Le Monde and Libération correspondents sent home in junta’s latest move against media from former colonial power
Burkina Faso has expelled correspondents from Le Monde and Libération, the newspapers said on Sunday, the latest move the junta running the west African country has taken against French media.
Burkina Faso, where two coups took place last year, is battling a jihadist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
Continue reading...Diplomats add their voices to Japanese campaigners in demanding LGBTQ+ rights as Hiroshima prepares to host the G7 summit
Akane Kousaka and her partner live in fear of the day when one of them falls ill or is injured in an accident. The LGBTQ+ couple have a “partnership certificate” issued by their ward office in Tokyo, but it comes with none of the legal guarantees afforded married heterosexual couples – including the right to visit a spouse in hospital.
“We might be able to get special permission, but we shouldn’t have to rely on other people’s goodwill … it’s not right,” Kousaka told the Observer. Other countries were leaving Japan behind, she added.
Continue reading...Authorities say both deaths were in response to threats: a man grabbing a police officer’s gun at al-Aqsa mosque, and a car ramming near Beit Ummar
A man was killed by Israeli soldiers after a West Bank car ramming on Saturday, the army said, in an escalation threatening to end a relative lull during the holy month of Ramadan so far.
The Palestinian’s death came less than 24 hours after an Arab Israeli allegedly snatched a gun from a police officer at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound and fired it before being shot dead.
Continue reading...‘Absurd and destructive’ that Russia chairs security council , says Zelenskiy; top US general Milley says Ukraine unlikely to expel Russian forces this year
Continue reading...Country’s chief justice says unveiled women will be prosecuted ‘without mercy’ after defiance
Two women have been arrested in Iran for not covering their hair in public after having a tub of yoghurt thrown over them.
Video footage that went viral on social media showed two female customers being approached by a man who engages them in conversation.
Continue reading...Charity medic, hotelier and ‘danger tourist’ reportedly arrested by Taliban’s secret police in January
Three British men including a charity medic and a self-styled “danger tourist” are being held in custody by the Taliban in Afghanistan, it has been reported.
The Mail on Sunday said Kevin Cornwell, a 53-year-old charity medic, and another British national who manages a hotel for aid workers in Kabul, who has not been named, were detained by the Taliban’s secret police in January.
Continue reading...Sadai Banowan violated ‘laws and regulations of the Islamic emirate’, says local Taliban official
A female-run radio station in Afghanistan’s north-east has been shut down for playing music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official said.
Sadai Banowan, which means women’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s only female-run station and started 10 years ago. It has eight staff, six of them female.
Continue reading...The last time Moscow held the post was in February 2022, when its troops launched invasion of Ukraine
A top Ukrainian official has criticised the “symbolic blow” of Russia assuming the rotating presidency of the United Nations security council.
Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, wrote on Twitter on Saturday: “It’s not just a shame. It is another symbolic blow to the rules-based system of international relations.”
Continue reading...Hailed by Tory MPs as a Brexit benefit, CPTPP membership actually turns the UK into a willing pawn in Washington’s geopolitical game
Tory MPs hailed the UK’s entry last week into the Indo-Pacific trading bloc as a major step on the road to re-establishing Britain as a pioneer of free trade.
It was a coup for Rishi Sunak, said David Jones, the deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Tory Eurosceptics, who was excited to be aligned with “some of the most dynamic economies in the world”.
Continue reading...Man was killed near al-Aqsa mosque after allegedly firing officer’s gun, in what police describe as terrorist attack
A man detained by Israeli police near a flashpoint mosque compound in Jerusalem grabbed an officer’s gun and fired it, prompting the unit to shoot him dead, the force said on Saturday, describing the incident as a terrorist attack.
The incident overnight at the edge of al-Aqsa mosque complex, an icon of Palestinian nationalism, came at a high point of Muslim attendance for the holy month of Ramadan.
Continue reading...Police in Karachi say nine women and three children dead after crush outside factory during Ramadan alms-giving
Pakistani police have arrested eight people in the southern port city of Karachi after a crush killed 12 people at a Ramadan food and cash distribution point a day earlier.
Hundreds of women and children rushed to collect free food and cash outside a factory in an industrial area of the city on Friday. Business-owners during the Islamic holy month often hand out cash and food, especially to poorer people. An initial report from the police said nine women, aged between 40 and 80, and three children, aged between 10 and 15, had died in the crush.
Continue reading...Social media influencer posts video about release from police custody in Romania after court ruling
Andrew Tate has posted a video saying he has “absolute clarity of thought” after he was moved from police custody to house arrest.
The social media influencer was released into house arrest on Friday after a Romanian court overturned a request by prosecutors for him to be detained until late April.
Continue reading...Pope, 86, responded well to antibiotic infusion for breathing difficulties, medical team says
Pope Francis has left hospital to return to the Vatican after being treated for bronchitis, quipping to journalists before being driven away: “I’m still alive.”
The pope, 86, was taken to Rome’s Gemelli hospital three days ago after complaining of breathing difficulties. He had responded well to an infusion of antibiotics, his medical team has said.
