New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu says ‘we need a candidate that can win’ even as Trump dominates national primary polls
Donald Trump is a “four-time loser” who will not necessarily be the Republican presidential nominee despite dominating primary polling, the New Hampshire governor said on Sunday.
“Donald Trump is positioning himself to be a four-time loser in 2024,” Chris Sununu said. “We need candidates that can win.”
Continue reading...Death toll passes 420, including 264 civilians, and more than 3,700 wounded as ceasefires fail to hold
Western and other nations have intensified increasingly desperate efforts to evacuate diplomats and their dependents from Khartoum, as battles raged in the centre of the Sudanese capital and in its twin city of Omdurman.
With a series of ceasefires failing to hold, the death toll has now passed 420, including 264 civilians, and more than 3,700 have been wounded, according to local and international NGOs. However, most analysts believe the true total of fatalities and injuries in more than nine days of fighting is much higher.
Continue reading...Spectacular conflagration prompts evacuation of Tom Sawyer Island at California resort but no injuries reported
A 45ft-tall Disneyland dragon caught fire late on Saturday during a show in Anaheim, California, causing those in attendance to flee, local media and officials said. No injuries or deaths were reported.
“The dragon’s head started to glow, and I see fire and kind of smoke coming out,” Elaine Gilmer, who was at the event, told ABC News.
Continue reading...Lu Shaye’s comments raise fresh questions over China’s role in brokering peace in Ukraine
France, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have expressed dismay after China’s ambassador in Paris questioned the sovereignty not only of Ukraine, but all the former Soviet Republics including the Baltic states.
Lu Shaye’s remarks in a TV interview late on Friday raise fresh questions about the faith the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has placed in China to act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine.
Continue reading...The tradition of bashing pots and pans in protest has been revived, with ministers facing a cookware cacophony across the country
The French have turned protesting into an art form. A country synonymous with revolution has given the world the “manure protest”, where tonnes of muck were dumped outside parliament; the “vegetable protest”, with carrots and rotten tomatoes spread on the steps of public buildings; and the “dairy protest”, in which gallons of milk were spilled. Earlier this month, opponents of Emmanuel Macron’s bill to raise the state pension age to 64 dumped gas and electricity meters outside Marseilles city hall.
For the past week, furious French people have revived a much older form of protest: the casserolade, or “pots and pans protest”, after Macron pushed through the unpopular law.
Continue reading...As Khalifa Haftar’s influence emerges, analysts warn the area could be a battleground for multiple players
The Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar helped to prepare the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia now fighting for control of Sudan, for battle in the months before the devastating violence that broke out on 15 April, the Observer has been told by former officials, militia commanders and sources in Sudan and the UK.
The involvement of Haftar, who runs much of the eastern part of Libya, will raise fears of a long-drawn-out conflict in Sudan fuelled by outside interests. Analysts have described a “nightmare scenario” of multiple regional actors and powers fighting a proxy war in the country of more than 45 million people.
Continue reading...World mourns ‘unique wit’ of Australian star and inventor of vivid stage personas, who has died aged 89
Like bouquets of appropriately lurid gladioli, colourful tributes to the memory of Barry Humphries piled up this weekend as his many fans adjusted to a dimmer world without Dame Edna Everage.
Mourning Humphries, who was taken ill in Sydney last week with complications after hip surgery, means saying goodbye to his charismatic, hyper-real fictional personas: not only “the Australian housewife and superstar” Dame Edna, with her radiant, rinsed hairdo, trademark sparkling spectacles and bright gladioli, but also to the revolting Australian cultural attaché, Sir Les Patterson, and the irrepressibly dull Sandy Stone. Over decades, each of these stage characters has mischievously shaped the world’s view of Australians, satirising the stereotypical lack of taste that British “pommies” enjoy looking down on.
