Category Archives: World News

Peru extradites Dutch murderer to US over Natalee Holloway disappearance

Posted on by

Joran van der Sloot, already serving 28-year sentence, faces fraud and extortion charges linked to Alabama teen missing since 2005

Peruvian police have handed over a convicted Dutch murderer to US FBI agents for transfer to the United States, where he faces extortion and fraud charges related to the killing of the Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway two decades ago.

Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch national from the Caribbean island of Aruba, is set to face charges in the United States related to the mysterious disappearance and presumed murder of Holloway, an 18-year-old from a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, who vanished during a high school graduation trip to Aruba in 2005.

Continue reading...

Activists take Canada’s environment minister to court in fight to save northern spotted owl

Posted on by

Advocacy group says continued destruction of critical habitat leaves it no choice but to take legal action against Steven Guilbeault

Environmental groups in Canada are taking legal action against the country’s environment minister, arguing his delay in protecting old growth forest is harming the critically endangered northern spotted owl.

In February, Steven Guilbeault said he would recommend an emergency order after determining the species was facing “imminent threats” to its survival.

Continue reading...

Canada wildfires: blazes intensifying due to climate crisis, says Kamala Harris; Trudeau accuses opposition of inaction – as it happened

Posted on by

US vice-president said administration working with Canada to tackle the crisis; Canadian PM accuses opposition leader of fighting climate plan

Protesters are set to descend upon the White House on Thursday amid growing anger among climate activists at Joe Biden for allowing a controversial gas pipeline in Appalachia to be fast-tracked.

Several hundred protesters are expected to demand Biden “reclaim his climate legacy” by blocking the Mountain Valley pipeline, a 300-mile pipeline that will bring fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia.

Continue reading...

Four children and two adults injured in knife attack in French Alps

Posted on by

Police detain man after attacks in lakeside playground that left children in critical condition

Four children and two adults have been injured in a knife attack in the picturesque town of Annecy in the French Alps.

The children – one aged 22 months, two aged two years old and one aged three – were in a critical condition from stab wounds, and were transferred to hospitals in the French Alps and across the Swiss border in Geneva on Thursday afternoon.

Continue reading...

British child among French Alps stabbing victims, says foreign secretary

Posted on by

Briton was one of four children aged between 22 months and three years attacked in Annecy playground

A British child is among four children and two adults who have been injured in the town of Annecy in the French Alps, after a knifeman went on a rampage in a playground, the UK’s foreign secretary has confirmed.

At least two of the children, both aged about three, were reported to be in a critical condition in hospital, while an adult also suffered life-threatening injuries, French national police said.

Continue reading...

Three acquitted in ‘cattle mafia’ case over alleged intimidation of Sicilian sisters

Posted on by

Three sisters who own farm in Mezzojuso say they will appeal after men cleared due to lack of evidence

Three men accused of threatening three Sicilian sisters who claimed to have been targeted by the local mafia have been acquitted due to lack of evidence.

The sisters claimed to be victims of the so-called “cattle mafia”, a group of mobsters accused of driving farmers from their lands with intimidation campaigns in order to obtain EU agricultural subsidies of up to €1,000 a hectare.

Continue reading...

Taiwan’s ruling party rocked by sexual harassment claims

Posted on by

President apologises for second time in a week as politics and media embroiled in #MeToo allegations

Taiwan’s ruling party has been rocked by a wave of sexual harassment allegations, as the country grapples with a #MeToo movement that has encompassed politics and the media.

On Tuesday, President Tsai Ing-wen apologised for the second time in a week in response to sexual harassment claims against senior staff in the Democratic Progressive party (DPP). “Our society as a whole must educate ourselves again. People in sexual harassment incidents are victims,” she wrote in a Facebook post.

Continue reading...

Army of fake social media accounts defend UAE presidency of climate summit

Posted on by

Sultan Al Jaber – Cop28 president and CEO of state oil firm – is ‘ally the climate movement needs’, posts say

An army of fake social media accounts on Twitter and the blogging site Medium have been promoting and defending the controversial hosting of a UN climate summit by the United Arab Emirates.

The president of the Cop28 climate talks is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the state oil giant Adnoc, which has major net zero-busting expansion plans.

Continue reading...

Poland criticises EU’s ‘unacceptable’ proposed charge for refusing migrants

Posted on by

Warsaw says it would not pay €22,000 ‘fine’ for each person it declines to host as ministers hold crunch talks in Luxembourg

Poland has entered crunch talks aimed at making radical changes to the EU’s migration and asylum laws with the claim that the proposals could result in a “step back” to 2015, when more than a million people flowed into the bloc.

The Polish deputy state secretary of the interior, Bartosz Grodecki, opened the summit of home affairs ministers in Luxembourg by declaring that Warsaw would refuse to pay proposed “fines” for not taking people.

Continue reading...

Maps show how Kakhovka dam collapse threatens Ukraine’s bread basket

Posted on by

Falling water levels in Kakhovka reservoir could imperil canals that feed some vital crop regions

The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam has led to fears that a depleted reservoir will leave three critical regions in Ukraine’s bread basket without a key water supply.

