This live blog has now closed, you can read more on this story here
Gert Jan Koopman, the head of the European Commission’s directorate-general for neighbourhood and enlargement negotiations, has said Bosnia and Herzegovina’s progress “must continue” and “in particular” on rule of law.
The country “should seize the momentum around enlargement & focus its efforts on the outstanding reforms”, he added.
Continue reading...CDC data shows rate rose 3% last year but experts say they are not sure why statistic that has been falling should have risen sharply
The US infant mortality rate rose 3% last year – the largest increase in two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
White and Native American infants, infant boys and babies born at 37 weeks or earlier had significant death rate increases. The CDC’s report, published Wednesday, also noted larger increases for two of the leading causes of infant deaths – maternal complications and bacterial meningitis.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here
Continue reading...Huq, ‘a visionary and climate champion’, who was named one of the top 10 scientists in the world by Nature last year, has died at 71
Tributes have poured in from around for world for the renowned Bangladeshi scientist Prof Saleemul Huq, who died on 28 October.
Huq, 71, was an acclaimed academic, a relentless climate activist and the director of the International Centre for Climate Change & Development (ICCCAD), a research and capacity-building organisation in Bangladesh.
Continue reading...Ad released in Virginia part of well-funded effort to portray Democrats as abortion extremists and Republicans as reasonable compromisers
The ad opens with the sound of a fetal heartbeat.
“Most people believe that abortion at the moment of birth is wrong, far beyond any reasonable limit. Not Virginia Democrats,” a female narrator says, just before the sound of a baby cooing and crying. “They fought to make late-term abortions the rule, not the exception.”
Continue reading...Crossing open for first time in weeks to allow evacuation of foreign passport holders and injured Palestinians
The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has opened for the first time in more than three weeks of brutal conflict to allow the evacuation of dozens of injured Palestinians requiring hospital treatment and hundreds of foreign passport holders.
Witnesses at the border on the Gaza side saw scores of people and cars hurrying to get through the gates towards the Egyptian side through the damaged terminal area, some carrying their belongings. Ambulances whisked away the wounded to Egyptian field hospitals, including one young boy with heavy bandaging around his stomach.
Continue reading...Prestigious show contains one set of images with LGBTQ+ theme, prompting a far-right lawmaker to file a complaint with the cultural ministry
People younger than 18 have been barred from visiting this year’s World Press Photo exhibition in Budapest after Hungary’s rightwing populist government decided that some of its photos violate a contentious law restricting LGBTQ+ content.
The prestigious exhibition, being shown at Hungary’s National Museum in Budapest, receives more than four million visitors from around the world every year. Showcasing outstanding photojournalism, its mission is to bring visual coverage of a range of important events to a global audience.
Continue reading...Some have waited years in Pakistan for Britain to fulfil its promises – and are now at risk of deportation
For a year after the fall of Kabul and the swift withdrawal of international allies from Afghanistan, Jawed* and his family were in hiding, evading the ruling Taliban as they counted the days waiting for relocation promises from the British government to be realised.
“But that didn’t happen. To this day, two years and two months [later], we’re still living in limbo,” Jawed, a former English teacher for the British Council, said from a hotel in Islamabad.
Continue reading...Audit finds ‘little to no improvement’ in health of sea between 2016 and 2021, as Swedish coastguard battles oil spill
The Baltic Sea faces “critical challenges” due to the climate crisis and degradation of biodiversity, a report has said, as Sweden’s coastguard battled to contain the impact of an oil spill off the country’s southern shore.
In the most comprehensive audit of its kind to date, experts at the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (Helcom) said on Tuesday there had been “little to no improvement” in the health of the body of water between 2016 and 2021.
Continue reading...Maastricht clamps down on cyclists who illegally secure their two-wheelers to lamp-posts or railings
Officials in the Netherlands, a country with more bicycles than people, are tackling a plague of “wild parking” by confiscating illegally stationed bikes and increasing the penalties to get them back.
This year the southern city of Maastricht – beloved of international students – banned people from “orphaning” their bikes by deserting them on the street. Now it is doubling the fines it charges people who want to reclaim impounded bicycles.
Continue reading...Community looks tentatively to future as party that sought to demonise them is unlikely to retain power
For the past eight years, fear and anxiety has threaded through much of Bart Staszewski’s daily life. As a gay man living in Poland, he found himself increasingly under attack by a government that had sought to depict the LGBTQ+ community as a threat to the nation and its children, fuelling prejudices and hate crimes across the country.
But since last month’s election pointed to a possible route to power for opposition parties, Staszewski has been gripped by a wave of relief. “It’s like I’m breathing fresh air for the first time in eight years,” he said. “After years of hate against people like me, the nightmare is over.”
