Vincent Nichols says shooting of mother and daughter did nothing to further Israel’s right to defend itself
The shooting of a mother and daughter allegedly by an Israeli military sniper in a church compound in Gaza City was a “cold–blooded killing”, the most senior Catholic cleric in England has said.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, said the shooting did “nothing to further Israel’s right to defend itself”.
Continue reading...PTI party uses ‘voice clone’ of imprisoned opposition leader to give impassioned speech in ‘virtual rally’
Artificial intelligence allowed Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan to campaign from behind bars on Monday, with a voice clone of the opposition leader giving an impassioned speech on his behalf.
Khan has been locked up since August and is being tried for leaking classified documents, allegations he says have been trumped up to stop him contesting general elections due in February.
Continue reading...‘I join you in the prayer to guide those regarding your appeal,’ Gregory Aymond of New Orleans wrote to priest given life sentence
As he reached the end of his 41-year life, Kevin Portier had endured child rape at the hands of a southern Louisiana Catholic priest for whom he had served as an altar boy; a highly publicized trial that sent the clergyman to prison for the rest of his days; and the trauma associated with those experiences.
But one of Portier’s harshest ordeals came within his final two years alive. Representatives of the church that he had been raised to believe in approached him at his home, at his job and at a relative’s funeral to ask him to lend his support to efforts to secure an early release for his rapist, Robert Melancon.
Continue reading...Media mogul and pro-democracy activist accused of conspiring to collude with foreign forces and faces life in prison
The media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai has gone on trial at a heavily guarded Hong Kong court on national security charges that could lead to life imprisonment.
Lai’s trial, expected to last months, is one of the most high-profile prosecutions in the Hong Kong government’s crackdown on opposition, and has been widely condemned by rights groups and other governments.
Continue reading...With pupils and teachers uprooted and buildings destroyed, it is likely to be many months before classes can resume
Mohammad Mosa packed his laptop when he fled his home in October and hoped he would still be able to Zoom into classes between airstrikes. The 14-year-old has his heart set on a competitive scholarship and has studied through wars before.
Two months later, the only new thing he has learned is how to bake bread over an open fire. Intense bombardment and a tight blockade have meant that civilian life in Gaza has turned into a daily fight to survive, and education is one of the many casualties.
Continue reading...Japan’s government has called a meeting of its national security council in response to the launches
North Korea has tested a long-range ballistic missile that is theoretically capable of striking anywhere on the US mainland, Japan officials said, in the regime’s first round of missile tests for about a month.
The missile appeared to have flown about 1,000km (620 miles) and reached a maximum altitude of more than 6,000km before landing in the sea east of the Korean peninsula on Monday.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary’s plea made as publisher faces trial under national security law imposed by China
The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has called for the release of the British citizen Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy newspaper publisher facing a “politically motivated prosecution” in a high-profile trial in Hong Kong.
In a significant intervention, the former prime minister condemned the charges against Lai, 76, who faces a possible life sentence if convicted under a national security law that China imposed after the 2019 pro-democracy protests.
Continue reading...Response to Houthi attacks from Yemen seeks to reassure commercial shipping companies suspending use of Red Sea
The US is to announce the launch of an expanded maritime protection force involving Arab states to combat the increasingly frequent Houthi attacks being mounted from Yemen’s ports on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The force, provisionally entitled Operation Prosperity Guardian, is due to be announced by the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, when he visits the Middle East, including the fifth fleet stationed in Bahrain. Similar to the Task Force 153 already operating out of Bahrain, the larger protection force is designed to provide reassurance to commercial shipping companies that Houthi attacks will be seen off, and the Red Sea remains safe for commercial shipping.
Continue reading...Fatalities in last 24 hours come amid public anger over mistaken killing of three hostages by Israeli forces
Airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 100 people over the last 24 hours, as Israel’s leadership faces growing international pressure for a ceasefire and calls at home to resume hostage negotiations after the Israeli army shot and killed three men kidnapped by Hamas.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said on Sunday that at least 90 people had been killed by Israeli bombardment in the Jabalia camp in the north, and another 12 had died in bombings in the central city of Deir al-Balah, as fighting was reported in several parts of Gaza.
