Moscow says details need to be analysed after western leaders say Beijing lacks credibility to act as mediator
Ukraine’s ministry of defence has claimed that overnight its forces shot down 11 Iranian-made Shahed drones. It also confirmed that an officer of Ukraine’s emergency services was killed in Khmelnytskyi.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Continue reading...Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the photo appeared to show an alux, a creature from Yucatán folklore
Mexico’s president posted a photo on his social media accounts on Saturday showing what he said appeared to be a mythological woodland spirit similar to an elf.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not seem to be joking when he posted the photo of an alux, a mischievous woodland spirit in Maya folklore.
Continue reading...One man killed and four wounded in apparent worst outburst of settler violence in northern West Bank in decades
Scores of Israeli settlers have gone on a violent rampage in the northern West Bank, setting alight dozens of cars and homes after two settlers were killed by a Palestinian gunman.
Palestinian medics said one man was killed and four other people were badly wounded in what appeared to be the worst outburst of settler violence in the area in decades.
Continue reading...Trade and governance will be at centre of new post-Brexit pact, but what about other areas of disagreement?
Named the “new Windsor framework”, the revised Northern Ireland protocol has been described as a “decisive breakthrough” by Rishi Sunak and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
What does it mean and what are the big breakthroughs?
Continue reading...Project to revive 1,000-year-old village of Fraguas ended as activists face fines of up to €110,000
An abandoned village in Spain has been condemned to its third and final death after the rural activists who occupied it 10 years ago gave up the struggle to bring it back to life.
Fraguas’s first death came in the late 1960s, when it was expropriated by the Franco regime to make way for a huge reforestation programme; its second when it was used as an army training ground.
Continue reading...Group says it used drones to hit early warning aircraft at Machulishchy airfield 12km from Minsk
Belarusian anti-war partisans claim to have severely damaged a Russian military aircraft in what an opposition leader has called the “most successful diversion” since the beginning of the war.
BYPOL, the Belarusian partisan organisation, said it had used drones to strike the Machulishchy airfield 12km from Minsk, severely damaging a Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft (Awacs).
Continue reading...Two killed as Ukraine claims to have shot down 11 of 14 drones in overnight attack; partisans claim to have destroyed Russian plane at Belarusian airstrip
Continue reading...Remains taken for forensic testing to determine if they belong to influencer Abby Choi
The ex-husband and two former in-laws of a woman in Hong Kong have been charged with her murder, after police revealed they had found more body parts during a weekend search.
Abby Choi’s ex-husband, Alex Kwong Kong-chi, his father and his brother were formally charged with murder on Sunday. Kwong’s mother was charged with perverting the course of justice.
Continue reading...Alessandra Sampaio preparing to visit remote area where husband and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were murdered last year
The widow of British journalist Dom Phillips has spoken of her desire to raise awareness of the urgent and complex crisis facing the Amazon as she prepared to visit the remote jungle region where he was murdered last year with the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.
Alessandra Sampaio will travel to the Javari valley region on Monday with a delegation of Brazilian ministers, officials and activists as well as the British ambassador Stephanie Al-Qaq.
Continue reading...Patrols dispatched to frontier as migration minister calls for fences and surveillance as well as aid to preempt migration
Greece has reinforced border controls along its land and sea frontier with Turkey amid expectations of a new wave of arrivals by people displaced in the earthquakes that have devastated south-east Turkey and northern Syria.
Hundreds of extra border guards began patrolling the Greek-Turkish land frontier in the Evros region at the weekend as contingency measures were stepped up to stave off the expected flows.
Continue reading...Jordan hosts first such high-level talks in years aimed at defusing tensions in region before Ramadan
Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs have met in Jordan for the first such high-level talks in years aimed at defusing tensions in the volatile region ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, which it is feared could act as the catalyst for a wider escalation.
In a joint statement released at the close of the summit in the port city of Aqaba on Sunday, which was also attended by US, Jordanian and Egyptian officials, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) expressed “readiness and commitment to work immediately” to prevent further violence.