Continue reading...Top Ukrainian official criticises the ‘symbolic blow’ of Russia assuming the rotating presidency. This blog is now closed
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has promised to increase the supply of munitions to the country’s forces, during a visit to the headquarters of Moscow’s troops fighting in Ukraine, according to footage published by the defence ministry on Saturday.
In the video published on Telegram, Shoigu presides over a meeting with senior military officers, including Gen Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, Reuters reports.
The volume of supplies of the most demanded ammunition has been determined. Necessary measures are being taken to increase them.
Continue reading...Long coalition talks may follow Sunday, with conservative NCP not ruling out deal with populist Finns
Four years after she became the world’s youngest prime minister, Finland’s Sanna Marin faces a battle to keep her job on Sunday in an unpredictable election so tight that it could be won by any of the country’s three main parties.
Marin, now 37, took the reins of the Social Democratic party (SDP) – and the Finnish premiership – in 2019 and has since piloted the traditionally non-aligned Nordic country through the Covid pandemic and to the brink of Nato membership.
Continue reading...The town infamous for a massacre at hands of Russia has become a symbol of Ukraine’s reconstruction effort, but experts say the influx of money from the west will bring challenges in such a corrupt country
Standing on the crumbling roof of a house, dozens of workers hammer in unison. Around them, cranes, bulldozers and trucks work frantically to repair roads and buildings destroyed by Russian artillery. It is hard to believe that this noisy construction site is in Yablonska Street, in the town of Bucha, in the north of Kyiv, at the precise crossroads where a year ago the bodies of dozens of civilians, brutally killed by Russian soldiers, were strewn over almost a mile, some with their hands bound behind their backs.
Ukraine has already repaired, and in many cases fully rebuilt, many of the sites destroyed by Moscow, including bridges, roads and government buildings. It is only the beginning of what Kyiv has described as the largest rebuilding effort since the second world war and perhaps the most expensive in history, with an estimated cost of half a trillion dollars. But managing this unprecedented influx of money in a country with a long history of corruption will bring challenges, experts say.
Continue reading...Quebec authorities announced six people were in custody for criminal harassment, intimidation and forcible confinement
Police in Canada have arrested members of a vigilante “pedophile-hunting” group, charging them with distribution of child abuse images, amid frustration over the group’s controversial tactics.
Quebec police announced on Thursday that six people had been arrested as part of an investigation into a group that had drawn complaints from the public.
Continue reading...Court officials confirm arraignment while Manhattan district attorney rejects House Republicans’ demands
The indictment of Donald Trump has profound implications for the Republican race for the nomination for next year’s presidential election. As Jill Colvin writes for Associated Press, it is likely to force his potential rivals into the awkward position of having to defend him – or risk the wrath of Trump’s support base.
Polls show Trump remains the undisputed frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and his standing has not faltered, even amid widespread reporting on the expected charges.
The move was especially stunning given Trump’s long record of impunity, which has seen him constantly stretch the limits of the law and the conventions of accepted behaviour with his uproarious personal, business and political careers. Suddenly, Trump’s decades of evading accountability will end. The former president will have to start answering for his conduct.
The perception of this extraordinary case will turn on two questions fundamental to the credibility of American justice: Are all citizens – even the most powerful, like former presidents and White House candidates – considered equal under the law? Or is Trump being singled out because of who he is?
50 years after federal officials first accused Trump and his father of violating laws that barred racial discrimination in apartment rentals, the former president has been indicted. The indictment in the Daniels case comes amid an Atlanta-area investigation into Trump’s role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, and a special counsel’s federal investigations into Trump’s actions leading up to the 6 January riot at the Capitol, as well as his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Already, Trump’s statements about the Daniels case have followed a pattern he set in 1973, when federal prosecutors accused Trump and his father, Fred, a prominent New York City apartment developer, of turning away Black people who wanted to rent from them. In that case, Trump first denied the allegation, then said he didn’t know his actions were illegal, and then, through his lawyer, accused the government of conducting a bogus “Gestapo-like investigation.”
Continue reading...Bucharest Court of Appeal rules in favour of divisive social media influencer who has spent months in a Romanian jail
Andrew Tate, the divisive social media influencer who has spent months in a Romanian jail on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking, has won an appeal to replace his detention with house arrest.
The Bucharest court of appeal ruled in favour of Tate’s appeal, which challenged a judge’s decision last week to extend his arrest a fourth time for 30 days, Ramona Bolla, a spokesperson for Romania’s anti-organised crime agency, DIICOT, said on Friday.
Continue reading...Charles and Camilla also remembered the Kindertransport children, during a state visit to Germany
King Charles and Germany’s president have lain wreaths in remembrance of the victims of the second world war, in the ruins of a bombed-out church in Hamburg.
The monarch joined President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschentscher, to leave floral tributes at St Nikolai memorial church, whose spire was a landmark used by bomber crews during the conflict 80 years ago and has since become a monument against war.
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