Category Archives: World News

Israel hits Gaza with one of deadliest nights of bombings so far in war against Hamas

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At least 400 Palestinians killed in last 24 hours, including 70 in refugee camp and near hospitals

The blockaded Gaza Strip has been hit by one of the deadliest nights of Israeli bombing so far in the war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as two more hostages were freed amid reports that talks to secure the release of dozens of others were under way.

At least 400 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and 70 were killed overnight on Sunday in bombardments of the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp and streets close to two hospitals in Gaza City.

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Orbán to give speech as government tries to release EU funds suspended over rule-of-law concerns – Europe live

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Hungary marks anniversary of 1956 revolution as European parliament investigates whether it has made progress on democratic standards

European parliament members representing the centre-right European People’s Party, Socialists and Democrats group, centrist Renew Europe group and the Greens will speak today in Brussels about whether they believe Hungary has done enough for the EU to unfreeze billions in funding currently suspended over rule-of-law concerns.

They will be focusing on a 13 billion euro pot of money earmarked for regional development and frozen until Budapest can show it has implemented reforms safeguarding judicial independence.

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China launches tax investigations into Apple iPhone maker Foxconn

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Tax audits and land use inquiries follow company founder announcing run for Taiwan presidency

China’s tax authorities have launched multiple investigations into the company that makes the iPhone, months after its billionaire founder announced he would run in Taiwan’s presidential elections.

Foxconn faces tax audits of its operations in China, as well as investigations into land use in two Chinese provinces, according to reports by local media.

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Venezuela: Machado takes big early lead in presidential primary vote

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Challenger to crisis-ridden presidency of Nicolás Maduro claims victory after Venezuelans queue for hours in rainstorm to vote

Early returns in the Venezuelan opposition’s presidential primary have given a big lead to former legislator María Corina Machado, who quickly claimed victory as the candidate to end the decade-long, crisis-ridden presidency of Nicolás Maduro.

The independent National Primary Commission, which organised the vote, said about 93% of the first 601,110 ballots counted went to Machado, who entered the contest as a strong frontrunner. The rest of the votes were scattered among the other nine candidates. There was no indication of how many people had voted, and organisers were expected to release additional results throughout Monday.

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Trapped by debt: migrant workers in Israel unable to escape conflict

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Foreign workers in Israel often have to pay exorbitant ‘placement fees’ to secure work in the country, which has left many of them with too much debt to leave

Migrant workers in Israel have said that they are unable to return home to their families after the 7 October attacks as they are trapped in debt from the high recruitment fees they had to pay for their jobs.

It is understood that at least 50 migrant workers died in Israel during the attacks by the Hamas militant group; 30 Thai nationals, four Filipinos and 10 Nepalis are so far known to have been killed, according to government and media reports. There are reportedly more than 100,000 foreign workers in Israel, with the majority working as caregivers, as well as in agriculture and construction.

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Access to remains of Bambuti baby withdrawn by London museum

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Hunterian had listed stillborn child of African descent as viewable for medical research but removed it after criticism from author

The remains of a stillborn Bambuti baby have been removed from a museum’s catalogue of items that can be viewed for medical research after criticism from a Booker prize-shortlisted author.

Novelist Nadifa Mohamed is the presenter of an upcoming Channel 4 documentary examining the history of “human zoos” in Britain, in which African and Asian people were put on display to the wider public in a practice which is now deemed to have been deeply racist.

Britain’s Human Zoos is on Channel 4 on Saturday 28 October

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Iceland’s first full-day women’s strike in 48 years aims to close pay gap

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PM will take part in stoppage by women and non-binary people calling for pay equality and action on gender-based violence

Tens of thousands of women and non-binary people across Iceland, including the prime minister, are expected to stop work – both paid and unpaid – on Tuesday in the first strike of its kind in nearly half a century.

Organisers hope the women’s strike – whose confirmed participants include fishing industry workers, teachers, nurses and the PM, Katrín Jakobsdóttir – will bring society to a standstill to draw attention to the country’s ongoing gender pay gap and widespread gender-based and sexual violence.

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‘The fight will continue’ for India’s LGBTQ+ campaigners for equal marriage

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Homosexuality was decriminalised in 2018 but the supreme court has declined to change marriage laws

Utkarsh Saxena had been secretly planning the proposal for weeks. He had secretly measured his boyfriend’s finger while he was sleeping and bought a pair of matching steel rings from a Delhi market. They had been together for 15 years, having fallen in love on the university debating team, and Saxena felt optimistic that this would be an auspicious moment to ask the love of his life to marry him – the same day that India’s supreme court ruled on whether same-sex couples would be allowed to get married.

Yet when the verdict came out on Tuesday, Saxena’s heart broke. Even as India’s chief justice, DY Chandrachud, spoke of India’s long history of LGBTQ+ people and their right to equality, he ruled that changing marriage laws was beyond the scope of the court and that marriage was not a fundamental right. It was the job of parliament, not judges, to make such decisions, Chandrachud said.

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Far-right populist Javier Milei fails to win first round of Argentina’s presidential election

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Potty-mouthed political outsider will head to November runoff with centrist finance minister Sergio Massa

The eccentric far-right populist Javier Milei has failed to win the first round of Argentina’s presidential election, with the centrist finance minister Sergio Massa unexpectedly beating his radical challenger.

Supporters of Milei, a potty-mouthed political outsider described as an Argentinian mashup of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, had hoped he was heading for a sensational outright victory similar to Bolsonaro’s shock triumph in Brazil in 2018.

