Security forces stage rescue operation in country which is facing violent Islamist insurgency
Sixty-six women and children kidnapped by armed assailants in northern Burkina Faso last week have been freed, it has been reported.
The mass kidnapping was unprecedented in Burkina Faso, which is facing a violent Islamist insurgency that spread from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
Continue reading...Report revealed multiple executions in recent years carried out without proper testing of lethal injection drugs
Two top Tennessee officials have been fired by the corrections department after an independent report revealed striking errors in the state’s lethal injection execution protocol.
According to official documents reviewed by the Tennessean newspaper, the deputy commissioner and general counsel, Debra Inglis, was fired, as well as inspector general Kelly Young, on 27 December.
Continue reading...High-cost, low-quality housing market is pushing many from war-torn country to edge of homelessness
Maria, 22, came to the UK from Ukraine in March last year shortly after the war broke out. She and her mother travelled using the Ukraine family scheme visa to stay with her aunt. But when her aunt was evicted, they became homeless. For five months, Maria and her mother have been living in temporary accommodation in south London.
“It’s horrible actually, the corridors are so old and so dirty,” Maria says. “The council haven’t been very helpful. The room is so small and it’s hard with two adults in one room.”
Continue reading...Culture minister’s attack on two documentaries set in Palestinian territories part of campaign to silence dissent, film-makers say
Israel’s culture minister is attempting to revoke state funding from two documentary films dealing with the occupation of the Palestinian territories, increasing concerns that the country’s new hard-right government will follow through on promises to crack down on dissenting voices.
The minister, Miki Zohar, of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, has pledged to “revoke funding that promotes our enemy’s narrative” and withhold grants from films that “present Israeli soldiers as murderers”. He has also said he will require film-makers to sign a declaration they will not use state funds to create content that “harms the state of Israel or IDF soldiers”.
Continue reading...Move comes after country’s minister for Indigenous people says issue is an ‘absolute priority’
Brazil’s first-ever minister for Indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, has vowed to make tackling the humanitarian crisis plaguing the country’s largest Indigenous territory “an absolute priority”, as she prepared to fly into the region with the new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Under the former president, Jair Bolsonaro, thousands of illegal gold miners poured into the Yanomami enclave in the Amazon, bringing violence, pollution and a healthcare calamity captured in a recent series of photographs of severely malnourished children and adults.
Continue reading...Minister selected by Labour party to succeed Jacinda Ardern after her shock resignation on Thursday
A new prime minister for New Zealand has been chosen by the Labour party after the shock resignation of Jacinda Ardern on Thursday.
Chris Hipkins – the minister for education and policing, and one of the primary architects of the Covid response – was nominated uncontested by the party caucus on Saturday morning, after efforts by senior MPs to achieve consensus and secure a smooth transition in Ardern’s wake. The caucus is due to formally endorse his selection on Sunday.
Continue reading...Isaac and Mathew Auchterlonie were heavily armed, had strong anti-government views and did not expect to survive 2022 incident
Two brothers who died in a hail of gunfire last summer outside a Canadian bank had been planning their attack for years, with a goal to kill as many officers as possible, police said on Friday.
An investigation by the Vancouver Island integrated major crime unit found that 22-year-old Isaac Auchterlonie and his brother, Mathew, showed up at the Victoria, British Columbia, area bank on 28 June 2022 wearing full body armor and carrying semi-automatic rifles. Isaac and Mathew were two-thirds of a set of triplets.
Continue reading...The minister for mines, Irene Vélez, told world leaders the country will shift away from fossil fuels to begin a sustainable chapter
Colombia’s leftwing government has announced that it will not approve any new oil and gas exploration projects as it seeks to shift away from fossil fuels and toward a new sustainable economy.
Irene Vélez, the minister for mines told world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the time had come for the Andean nation to move away from its reliance on oil and gas and begin a new, greener chapter in the country’s history.
Continue reading...US will apply designation in the coming days, says national security council spokesman, imposing new sanctions on the group
The US will designate the Russian mercenary group Wagner as a “significant transnational criminal organization”, imposing further sanctions on the military contractor which has been aiding Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine.
The White House national security council spokesman, John Kirby, announced on Friday that the treasury will apply the new designation in the coming days, putting it in the same category as Italian mafia groups and Japanese and Russian organized crime.
Continue reading...Poland says lives will be lost because of Berlin’s inaction, as summit breaks up without progress over Leopard 2s
Germany has declined to take a decision on whether to give Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine at a special international summit, prompting frustration in Kyiv and a warning from Poland that lives could be lost because of hesitation in Berlin.
It had been hoped in Europe and the US that Germany would at least allow Leopards owned by countries such as Poland and Finland to be re-exported, but despite days of pleading, Berlin’s newly appointed defence minister said no final decision had been taken.