Continue reading...Bolivia’s leftwing government cuts diplomatic ties with Israel, alleging crimes and human rights abuses in Gaza, as Chile and Colombia recall ambassadors
A number of South American countries have registered diplomatic protests against Israel, in response to its latest conflict with Hamas, with Bolivia’s leftwing government cutting ties entirely and attributing its decision to alleged war crimes and human rights abuses being committed in the Gaza Strip.
The decision by Bolivia was announced at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon by María Nela Prada, a minister in President Luis Arce’s administration. “We demand an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip which have so far claimed thousands of civilian lives and caused the forced displacement of Palestinians,” the minister told reporters in her country’s de facto capital, La Paz.
Continue reading...More than 10,000 arrests and nearly 3,000 prosecutions, with 82% given jail including ‘extraordinary high’ proportion of children
Protesters involved in the 2019-2020 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong have been treated extraordinarily harshly by the criminal justice system compared with local and international norms, a report has found.
The surge in arrests, detentions and charges in the wake of the anti-extradition bill protests that saw millions of Hongkongers taking to the streets to oppose closer ties with mainland China meant that the criminal justice system was put under “extreme stress”, according to Jun Chan, Eric Yan-ho Lai and Thomas E Kellogg at the Center for Asian Law of Georgetown University.
Continue reading...Visiting monarch speaks of sorrow and deepest regret for past ‘wrongdoings’ under British rule
King Charles has spoken of Britain’s “abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence” committed against Kenyans during their fight for independence, but stopped short of an apology despite human rights groups demanding one.
The monarch made the comments in a speech, delivered during a banquet in Kenya held in his honour, in which he referred to the “greatest sorrow” and “deepest regret” for the “wrongdoings” of the past.
Continue reading...White House comments come after China’s foreign minister made rare visit to Washington to pave way for Xi to meet Biden
Joe Biden is expected to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a summit in San Francisco in November for “constructive” talks, the White House said on Tuesday.
The comments came days after China’s foreign minister made a rare visit to Washington to pave the way for Xi to meet Biden at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit.
Continue reading...Israeli military says it bombed Jabalia camp to target a key Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari
Israeli airstrikes have destroyed apartment blocks and killed dozens of people at a refugee camp in northern Gaza on the 25th day of a conflict that the United Nations said has become a “graveyard” for children.
At least six airstrikes hit residential areas in the Jabalia refugee camp on Gaza City’s outskirts on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people and injuring about 150 people, Hamas officials said.
Continue reading...Limited information suggests IDF seeking to encircle Gaza City – but urban warfare can confer significant advantages to defenders
Israel’s ground invasion of the northern Gaza Strip began on Friday evening, an urban warfare operation that is likely to be lengthy, fraught with danger for its military and Palestinian civilians and whose ultimate goals remain uncertain.
It began more than three weeks after Hamas’s surprising and brutal cross-border attack of 7 October, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, and comes amid what the monitoring group Airwars says is an aerial bombardment that “far outpaces” the number of bombs dropped in “the deadliest months” of the US-led war against Islamic State.
Continue reading...Lloyd Austin ‘guarantees Putin will be successful’ if US support for Kyiv ends during Senate hearing on Joe Biden’s request for funding
Russian president Vladimir Putin and top government and security officials on Monday discussed strengthening measures to counter external interference after a weekend riot in Dagestan that targeted airline passengers from Israel, the Kremlin said.
In a statement at the start of Monday’s meeting of members of his Security Council, the government and the heads of law enforcement agencies, Putin accused the west and Ukraine of stirring up unrest inside Russia after rioters in the predominantly Muslim Dagestan region stormed an airport to “catch” Jewish passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed.
The United Nations has said “there is already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed” by Hamas and the Israeli military since 7 October and that it is gathering evidence for potential prosecutions.
All parties involved in the conflict are governed by a body of law drawn from a system of conventions, treaties and war crimes tribunal rulings known as “international humanitarian law” or the “law of armed conflict”.
Continue reading...Saudi Arabia was confirmed on Tuesday as the sole bidder to host the 2034 men’s World Cup, raising concerns over Fifa’s ability to deliver on its human rights commitments.
After Australia decided against a bid, having been given a 25-day deadline by Fifa to express interest after the deadline was unexpectedly brought forward to 4pm GMT on Tuesday, the prospect of a second World Cup in the Gulf within 12 years is all but a formality. The lack of a competitive tender and the alacrity with which the process has been conducted, however, have prompted alarm among human rights groups. Amnesty International called on Fifa to pull the plug if human rights commitments were not fulfilled.
Continue reading...