Category Archives: World News

The wine intervention: Dutch nuns appeal for help with booze glut

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Convent in Oosterhout has been left with surplus of more than 60,000 bottles after hot and dry year

A Dutch convent is appealing to wine drinkers to support its endeavours as, thanks to an extremely hot and dry year, Sint-Catharinadal in Oosterhout has an excess of 64,000 bottles made from its vineyard.

“We had a lovely summer last year, warm temperatures, and it promises to be an excellent harvest of more than 60,000 bottles,” said Sister Maria Magdalena, prioress, in a video appeal.

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Kremlin’s foreign minister to meet UN secretary general; US considering ban on exports to Russia – as it happened

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Sergei Lavrov to meet António Guterres on Monday; US to discuss export ban at G7 leaders’ summit. This live blog is now closed

DR, Denmark’s public broadcaster, is reporting that foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and acting defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen have said the 14 Leopard 2 tanks being donated by the Netherlands and Denmark could be with Ukraine in early 2024.

Poulsen is quoted as saying they are not Danish tanks, but tanks “which are bought in collaboration with the Netherlands”.

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Sudan: up to 20,000 flee violence as rival leaders refuse to negotiate

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Military ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of RSF both rule out truce

Up to 20,000 people have fled the escalating violence in Sudan to seek safety in neighbouring Chad, many of whom lack basic needs such as food, water and shelter, the United Nations has said.

The UN’s refugee agency said the majority of those arriving were women and children, who were currently sheltering out in the open, some of whom had been caught up in the fighting that has raged around the country for six days.

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Crime agencies condemn Facebook and Instagram encryption plans

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Global alliance including NCA and FBI says Meta’s decision to encrypt direct messages could harm children

An alliance of the world’s most powerful law enforcement agencies including the FBI, Interpol and Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have condemned Meta’s plans to encrypt direct messages on Facebook Messenger and Instagram, saying that doing so will weaken the ability to keep child users safe.

The Virtual Global Taskforce, made up of 15 agencies, is chaired by the NCA and also includes Europol and the Australian federal police among its membership. The VGT has spoken out, it says, owing to the “impending design choices” by Meta, which it says could cause serious harm.

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Star quality: Russia premieres first feature film shot in space

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Vladimir Putin hails achievement that beat Hollywood project announced by Tom Cruise, Nasa and Elon Musk’s SpaceX

The first feature film shot in space premiered in Russian cinemas on Thursday, as Moscow exulted in beating a rival Hollywood project amid a confrontation with the west.

The Challenge is about a surgeon dispatched to the International Space Station (ISS) to save an injured cosmonaut. Russia sent an actor and a film director for a 12-day stint on the ISS in October 2021 to film scenes aboard the orbiting laboratory.

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US gun safety group’s chilling new ad calls for assault weapons ban

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Brady ad features US navy veteran’s shocking account of Vietnam gunfire and comes on heels of several devastating mass shootings

A gun safety group has created a provocative new ad campaign calling for the renewal of a federal assault weapons ban, in the wake of several devastating mass shootings across the US that involved the use of military-style rifles.

The ad, released on Thursday by the gun safety group Brady and shared exclusively with the Guardian, features a US navy veteran of the Vietnam war reading a chilling account of coming under gunfire and being struck by a bullet.

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‘Otherworldly’ hybrid solar eclipse reaches totality over Australia – as it happened

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Among those in Exmouth, Australia today are the Solar Wind Sherpas, an international team of scientific adventurers who have tracked solar eclipses across the Sahara and Mongolia, in Svalbard and Antarctica.

There are 13 sherpas and they come from countries including Germany, the Czech Republic and the US.

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Rahul Gandhi could face jail and loss of seat after Indian court rejects plea

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Lawyers pledge to challenge ruling in higher court, saying they believe judiciary will ‘uphold justice’

The Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has been dealt a blow after a court rejected his plea for a stay on his recent defamation conviction, meaning he could face jail and will lose his parliamentary seat as he appeals against the guilty verdict.

On Thursday, a judge in Surat district court, in India’s western state of Gujarat, rejected his petition seeking a stay of conviction. The rejection of the plea means Gandhi, former leader of the Congress party and the most recognisable face of India’s political opposition, is disqualified from office and there will now be a byelection in his Kerala constituency.

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Yemen crowd crush: at least 85 dead after Houthi gunfire sparks panic

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Money was being handed out to mark end of Ramadan when rebels tried to control crowd, witnesses say

At least 85 people, many of them children, have died in a crush in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, during a charity handout marking the end of Ramadan.

Three businessmen have been arrested over the incident, in which 322 people were injured, 50 of them seriously.

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Confusion over cause of flash in sky over Kyiv after Nasa denies involvement

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Ukraine had said a satellite reentering the atmosphere was the cause of the phenomenon, but the space agency has denied this

A flash in the sky over the Ukrainian capital prompted confusion and alarm as city authorities said it was caused by a Nasa satellite reentering the atmosphere, while the US space agency denied involvement.

