Nato chief announces further measures as situation in Serb-majority north remains ‘fragile’
Nato has said it will send 700 extra troops to try to curb the violence in Kosovo a day after 30 alliance-led peacekeeping soldiers and more than 50 ethnic Serbian protesters were injured in clashes.
On Monday, Nato peacekeepers in riot gear had secured a town hall in the town of Zvecan as the situation remained tense.
Continue reading...Tourist boat was reportedly carrying more than 20 people when it was struck by a whirlwind on Sunday
Two agents from the Italian intelligence services and a retired member of the Israeli security forces were among the victims when a tourist boat capsized and sank in a sudden, violent storm in a northern Italian lake, it has emerged.
Claudio Alonzi, 62, and Tiziana Barnobi, 53, who worked for Italian intelligence, were officially named among the dead on Monday.
Continue reading...Decision follows poor performance in Sunday’s regional and municipal elections
Spain’s centre-right Citizens party, once seen as a potential kingmaker, has announced it will not run in July’s snap general election after an abysmal performance in Sunday’s regional and municipal elections, ceding its space to the triumphant conservative People’s party (PP).
Citizens attracted just 1.35% of the vote and lost its seats in 12 regional parliaments on Sunday, suggesting that the party is in its death throes. Its decline began in 2018 when it refused to back the socialists’ successful vote of no confidence in the corruption-mired PP government of Mariano Rajoy, and was exacerbated by its decision to abandon the centre ground and shift to the right.
Continue reading...Party leader and Alberta premier Danielle Smith used victory speech to attack the prime minister’s climate policies
Alberta’s United Conservatives have scraped a majority government, narrowly defeating the rival New Democrats in what proved to be the province’s closest ever election.
The triumph for incumbent premier Danielle Smith foreshadows more friction between the western province and Canada’s federal government on environmental regulation, with Smith using her victory speech to attack the climate policies of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
Continue reading...Niloofar Hamedi appears in court over her reporting on woman whose death sparked mass protests
A revolutionary court in Iran has begun the trial of a journalist behind closed doors on charges linked to her coverage of a Kurdish-Iranian woman whose death in custody last year sparked months of unrest, her husband has said.
Mahsa Amini’s death while held by the “morality police” for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code unleashed a wave of mass anti-government protests for months, posing one of the boldest challenges to the country’s clerical leaders in decades.
Continue reading...Nepal’s head of tourism says variable weather on the mountain has led to one of the deadliest years on record
Experts say this is likely to be one of the deadliest years on record on Mount Everest, with variable weather caused by climate change being blamed as one of the main reasons for the deaths of up to 17 people.
A total of 12 people have now been confirmed dead during Everest expeditions this season and another five are missing, presumed dead, as no contact has been made for at least five days in all cases, according to the Himalayan Database, which tracks mountain fatalities.
Continue reading...ICC warrant for Russian president’s arrest issued in March over alleged war crimes in Ukraine
South Africa has issued blanket diplomatic immunity to all leaders attending an August summit, meaning Vladimir Putin might be able to travel to Johannesburg and not fear the country acting on an international criminal court warrant for his arrest.
South African officials insisted the broad offer of immunity, issued in a government gazette, may not trump the ICC arrest warrant. As an ICC member, South Africa would be under pressure, and possibly under a legal requirement, to arrest Putin. The court issued a warrant for his arrest in March over the alleged forcible deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
Continue reading...Antony Blinken says he’s looking to ‘promote accountability’ for Ugandan officials who have violated rights of LGBTQ+ people
The US may restrict visas issued to Ugandan officials in its latest condemnation to the African country’s enactment of stringent – and highly controversial – anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that Joe Biden’s White House is “deeply troubled” by the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which was signed into law by Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, on Monday. Blinken said that he was looking to “promote accountability” for Ugandan officials who have violated the rights of LGBTQ+ people, with possible measures including the curtailment of visas.
Continue reading...Special rapporteur Olivier De Shutter calls for action on neglected crisis after finding ‘absolutely terrible’ conditions on visit to Cox’s Bazar camps in Bangladesh
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are at risk of becoming “the new Palestinians”, according to a UN head, who said they are trapped in a protracted and increasingly neglected crisis.
Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the almost 1 million people living in overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar should be given the right to work in their host country of Bangladesh, and that forcing them to rely on dwindling international support was not sustainable.
Continue reading...‘Massive’ strikes early on Tuesday morning, with falling debris setting an apartment building on fire
At least one person has died in Kyiv and three were injured when falling debris reportedly from a destroyed Russian drone hit a high-rise apartment building early on Tuesday and started a fire, officials in the Ukrainian capital said.
The attack on Kyiv was the third in 24 hours and came after a rare daytime attack on Monday that sent people running for shelter.
Continue reading...Eleven Russian missiles aimed at Kyiv shot down in rare daytime attack; Russia puts US senator Lindsey Graham on wanted list
Eleven Russian missiles aimed at Kyiv were shot down by the Ukrainian air defence on Monday morning. One person was hospitalised as a result of the attacks. The local authority reported that the roof of a two-story building caught fire in the district as a result of falling debris, but that the fire was contained.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that using US-provided Patriot anti-missile systems ensured a 100% interception rate and would play a role in pushing forward against Russia’s invasion. “When Patriots in the hands of Ukrainians ensure a 100% interception rate of any Russian missile, terror will be defeated,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Any peace settlement acceptable to Ukraine would include a demilitarised zone extending between 100km and 120km into Russia, the adviser to the head of the office of Ukraine’s president, Mykhailo Podolyak, has suggested. The key topic of the postwar settlement should be the establishment of safeguards to prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future, he said.
US president Joe Biden said that in a call on Monday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan repeated Ankara’s desire to buy F-16 fighter jets from the United States, while Biden responded that Washington was keen to see Ankara drop its objection to Sweden’s joining Nato. The exchange took place when Biden called Erdogan to congratulate him on his victory in Turkey’s presidential election on Sunday.
Two people were killed and eight were wounded in a Russian attack on the city of Toretsk on Monday morning, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, said. Kyrylenko said Russian forces had used high-explosive aerial bombs in the attack at about 11:30 am local time which damaged a gas station and a multi-storey building in the city.
Russia’s interior ministry has put US senator Lindsey Graham on a wanted list after the Investigative Committee said it was opening a criminal probe into his comments on a Ukrainian state video. In an edited video released by the Ukrainian president’s office of Graham’s meeting with Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, Graham was shown saying “the Russians are dying” and then saying US support was the “best money we’ve ever spent”. Russia said Graham should say publicly if he believes his words were taken out of context in the video edit.
Polish president, Andrzej Duda, said that he would sign a bill to allow a panel to investigate whether the opposition party Civic Platform (PO) allowed the country to be unduly influenced by Russia and as a result become too dependent on its fuel when it was in power. The PO party rejects the claims and says the law is designed to destroy support for the party in the lead up to the elections being held at the end of the year.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said that her government planned to increase spending on military aid to Ukraine by $2.6bn over this year and next year. Earlier this year, Denmark set up a $1b fund for military, civilian and business aid to Ukraine. Danmarks Radio, the Danish public-service broadcaster, reported that the new funds were earmarked for military aid.
Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill that sanctions Iran for 50 years. The bill was put forward by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The bill will stop Iranian goods transiting through Ukraine and ban use of its airspace, as well as imposing trade, financial and technology sanctions against Iran and its citizens.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “appears to have again indirectly undermined Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authority and regime”, the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its latest analysis of the conflict. The US-based thinktank based its assertion on the response given by Prigozhin to a journalist asking about Russian state media’s ban on any discussion of Wagner.
Foreign investors who left Russia after selling their businesses there between March 2022 and March 2023 withdrew about $36bn from the country, the state RIA news agency reports, citing analysis of data from the Central Bank.
The death toll from a Russian missile attack on a medical facility in Dnipro on Friday rose from two to four people, according to the region’s governor.
Continue reading...Police have accused the teenager of starting the blaze in a dormitory that killed 18 schoolmates and a five-year-old boy
A teenage student whom police in Guyana accuse of deliberately setting a fire in a girls’ dormitory that killed 18 schoolmates and a five-year-old boy has been charged as an adult with 19 counts of murder.