Continue reading...Lawyer who has advised foreign secretary says Israel has the capacity, but not the will, to relocate even one settler
Nearly 200,000 of the 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank would have to be relocated to Israel to create a viable Palestinian state, according to an Israeli lawyer from whom the UK foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, has sought advice on his visits to Israel.
Cameron has said he realises reaching a two-state solution would be tough, but he has not spelled out the practical consequences in terms of borders, including the need to persuade so many Israelis to relocate.
Continue reading...Russia has no interest in fighting with Nato country, Vladimir Putin says, but says he will send military units near border with Finland. This live blog is closed
A Ukrainian military intelligence officer is undertaking sabotage missions in Russia that he claims do not have the approval of his superiors, according to this dispatch from south-eastern Ukraine in the Sunday Times.
It comes as the frontlines of the war calcify into something of a stalemate with the onset of bitter winter, boosting the significance of other forms of warfare in Kyiv’s fight against Moscow’s invasion. In this case, without the approval of senior officers.
Mykola is an officer in the main intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s defence ministry. He trains operatives for secret missions in Russia: sabotage, poisonings, assassinations, diversions. He claims they are unauthorised by the chain of command above him.
Last week, he invited me to his training centre in south-east Ukraine, a place so secret that before we even got in his car, I had to switch off my phone and seal it in a bag that blocks out all signals.
Often, when Kostiantyn Grygorenko walks the streets of Izium, he spots people he suspects collaborated with the Russians during the five-month occupation of his home town last year.
He used to feel an overwhelming rush of emotions when he saw them. Now, he tries to conserve his energy and nerves and ignore them. But still, it gets to him.
Continue reading...Many in Israel see Hezbollah as a greater threat than Hamas and consider a new war in Lebanon to be inevitable
When the news first broke of the Hamas attack early on 7 October, Itai Reuveni and the other reservists in his paratrooper battalion packed their bags and arrived at their muster point well before their call-up came from the army.
The paratroopers did not head south to Gaza but to the northern border, where they believed a far greater threat than Hamas was poised to join the fight: Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement backed by Tehran.
Continue reading...Official says party favours sending refugees to third countries such as Rwanda for application processing
Germany’s opposition conservatives are seeking to win back voters with a sweeping change to the country’s immigration and asylum policy, including plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Jens Spahn, a leading member of the Christian Democrats (CDU), said at the weekend that his party was in favour of the transportation of future refugees to third countries for processing of asylum applications such Ghana and Rwanda in Africa, or to non-EU European countries such as Moldova and Georgia.
Continue reading...Russian airbase said to be among targets and Ukrainian civilian killed by drone debris in Odesa
Russia and Ukraine launched more than a dozen drones at each other’s territory for a second day on Sunday, one of which apparently targeted a Russian military airport, while a Ukrainian civilian was killed after drone debris slammed into his house near the Black Sea.
At least 35 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over three regions in south-western Russia, the Russian defence ministry said in a post on the messaging app Telegram.
Continue reading...Victims were from Nigeria, the Gambia and other African countries and included women and children, UN agency says
Dozens of people are missing and presumed dead after their boat sank off Libya’s coast, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said, in the latest migration tragedy off north Africa.
The 61 people are believed to have died because of high waves, which swamped their vessel after it left from Zuwara, on Libya’s north-west coast, the IOM’s Libya office said in a statement on Saturday.
Continue reading...President Javier Milei and his allies are preparing new security guidelines in anticipation of protests against currency devaluation
Human rights activists in Argentina have expressed consternation over new security guidelines to crack down on an anticipated wave of protests after the incoming government of libertarian president Javier Milei devalued the country’s currency by more than 50%.
Protesting individuals and organizations will be identified with “video, digital or manual means” – and then billed for the cost of sending security forces to police their demonstrations, said Milei’s security minister, Patricia Bullrich, as she announced the new protocol on Thursday.
