Category Archives: World News

Myanmar’s military commanders responsible for rape and torture – war crimes report

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Security Force Monitor finds 64% of senior army officers led units allegedly committing killings, rapes, torture and disappearances

New research into alleged war crimes in Myanmar has concluded that the majority of senior commanders in the Myanmar military, many of whom hold powerful political positions in the country, were responsible for crimes including rape, torture, killings and forced disappearances carried out by units under their command between 2011 and 2023.

The research, by the Security Force Monitor (SFM), a project run by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, states that 64% – 51 of 79 – of all Myanmar’s senior military commanders are responsible for war crimes. It claims that the most serious perpetrator of human rights violations is Gen Mya Tun Oo, Myanmar’s deputy prime minister, former defence minister and a member of the ruling military council.

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Israel to start ‘pauses’ in fighting – as it happened

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Two Israelis were shot overnight into Thursday and moderately wounded while driving in the northern West Bank, the Associated Press reports, citing Israeli media. A baby in the back seat of the car was unharmed, the reports said.

It was the second shooting attack on Israeli drivers in the West Bank in a week. On 2 November, an Israeli man was killed after his car was shot at, then crashed and overturned.

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China tells UK to stop using trade to improve Taiwan ties

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UK and Taiwan sign trade agreement they hailed as a first in fostering bilateral trade between Taiwan and Europe

China’s government has accused the UK of using trade cooperation “as an excuse” to enhance its ties with Taiwan, after the announcement of a bilateral trade talks agreement.

On Wednesday Taiwan’s representative to the UK, Kelly Hsieh, and his British counterpart based in Taipei, John Dennis, signed an enhanced trade partnership (ETP). The agreement paves the way for future talks on green energy, digital trade and investment, among other trade-based issues. The UK is Taiwan’s third-biggest trading partner in Europe and 21st largest overall.

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Support for Israel and verbal sparring propel fiery third Republican debate

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Candidates clash over Ukraine and immigration and grapple with abortion questions as Donald Trump holds rally nearby

The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and other foreign policy issues dominated Wednesday’s fiery third debate of Republican presidential hopefuls in Miami. Candidates pledged wholehearted support for Israel’s military response following last month’s Hamas attacks, and clashed over Ukraine, China and immigration.

The debate, minus Donald Trump, the runaway favorite for the party’s 2024 nomination who was hosting his own private rally elsewhere in the area, was a more bitter affair than its predecessors in Wisconsin and California. Lively verbal sparring sometimes regressed into insults, with Nikki Haley at one point calling one of her rivals “scum”.

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Tensions high as Germany prepares to mark Kristallnacht

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Eighty-five years after the ‘brutal prelude’ to Nazi crimes, the emphasis falls on contemplating its influence on the present day

It has long been the most delicate day in the German calendar, 9 November. It brings a balancing act of remembrance for the state-sanctioned murderous devastation of the Nazi pogroms across the country in 1938, and, 51 years later, the overnight collapse of the most famous barrier in the world, the Berlin Wall.

Both had international repercussions which are still felt today. The former dominates the nation’s collective memory.

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Sámi call to protect reindeer in Sweden after 10,000 road deaths in five years

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Indigenous people’s parliament says action required including lower speed limits and more fences

Sweden’s Sámi parliament is calling for more protection for reindeer after more than 10,000 were killed by motorists in the last five years, turning roadsides into “animal graveyards”.

According to police, between October 2018 and October 2023 there were more than 10,000 road accidents in northern Sweden involving at least one reindeer, meaning the number killed is likely to be far higher.

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Tens of thousands fleeing northern Gaza, says Israeli military, as WHO warns of disease risk

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IDF says 50,000 people moved south on Wednesday, up from 15,000 a day earlier, claiming Hamas has lost control of the north; health organisation warns of ‘worrying trends’ in disease in Gaza

Tens of thousands of Palestinians fled northern Gaza on Wednesday, the Israel Defence Forces said, as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of “worrying trends” in the risk of disease in the territory after weeks of Israeli airstrikes.

The accelerating exodus came as Israeli forces closed in on the centre of Gaza City, launching intense bombardments, and claimed that Hamas had lost control of the north of the territory.

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Calls to ‘finish’ Hamas and ‘you’re just scum’: key Republican debate takeaways

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Candidates showed unequivocal support for Israel on a night when Nikki Haley shot back at Vivek Ramaswamy’s criticism

The third Republican debate was held in Miami on Wednesday, with frontrunner Donald Trump once again foregoing the debate for his own rally nearby.

The pool has dwindled since the last debate, and Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott and Chris Christie seemed to be more serious and focused this time around as they answered questions on the Israel-Hamas war, immigration, abortion and the federal budget. Even so, the debate had moments where it devolved into a shouting match, with petty barbs and personal attacks.

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US forces targeted in broadest Iraq attacks since start of Israel-Hamas war

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Armed drones attack two airbases and explosive device targets patrol in most widespread strikes in a single day

US forces were targeted in three attacks in Iraq on Thursday but suffered no casualties, security sources have said, in the most geographically widespread series of strikes on US assets in a single day since the Israel-Hamas conflict started.

Spokespeople for the US embassy in Baghdad and US-led international forces stationed in Iraq did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Music executive LA Reid accused of sexual assault in lawsuit

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Ex-executive Drew Dixon alleges Reid, known for growing stars such as Usher and Pink, assaulted her twice and derailed her career

LA Reid, the music executive known for helping develop superstars Mariah Carey, Pink, TLC and Usher, was sued on Wednesday by a former music executive who accused him of sexually assaulting her more than two decades ago.