Continue reading...Ukraine military sets up positions on east bank of Dnipro river; France and Baltic states dismayed at Chinese ambassador comments
At least five Russian missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and surrounding districts late on Saturday night, damaging civilian buildings, local officials said. One missile hit a house in the village of Kotliary, just to the south of Kharkiv, while another caused a fire in the city itself, said the regional governor, Oleh Sinegubov.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had captured another three districts in the western part of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Troops who have continued into the heavily contested city are thought to be part of the Wagner group of mercenaries.
Russia confirmed it would expel 20 German diplomats in retaliation for its own diplomats being sent home from Berlin, the Tass news agency said, citing Russia’s foreign ministry.
Seventeen apartment buildings were evacuated in the Russian city of Belgorod after an explosive device was found at the site blown up by a bomb accidentally dropped by a Russian warplane, authorities said. The explosion on Thursday injured three people in the city near the Ukrainian border. The province’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Saturday that sappers examining the blast site found and detonated an “explosive object” that was “in the immediate vicinity of residential buildings”. The precautionary evacuations ended later in the day, said Belgorod’s mayor, Valentin Demidov.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has again refused to take sides in the war in Ukraine, calling for a “negotiated political solution” between Kyiv and Moscow. “We urgently need a group of countries to sit round a table with both Ukraine and Russia,” he said after a meeting with the Portuguese president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in Lisbon.
Units from Belarus returned home from Russia on Saturday after training on how to use the Iskander tactical missile system to launch nuclear weapons, the Belarusian defence ministry said. It made the announcement exactly four weeks after Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in neighbouring Belarus.
Ukraine plans to deploy software from the US data analytics provider Palantir Technologies to help it prosecute alleged war crimes committed by Russia, the company has said.
Ukraine’s operational command has reported that 11 Russian warships are in combat readiness in the Black Sea, including two submarines armed with Kalibr cruise missiles. The press service of Ukraine’s Operational Command South reported this on Facebook, according to Ukrinform.
Cyprus has cracked down on those named by the US and Britain for allegedly helping Russian oligarchs bypass sanctions on Moscow because of the Ukraine war, an official said. The financial commissioner, Pavlos Ioannou, told state broadcaster CyBC on Saturday that assets of the individuals and entities concerned had been frozen.
Jack Teixeira, the US air national guardsman accused of leaking classified defence documents to a small group of gamers, posted sensitive information months earlier than previously known and to a much larger chat group, according to the New York Times.
The UK Ministry of Defence has said Russia is struggling to maintain consistency in a core narrative used to justify the Ukraine war: that the invasion is akin to the Soviet experience during the second world war.
A Ukrainian soldier who lost his leg and has been fighting on the frontline wearing a prosthesis will run the London Marathon to raise money and share a message of unity against Russian aggression. Roman Kashpur, from Khmelnyk in Vinnytska, stood on a landmine in 2019. He fought on the frontline in Ukraine wearing a prosthesis for six weeks after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
The top Russian official in occupied Crimea said its air defence systems had been activated but there were no reports of damage or casualties. “Air defence forces worked in the sky over Crimea. No damage or casualties,” the official, Sergei Aksyonov, said on Telegram. “I ask everyone to remain calm and trust only trusted sources of information.”
Continue reading...Rambahadur Limbu was awarded Britain’s highest military honour in 1966 for an act of gallantry
The last remaining Gurkha recipient of Britain’s Victoria Cross has died in Nepal at the age of 83.
Rambahadur Limbu was awarded Britain’s highest military decoration by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 1966 for gallantry during an attack on Indonesian troops on the island of Borneo during which he rescued two fellow soldiers.
Continue reading...Joe Biden says US has retrieved personnel from Khartoum as fighting continues between rival armed groups
The US military has evacuated embassy staff and families from Khartoum, according to Joe Biden, as other countries are also scrambling to get their nationals out of Sudan amid continued fighting.
France’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that a “rapid evacuation operation” had begun, and that European citizens and those from “allied partner countries” would also be assisted, without giving further details.
Continue reading...Experts say Australia should look beyond criticism that is largely for domestic Chinese consumption and engage on a broader level
Australia’s strategic defence review, to be made public on Monday, is likely to spark a hostile response from China and set off a new round of claim and counterclaim about the precarious relationship between the two countries.
