Category Archives: World News

Top US chemical firms to pay $1.2bn to settle water contamination lawsuits

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Dupont, Chemours and Corteva agree deal and 3M also reportedly considering $10bn settlement to avoid trial due to start on Monday

DuPont and two related companies said they would pay close to $1.2bn to settle liability claims brought by public water systems serving the vast majority of the US population on Friday, just days before the start of a bellwether trial in South Carolina over PFAS contamination.

PFAS maker 3M was reportedly also considering a settlement that would keep the company from having to face allegations that it was responsible for knowingly contaminating drinking water supplies around the United States.

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Snow fly in US and Canada can detach its legs to survive, research shows

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Flies chilled to sub-zero temperatures amputate one or more of their six limbs to protect their internal organs

Flightless snow flies in the US and Canada can amputate their legs to survive as they begin to freeze, researchers have discovered.

Lab experiments in which the flies were chilled gradually to sub-zero temperatures revealed they can detach one or more of their six legs, an apparent “last-ditch tactic” to protect their internal organs from the advancing cold.

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Mastermind of assassination of Haiti president sentenced to life by US court

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Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with Colombian mercenaries, to kill Jovenel Moïse in 2021

A mastermind of the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse two years ago has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a federal court judge in Florida.

Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with a group of Colombian mercenaries to murder Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021. Prosecutors at his sentencing hearing in Miami said Jaar obtained the weapons used in the “commando-style” attack that killed Moïse, 53, and seriously injured his wife.

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Fatigue and frayed nerves grip Kyiv as city shelters from nightly Russian raids

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Strikes on the capital have caused few casualties but residents face a new ‘psychological terror’

When the air raid alarms go off at around 3am, the first things exhausted Kyvians do is reach for their mobile phones, check the news, message family and friends – and start listening to the explosions that almost certainly follow.

“You wake up, go to a safe space, maybe a shelter, holding your phone. You cannot work, you cannot read; you sit and look around and wait. In the worst case, you hear a distinctive noise, maybe like a motorcycle passing by,” said Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP and leader of the liberal Holos party.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Belgorod governor says shelling continues after two killed; missiles and drones shot down over Kyiv – as it happened

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Attacks said to be ongoing in Russian border region, but no new casualties; Moscow launches sixth airstrike in six days

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, has posted some more details of Russia’s overnight attack on Kyiv to his official Telegram channel. He writes:

The occupiers continue to terrorise Ukraine with attack drones and missiles.

Around 11pm the enemy attacked Kyiv with Shahed-136/131 kamikaze drones. They entered from the southern direction, using the topography of the area and the course of the Dnieper River.

The aggressor does not stop. Nikopol region came under attack again. At midnight, the Rashists shelled Nikopol. Shells from heavy artillery flew into the city. People are unharmed. Rescuers are examining the area. The enemy is insidious and does not abandon its tactics of terrorising the civilian population.

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Joe Biden gives first Oval Office address ahead of signing debt ceiling deal – as it happened

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‘We averted an economic crisis and economic collapse,’ says president in address to the nation about deal, but will not sign bill before Saturday

Here’s more on how the debt ceiling crisis will impact the US’s credit rating, from the Guardian’s Joan E Greve.

The US is not yet out of the woods on a potential credit downgrade, even though Joe Biden is scheduled to sign the debt ceiling bill tonight to avert a federal default.

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Police release e-fit of man found dead in wheel bay of Gatwick-bound plane

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Detectives hope to identify man, whose body was found on a Tui flight from the Gambia on 7 December

Police have released a digitised image of a man who was found dead in the undercarriage of a plane, as they work to identify him.

The man’s body was found on a Tui flight from the Gambia to the UK. His body was discovered at Gatwick airport at about 4am on 7 December, Sussex police said at the time.

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Nova Scotia hopes forecast rain will help contain largest wildfire on record

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Huge Barrington Lake fire now considered province’s largest wildfire but wet weather expected from Friday into next week

Rain on Friday and a rainy forecast for the weekend have fire officials hopeful they can get the largest wildfire ever recorded in Canada’s Atlantic coast province of Nova Scotia under control.

That wildfire and three others in the province have prompted air quality warnings in US regions as far south as Virginia and Maryland.

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‘I can’t’: Georgia gun shop owner to close store as US reels from mass killings

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Jon Waldman says attacks have weighed on his conscience and that Atlanta shooting earlier this month was ‘final straw’

A Georgia gun shop owner said he is closing his store in the wake of several mass shootings targeting young children, as the country reels from recent attacks and an escalating rate of killings.

Jon Waldman, a gun shop owner in Duluth, Georgia, said that he had already closed his store and will have the gun inventory cleared out by 15 June, NBC News reported.

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Pro-Ukrainian forces ‘still fighting in Russia’s Belgorod’ despite Moscow claims

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Freedom of Russia Legion social media reports contradict Russian claims to have repelled the rebel incursion

Ukrainian-backed Russian rebel groups have said they are still fighting inside Russia’s Belgorod region, despite Moscow’s claims on Thursday to have repelled the incursion.