A “bright glow” was observed over Kyiv around 10pm local time, the head of Kyiv’s military administration Sergiy Popko wrote on Telegram.

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Sudan’s warring generals – podcast

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Fighting in Sudan is continuing despite an internationally brokered truce. At the heart of the conflict is a power struggle between two powerful generals in a country permanently in the grip of its military. Nesrine Malik reports

When Omar al-Bashir was forced from Sudan’s presidency in 2019 after 30 years of repression it felt to many like a time for celebration and a fresh start for the country. Toppled by the military, a tyrant accused of genocide and war crimes was finally out of power.

But the vacuum he left behind was quickly filled, not by one man but two. Many feared that Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto leader and army chief, and Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the vice-president who controls the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and is known as Hemedti, would soon clash. That fear became reality last weekend.

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Brazil: Lula security chief resigns after leaked footage of far-right palace riot

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Video shows Gonçalves Dias inside presidential palace as supporters of Bolsonaro went on the rampage in January

A key member of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new administration has been forced to resign after the emergence of security footage showing him inside the presidential palace during the 8 January far-right assault on Brazil’s democratic institutions.

After his election last year, president Lula made the retired army general Gonçalves Dias head of Brazil’s Institutional Security Bureau (GSI), which advises the president on defense and security matters and handles presidential security.

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British Council staff stranded in Khartoum offices amid gunfire and explosions

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Nine employees stuck for five days say they are ‘terrified’ as they wait to be evacuated while fighting continues in Sudan

Nine employees of the British Council in Khartoum have been stranded in their offices for five days amid heavy gunfire and explosions, as fighting in the streets of the Sudanese capital continues between the army and paramilitary forces.

One of the British Council staff is a British-Ugandan dual citizen; the rest are Sudanese. They include a security guard, an English language teacher, a driver and administrators.

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Thousands flee Khartoum as Sudan ceasefire fails to hold

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Germany and Japan reportedly planning to evacuate citizens as UN documents describe ‘nightmare scenario’

Thousands of residents have fled Khartoum as fighting continued across the city for a fifth day and many countries began preparations to evacuate their citizens from Sudan.

Attempts to resurrect a US-brokered ceasefire between the army and paramilitary forces that failed to hold on Tuesday did not reassure many inhabitants of the capital, which suffered some of the most intense clashes yet seen as rival factions battled for control of the airport, defence headquarters and other key strategic sites.

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HSBC shareholders urged to vote against break-up of business

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Bank warns spinning off more profitable Asia business would be complex and would lower dividends

HSBC’s board has urged shareholders to vote against a proposed break-up of its business at its annual meeting, arguing that a split would result in a “material loss” and lower dividends.

In response to calls for the split from its largest shareholder, the Chinese insurer Ping An, HSBC warned on Wednesday that spinning off its more profitable Asian business from the rest of the bank would also require approval from regulators in approximately 25 jurisdictions, and force it to make changes to customer services.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Kyiv receives Patriot missile systems from US and Germany – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here

Ukraine’s agriculture minister, Mykola Solsky, confirmed on Wednesday that the transit of Ukrainian grain and food products will resume through Poland after an agreement reached in talks with Warsaw.

But Reuters reports he again raised concerns about the status of an agreement with Moscow on the safe passage of ships carrying grain from Ukrainian Black Sea ports, saying it was impossible to predict how many vessels Moscow would allow through.

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Two arrested and charged with murder over Alabama shooting that killed four

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Investigators make announcement following deadly shooting at 16th birthday party in small town of Dadeville on Saturday

Two people were arrested and charged with murder in connection with a shooting that killed four people at a Sweet 16 birthday party in Alabama last weekend, investigators announced on Wednesday.

It was the first police news conference since the day after the shooting, which happened on Saturday. The district attorney, Mike Segrest, said the pair would be charged as adults and prosecutors would ask a judge to hold them without bail.

Associated Press contributed reporting

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Judge dismisses youth climate crisis lawsuit against Ontario government

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Judge says weak climate plans will increase risk of death for Canada’s young people but do not violate Charter rights

A judge has warned that Ontario’s weak climate plans will “increase the risk of death” for Canada’s young people – but dismissed a lawsuit brought by a group worried that government inaction on global heating threatens their futures.

Justice Marie-Andrée Vermette of Ontario superior court issued a decision on Tuesday that found that while both young people and Indigenous peoples bear the brunt of climate change, government failures to react were not a breach of their rights.

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Banging saucepans will not move France forward, says Macron

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President tours rural France in attempt to calm tensions over his unpopular pensions changes

Emmanuel Macron has said that banging saucepans at him will not move France forward, as about 100 protesters bashing pots were pushed back by police when the French president visited a factory in Alsace in an attempt to contain anger over raising the pension age from 62 to 64.

Members of the CGT and CFDT trade unions had gathered in front of the mayor’s office in the village of Muttersholtz on Wednesday, where Macron began a series of visits to rural France to try to calm tensions over his unpopular pensions changes.

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