Canadian politician, poet, an India MP and journalists are among 120 accounts that have been withheld
Twitter has been accused of bowing to government pressure in India by blocking scores of prominent journalists, politicians and activists from its platform in recent weeks.
The Indian government issued notices to Twitter to remove people in the aftermath of an internet shutdown in Punjab during the search for a fugitive Sikh separatist leader.
Continue reading...Move to deny Moscow’s children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova a platform comes as she tells parents to write to her ‘to find’ their missing children
Britain has blocked the UN webcast of an informal security council meeting on Ukraine on Wednesday at which Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights – wanted by the international criminal court on war crimes charges – is due to speak.
The meeting this week will focus on “evacuating children from conflict zone” and Russia said on Tuesday that commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova would feature virtually. Such meetings are not held in the security council chamber and all 15 council members have to agree to allow it to be webcast by the United Nations.
Continue reading...Andrés Manuel López Obrador asks China to curb exports of opioid after lengthy denunciation of similar calls from US
Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.
Continue reading...Baroque music and performing arts group performed Pergolesi’s lyrical sequence Stabat Mater combined with pole and dance acts
A French priest has received death threats after a sold-out pole dance performance that the local paper called “sexy” was held in his church.
Daniel Boessenbacher, the priest at the Protestant Saint-Guillaume church in Strasbourg, eastern France, told AFP he had alerted police to the threats after receiving two anonymous letters.
Continue reading...Shareholders lash out during final AGM as boss apologises for crisis that led to takeover of lender by UBS
Furious Credit Suisse investors at its final ever annual meeting blocked executive pay plans and called for board members to be “put behind bars”, as the Swiss lender’s chair said he was “truly sorry” over the bank’s demise.
Shareholders used most of the nearly five-hour annual general meeting in Zurich – the last in the 167-year-old bank’s history – to voice fury over poor management, hitting out at excessive pay for “incompetent and greedy” bankers who they said took too many risks and endangered Switzerland’s economic prosperity.
Continue reading...The first former US president to face criminal charges will appear in court at about 14.15ET (18.15 GMT / 19.15 BST)
The Hill this morning is carrying some quotes from Vin Weber, a Republican strategist and former member of the House Republican leadership. Weber is warning that the indictment of former president Donald Trump sets a dangerous precedent.
He argues that the impeachment of Bill Clinton lowered the bar for what might be considered an impeachable offence, and that the Stormy Daniels hush money case is doing the same, and risks people attempting political prosecutions of their opponents in the future. He said:
I think it’s bad for America, bad for the Republican Party and it’s bad for the political system in our country. Once you start down this path, there’s no way you’re going to reverse it. That’s what we saw with impeachment.
We’re going to see political prosecutions brought, some of them for meritorious reasons, some of them to advance the careers of the prosecutors. But all of this is harmful to America and our political process.
Continue reading...Country joins alliance in move Moscow says is an ‘encroachment on Russia’s security’
Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency has reported that the number of people injured in the St Petersburg cafe explosion that killed the prominent military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky has risen to 40. It quotes a statement from the press service of the Russian health ministry:
According to operational data, as a result of an incident in a cafe in St. Petersburg, 40 people sought medical help, including three minors.
At night, the Russian Federation attacked Ukraine from the south with 17 “Shahed” drones: 14 of them were destroyed by air defence forces. In the Odesa region, a business was hit, there were no casualties.
In the morning, Russian troops shelled Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region. As a result of the impact, an economic building caught fire, the state emergency service reported. On 3 April, one man was injured as a result of shelling in the Chuhuiv district.
Continue reading...Officials decided to shut down decrepit building last year amid concerns that the air in the mansion was no longer safe to breathe
So many dead mice were trapped behind the sagging walls and heaped in the basement of the Canadian prime minister’s official residence that officials decided to shut down the decrepit building last year amid concerns that the air in the mansion was no longer safe to breathe, according to newly released documents.
The limestone-clad house at 24 Sussex Drive, perched on a cliff above the Ottawa River, is the country’s most symbolically important and politically fraught plots of real estate.
Continue reading...Republican legislators introduce resolution to remove trio after they supported protest in wake of Nashville school shooting
Republican legislators in Tennessee have begun the process of expelling three Democratic colleagues from the conservative-controlled house over their support for a gun control protest at the state capitol days after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.
On Thursday, hundreds gathered at the capitol to protest against the absence of gun control measures after three nine-year-old students and three staff members were killed at the Covenant school last week, according to a report in the Tennessean.
Continue reading...Formal accession nearly doubles Nato border with Russia as Moscow warns it will boost its defences if necessary
The blue-and-white flag of Finland has been raised alongside those of its western partners outside Nato’s headquarters in Brussels after the Nordic country formally became the 31st member of the transatlantic defensive alliance.