Drew Dixon said Reid, 67, derailed her once promising music industry career after he became Arista Records’ chief executive because she rejected his advances, including two assaults that she said occurred in 2001.

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China has a history of being pro-Palestinian, but now faces diplomatic conundrum

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Rivalry with US and current of antisemitism are running up against Beijing’s increasing closeness to Israel

China was an early proponent of a ceasefire in Gaza and has called for wider talks on resolving the Palestinian question. But analysts say the situation is complicated, and it’s not clear what Beijing expects to achieve, and how it can get there.

Beijing has been a supporter of the Palestinians since the Mao era and long called for a two-state solution, but it is increasingly close to Israel, and is presenting itself as a neutral party that holds steadfast to a noninterference principle.

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Failure to save 27 lives in Channel exacerbated by confusion and lack of resources

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Report identifies lack of aerial surveillance and personnel as contributing to deaths when small boat sank in 2021

Attempts to save 27 people who drowned in the deadliest Channel disaster for more than 40 years were compromised by confusion, lack of resources and poor communication between the UK and France, a report has found.

A failed operation to reach a stricken dinghy on 24 November 2021 identified the wrong boat, the report says. A Border Force cutter rescued 98 people in three other boats that night, but not those on the dinghy carrying the 27 who died.

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Ukrainian PoWs being sent to fight their own army, Russian news claims

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Unverified footage from state media shows captured soldiers swearing allegiance to Russia as part of new battalion

Russia is sending Ukrainian prisoners of war to the frontlines of their homeland to fight on Moscow’s side in the war, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti has reported.

Video from RIA Novosti released on Tuesday showed the Ukrainians swearing allegiance to Russia, holding rifles and dressed in military fatigues to fight in a battalion named for medieval nobleman Bogdan Khmelnitsky, seen as a national hero in Russia for bringing parts of Ukraine under Moscow’s control in the 15th century.

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Ivanka tells court she does not recall details of Trump Organization loans correspondence – live

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Former US president’s eldest daughter echoes her brothers’s testimony, saying she does not recall much about loan correspondence

Given that James’s case involves Trump’s alleged overvaluation of assets, the state is trying to undermine any claim that property valuations also included potential value – effectively, the position there wasn’t anything wrong with seemingly oversized sums because of what the real estate could amount to.

Donald Trump claimed on Monday in court, for example, that the valuation of his golf resort in Aberdeen, Scotland, was legitimate, because he could build hundreds of houses there “anytime I want”. He also said: “There’s nothing wrong with sitting on a property and waiting if you’re willing to play their game.”

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Uyghur film-maker claims he was tortured by authorities in China

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Ikram Nurmehmet, a director known for his Uyghur protagonists, is facing charges related to ‘separatism’ and ‘terrorism’

A Uyghur film-maker has alleged he was tortured and forced to give a false confession during detention in Xinjiang province.

Ikram Nurmehmet, 32, appeared on trial at Ürümqi people’s intermediary court on 27 October and is accused of organising “terrorist” activities and participating in an “East Turkestan separatist” group, sources close to him told the Guardian.

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Economists warn electing far-right Milei would spell ‘devastation’ for Argentina

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More than 100 economists including Thomas Piketty and Jayati Ghosh publish open letter ahead of country’s 19 November election

The election of the radical rightwing economist Javier Milei as president of Argentina would probably inflict further economic “devastation” and social chaos on the South American country, a group of more than 100 leading economists has warned.

In an open letter, published ahead of Argentina’s crunch 19 November election, the economists said they understood the “deep-seated desire for economic stability” among voters, given Argentina’s frequent financial crises and recurring bouts of very high inflation.

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Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on ‘apartheid’ debate

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Consul Yuval Donio-Gideon objected to course at Bard College but president says institution ‘stood up for academic freedom’

An Israeli diplomat tried to persuade a leading New York college to cancel a course about the growing debate over whether the Jewish state practices a form of apartheid in the Palestine.

The Israeli consul for public diplomacy in New York, Yuval Donio-Gideon, took the highly unusual step of contacting Bard College earlier this year to object to the course, Apartheid in Israel-Palestine, on the grounds that it breached the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

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Moldova and Ukraine’s accelerated path to EU marks Russia’s waning influence

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Invasion of Ukraine has fast-tracked timetable for the countries to join bloc after years of ‘economic warfare’

Long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow had already been accused of launching an economic war against its neighbours. With bullying, cajoling and outright threats, the Kremlin’s campaign to warn its former Soviet subjects away from the EU involved telling them they would be blocked from the Russian market and its own customs union, and face cutoffs of crucial supplies of natural gas.

Wednesday’s recommendation by the European Commission to open EU accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova marks the latest casualty of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine: its own war for economic domination, or at least competitiveness, in eastern Europe.

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Industrial robot crushes man to death in South Korean distribution centre

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Machine apparently identified man inspecting it as one of the boxes it was stacking

A robot crushed a man to death in South Korea after the machine apparently failed to differentiate him from the boxes of produce it was handling, the Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday.

The man, a robotics company worker in his 40s, was inspecting the robot’s sensor operations at a distribution centre for agricultural produce in South Gyeongsang province.

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