This has led to warnings about the region and wider world’s food supply, with Ukraine accounting for 40% of global trade in sunflower meal, 35% of sunflower oil, and 5% of wheat, barley and corn exports.

Continue reading...

Threatened Saudi dissident told to live like Edward Snowden by Met police

Posted on by

Col Rabih Alenezi received advice after reporting death threats, of which he says he receives 50 a week

A Saudi Arabian dissident living in London was told to “emulate” the life of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden by a Metropolitan police officer, amid death threats he received after fleeing his country.

Col Rabih Alenezi, 44, had been a senior official in Saudi Arabia’s security service for two decades, but sought asylum in the UK after he claimed to have been ordered to carry out human rights violations. His life was threatened for criticising the regime of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Continue reading...

Eurozone sinks into recession as cost of living crisis takes toll

Posted on by

GDP shrank 0.1% in first quarter of 2023 and final three months of 2022 after revisions to earlier estimates

The eurozone slipped into recession in the first three months of the year, after official figures were revised to show the bloc’s economy shrank as the rising cost of living weighed on consumer spending.

Figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, showed gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.1% in the first quarter of 2023 and the final three months of 2022 after revisions to earlier estimates. A technical recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

Continue reading...

Ukraine and Myanmar make 2022 most violent year in a decade for medical staff

Posted on by

Report demands accountability for war crimes and singles out Russia for ‘mind-boggling’ targeting of hospitals in Ukraine

Russian attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine made 2022 the most violent year in a decade for hospitals and health workers operating in conflict zones, according to a new report by a coalition of humanitarian organisations.

With 750 reported attacks in 2022, Russia set a 10-year record, according to the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.

Continue reading...

Canada’s wildfires are part of our new climate reality, experts and officials say

Posted on by

Canada is on track to experience its most severe wildfire season on record, and it’s part of a trend experts say will intensify

Canada’s ongoing wildfire season is a harbinger of our climate future, experts and officials say.

The fires are a “really clear sign of climate change”, said Mohammadreza Alizadeh, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal, who is also a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Continue reading...

Canada wildfires smoke: climate change ‘accelerated conditions’, says New York mayor as Canada battles more than 400 blazes – live

Posted on by

Eric Adams remarks come as city briefly ranked world’s worst for air pollution; more firefighters to be mobilised as over 200 blazes are out of control

Over 200 “out of control” fires are currently burning across Canada as experts warn that air quality will continue to deteriorate.

Leyland Cecco reports from Toronto:

Continue reading...

Mike Pence: ‘Trump asked me to choose him or the constitution – I chose the constitution’ – as it happened

Posted on by

Former US vice president says was proud to stand by Trump but goes on to criticise attempts to overturn election result in Iowa campaign launch

We’re about an hour away from Mike Pence’s campaign launch in Iowa, and a CBS News reporter at the event noticed something telling in his campaign’s arrangements for the media.

As noted below, the password for the wifi provided to journalists seems to be a reference to Pence’s refusal to go along with Trump’s demand that he block Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election win on January 6:

Continue reading...

Fields of southern Ukraine could ‘turn into deserts’ after dam destruction

Posted on by

Agriculture ministry warns of greater disaster next year, with global implications, from loss of Kakhovka reservoir

The fields of southern Ukraine could “turn into deserts” by next year, the country’s agrarian and food ministry said after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the draining of its reservoir, which had irrigated one of the world’s breadbaskets.

Ukrainian emergency services and aid organisations carried out a second day of rescue operations to help the 42,000 people estimated to be at immediate risk from flooding downstream of the dam, including making some forays to the Russian-occupied left bank of the Dnipro River to save people cut off in flooded towns.

Continue reading...

Nato members may send troops to Ukraine, warns former alliance chief

Posted on by

Security guarantees and membership path needed at Nato summit to avoid escalation, says Anders Rasmussen

A group of Nato countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states including the US do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kyiv at the alliances’s summit in Vilnius, the former Nato secretary general Anders Rasmussen has said.

Rasmussen, who has been acting as official adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Ukraine’s place in a future European security architecture, has been touring Europe and Washington to gauge the shifting mood before the critical summit starts on 11 July.

Continue reading...

EU states refusing to host migrants may have to pay up to €20,000 a head

Posted on by

Contentious plans to be discussed in Luxembourg aimed at making distribution of responsibility fairer

EU countries that refuse to host migrants or asylum seekers could be charged up to €20,000 (£17,000) a head under radical proposals aimed at easing the pressure on frontline countries including Italy and Greece.

Home affairs ministers from the 27 member states will attend a crunch meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday to discuss two key proposals including a relocation scheme for more than 100,000 migrants a year.

Continue reading...

‘It’s been hell’: Briton tells of harassment in French bridle path dispute

Posted on by

Roderick Sinclair claims he has faced intimidation and mayor says he has had death threats in row with farmer in Montjoi

A retired British stockbroker claims he has been subjected to a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation in a row over a bridle path running through his property in an idyllic corner of south-west France.

“It has been hell. In the beginning we all thought it was the traditional sort of spat between neighbours that happens all the time in France,” Roderick Sinclair said of the dispute at his French second home, a stone farmhouse his family have spent thousands renovating in Montjoi, in the Tarn-et-Garonne.

Continue reading...