“The state is not going to pay for the use of the security forces; organizations that have legal status will have to pay or individuals will have to bear the cost,” Bullrich said.
Children and women to lose out if voters approve new document that critics say reads ‘more like a Republican party manifesto’
Activists and analysts in Chile have warned that swathes of the country’s population stand to lose out should a new draft constitution drawn up by conservative lawmakers be approved in a nationwide referendum on Sunday.
Chileans head to the polls caught between exhaustion and resentment in a compulsory vote to decide whether the 1980 constitution written during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, and since reformed, should be replaced.
Continue reading...The 78-year-old was driven away in his own BMW alongside his Colombian partner, according to a police report
A British businessman and the former UK honorary consul in Guayaquil, Colin Armstrong, has been kidnapped by hooded men at his home in Ecuador’s Los Rios province, according to police reports.
Armstrong, 78, was snatched in the early hours of Saturday alongside a Colombian woman identified as his partner Katherine Paola Santos from his home in the town of Baba, according to a police report seen by the Guardian. He was driven away in his own black BMW, which was later found dumped, the report said.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin vows to make Russia self-sufficient power in face of west and warns of ‘problems’ with neighbouring Finland
Russian president Vladimir Putin vowed to make Russia a “sovereign, self-sufficient” power in the face of the west. In a campaign speech he accused the west of unsuccessfully trying to “sow internal troubles” in Russia.
Putin also warned of “problems” with neighbouring Finland after it joined Nato earlier this year. Russia plans to reorganise military divisions to station more troops in its north-west region, by the EU and Nato border.
But Putin dismissed US president Joe Biden’s claims that Russia could attack a Nato country as “nonsense”. It came after Biden said Putin would not stop at Ukraine if it secures victory, as he pleaded with Republican lawmakers to authorise further aid to Kyiv.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington DC last week has yet to bear fruit as Biden called lack of Congressional support for aid a “Christmas gift” to Russia. Biden has requested $61.4bn (£48.4bn) in further aid to Ukraine but Republicans in Republicans in Congress have rejected the proposals.
Russia is not interested in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the agriculture minister said. The deal led to 33m tonnes of grain leave Ukraine’s ports before it collapsed in July.
Ukraine claims Russia has suffered almost 350,000 troops dying or being injured. The figure is higher than the 315,000 estimated by US intelligence, according to reports, but even that represents a significant toll for Moscow.
Ukraine continued its use of ‘memetic warfare’ as the defence ministry posted a video of two Russian tanks being destroyed, with guitar music and the caption “WELCOME TO UKRAINE.” Scholars have tracked the use of memes to try and grab control of the war narrative.
An intelligence report from the UK Ministry of Defence said Russia is likely to deploy “electoral fraud and voter intimidation” when elections take place in occupied Ukrainian territories. Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will vote in March’s presidential elections but they are expected to not be “free or fair”.
It comes as Vladimir Putin was confirmed to be running for president again as an independent candidate in Russia after two decades in power. Russian news agencies reported the news on Saturday, with the victory of Putin, 71, a formality.
Russia continued to batter Ukrainian targets with mortars overnight, with Dnipro in the centre, Sumy in the north and Zaporizhzhia in the south-east hit with artillery.
Russian rocket forces have loaded a new Yars intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo at the Kozelsk base south-west of Moscow. The missiles are capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads.
More than a year after the Russians retreated from Izium, the Ukrainian city is wracked by suspicion and distrust about collaborators. Read Shaun Walker’s Observer dispatch from a city still in ruins here.
Lorry blockades are continuing at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Polish drivers say Ukraine is undercutting them as about 2,150 Ukrainian lorries remain stuck in Poland unable to return.
Continue reading...Territory’s global reputation on the line as media mogul and democracy activist finally tried over alleged national security crimes
Hong Kong’s global reputation will be tested this week when the long-delayed trial of the pro-democracy activist and former media mogul Jimmy Lai gets under way.
Lai, who turned 76 in jail this month, is charged with colluding with foreign forces under the national security law, as well as sedition. If convicted, which experts say is highly likely, the British national faces spending the rest of his life in prison.
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