Category Archives: World News

Washington Post chief announces job cuts – and refuses to answer questions

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Publisher Fred Ryan described as ‘embarrassing’ after walking out of meeting following revelation that up to 250 jobs could be lost

Turmoil at the Washington Post has intensified after a contentious town hall meeting on Wednesday in which the newspaper’s publisher, Fred Ryan, astounded staffers by announcing substantial job cuts to come, then quit the meeting, refusing to answer questions.

“This is embarrassing, this is embarrassing,” one staffer was heard saying as Ryan made his hasty exit, according to video footage posted on social media.

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Inquiry launched into claims SAS soldiers killed Afghan civilians

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MoD concedes to longstanding demands for statutory inquiry into allegations dating back to 2010

Ministers have announced a statutory judge-led inquiry into allegations of more than 50 summary killings by SAS soldiers in Afghanistan, a decision made after years of reports that elite British troops killed civilians in cold blood.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Andrew Murrison, the minister for defence people, said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would concede to longstanding demands for an “independent statutory inquiry” after years of dismissing the idea. The inquiry will cover the period from mid-2010 to mid-2013.

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Fears of full-blown Israeli-Palestinian conflict grow after bloodiest year since 2005

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Surge in violence either side of the ‘green line’ has led people to wonder if a third intifada is on the cards

Late on Sunday night, like almost every other night in Jenin, the fighting started. The Israeli army said it entered the occupied West Bank city to arrest three suspected Palestinian terrorists and militants responded by throwing firebombs and opening fire.

According to two members of her family, 16-year-old Jana Zakaran ventured up to the roof of her home when gunfire erupted nearby to bring her cat inside to safety. When Zakaran’s father went to look for her, he found her dead in a pool of blood, the cat by her side.

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Irish soldier killed on UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon

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Convoy of two armoured utility vehicles travelling to Beirut came under small arms fire, Ireland’s defence forces said

An Irish peacekeeper has been killed and another seriously wounded in a gun attack after a hostile crowd surrounded Irish members of the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.

The incident happened on Wednesday night when a convoy of two armoured utility vehicles with UN markings passed near the village of al-Aqbieh, just outside the force’s area of operations in a strip along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.

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China’s return to wildlife farming ‘a risk to global health and biodiversity’

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Post-pandemic relaxation of restrictions could weaken animal protection and pose a hazard to public health, say experts

China appears to be weakening its post-Covid restrictions on the farming of wildlife such as porcupines, civets and bamboo rats, which raises a new risk to public health and biodiversity, warn NGOs and experts.

Before the pandemic, wildlife farming was promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich. But China issued an outright ban on hunting, trading and transporting wildlife, as well as the consumption as food, after public health experts suggested the virus could have originated from the supply chain.

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Fiji election: opposition leader disputes results as vote count continues

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Sitiveni Rabuka calls for calm, while his claims of irregularities are rebuffed by election supervisors

Fiji’s opposition leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, has alleged irregularities in voting data while calling for calm, as counting continued in the country’s national election.

Provisional results had the opposition People’s Alliance party hovering in the mid to low 40s and incumbent prime minister Frank Bainimarama’s FijiFirst party in the mid-20s four hours after polls closed. The results were taken offline for a number of hours and, when they returned, the results had flipped.

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Celebrations on the Champs-Élysées as France fans hail ‘magnificent game’

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Excitement builds for final against Argentina as spectators, some draped in French and Moroccan flags, praised play of both teams

Amid a cacophony of beeping car horns, fireworks, and people hanging from car windows waving flags, cheering football fans poured on to Paris’s Champs-Élysées on Wednesday night to celebrate France beating Morocco to reach the World Cup final, hoping it would become the first country in 60 years to retain the title.

“We’re in the final!” yelled Romain, 16, who had high school the next day but was planning a late night celebrating. “When France won the World Cup in 2018, I was 12 and couldn’t really celebrate in the streets,” he said. “It feels brilliant tonight, but facing Argentina will be close, nail-biting.”

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Russia faces ‘critical shortage’ of artillery shells, says UK defence chief

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Tony Radakin said Moscow’s ability to conduct ground operations in Ukraine is ‘rapidly diminishing’ as a result

Russia faces a “critical shortage” of artillery shells and Moscow’s ability to conduct ground operations in Ukraine is “rapidly diminishing” as a result, Britain’s armed forces chief has said.

Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of defence staff, told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank on Wednesday that the Kremlin had only planned for a short period to subjugate Ukraine, and has instead found itself embroiled in a conflict lasting nearly 10 months.

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Channel deaths: desperate call from boat raised alarm for rescue operation

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Skipper of fishing vessel tells how his crew spent two hours pulling 31 people from the freezing water

Four people died and more than 40 were rescued after a desperate call to a charity warned that a boat carrying asylum seekers including children had capsized in the Channel on Wednesday morning.

An unidentified man on the sinking vessel, in a recording obtained by the Guardian, asked at 2.53am for the alarm to be raised to save his family who were in the icy waters.