The 15-year-old girl appeared virtually at the hearing on Monday in a court south of the capital, Georgetown, and was ordered to be held in custody pending further court proceedings.
Continue reading...Dozens of Italian and Hungarian soldiers from Kfor mission and more than 50 Serbs were injured in clashes over ethnic Albanian mayors taking office
More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers defending three town halls in northern Kosovo have been injured in clashes with Serb protesters, while Serbia’s president put the army on the highest level of combat alert.
The tense situation developed after ethnic Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo’s Serb-majority area after elections that the Serbs boycotted – a move that led the US and its allies to rebuke Pristina on Friday.
Continue reading...Human rights group’s 107-page report details human cost of President Nayib Bukele’s controversial ‘war on gangs’
The human cost of El Salvador’s controversial “war on gangs” has been laid bare in a new report which claims dozens of prisoners were tortured and killed in jail after being caught up in the year-long security crackdown.
The detailed 107-page report from human rights group Cristosal said at least 153 people had died in custody after being arrested as part of President Nayib Bukele’s year long offensive against the Central American country’s notorious “pandillas”.
Continue reading...Beluga whale was first spotted in Norway wearing a harness marked ‘Equipment St Petersburg’ in 2019
A beluga whale that turned up in Norway wearing a harness in 2019, prompting speculation it was a spy trained by the Russian navy, has reappeared off Sweden’s coast.
First discovered in Norway’s far northern region of Finnmark, the whale spent more than three years slowly moving down the top half of the Norwegian coastline, before suddenly speeding up in recent months to cover the second half and move on to Sweden.
Continue reading...Capital’s mayor warns residents to take shelter after explosions reported in central area
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, offers this roundup of overnight events in the skies over Ukraine:
At night, Russia launched up to 40 cruise missiles and about 35 drones over Ukraine: air defence managed to shoot down 37 missiles and 29 “Shahed” drones. Debris fell in several districts of Kyiv and the region. There are no dead or injured.
Russia attacked targets in the Khmelnytskyi region: one of them is a military one. Five aircraft were disabled, and fires broke out in fuel and lubricant warehouses. Fires are being extinguished and the runway is being restored.
Continue reading...Airline said to have demanded two passengers pay €45 each to take ensaïmada onboard with hand luggage
The government of the Balearic Islands has called an urgent meeting with Ryanair and the local pastry-makers’ association after the airline tried to charge passengers to bring cakes onboard, claiming it exceeded their cabin baggage limit.
The row erupted after two passengers at Palma de Mallorca airport tried to each carry an ensaïmada, a traditional Mallorcan pastry, along with their hand baggage. The airline demanded an additional €45 (£39) each to bring the pastries onboard, at which point the passengers abandoned them rather than paying.
Continue reading...Thousands forced from their homes after spring fires destroy buildings in Canadian province
Rare and “very aggressive” spring wildfires in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia have destroyed many buildings and forced thousands from their homes and prompting officials to declare a local state of emergency.
Over the weekend, residents of the Maritime province posted video of thick smoke encroaching over Halifax as a nearby blaze rapidly swept through a suburb.
Continue reading...Violence in recent days has stopped aid getting to civilians, as fears grow war will escalate
Gunshots and artillery fire have rocked the Sudanese capital on the last day of a frequently breached ceasefire, as calls to arms stoked fears the six-week war would intensify.
People said they could hear street battles in northern Khartoum, as well as artillery fire in the south of the city of more than 5 million people, which has been turned into a war zone.
Continue reading...Residents run for shelter during attack that appears to have been part of effort to exhaust air defences
Russian forces have launched an intense and unusual daytime missile barrage at Kyiv, forcing residents to flee to bomb shelters, in what appears to be an effort to exhaust Ukraine’s air defences.
The Ukrainian military said it had intercepted all 11 of the ballistic and cruise missiles fired at the city in the attack that began at 11am. One person was reported to have been injured. Residents who had become accustomed to a string of night-time attacks ran to Kyiv’s metro stations and other shelters after a succession of loud bangs as incoming missiles were intercepted and bursts of smoke from air defences dotted the clear morning sky.
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