Category Archives: World News

Bear kills jogger on woodland path in northern Italy

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Mauled body of Andrea Papi, 26, found overnight after he failed to return from run near his village

A bear attacked and killed a jogger on a woodland path in north-east Italy, the first case of its kind, a source close to the case told AFP on Friday.

Andrea Papi, 26, was killed on Wednesday while out running in the mountainous region near his village, Caldes, in the Trentino region. His family raised the alarm when he failed to return and a search team found his body overnight.

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Gunmen kill at least 46 people in attack on rural village in Nigeria

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Death toll may rise as many people are still missing after attack in northern-central Benue state

Forty-six bodies have been found after gunmen attacked a rural village in central northern Nigeria, local government officials said, the latest in a series of deadly assaults in the region.

The attack happened on Wednesday in Umogidi in Benue state, where tit-for-tat clashes are common between nomadic herders and settled farmers competing for land and resources.

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Biden proposal forbids US schools from outright bans on transgender athletes

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Proposed rules require any decisions to restrict trans people from competing to involve important educational objectives

The Biden administration has released a proposal that would forbid schools and colleges across the US from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes competing in sports.

But teams could create some limits in certain cases – for example, to ensure fairness, according to the proposal, which did not go into extensive detail about the term.

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UAE refuses to extradite brothers accused of corruption in South Africa

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UAE accused of non-cooperation by South Africa after court rules against extraditing tycoons Atul and Rajesh Gupta

South Africa said on Friday it had learned with “shock and dismay” that the United Arab Emirates had turned down its request to extradite two brothers accused of orchestrating industrial-scale corruption.

The justice minister, Ronald Lamola, bluntly accused the UAE of “non-cooperation” after being informed late on Thursday of a court ruling against extraditing the tycoons Atul and Rajesh Gupta.

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Two British sisters killed and mother injured in West Bank shooting

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Sisters, believed to have migrated from the UK, died after car was shot at and crashed on Friday

Two sisters with British nationality have been killed and their mother seriously injured in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank, keeping the region on edge even as the situation on Israel’s borders appeared to ease after Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip overnight.

The sisters were killed when their car crashed after it was shot at in the north of the territory on Friday, Israeli media reported. Local authorities said they were 16 and 20 years old, and their mother 48. The family have not yet been officially named due to a pause in some Israeli police procedures for the Jewish holy day, Shabbat.

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Journalist Evan Gershkovich formally charged with espionage in Russia

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Wall Street Journal reporter denies charges, while US Senate leaders issue bipartisan call for his release

Russian Federal Security Service investigators have formally charged Evan Gershkovich with espionage but the Wall Street Journal reporter denied the charges and said he was working as a journalist, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said on 30 March that it had detained Gershkovich in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and had opened an espionage case against the 31-year-old for collecting what it said were state secrets about the military-industrial complex.

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Pentagon investigates reported leak of top-secret Ukraine documents

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Classified papers said to contain details of military aid and battalion strengths before potential Ukrainian counteroffensive

The Pentagon is investigating a security breach in which classified war documents detailing secret American and Nato plans for supplying aid to Ukraine before its prospective offensive against Russia were leaked to social media platforms.

The top secret documents were spread on Twitter and Telegram, and reportedly contain charts and details about anticipated weapons deliveries, battalion strengths and other sensitive information, the New York Times reported. According to military analysts, the papers appear to have been altered in certain parts from their original format, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed, citing how the modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow.

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Mayor closes museum of memories in battle over story of Peru’s violent past

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Far-right mayor claimed Lima institution peddled false narrative of 1980-2000 conflict in which guerrillas and army killed 70,000

It was supposed to be a museum of memories: a place of dialogue and reconciliation where Peruvians could commemorate the victims of a brutal internecine conflict which killed tens of thousands of people in the 1980s and 1990s.

Since its controversial inception in 2015, the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion has received about 60,000 visitors a year.

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Kremlin says its strategic aim is to create a ‘new world order’ – as it happened

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Foreign minister says Russia rejects a ‘unipolar world order led by one hegemon’. This blog is now closed

At a Chinese foreign ministry briefing this morning, spokesperson Mao Ning has asserted that China is in contact with all sides of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency quotes the spokesperson saying:

As for the Ukrainian conflict, China maintains a dialogue with all parties involved, including Ukraine. China always stands for a peaceful settlement and is ready to cooperate with the international community to achieve peace.

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China enters riskier space by positioning itself as diplomatic alternative to US

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Recent meetings in Beijing mark a return to the world stage but with that comes increased scrutiny

Beijing this week displaced New York and the UN as the diplomatic capital of the world, hosting two meetings that have the potential to unblock two of the deepest conflicts plaguing the globe – the nine-year-old conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and the 30-year standoff between Riyadh and Tehran.

For Beijing, often described as neuralgic towards interventionist foreign policy, it marks a step into the biggest of diplomatic leagues, and a sign of the country’s return to the global stage post-Covid.

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Israel launches airstrikes in Lebanon and Gaza Strip after ‘biggest rocket salvo since 2006’

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Rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon and second Israeli raid on al-Aqsa mosque stoke fears of further escalation

Israeli jets hit sites in Lebanon and Gaza early on Friday, in retaliation for rocket attacks it blamed on the Islamist group Hamas, as tensions following police raids on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem this week threatened to spiral out of control.