The Freedom of Russia Legion posted videos on social media of combat purportedly in the Belgorod village Novaya Tavolzhanka, between the Ukrainian-Russian border and the town of Shebekino, the legion’s stated goal.

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Home Office could forcibly separate non-cohabiting couple before their wedding

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Youssef Mikhaiel is at risk of forced removal to Egypt before he marries Sarah Bradley

A couple planning to marry soon could be forcibly separated by the Home Office because they are not cohabiting before their wedding.

Sarah Bradley, 29, a British digital marketing teacher, and Youssef Mikhaiel, 28, an Egyptian man who graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in aeronautical engineering, met in February 2022 through a Christian dating app.

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The multinational companies that industrialised the Amazon rainforest

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Analysis shows handful of corporations extract tens of billions of dollars of raw materials a year – and their commitments to restoration vary greatly

A handful of global giants dominate the industrialisation of the Amazon rainforest, extracting tens of billions of dollars of raw materials every year, according to an analysis that highlights how much value is being sucked out of the region with relatively little going back in.

But even as the pace of deforestation hits record highs while standards of living in the Amazon are among the lowest in Brazil, the true scale of extraction remains unknown, with basic details about cattle ranching, logging and mining hard to establish despite efforts to ban commodities linked to its destruction.

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More than 800m Amazon trees felled in six years to meet beef demand

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Investigation involving Guardian shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming in Brazil

More than 800m trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just six years to feed the world’s appetite for Brazilian beef, according to a new investigation, despite dire warnings about the forest’s importance in fighting the climate crisis.

A data-driven investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and Forbidden Stories shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming.

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Zelenskiy orders audit of Ukrainian air-raid shelters after civilian deaths

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A rift widened between the president and Kyiv’s mayor after witness reports that three people were locked out on the street during Russian attack

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has ordered an audit of all Ukrainian air-raid shelters as a rift widened with Kyiv’s mayor after the deaths of three people who were locked out on the street during a Russian attack.

A nine-year-old girl, her mother and another woman were killed by falling debris after rushing to a Kyiv shelter on Thursday morning and finding it was shut. Later that day, the Ukrainian president accused Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, and other city leaders of negligence. Klitschko responded by saying the responsibility for the tragedy should be shared between them.

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The right Covid response? How countries outside UK are also under scrutiny

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From Sweden to the US, the handling of the pandemic has been questioned. In some cases criminal proceedings are under way

Britain’s public Covid-19 inquiry, led by the retired judge Heather Hallett, is far from the first independent commission in the world to begin examining a country’s experience confronting the pandemic.

Their formats, mandates – and their progress – vary widely according to systems and traditions, but their task is essentially the same: to assess preparedness, make a record of decision-making, review government responses and learn lessons for the future.

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Chinese censors remove protest site Sitong Bridge from online maps

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Amid usual scrubbing for Tiananmen Square anniversary, searches for bridge where protest was held in 2022 return no results

Chinese censors scrubbing the internet of any words or symbols that could be used to reference the Tiananmen Square massacre in the run-up to Sunday’s anniversary have a new target in their sights: a bridge in Beijing where a rare protest was staged last year.

As the 34th anniversary of the 1989 massacre approaches, anyone searching in Chinese for Sitong Bridge on Baidu maps will draw a blank.

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Weather tracker: Shanghai reports record high May temperature of 36.7C

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Heatwave continues in southern and eastern Asia as temperatures exceed 40C in vast swathes of region

Shanghai in China has reported a record high May temperature of 36.7C, breaking the previous record by 1C. The new high temperature on 29 May comes amid the heatwave affecting southern and eastern Asia since mid-April. Vast swathes of the region have had temperatures exceeding 40C, with parts of Pakistan reaching almost 50C in mid-May.

South-east Asia has been affected particularly badly, with record high national temperatures in Laos (43.5C), Vietnam (44.2C), and Thailand (45.4C). This is due to low amounts of rainfall over the previous winter resulting in drier soils, which can heat up more quickly than moist soils, thus exacerbating the effect.

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Japan’s ageing footballers get their kicks in over-80s league

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Soccer for Life league in Tokyo has about 40 players, enough for three teams, playing 30-minute matches

There are mops of silver hair, Bobby Charlton combovers and a fair number of creaking knees. But the Red Star and Blue Hawaii football teams can be forgiven for the hesitant start to their match: every man on the pitch is older than 80. Within minutes, though, they are running freely – and moaning at the referee – as they roll back the years with every pass and tackle.

With a combined age in four figures, the 22 men are defying the passage of time in the Tokyo Soccer for Life league for the over-80s, a sporting expression of Japan’s status as a “super-ageing” society where the average male life expectancy is 85.

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