FedEx sues US government, seeking ‘full refund’ over Trump tariffs

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Firm does not specify amount but seeks reimbursement after supreme court ruled against president last week

FedEx sued the US government on Monday, seeking a refund for the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump that were deemed illegal by the US supreme court last week.

The lawsuit marks the first attempt by a major company to receive reimbursement of their share of an estimated $175bn in levies after the highest court found Trump had overstepped his authority in issuing the tariffs. Other companies are expected to follow.

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Canada seeks answers from OpenAI for failing to alert police after suspending school shooter’s account

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Company had suspended account of Tumbler Ridge shooter in June 2025 over ‘furtherance of violent activities’

Canada’s artificial intelligence minister says he has summoned representatives from the technology company OpenAI after the company declined to alert police after suspending the account of a user who became the perpetrator of one of the country’s worst-ever school shootings.

Evan Solomon says he is “deeply disturbed” by reports that the company, which operates the popular ChatGPT chatbot, suspended the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar over the “furtherance of violent activities” in June 2025 but did not reach out to Canadian law enforcement.

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US ambassador to France vows not to interfere in its domestic affairs

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Charles Kushner, father of president’s son-in-law Jared, failed to show up to meeting to explain US comments relating to death of far-right activist

Donald Trump’s envoy to Paris has called France’s foreign minister and pledged not to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs, a day after he was barred from talking to government officials for failing to attend a formal meeting at the ministry.

The foreign ministry said on Monday that Charles Kushner would not be permitted to carry out his diplomatic duties until he had explained his refusal to comply with the summons over US comments about the killing of a far-right activist in France.

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Trump Iran airstrikes decision to be guided by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff’s advice

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Exclusive: Trump’s decision will be driven by envoys’ judgment on whether Iran is stalling on a nuclear deal

Donald Trump’s decision to order airstrikes against Iran will hinge in part on the judgment of Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about whether Tehran is stalling over a deal to relinquish its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the matter.

The president has not made a final determination on any strikes, as the administration prepares for Iran to send its latest proposal this week, ahead of what officials have described as a last-ditch round of negotiations scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.

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More than 600 people have died trying to cross Mediterranean in 2026, UN says

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Deadliest start to a year in more than a decade, according to the International Organization for Migration

A least 606 people trying to reach Europe in search of refugee have been reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean since the beginning of 2026, marking the “deadliest start to a year” in more than a decade, the UN’s migration agency said on Monday.

The figure includes at least 30 people who are feared dead or missing after their boat capsized in severe weather off the coast of Greece on Saturday. Authorities rescued 20 people, including four minors, and recovered the bodies of three men and one woman, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said.

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Robert Mugabe’s son charged with attempted murder over Johannesburg shooting

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Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, known for lavish lifestyle, also accused of theft and being illegal immigrant after man was allegedly shot in back

A son of the late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has been charged with attempted murder after a 23-year-old man was allegedly shot in the back on 19 February in an upmarket area of Johannesburg.

Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, 28, appeared in court on Monday for a brief hearing alongside co-accused Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze. Mugabe’s lawyer Sinenhlanhla Mnguni declined to comment when asked by reporters whether the two men were related. Mnguni said he would request bail for his clients at the next hearing on 3 March.

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Fears of polio resurgence as US vaccine adviser questions need for childhood shots

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Survivors say US healthcare system not ready for new cases – ‘the only thing to fix polio is the polio vaccine’

With preventable infectious diseases surging and top US vaccines adviser saying all vaccine recommendations may be reconsidered, experts are bracing for more polio cases while survivors say the medical system is not ready for polio.

“We don’t have a healthcare infrastructure to take care of a polio outbreak,” said Grace Rossow, an operating-room communications coordinator in Illinois, who has long-term health issues following a case of polio as an infant.

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‘Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full’: Iran’s students on why they are protesting again

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As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality

More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.

The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.

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The tragedy of Punch the monkey: why do mother animals abandon their offspring?

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Footage of Punch, a seven-month-old Japanese macaque, has gone viral around the world after he was rejected by his mother and formed a bond with a soft toy

A baby monkey in Japan has captured hearts around the world after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week.

Punch, a Japanese macaque, was born last July at Ichikawa zoo. He has drawn international attention after zookeepers gave him a stuffed orangutan toy after he was abandoned by his mother.

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