Sir Angus Houston, the former head of the Australian military who led the review with the former defence minister Stephen Smith, said when it was launched last year the strategic circumstances were “the worst I have ever seen in my career and lifetime”.
Continue reading...Paul Mackenzie Nthenge reportedly told followers to starve themselves to ‘meet Jesus’
Twenty-one bodies have been exhumed in eastern Kenya in an investigation into a cult whose followers are believed to have starved themselves to death, police sources have said.
On Saturday officials reported seven deaths in connection with the inquiry after the arrest of Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who reportedly told followers to starve themselves in order to “meet Jesus”.
Continue reading...At least nine people reportedly killed and 60 injured in attack in town of Sévaré
At least nine civilians were killed and more than 60 injured in a triple suicide bomb attack in the central Mali town of Sévaré early on Saturday, an official has said.
“The blast destroyed about 20 houses in the neighbourhood. There are a total of nine dead and about 60 wounded, all civilians,” said Yacouba Maiga, a spokesperson for the regional governor.
Continue reading...Ricky Gervais, Rob Brydon and Matt Lucas among those paying homage to the Dame Edna Everage star who has died aged 89
Comedy stars from around the world have paid tribute to the late Barry Humphries, hailing him a “true great”.
Humphries, best known for his character Dame Edna Everage, died in hospital in Sydney on Saturday aged 89.
Continue reading...Restaurant employee and customer die and 12 people injured in blaze after decorations caught light
Two people died and 12 were injured in a fire apparently sparked when a waiter flambéed a pizza at a Madrid restaurant and accidentally set decorations ablaze.
One of the dead was a restaurant employee and the other a customer, said the city’s mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida. He said one person was in a critical condition in hospital and five others were seriously hurt.
Continue reading...Violent criminals who served with the notorious Russian militia in Ukraine are terrorising the communities they return to
He strode up and down the central street of Tskhinvali on Monday, like he did most days, occasionally stopping to chat with passersby.
Locals knew the man, Soslan Valiyev, 38, as an idiosyncratic but popular fixture in Tskhinvali, the tiny capital of the Russian-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.
Continue reading...Finance sector workers are deserting the UK for the Italian city, lured by the weather, the way of life and tax breaks
It wasn’t so long ago that Milan was cast aside as a grey, uninspiring industrial city, with the only sprinkle of colour coming from its fashion sector. But the northern Italian powerhouse now has a newfound energy and confidence – and it’s partly driven by Brexit.
As the consequences of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU have kicked in, a significant number of bankers, fund managers and other financial services workers have shifted from London to Milan – an option that would never have been considered a decade ago.
Continue reading...Hundreds of dead birds found in past three weeks as conservationists call for international funding to help stop the disease spreading on migration routes
An outbreak of avian influenza in seabirds in the Gambia could affect vast numbers of birds migrating along the East Atlantic Flyway, unless international funding is secured, warn conservationists.
Teams from the West African Bird Study Association (Wabsa), the Gambia’s Department of Parks and Wildlife Management, and UK-based NGO Conservation Without Borders have buried hundreds of dead birds over the past three weeks, including some ringed birds from Europe.
Continue reading...Russian defence ministry says it has made progress in heavily contested region. This blog is now closed
A guided bomb hit the village of Orlykivka in Chernihiv in the early hours of Saturday.
No casualties were reported by Ukraine’s operational command northern region on Saturday, after the bomb was dropped from a Russian SU-35 jet.
Continue reading...Staff wearing demon masks try to make competing babies cry, with the first to bawl declared the winner in a centuries-old tradition
Dozens of bawling Japanese babies faced off in a traditional “crying sumo” ritual believed to bring the infants good health, which returned for the first time in four years after the pandemic.
Pairs of toddlers wearing ceremonial sumo aprons were held up by their parents and faced each other in the sumo ring at Sensoji Temple in Tokyo on Saturday.
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