Two explosions were heard in Gaza late on Thursday. It was not immediately clear what had been targeted but Israel said its jets hit targets including tunnels and weapons manufacturing sites of Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the blockaded southern coastal strip.

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Two Democratic members expelled from Tennessee house over gun control protest

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Joe Biden and Barack Obama condemn expulsion of Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from Republican-controlled state house

Two Democratic lawmakers have been expelled from Tennessee’s GOP-dominated House, an extraordinary act of political retaliation for their role in a gun control demonstration after the killings at a Nashville elementary school last week.

Thousands of protesters have flocked to the Tennessee state capitol to support three Democratic members who were facing removal. Only two of the three were ultimately forced out.

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Unable to shoot rabbits this Easter, New Zealand mulls deadly virus to fight ‘plague’

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Pest numbers are booming and the annual cull has been called off, forcing one rural council to look at other ways to control the rabbit boom

In New Zealand, Easter is usually a time for killing rabbits. But, faced with a ban on the annual slaughter this year, one region is hoping to deploy a deadly virus instead.

Wild rabbits are considered a serious pest in New Zealand, particularly in rural areas, with major impact on agriculture and native landscapes. In parts of the South Island, the boom is reaching “plague” proportions, a spokesperson for Otago regional council (ORC) said on Wednesday.

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California: stunning shift as parched reservoirs replenished by storms

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Reservoirs whose water levels had plummeted during punishing drought have recovered – but officials warn of ‘weather whiplash’

Water levels fell so low in key reservoirs during the depth of California’s drought that boat docks sat on dry, cracked land and cars drove into the center of what should have been Folsom lake.

Those scenes are no more after a series of powerful storms dumped record amounts of rain and snow across California, replenishing reservoirs and bringing an end – mostly – to the state’s three-year drought.

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Paris brasserie favoured by Macron set alight as pension protests continue

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Awning of La Rotonde briefly in flames as hundreds of thousands of mostly peaceful demonstrators again take to streets across France

Hundreds of thousands of people have continued to demonstrate across France against Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the pension age to 64, with clashes breaking out between demonstrators and police on the edges of protests in cities including Lyon, Nantes and Paris.

In the capital, protesters briefly set fire to the awning of the Left Bank brasserie La Rotonde, well known for hosting Macron’s controversial evening of celebrations when he led the first-round vote in the 2017 presidential election. Police said several hundred of what they described as “radical elements” set bins alight and threw projectiles at officers near the restaurant.

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Russia-Ukraine war: EU warns China against arming Putin and says Xi should reach out to Zelenskiy – as it happened

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

Overnight news broke that the Russian girl sent to an orphanage after drawing an anti-war sketch at school has been taken from the facility by her mother.

Reuters is carrying quotes from Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova about the situation. It quotes her saying:

Masha did not want to go to her mother at first, and her opinion is legally required to be taken into account. Now her position has changed – she told me this herself on the phone.

Olga has already taken Masha from the social rehabilitation centre. Let’s hope that everything will work out for mum and daughter. I am glad about the beginning of the reunion of daughter and mother.

As claimed on Russian social media, the Russian MoD has highly likely dismissed Colonel-General Rustam Muradov as commander of the Eastern Group of Forces (EGF) in Ukraine.

The EGF under Muradov has suffered exceptionally heavy casualties in recent months as its poorly conceived assaults repeatedly failed to capture the Donetsk Oblast town of Vuhledar.

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Covid vaccine to be offered to vulnerable babies and children in UK

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Eligible children between six months and four years old will be offered jab from June

Children aged between six months and four years old who are deemed clinically vulnerable will be offered two doses of a Covid vaccine, public health bodies in the UK have announced.

The move, revealed by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) after approval by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), comes after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was approved for children of this age by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in December. Children who are not clinically vulnerable are not included in the UK-wide offer.

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Silvio Berlusconi living with leukaemia for some time, doctor confirms

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Former prime minister, 86, is being treated for lung infection at Milan’s San Raffaele hospital

The former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been suffering from leukaemia for some time and is in intensive care, his doctor has confirmed.

The 86-year-old was admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele hospital on Wednesday, where he is being treated for a lung infection.

This article was amended on 6 April 2023 to correct the type of cancer which Berlusconi overcame in 1997.

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State actor still main suspect behind Nord Stream sabotage, says investigator

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Swedish prosecutor casts doubt over theories that independent group was responsible for pipeline blasts

The Swedish prosecutor investigating the Nord Stream sabotage attack has said the “clear main scenario” was that a state-sponsored group had been involved, seemingly casting doubt over theories that posited an independent group was responsible for the pipeline blasts.

Mats Ljungqvist told Reuters on Thursday that though a non-state-backed plot was still theoretically possible, the type of explosive used in the bombings ruled out a “large portion of actors”.

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Rocket fire from​ Lebanon and​ Gaza​​ ​hits Israel​ after​ second al-Aqsa mosque raid

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Israeli army says salvo fired from Lebanese territory, after officers entered religious compound to remove worshippers

Rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon and a second Israeli police raid on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque in as many nights have stoked fears of further escalation in the region during a sensitive period of overlapping religious holidays.

On Thursday afternoon, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said the biggest salvo of rockets since the 2006 war had been fired from Lebanese territory into northern Israel. Most of the 34 projectiles were intercepted, but there were two minor injuries and a fire.

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