Continue reading...Checkpoints have sprung up and armed police flood the streets in the restive city where dozens of civilians were killed last year
Protesters say they fear Iran’s security services may be planning an assault in the city of Zahedan – the site of a deadly attack on civilians last year – as reports emerge that there are thousands of armed police on the streets.
Fifteen checkpoints have been put up in the past week across the city, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, and several people have been detained by security forces.
Continue reading...Eight have been charged with murder over death of Ken Lee, but none can be identified under Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act
The family of the Toronto man allegedly killed by teen girls in a “swarming” attack have denounced “flaws” in the criminal justice system, criticizing the opacity surrounding youth cases involving serious crimes.
Eight teenage girls have been charged with murder over the death of Ken Lee, who was repeatedly stabbed at a plaza near the main rail station in Canada’s largest city in the early hours of 18 December. Three of the girls are 13, three are 14 and two are 16.
Continue reading...Dmitry Mazepin’s vessels, both called Aldabra, went missing within weeks of each other last summer
Italian authorities are on the hunt for a Russian oligarch after two of his luxury yachts that were seized under EU sanctions mysteriously disappeared from a port in Sardinia.
A public notice informing Dmitry Mazepin, the billionaire owner of a mineral fertiliser company, of the penalties against him over the alleged illegal removal of the vessels has been issued by the town hall of Forte dei Marmi, the Tuscan coastal resort where the oligarch owns a home.
Continue reading...Relatives denounce transnational Ternium over case of lawyer Ricardo Lagunes and Indigenous leader Antonio Díaz Valencia
Relatives of two missing Mexican environmentalists are pointing the finger at a transnational mining company which they claim is responsible for environmental destruction and violence in the rural community, and may have links to the criminals who abducted their loved ones.
Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca, a renowned human rights lawyer, and Antonio Díaz Valencia, leader of the Aquila Indigenous community in the state of Michoacán, were last seen on Sunday evening after attending an anti-mining community meeting.
Continue reading...Peruvians speak up about inequality as President Dina Boluarte declares state of emergency in Lima
Daniel, 32, an indigenous mine worker from the city of Abancay in the southern-central Apurimac province, did not participate in the mass protests that swept over Peru in 2020, after president Martín Vizcarra was ousted.
“But I did take part this time, in my town, to support my people, Indigenous people, who have been treated like garbage for centuries by the ‘elites’.”
Continue reading...WUC claimed UK unlawfully failed or refused to investigate cotton imports from Xinjiang
The World Uyghur Congress has said it is disappointed to have lost a legal challenge against UK authorities for not launching a criminal investigation into the importation of cotton products manufactured by forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province but would continue to fight for accountability.
The WUC took the home secretary, HM Revenue and Customs and the National Crime Agency (NCA), to the high court, claiming an unlawful failure or refusal to investigate imports from Xinjiang, allegedly home to 380 internment camps used to detain Uyghurs and people from other Muslim minorities.
Continue reading...Influencer and self-professed misogynist in custody after arrest on suspicion of human trafficking and rape
A court in Bucharest has ruled that Andrew Tate must remain in preventive custody until at least 27 February while an organised crime investigation continues into the former kickboxer, influencer and professed misogynist.
The court on Friday agreed to a request by the country’s organised crime agency, Diicot, to extend Tate’s detention, along with that of his brother Tristan and two Romanian female suspects, one a former police officer.
Continue reading...Spokesperson says three trucks carrying supplies for 800 people have headed to scene of intense fighting
A UN humanitarian convoy has reached an area close to the town of Soledar in east Ukraine, where some of the fiercest fighting in the country has taken place in recent weeks.
“Our colleagues in Ukraine have just reached government-controlled areas close to Soledar in eastern Donetsk oblast,” Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva. “This is the first interagency convoy to reach this area since the war began.”
Continue reading...Trip to examine country’s rights record derailed as meetings with government officials also cancelled
A high-profile trip by two senior UK parliamentarians to Kazakhstan to examine its human rights record has almost immediately run into trouble as they were denied access to a jailed opposition leader who is the focus of the visit.
The former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald and the former justice secretary Robert Buckland were not permitted to meet the head of the unregistered Democratic party of Kazakhstan, Zhanbolat Mamai, or senior Kazakh diplomats.
Continue reading...Germany yet to make a decision on supply of Leopard tanks; Gen Mark Milley says not to expect Russian forces to be ejected this year. This live blog is now closed
Here are some of the latest images from the war in Ukraine to be sent to us over the news wires.
A quick snap from Reuters here that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has held a phone call with his counterpart from Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The immediate read-out is that they discussed energy cooperation.
Continue reading...