Category Archives: World News

Outcry as Texas to install ‘buoy barrier’ in Rio Grande to deter border crossings

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Rightwing governor Greg Abbott unveils new measures at US-Mexico border condemned by critics as ‘chilling’

The governor of Texas announced the state will install a barrier made of buoys along a section of the Rio Grande where people often wade or swim across the treacherous river from Mexico seeking refuge in the US, as the state committed $5.1bn towards ramping up plans to thwart border crossings.

Greg Abbott said a “new, water-based barrier of buoys” will be placed in the river. At a press conference he showed a line of large red buoys floating in the center of the Rio Grande.

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Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi back in hospital

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Eighty-six-year-old readmitted to Milan hospital weeks after long stay linked to chronic leukaemia

The former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been readmitted to a hospital in Milan for scheduled medical checks, weeks after being discharged after a long stay.

The media tycoon, 86, had left San Raffaele last month after six weeks of treatment for a lung infection linked to a chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia, a type of cancer that affects the white blood cells.

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‘Everyone is asking why’: Annecy locals try to make sense of knife attack on children

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The stabbing of four toddlers has united inhabitants of the picture-postcard French town but also left them heartbroken and baffled

By the wooden climbing frame in the shape of a pirate ship, Jean-Xavier dismounted from his bike and surveyed the piles of flowers and candles lit for the four children aged between 22 months and three who were seriously injured when a knife attacker stabbed toddlers in this lakeside playground in the French Alps town of Annecy.

“Everyone is asking why,” he said, as his own two-year-old son, who usually liked whizzing down the slides here, sat sucking a dummy and clutching a toy rabbit, strapped safely into his bike seat. “Stabbings happen a lot in France but to actually go after small children in a playground gives a different context – it’s incomprehensible.”

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Disney’s Little Mermaid flops in China amid racist backlash over casting

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Poor box office performance reflects broader challenge for Hollywood as it vies with domestic productions

The poor performance of Disney’s The Little Mermaid at the Chinese box office has reopened questions on Hollywood’s increasing difficulties in the world’s second-largest economy and the role racism has played in the film’s reception.

The live action remake has grossed just $3.6m (£2.9m) since its release in Chinese cinemas on 26 May, according to Box Office Mojo.

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Food aid suspended in Ethiopia after ‘widespread and coordinated’ thievery

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UN and US halt food assistance in the country, where 20 million people rely on aid, in order to investigate ‘diversion’ of supplies

Food aid to Ethiopia has been suspended after the discovery that humanitarian supplies meant for people in need were being stolen.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday that it is halting food assistance while it rolled out “enhanced safeguards and controls that will ensure humanitarian food assistance reaches targeted, vulnerable people”. It comes a day after the US Agency for International Development (USAid) said it was doing the same, after a “countrywide review” uncovered “a widespread and coordinated campaign” that was diverting food assistance from Ethiopian people.

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Radio New Zealand investigates Russia-friendly editing of Ukraine articles

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At least four wire articles published by national broadcaster had been edited to add pro-Kremlin phrasing

New Zealand’s national radio broadcaster is conducting an internal investigation after evidence emerged that an employee had edited wire reporting on the Ukraine war to add Russia-friendly phrasing.

The state-funded RNZ, or Radio New Zealand, published at least four articles attributed to the Reuters wire service that had been edited to add pro-Kremlin phrasing.

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Ukrainian offensive is under way, says Putin – as it happened

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Russian president says beginning of offensive ‘is evidenced by the use of strategic reserves’. This live blog is closed

Russian military bloggers are saying that overnight the Ukrainians were making another attempt to break through Russian lines in occupied Zaporizhzhia in the area of Orikhiv.

The claims have not been independently verified.

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Justin Welby criticises Ugandan church’s backing for anti-gay law

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Archbishop of Canterbury expresses dismay over church’s support for Ugandan law enacted last month

The archbishop of Canterbury has urged the Anglican church in Uganda to reconsider its vociferous support for the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ law, which imposes the death penalty for certain homosexual acts.

Justin Welby said there was no justification for supporting the legislation, in a move that highlights deep divisions within the global Anglican church on LGBTQ+ issues.

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Weather tracker: Canada wildfires rage in what could be worst season to date

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Plumes of smoke move southwards across US east coast. Elsewhere, Japan hit by remnants of Typhoon Mawar

Wildfires in Quebec, Canada, continue to rage, following a spring that was drier and warmer than normal, creating perfect conditions for wildfires to develop. As of 7 June, at least 150 fires remained active across the province, with more than 400 across the country according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Officials warned this could be the country’s worst wildfire season to date, with at least 9.4m acres of land destroyed so far.

Plumes of smoke from the fires have been moving southwards across the US east coast, delaying thousands of flights. The US National Weather Service also issued air quality alerts for many states, with air quality index levels above 400 – a level of 300 is considered “hazardous” – in some states. A fairly static weather pattern this weekend will mean further plumes of smoke moving towards eastern parts of the US.

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China plans new rules to regulate file sharing services like Airdrop and Bluetooth

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Under the proposal, service providers would have to prevent the dissemination of harmful and illegal information, save records and report their discoveries

China is planning to restrict and scrutinise the use of wireless filesharing services between mobile devices, such as airdrop and Bluetooth, after they were used by protesters to evade censorship and spread protest messages.

The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, has released draft regulations on “close-range mesh network services” and launched a month-long public consultation on Tuesday.