Guests including the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Finnish president, foreign and defence ministers applauded and shouted “bravo” at the ceremony on Tuesday, which marked a historic realignment of Europe’s security landscape.
Continue reading...Grain producers say they are being undercut by tariff-free imports from Ukraine
Polish farmers are threatening to derail a visit to Warsaw by Volodymyr Zelenskiy over claims that Ukrainian grain is flooding their market, in a move that would provide Russia with valuable evidence of a crack in western solidarity.
Ukraine’s president is scheduled to visit Poland’s capital on Wednesday to express his gratitude for the country’s solidarity over the war with Russia, but Polish grain producers are warning they could take to the streets to “ruin” the occasion.
Continue reading...Bongo Bazar and three adjacent markets said to be gutted, as 11 people reported injured
Hundreds of Bangladeshi firefighters have battled an inferno that raged through a popular clothing market in the capital, Dhaka, and covered the city’s oldest neighbourhoods in black smoke.
No deaths have been reported, but shop owners and fire officials told reporters that the famous Bongo Bazar and three adjacent markets had been gutted in the dawn fire.
Continue reading...Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri said to have been responsible for planning IS attacks in Europe
The US military has said it carried out a strike in Syria, killing a senior Islamic State group official responsible for planning attacks in Europe.
The strike in the north-west of the country on Monday killed the senior IS leader Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, US Central Command said.
Continue reading...Contradictions over missions in Syria and Iraq deepens concern over Britain’s ‘perfect’ precision war
It sounded like accountability. Pressed about the UK’s implausibly spotless record in its bombing campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the British government admitted in May 2018 that its military had killed one civilian in eastern Syria two months earlier.
But the strike the then defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, described to parliament was not logged in the records of civilian casualties kept by its allies in the international coalition flying bombers and drones over Syria and Iraq.
Continue reading...The county was the deadliest for rights activists in 2022, and Latin America and Ukraine together accounted for 80% of the 401 deaths
Colombia was the deadliest country in the world for human rights defenders in 2022, accounting for 186 killings – or 46% – of the global total registered last year, according to the latest report from the international human rights group Front Line Defenders.
Front Line Defenders found that killings of rights defenders across the globe increased in 2022, with a total of 401 deaths across 26 different countries, compared with 358 deaths in 38 countries registered in 2021.
Continue reading...Authorities say at least 50 passengers were onboard train that crashed into a crane between The Hague and Leiden
A train in the Netherlands rammed into a maintenance crane on the tracks before it derailed and ploughed into a field, killing the crane operator and injuring dozens of passengers.
The maintenance work was planned and standard, but “we have no idea how the crane got on the track which was still open for traffic”, John Voppen, the chief executive of the railway infrastructure company ProRail, said at a news briefing on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Exclusive: UAE’s fossil fuel boss will be the president of Cop28, making a mockery of the summit, say campaigners
The United Arab Emirates, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit, has the third biggest net zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world, the Guardian can reveal. Its plans are surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc, has been controversially appointed president of the UN’s Cop28 summit in December, which is seen as crucial with time running out to end the climate crisis. But Sultan Al Jaber is overseeing expansion to produce oil and gas equivalent to 7.5bn barrels of oil, according to new data, 90% of which would have to remain in the ground to meet the net zero scenario set out by the International Energy Agency.
Continue reading...Swedish police pressing ahead with removal of Kathleen Poole, 74, due to incomplete post-Brexit paperwork
The family of a woman with Alzheimer’s who is threatened with deportation from Sweden have vowed to do anything they can to stop her removal because of a promise they made to their children.
Kathleen Poole, 74, is facing forced removal from Sweden, her home for 18 years, after immigration authorities rejected an application by her family to stay in the country post-Brexit on the grounds her paperwork was incomplete.
Continue reading...Former New Zealand prime minister will push initiative she created in wake of 2019 terrorist attack
Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern will take on a new role working alongside international governments and social media companies to target extremism and terrorist content online.
Prime minister Chris Hipkins announced on Tuesday evening that he had appointed Ardern as special envoy for the Christchurch Call, a newly created position.
Continue reading...Jimin’s single Like Crazy is the 66th track ever to debut at the peak of the Hot 100 chart, and the first by a South Korean solo artist
Jimin, a member of the K-pop supergroup BTS, has made history as the first South Korean solo artist to land the No 1 spot on the top US songs chart, Billboard announced on Monday.
The single, Like Crazy, debuted at No 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 this week, bumping Miley Cyrus’s track Flowers out of the top spot, where it had reigned for eight weeks.
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