Overhaul of constitution would include allowing Shavkat Mirziyoyev to stay in power
Polls have closed across Uzbekistan, ending a day of voting in the central Asian nation in a constitutional referendum that could allow President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to remain in power until 2040.
Voting stations closed at 8pm (3pm GMT), after being open for 12 hours. The Election Commission has to announce the result within 10 days.
Continue reading...FCDO asks any British nationals hoping to leave war-torn country to reach airport in Port Sudan by noon local time on Monday
The UK government has announced plans to carry out an additional evacuation flight from Sudan on Monday, after previously suggesting that efforts to bring British nationals out of the war-torn country had concluded.
In a statement on Sunday, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) urged any UK nationals still hoping to leave Sudan to make their way to the airport in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, by noon local time (11am BST) on 1 May.
Continue reading...UN refugee agency ‘extremely concerned’ about effect on ‘fragile’ region, as evidence emerges of widespread destruction
Fighting has erupted in Sudan’s Darfur region – including the use of heavy weaponry, and attacks on civilians and essential healthcare infrastructure – escalating a crisis now in its third week that was sparked by two rival generals.
Across the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, the sound of gunfire echoed through the streets throughout Sunday and airstrikes hit its twin city Omdurman.
Continue reading...Republican expected to run for nomination supports UK business secretary’s attempt to stop the left ‘corrupting British society’
Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has backed UK business secretary Kemi Badenoch in taking on what he calls “the woke”.
DeSantis, who is expected to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, met Badenoch and foreign secretary James Cleverly on a visit to London this week.
Continue reading...A strike that killed 23 people far from any frontlines has forced residents to understand that one could come anywhere
Huddled under a blanket, Iryna Babii turned away from the empty space where, until Friday, nine floors of apartments had been stacked, one of them home to her daughter’s best friend.
The apartments were obliterated when a Russian missile crashed into this residential block, which sits beside a school in a neighbourhood just near the botanical gardens of Uman, a central Ukrainian city that before the war was known mostly as a Jewish pilgrimage site.
Continue reading...More than 100 bodies have been unearthed since church leader was arrested on suspicion of luring his followers to their deaths
Two years ago, Issa Ali’s mother took all her belongings and left her family to join followers of the charismatic church leader Paul Mackenzie Nthenge in the Shakahola forest in south-east Kenya.
“He told them that’s where Jesus’ second coming will happen,” the 16-year-old said.
Continue reading...Hospitals, morgues and burial grounds under pressure, with more than 300 bodies found this year in just one region
Authorities in Tunisia are considering building new cemeteries, as the country runs out of space to bury the dozens of refugees washing up every day on its shores.
The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest for people attempting to cross the central Mediterranean since 2017, according to the UN, with an increasing number of boats carrying asylum seekers wrecked at sea.
Continue reading...Members of terrorised Port-au-Prince communities armed with rocks and machetes carry out wave of lynchings
As Vélina Élysée Charlier ventured on to the streets of her conflict-stricken city last week, she encountered scenes that will haunt her for many years to come.
Armed civilians dragging bodies through the streets. Smouldering corpses. Young men with machetes chasing suspected gangsters they planned to kill.
Continue reading...President says island is only receiving two-thirds of the petrol it needs as queues outside gas stations stretch for miles
There was a time when International Workers’ Day was marked in Cuba by parades involving more than a million people marching through Havana’s Revolution Square. Many came out of conviction, some because they were pressured, others to enjoy the party.
This Monday, however, the square will be empty, after the Cuban Communist party cancelled this year’s celebrations due to gasoline shortages that are crippling the island’s economy.
Continue reading...With concern among allies seemingly growing, there is a lot riding on an imminent counter-assault on the Russians in the south
The last time “Luh” served in the military, he was a Soviet conscript, sailing the Arctic Ocean with the USSR’s northern fleet over four decades ago.
When Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and Russian-backed proxies moved into his home region of Luhansk nearly a decade ago, he cheered on the Ukrainian army but thought his fighting days were behind him.
Continue reading...The country has recorded its hottest, driest April yet. For people working outdoors, it’s no joke
There are many better places to be in Spain than Madrid when recordbreaking temperatures bring summer’s ruthless heat in spring, prompting government health warnings, action plans from regional authorities and the familiar agonising wait for outdoor public pools to open.
There are also many better places to be in Madrid when the mercury nudges 30C (86F) than under a woolly hat inside a furry Sonic the Hedgehog costume in the elegant, shadeless air fryer that is the Spanish capital’s Plaza Mayor.