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says uncle murdered in Ethiopia

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WHO director-general says he is ‘not in good shape’ after learning Eritrean troops killed his uncle in Tigray

The head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that Eritrean troops “murdered” his uncle in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former Ethiopian minister who comes from Tigray, has previously been a vocal critic of Ethiopia’s role in the conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.

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Meta faces $1.6bn lawsuit over Facebook posts inciting violence in Tigray war

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Legal action backed by Amnesty alleges hateful posts inflaming war in northern Ethiopia were allowed to flourish on platform

Meta has been accused in a lawsuit of letting posts that inflamed the war in Tigray flourish on Facebook, after an Observer investigation in February revealed repeated inaction on posts that incited violence.

The lawsuit, filed in the high court of Kenya, where Meta’s sub-Saharan African operations are based, alleges that Facebook’s recommendations systems amplified hateful and violent posts in the context of the war in northern Ethiopia, which raged for two years until a ceasefire was agreed in early November. The lawsuit seeks the creation of a $1.6bn (£1.3bn) fund for victims of hate speech.

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Peru declares 30-day state of emergency amid protests at president’s arrest

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Measure will suspend free movement over Christmas holidays as supporters of ousted Pedro Castillo take to the streets

• What is happening in Peru and why are people so angry?

Peru’s new government has declared a 30-day national state of emergency to quell violent demonstrations which have shaken the country following the ousting and arrest of President Pedro Castillo a week ago.

The measure announced on Wednesday suspends the right to gather and move freely across the entire country – and comes just before the Christmas holidays when people typically travel extensively to visit family.

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‘You could see the panic’: how the Channel small boat incident unfolded

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Experts said lessons appeared to have been learned from previous incidents as teams scrambled into action after dinghy capsized

The emergency call came through at 2.53am. “Please help me bro, please, please, please. We are in the water. We have a family.”

The unidentified man, on a stricken dinghy, used WhatsApp to contact the French NGO Utopia 56, a humanitarian association, which works to support migrants in the camps in northern France.

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Goldman Sachs bankers brace for hefty cut to bonuses

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Bonus pool could be slashed by up to 40%, in possibly the lender’s largest cut to payouts since the financial crisis

Goldman Sachs bankers are reportedly at risk of having their bonus pool slashed by up to 40%, in what could be the lender’s largest cut to payouts since the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank is still in the process of deciding the size of its bonus pools for 2022, but the prospective cut could mean its 3,000 investment bankers endure the most significant drop in variable pay among their peers, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news.

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Republican who urged Trump to declare ‘Marshall’ law only regrets misspelling

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Text from Ralph Norman to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, urged president to declare martial law

A Republican who urged the Trump White House to declare martial law to stop Joe Biden taking office has only one regret: that he misspelled “martial”.

The text from Ralph Norman of South Carolina to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, was given to the January 6 committee by Meadows and revealed by Talking Points Memo.

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Bipedalism in humans may have come from foraging in treetops, research suggests

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Walking on two legs may not have been linked to environmental shifts, as previously thought

The ancestors of humans may have begun moving on two legs to forage for food among the treetops in open habitat, researchers have suggested, contradicting the idea that the behaviour arose as an adaptation to spending more time on the ground.

The origins of bipedalism in hominins around 7m years ago has long been thought to be linked to a shift in environment, when dense forests began to give way to more open woodland and grassland habitats. In such conditions, it has been argued, our ancestors would have spent more time on the ground than in the trees, and been able to move more efficiently on two legs.

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Greek MEP at centre of Qatar corruption inquiry has hearing postponed

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Eva Kaili awaits bail decision as lawyer says prison strike stopped her attending court

The Greek MEP at the centre of a corruption scandal engulfing the European parliament will have to wait in prison until next week to find out whether she will be released on bail pending a trial.

The Greek Socialist MEP Eva Kaili is one of four suspects arrested last week in connection with a major police investigation into cash for influence involving Qatar’s government.

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Revealed: MEP in prisoner resolution row made undeclared Bahrain visit

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European parliament due to vote on Thursday on resolution calling for release of Bahraini activist

A senior MEP is facing questions over trips to Bahrain and his support for a “one-sided” resolution on a political prisoner from that country that echoes the talking points of the authoritarian Gulf state.

Tomáš Zdechovský, a centre-right Czech MEP, who chairs the European parliament’s Bahrain friendship group, was found by the Guardian to have made an undeclared visit to the country in April 2022, where he met Bahrain’s chamber of commerce.

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US ‘has no expectation’ fighting in Ukraine will stop in winter; Russian rockets hit administration building in Kherson – as it happened

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White House spokesperson says war in Ukraine will continue ‘for some time’; no one reported hurt as two floors of central building damaged. This blog is now closed

The Kyiv city administration says another drone has been shot down, bringing the total number of Shahed drones downed in this morning’s attacks to 11.

In a post on Telegram, the administration said that air alerts were still in place.

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