Continue reading...Boat believed to be bringing refugees from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan struck rocks off coast of Calabria
Fifty-nine people, including a newborn baby and other children, have died after a wooden sailing boat believed to be carrying refugees crashed against rocks off the coast of Italy’s Calabria region.
Many of the bodies were reported to have washed up on a tourist beach near Steccato di Cutro, while others were found at sea.
Continue reading...Final tally not expected until middle of next week as polling system hit by significant technical problems
Nigeria is in the midst of a tense wait as election authorities count tens of millions of votes that will determine who will become president in Africa’s most populous country and control its national assembly.
Voting on Saturday was marred by widespread delays and some scattered violence but fears of widespread chaos proved unfounded.
Continue reading...UK nationals outnumber Germans for first time, as post-pandemic rebound helps Greek economy to grow by 5.6% in 2022
UK travellers are leading an extraordinary rebound in tourism to Greece with arrivals up by 181% last year, according to the country’s central bank.
Almost 4.5 million Britons were registered at Greek entry points, a record number and nearly 3 million more than in 2021.
Continue reading...Nancy Faeser says Ukraine war has exacerbated German cybersecurity concerns
Germany’s interior minister has warned of a “massive danger” facing Germany from Russian sabotage, disinformation and spying attacks.
Nancy Faeser said Vladimir Putin was putting huge resources into cyber-attacks as a key part of his war of aggression. “The cybersecurity concerns have been exacerbated by the war. The attacks of pro-Russia hackers have increased,” she said in an interview with the news network Funke Mediengruppe published on Sunday.
Continue reading...Russian leader’s comments on state TV channel follow first anniversary of invasion of Ukraine
Vladimir Putin has accused the west of seeking to “dismember” Russia and and to turn the vast country into a series of weak mini-states.
In an interview with the state TV channel Rossiya on Sunday, Putin claimed the US and its Nato allies wanted to “inflict a strategic defeat on us”. The aim, he said, was to “make our people suffer”, adding: “How can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?”
Continue reading...Crusading pathologist Raquel Fortun finds evidence of multiple murder at the direction of ‘a madman’ in the exhumed remains of young Filipinos
It was in an old university stockroom, with wooden tables salvaged from a junkyard, that Raquel Fortun began to investigate the merciless crackdown launched under the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.
Fortun, one of only two forensic pathologists in the country, has now spent more than 18 months examining the exhumed remains of dozens of victims of the so-called “war on drugs”, revealing serious irregularities in how their postmortems were performed – including multiple death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.
Continue reading...Elton John, Hugh Jackman, Dolly Parton, Pink, Sir Barry Gibb and Mariah Carey sent video condolences, which were played to the crowd in Melbourne
A host of international stars and dignitaries paid tribute to the late Australian star Olivia Newton-John in at a state memorial service in Melbourne on Sunday.
Thousands gathered at Hamer Hall and video tributes came from Elton John, Hugh Jackman, Dolly Parton, Pink, Barry Gibb and Mariah Carey.
Continue reading...Putin makes claim in TV address; mercenary boss and Ukraine make conflicting claims over control of Yahidne village
German defence minister Boris Pistorius on Sunday reacted with scepticism to a Chinese ceasefire proposal for the war in Ukraine.
“When I hear reports – and I don’t know whether they are true – according to which China may be planning to supply kamikaze drones to Russia while at the same time presenting a peace plan, then I suggest we judge China by its actions and not its words,” he told German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk in an interview.
Continue reading...Tests carried out on remains of young communist who confessed to arson attack that proved a gift to Hitler
When flames enveloped Germany’s parliament on the evening of 27 November 1933, six days before national elections, it was a political gift to Adolf Hitler, the recently appointed chancellor. The arson attack on the Reichstag by an “enemy within” secured his re-election and gave him the pretext to grab the dictatorial powers he craved.
Whether that gift fell into the Nazi leader’s lap by chance or was placed there via a covert false-flag operation has been the subject of bitter historical disputes ever since. Now, 90 years later, the body of the young communist whom historians have traditionally regarded as the sole perpetrator of the attack has been exhumed in the hope of finding a definitive answer.
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