Continue reading...Crimea navy oil depot fire extinguished after reported Ukrainian drone strike on fuel tanks; Nancy Pelosi speaks about her ‘dangerous’ Kyiv visit
Continue reading...Sarra Eljak and Mustafa Abbas missed the last flight as 220km trip to airbase was too dangerous for their children
A couple who both work for the NHS missed the last UK evacuation flight out of Sudan on Saturday, believing the journey to be “too dangerous”.
The doctors must now find an alternative means of fleeing the war-torn country.
Continue reading...Nearly 1,900 have been evacuated, says UK government, but final flight has yet to leave Khartoum
Britons are feared to have been stranded in Sudan following reports that the country’s armed forces had prevented a number of people from reaching the last rescue flights out of the war-torn country on Saturday.
On Saturday night, it was announced that 1,888 people on 21 flights have been evacuated from Sudan – the vast majority of them British nationals and their dependents – but the last flight was yet to leave despite being scheduled to depart at 6pm.
Continue reading...Investigation reveals that at least 440 people appear to have been abandoned in the weeks before the worst Channel disaster in 30 years
• Read more: ‘Horror beyond words’: how Channel distress calls were ‘ignored’
Hundreds of vulnerable migrants were abandoned to their fates after the UK coastguard “effectively ignored” reports of small boats in distress during the days leading up to the worst Channel disaster in 30 years when at least 27 people died, an Observer investigation suggests.
Around 440 people appear to have been left adrift after the coastguard sent no rescue vessels to 19 reported boats carrying migrants in UK waters, according to an analysis of internal records and marine data seen by the Observer and Liberty Investigates.
Experts said the failure to act appears to breach international law.
Continue reading...Investigation reveals that understaffed Dover control room was overwhelmed by calls from people in trouble before 27 died at sea
• Read more: UK coastguard ‘left Channel migrants adrift’
On the afternoon of 3 November 2021, a woman called Hampshire police. Her brother was crossing the Channel in a small boat that day, she said via a translator. But something awful had just happened. Twenty minutes earlier he’d texted to say that smugglers had begun shoving passengers overboard. “Loads had been kicked off and were in the water”, fighting for their lives in the treacherous currents of the world’s busiest shipping lane.
Police passed the details to HM Coastguard and at 4.57pm an operator flagged the incident, according to internal logs obtained by the Observer and Liberty Investigates.
Continue reading...People fleeing fighting in Khartoum left waiting for days at sparsely staffed crossing after costly and dangerous journeys
Thousands of people have fled fierce street battles in central Khartoum for Sudan’s borders, waiting for days in the open air to enter Egypt or walking hundreds of miles to cross into South Sudan.
Rana Ameen, a 23-year-old engineering student, said she and five members of her family had paid the equivalent of £475 per person to travel to the border crossing with Egypt, almost 600 miles (1,000km) away.
Continue reading...Moscow-installed governor in Sevastopol says blaze, attributed to Ukrainian drone strike, now under control
Ukraine’s president said on Friday that he had asked his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to help bring back Ukrainian children deported by Russia.
In his evening address, AFP reports that Volodymyr Zelenskiy as saying:
We need to involve everyone ... to put pressure on the Russian aggressor and the terrorists who kidnapped so many of our children.
The UN, many others want to do something, but so far the results have been poor. So I have appealed to the leader of China.
Now, with regard to the need in general for shells at the front, what we want. Today we are coming to the point where Wagner is ending.
Wagner, in a short period of time, will cease to exist. We will become history, nothing to worry about, things like this happen.
Continue reading...Health ministry gives green light to two-step treatment made by British pharmaceutical firm Linepharma
The abortion pill will become available in Japan for the first time after the health ministry approved a drug used to terminate early-stage pregnancies.
Abortion is legal in Japan up to 22 weeks, but consent is usually required from a spouse or partner, and until now a surgical procedure had been the only option.
Continue reading...Campaigners commemorate mammal who drew large crowds in Norwegian capital last summer before being put down
A bronze sculpture has been unveiled in Norway of the walrus nicknamed Freya, who gained global attention last summer after basking in the Oslo fjord until officials euthanised her.
The lifesize sculpture depicts Freya lying on her side on the rocky shore of Oslo’s Kongen marina, not far from where the real 600kg mammal last summer drew large crowds as she chased ducks and swans, and rested on boats that struggled to support her bulk.
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