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Zelenskiy steps up criticism of International Red Cross over inaction at Kakhovka dam

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Ukrainian president’s remarks echo previous comments about international bodies’ failure to intervene more decisively

Volodymyr Zelenskiy – well schooled in chiding the west for being slow in providing help – has shifted his line of criticism from the pace at which arms has been reaching his country to the slow international response to the humanitarian and ecological disaster caused by the breach of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.

Before visiting the flood-affected areas on Thursday, he used his nightly address to say: “Large-scale efforts are needed. We need international organisations, such as the International Committee on Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help the people in the occupied part of Kherson region. Each person that dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organisations that have forgotten how to save lives. If there is no international organisation in the area of this disaster now, it means it does not exist at all and that it is incapable of functioning.”

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Sushi what he did? Japanese chain sues viral food vandal for damages

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Sushiro says business badly damaged by video of teenager licking soy sauce bottle and wiping saliva on passing food

A sushi chain in Japan is seeking ¥67m (£383,280) in damages from a diner who filmed himself licking a soy sauce bottle and wiping saliva on a slice of fish at one of its restaurants, part of a wave of “sushi terrorism” that scandalised the country’s budget food industry.

Sushiro, Japan’s biggest operator of revolving sushi restaurants, filed the suit with a court in Osaka, according to the Kyodo news agency, arguing that it had suffered financial losses after the incident triggered public fears over food hygiene.

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Ukraine: cooling pond at Zaporizhzhia plant at risk after dam collapse – report

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Nuclear safety organisation says loss of pool would not necessarily be catastrophic, but would dramatically increase safety concerns

The cooling pond at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is in danger of collapse as a result of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the draining of its reservoir, according to a French nuclear safety organisation.

Without the reservoir on the other side to counteract it, the internal pressure of the water in the cooling pool could breach the dyke around it, a report by the Paris-based Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) said.

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EU agrees radical reforms on migration and asylum laws

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After years of infighting, 27-state bloc sets out new policies including charge of €20,000 a head for members that refuse to take refugees

The EU has agreed radical reforms of its migration and asylum laws including charges of €20,000 (£17,200) per head for member countries that refuse to host refugees.

After almost 12 hours of intense negotiations in Luxembourg, and years of fighting, interior ministers struck a deal on Thursday on what they described as a “historical” new approach to what one politician described as an often “toxic topic”.

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China reportedly reaches secret deal with Cuba to host spy base on island

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Facility would allow Beijing to gather electronic communications from US but Cuba dismisses report as ‘unfounded’

China has reached a secret deal with Cuba to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island roughly 100 miles (160km) from Florida, the Wall Street Journal has reported, but the US and Cuban governments cast strong doubt on the report.

Such a spy installation would allow Beijing to gather electronic communications from the south-eastern United States, which houses many US military bases, as well as to monitor ship traffic, the newspaper reported.

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Five killed in shooting at car wash near Nazareth as Israel sees wave of violence

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Police believe Yafa an-Naseriyye incident was connected to dispute between organised crime families

Five people have been killed in a shooting at a car wash in an Arab town in northern Israel, police said, the latest incident in a wave of criminal violence tearing through the minority community.

Police said they believed the shooting on Thursday in the town of Yafa an-Naseriyye, near the city of Nazareth, was connected to a dispute between organised crime families.

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Russian man dies after being mauled by shark off Egyptian Red Sea resort

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Authorities close off 46-mile stretch of coastline after man attacked by tiger shark near Hurghada

A Russian man has died after being mauled by a shark off one of Egypt’s Red Sea resorts, Egyptian and Russian authorities have said.

Egypt’s environment ministry said the man was killed on Thursday after being attacked by a tiger shark in the waters near the city of Hurghada. Authorities closed off a 46-mile (74km) stretch of the coastline, announcing it would remain off-limits until Sunday.

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Dam collapse a global problem as waters may poison Black Sea, Zelenskiy says

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Ukrainian president warns flood waters contaminated with sewage, oil, chemicals and possibly anthrax

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the ecological disaster triggered by the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam has become a global problem as severely contaminated waters flow into the Black Sea.

The Ukrainian president said the flood waters raging through the lower Dnipro River valley brought with them sewage, oil, chemicals and possibly anthrax from animal burial sites.

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Palestinian journalist hit in head by bullet during raid on terror suspect’s home

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News photographer Moamen Sumreen, 22, had been covering the demolition of the apartment in Ramallah

A Palestinian news photographer is in a serious condition in hospital after being hit in the head by a rubber bullet during a rare Israeli raid in Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative capital in the occupied West Bank.

A convoy of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) vehicles entered the city late on Wednesday night in order to demolish the home of a terrorism suspect who had been accused of planting two bombs targeting rush-hour commuters in Jerusalem last November that killed two people and injured another 21.

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Canada battles hundreds of wildfires as smoke still chokes major cities

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Quebec minister described ‘unprecedented’ situation amid warnings that country must be prepared in future

• Wildfires latest news – live

Wildfire crews in Canada continue to battle hundreds of blazes across the country as air quality in major cities remains poor and other regions brace for intense heat. And as the country burns, experts warn Canada needs to do a better job of readying its communities in areas increasingly prone to destructive blazes.

More than half of the 414 fires across the country are out of control, said the emergency preparedness minister, Bill Blair – with the hottest and driest months still to come.

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