Kremlin spokesperson says supply of arms to Kyiv from west has led to Nato becoming more directly involved in the conflict
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine over the news wires.
This is Martin Belam in London taking over the live blog from my colleague Samantha Lock in Sydney. You can email me at martin.belam@theguardian.com
Continue reading...Doctors at several hospitals cited a conscience clause to avoid treating the teenager who has a mental disability
Poland’s health minister has weighed in on a high-profile rape case, saying it was “unacceptable” that a mentally disabled 14-year-old girl struggled to get a legal abortion.
The case, in which doctors at several hospitals used a conscience clause to avoid carrying out the procedure, has sparked renewed calls to ease the Catholic country’s abortion laws, which are among Europe’s most stringent.
Continue reading...Officers are reviewing a dossier accusing Sayed Ataollah Mohajerani, who lives in London, of encouraging terrorism
The Metropolitan police is being urged to crack down on Iranian terrorism in the UK by prosecuting a former senior Iranian government official accused of advocating the fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie.
The Metropolitan police has been studying a legal dossier accusing Sayed Ataollah Mohajerani, who lives in Britain, of encouraging terrorism contrary to the 2006 Terror Act. He denies the claims.
Continue reading...Online betting firm finds best practices not followed in some areas, including anti-money laundering processes
Online betting group 888 has removed its chief executive and suspended VIP customer accounts in the Middle East amid an internal investigation into a failure to follow anti-money laundering processes.
Shares in the Gibraltar-headquartered group, which last year acquired William Hill’s operations outside the US in a £2.2bn deal, plunged by more than a quarter as investors fuelled 888’s biggest drop in share price since 2006. Its market value has slumped more than 70% over the last year.
Continue reading...Proposed use of tax credits follows pressure to respond to Biden’s $369bn green subsidy scheme in US
The EU is stepping up its green subsidy race with the US through plans to loosen state aid rules on tax credits for renewable energy projects.
European policymakers have been under pressure to respond to the US president Joe Biden’s $369bn (£298bn) Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to encourage renewables investment in everything from electric cars to wind turbines.
Continue reading...Paul Signac’s Le Port de La Rochelle was lifted from a museum in 2018 and found a year later by Kviv police in an unconnected raid
A Ukrainian man has gone on trial in France accused of masterminding the theft of a €1.5m (£1.3m) painting discovered in a house in Kyiv a year after it disappeared from a museum in Nancy.
The work by Paul Signac, Le Port de La Rochelle, went missing from the Musée de Beaux-Arts in Nancy, north-east France, in 2018.
Continue reading...Ingolstadt body identified by family as 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman was later found to be Algerian blogger
A 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman sought out a lookalike on Instagram and murdered her with a friend in order to fake her own death, prosecutors in Bavaria believe.
When the blood-covered body of a young woman was found last August in a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, southern Germany, reports initially identified the victim as Sharaban K, a Munich-based 23-year-old beautician with Iraqi roots.
Continue reading...Sichuan measures aim to encourage more people to have children after population fell for first time in 60 years
A Chinese province of more than 80 million people will lift restrictions on unmarried people having children and remove caps on the number of babies as part of a national drive to increase the country’s birth rate.
Sichuan’s health commission announced on Monday it would allow all people to register births with the provincial government from 15 February. It will also remove limits on the number of birth registrations for any parent.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Rami Ranger faces criticism over ‘deplorable’ comments about Pakistani journalists at the corporation
A Conservative peer has been accused of using “deplorable” and “racially charged language” in a scathing attack on the BBC’s recent documentary about the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.
Rami Ranger, who is already under investigation by the standards commissioners in the Lords, was criticised for comments made about Pakistani journalists at the corporation.
Continue reading...Legislation would force organisations to provide financial records to government with threat of bans for political or security reasons
New legislation proposed by the Venezuelan government to regulate civil society groups would kill the last functioning remnant of the country’s democracy and take it a step closer to a police state, leading NGOs have warned.
The bill passed its first reading in the country’s legislature on Tuesday and, if approved in a second reading, will obligate NGOs to provide the government with all their financial records so that their political agendas and funding can be scrutinised.
Continue reading...Two teenagers and 31-year-old man were subjected to torture including rape and beatings and denied fair trial, says group
The alleged torture of three young Iranian men facing the death penalty has been detailed in a report by Amnesty International that raises deep concerns about the country’s judicial system.
