Category Archives: World News

Trump indictment live: former president set to appear in New York courthouse in hush money case

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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.

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Russia-Ukraine war – as it happened: Finland joins Nato in move Moscow says increases risks of wider conflict

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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.

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Canadian PM’s residence shut down over dead mice in walls, documents say

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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.

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Tennessee Republicans bid to expel Democrats who cheered gun control protest

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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.

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Finland becomes 31st member of Nato in Brussels ceremony

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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.

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Polish farmers threaten to ‘ruin’ Zelenskiy visit amid grain dispute

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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.

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Bangladesh fire: 600 firefighters tackle blaze in huge Dhaka clothing market

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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.

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US says strike in Syria has killed senior Islamic State leader

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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.

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Only official civilian victim of UK’s bombing campaign against IS appears not to exist

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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.

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Almost half of human rights defenders killed last year were in Colombia

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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.

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Netherlands train crash: one dead and dozens injured after carriages derail

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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.

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Revealed: UAE plans huge oil and gas expansion as it hosts UN climate summit

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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.

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Family of UK woman with Alzheimer’s vow to stop deportation from Sweden

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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.

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Jacinda Ardern to tackle online extremism in new role as special envoy for Christchurch Call

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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.

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BTS’s Jimin becomes first South Korean solo artist to top US songs chart

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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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US house speaker Kevin McCarthy confirms he will meet Taiwan president in California

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China previously warned McCarthy he is ‘playing with fire’ over the meeting and risks ‘serious confrontation’

Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen will meet with US House speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday, the Republican’s office has confirmed, in defiance of warnings from Beijing that such a meeting would be a “provocation”.

Tsai is scheduled to make a stopover in California after state visits to Belize and Guatemala, Taiwan’s last remaining Central American diplomatic allies. McCarthy’s office said on Monday the “bipartisan” meeting would take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, outside Los Angeles.

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Four found dead in Mexico’s Cancún beach resort

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No immediate information on nationalities or identities in latest violence to hit popular holiday destination

Four dead bodies have been found near a beach in the Mexican resort city of Cancún, in the latest incident of violence to hit the popular holiday destination.

There was no immediate information on the nationalities or identities of the victims. The announcement of the deaths came less that a week after a US tourist was shot in the leg in the nearby town of Puerto Morelos.

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‘Damaged nuclear bomb’ at Dutch base was dummy weapon, Pentagon says

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US defence department releases statement saying object was used in training after photo emerged of military inspection

The Pentagon has said that a picture that featured in a report by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) on Monday about apparent damage to a US nuclear bomb at a Dutch airbase was a dummy weapon used for training emergency response teams.

FAS published a photograph of a B61 bomb being inspected for damage by US soldiers, including two from an explosive ordnance disposal unit, and a civilian. The rear of the bomb appears to have been twisted by an impact and one of the tail fins is missing. There is pink sticky tape covering an apparent hole.

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Russian police arrest woman over bombing that killed pro-war blogger

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Local news reports say bomb was hidden in bust of blogger gifted to him by suspect moments before blast

Russian police have arrested a woman suspected of delivering a bomb that killed a prominent pro-war Russian military blogger in a blast in a cafe in central St Petersburg on Sunday, as authorities blamed Ukraine for the attack.

Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed by a bomb blast as he was hosting a discussion with other pro-war commentators at a cafe on the banks of the Neva River in the historic heart of St Petersburg.

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Killed Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was a soft target for his many enemies

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Influential supporter of war in Ukraine had criticised military leadership and called for generals to be prosecuted

Many people could have wanted to kill Vladlen Tatarsky, the pro-war Russian blogger who died in a bomb blast in a St Petersburg cafe on Sunday.

Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, was notorious for his vehement support for the invasion of Ukraine, where he regularly called for Russia to commit to a total war and advocated for extreme violence that included war crimes. “We’ll defeat everyone, we’ll kill everyone, we’ll loot whoever we need to, and everything will be just as we like it,” he said last year on camera after a Kremlin ceremony confirming the “annexation” of four Ukrainian regions.

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