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Joko Widodo’s son chosen as running mate for Indonesia presidential candidate Prabowo

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Choice of 36-year-old Gibran Rakabuming Raka as a vice-presidential candidate has fuelled criticism that Widodo is trying to create a political dynasty

Indonesia’s defence minister and presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto said on Sunday he has chosen the eldest son of President Joko Widodo to be his running mate in next year’s election.

The choice of 36-year-old Gibran Rakabuming Raka, now the mayor of Surakarta city, as a vice-presidential candidate for the February vote has fuelled criticism that Widodo is trying to create a political dynasty in the world’s third-largest democracy.

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Plan for UK to host thousands of Gaza refugees drawn up by charities

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Groups urge government to introduce emergency family reunion scheme modelled on initiative for Ukrainians

A blueprint setting out how Britain could provide refuge to thousands of Palestinians from Gaza has been drawn up by a coalition of charities and groups.

Organisations including the Refugee Council, Safe Passage International, Doctors of the World, Helen Bamber Foundation and City of Sanctuary have raised concerns about the conflict worsening the Palestinian refugee crisis.

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‘An atmosphere of fear’: free speech under threat in Israel, activists say

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Jewish and Arab Israelis detained, fired from jobs and even attacked for expressing sentiments interpreted as pro-Hamas

Two activists from a Jewish-Arab peace movement were recently detained in Israel for putting up posters with a message that the police deemed to be offensive. The message was: “Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”

The activists, members of Standing Together, had their posters confiscated, as well as T-shirts printed with peace slogans in Hebrew and Arabic.

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Missing 16-year-old British girl was killed in Hamas attack, family says

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Noiya Sharabi confirmed dead along with sister, Yahel, and mother, Lianne, after raid on Israeli kibbutz

A 16-year-old British girl who went missing after Hamas targeted an Israeli kibbutz was murdered during the attack along with her sister and mother, her family have said.

Noiya Sharabi was feared kidnapped after the 7 October attack on Be’eri kibbutz in which her 13-year-old sister and mother were killed. However, on Sunday her family told the BBC that she too had been murdered.

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Pressure grows on Israel to negotiate release of Gaza hostages

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Families given glimmer of hope by release of two US citizens, but fear time is running out before ground invasion

Pressure has intensified on Israel to negotiate the release of more than 200 people held by Palestinian militants in Gaza, with desperate families begging officials to help free their loved ones before an anticipated ground invasion.

An Israeli military spokesperson announced on Sunday that more than 212 people were held in Gaza, as officials worked to identify and locate those missing after a deadly incursion by Hamas on 7 October.

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Projected results show rightwing SVP making gains in Swiss federal elections

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Party on track to win 29% of vote, an increase of almost 3.5 percentage points on 2019 after more than half of votes counted

The rightwing populist Swiss People’s party (SVP) was set to further strengthen its position as the largest political force in parliament, an early projection suggested, as voters appeared to back the party’s hardline stance against mass migration and what it called “woke madness”.

The SVP was on track to receive 29% of the vote, an increase of nearly 3.5 percentage points over its 2019 results, pollsters GFS Bern predicted, with more than half of the results in.

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At least six dead and 16 wounded after Russian missile strike on postal centre – as it happened

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Strike on distribution centre in Kharkiv on Saturday left people ‘fighting for their lives’, said regional governor. This blog is now closed

The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, has condemned the Russian missile attack on Kharkiv in which six people died.

The attack on a postal depot took place overnight on Sunday, with 16 people said to have been injured, seven of them said to be in a critical condition, according to earlier reports.

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Brussels football match gunman had escaped from Tunisian prison

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Tunisia had applied for extradition of Islamist gunman who shot dead two football fans but file got forgotten

The Islamist gunman who shot dead two Swedish football fans in Brussels last weekend had escaped from a Tunisian prison where he was serving a long sentence, which prompted Tunisian officials to seek his extradition from Belgium, prosecutors have said.

Belgian authorities received the extradition request in August 2022 but it was not dealt with.

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Israel-Hamas war: second convoy of as 14 aid trucks enters Gaza – as it happened

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This blog has closed. You can follow the latest news on the Israel-Hamas conflict on our new blog.

At least two workers were killed on Sunday “as a result of Israeli bombardment targeting Syria’s Damascus airport at dawn,” Syria’s general directorate of meteorology said in a statement, Reuters reports.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.

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Israel intensifies attacks on north Gaza as WFP says more aid urgently needed

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Israel says anyone in northern Gaza will be considered ‘an accomplice in a terrorist organisation’

Israel has said it is intensifying attacks on northern Gaza and warned that anyone who stayed risked being considered as “an accomplice in a terrorist organisation”, as airstrikes continued on Sunday in the south, where civilians had fled hoping to survive the war.

A second trickle of aid was allowed into Gaza from Egypt on Sunday, but the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the humanitarian situation was now catastrophic for the 2.3 million people trapped inside the territory.

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Rightwing SVP expected to make gains in Swiss federal elections

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Swiss People’s party believes its campaign focus on immigration and cost of living will increase its lead

The populist rightwing Swiss People’s party (SVP) is expected to make gains as the country votes in federal elections, after a campaign season centred on the cost of living and immigration.

Switzerland’s leading political party is predicted to garner 28.1% of the vote in Sunday’s election – an increase of 2.5 percentage points over its previous standing, according to polling by the Sotomo research institute.

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