One of the men, Mehdi Mohammadifard, was raped by prison guards and severely beaten, the rights group said. Amnesty said it had learned that Mohammadifard suffered anal injuries and rectal bleeding that required treatment in a hospital outside the prison where he was being held.
Continue reading...Sunday’s attack in Eastern Cape province highlights country’s problems with violent crime
Eight people were killed and three others wounded when gunmen opened fire at a birthday party in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, local officials said.
Continue reading...Fighters of Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion oppose Putin and his strongman Ramzan Kadyrov as they battle with Ukrainian prejudice
For all their efforts fighting for Ukraine in the eastern city of Bakhmut, if the Chechen volunteers’ Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion was a football club it would be Millwall. Nobody likes us, their fans sing, and “we don’t care”, says Tor, 38, with a laugh.
“Once I heard from one Ukrainian: ‘You can do what do you want here in Ukraine, but you will still in our opinion be terrorists and gangsters,’” says the Chechen private, who asked to be identified only by his call sign. “And I said: ‘You know what [is] the difference between me and you, or my nation and yours? We don’t care what Ukrainians think about us, we don’t care what Americans, Russians or British think of us. In truth, we do not care what the Chechens think of us.’ Yeah. We have to do what we have to do, you know.”
Continue reading...Death of Sourour Abouda casts spotlight on treatment of minority ethnic citizens by Belgium’s police
The death of a Belgian-Tunisian woman in police custody earlier this month has been rejected by her family as a case of suicide, while casting a spotlight on the treatment of minority ethnic citizens by Belgium’s police.
Sourour Abouda, a 46-year-old NGO worker, was found dead in a police cell early in the morning of 12 January, after being arrested several hours before. She had been found drunk in the fashionable district of Place Châtelain in Brussels and taken to a police station in the city centre, according to local media reports that have not been officially confirmed.
Continue reading...US secretary of state meets Israel’s prime minister and reaffirms support for two-state solution
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has called for calm after days of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, as he visited Jerusalem for talks with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
A Palestinian man died on Monday after an altercation with Israeli troops, as violence in the region continued to spiral.
Continue reading...Former prime minister’s comments about call to Russian president just before invasion come in new BBC documentary
Boris Johnson has said that Vladimir Putin claimed he could have sent a missile to hit Britain “within a minute”, in a call just before the invasion of Ukraine.
The former prime minister’s comments came in a three-part documentary for BBC Two looking at the conflict in Ukraine and the lead up to Russia’s invasion in February last year.
Continue reading...Actor appeared in two series of the thriller as well as Star Trek: Picard, and was reportedly diagnosed with cancer in 2020
The actor Annie Wersching, best known for playing FBI agent Renee Walker in the TV series 24, has died at the age of 45.
Wersching died on Sunday morning in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer, her publicist told the Associated Press. The type of cancer was not specified.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Letter to home secretary says bill echoes ‘dangerously broad laws’ that result in jailing of protesters
Hongkongers in Britain have called on Suella Braverman to reconsider controversial measures in her public order bill, which they likened to the repressive measures used to crack down on democratic opposition in their home city.
In a letter to the UK home secretary, aspects of the bill were described as “repressive measures that threaten to paralyse entire social movement” and posed a threat to their right to protest in Britain, including against Chinese communist repression in Hong Kong.
Continue reading...At vigil in Neve Yaakov there are calls for reprisals after worst attack by a Palestinian against Israelis since 2008
Sifting through construction debris on the traffic intersection in occupied East Jerusalem where seven Israelis were killed by a Palestinian gunman on Friday night, three emergency response volunteers wearing plastic gloves and hi-vis vests scraped up handfuls of blood-stained earth, placing it in a bag.
After sunset on Saturday, the end of Shabbat, they had arrived equipped with torches, trowels and putty knives. Their task was to ensure every drop of spilled blood was collected for proper Jewish burial.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Film-maker Miriam Segal says article made her feel compelled to tell story of anti-Putin journalist murdered in 2006
The Guardian’s obituary on Anna Politkovskaya, the anti-Putin journalist whose murder in 2006 shocked the world, has inspired a British film-maker to make a movie about her.
As Miriam Segal reached the end of the article, she felt compelled to make a film about a seemingly “normal woman who literally couldn’t turn away”, who “braved the Chechen killing fields and put her own life in jeopardy to expose Russian state corruption”.
Continue reading...