Julian Khater pleaded guilty to using chemical spray to attack the Capitol police officer who died on 7 January
A man who admitted using chemical spray to assault Brian Sicknick on January 6, a day before the Capitol police officer died, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison in a Washington court on Friday.
Julian Khater, 33, from Pennsylvania, was also fined $10,000.
Continue reading...Dina Boluarte calls for vote to be held in December after weeks of anti-government protests since overthrow of former president
Peru’s beleaguered president, Dina Boluarte, has urged Congress to bring forward elections scheduled for April 2024 to the end of this year as anti-government protests and blockades intensify across the country.
Boluarte, who has refused to step down despite furious nationwide protests calling for her to resign, said on Friday that elections should be brought forward to December in an attempt to ease the seven weeks of unrest that has claimed 57 lives – mostly civilians killed in clashes with the security forces.
Continue reading...Health secretary of Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, says 59 children in hospital, 45 of them from the Yanomami people
Dozens of Indigenous children suffering from malnutrition and acute diseases have been hospitalised in northern Brazil, with relatives in hammocks holding their emaciated frames in scenes that underscore the gravity of a public health crisis.
The health secretary of Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, said on Friday that 59 Indigenous children were currently at the only pediatric hospital in the state, 45 of them from the Yanomami people. Eight were under intensive care.
Continue reading...Watchdog report follows years-long investigation into strike that killed 43 civilians in Damascus suburb
Investigators from the global chemical weapons agency have found the Syrian regime responsible for a poison gas attack that killed 43 people in a suburb of Damascus in 2018, leaving victims choking to death in the basement of a home.
In a report nearly five in the making, the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found the canisters carrying poison gas had been dropped by a Syrian air force helicopter over Douma – then one of the last opposition strongholds near the Syrian capital.
Continue reading...Palestinian Authority suspends security cooperation after nine people were killed by Israeli defence forces
Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories remained tense but calm after an exchange of rocket fire between the Gaza Strip and Israel triggered by a deadly raid in the West Bank.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) entered the Jenin refugee camp, in the north of the occupied territory at about 7am (5am GMT) on Thursday acting on intelligence suggesting a cell linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad was planning to carry out imminent attacks, the army said in a statement.
Continue reading...Alleged actions of man, 74, were an attempt to force Spanish authorities ‘to abstain from supporting Ukraine’
A 74-year-old Spanish man accused of sending six letter bombs and explosive devices to targets including the Ukrainian and US embassies and the office of the Spanish prime minister last year has been denied bail because of the risk that he could flee to Russia.
Police in northern Spain arrested the man on Wednesday in connection with the devices, the remainder of which were sent to the defence minister, an airbase near Madrid, and a weapons company that manufactures the C90 rocket launchers that have been donated to Ukraine.
Continue reading...Work depicting mythological hero and apparently dating back to Roman imperial period found near Appian Way
An ancient Roman statue of Hercules has been discovered during repairs to the sewerage system underneath a park in Rome.
The statue, which apparently dates back to the Roman imperial period (27BC to AD476), emerged from the ground around the second mile mark along the ancient Appian Way, a famed historic road.
Continue reading...Towns and villages in east and south hit by new barrage; Ukraine claims to have killed 109 Russians in eastern Donetsk battle. This live blog is closed
Stefano Sannino, secretary general of the European Union’s European external action service, has defended German and US provisions of military equipment to Ukraine, and criticised Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for waging a war on Nato and the west.
Associated Press report that Sannino, speaking at a news conference in Tokyo as part of an Asia-Pacific tour, said Putin had “moved from a concept of special operation to a concept now of a war against Nato and the west.”
Continue reading...Vĕra Jourová says the bloc has a moral duty and the project would not necessarily mean a new station
A senior EU official has called for a “Radio Free Russia” to help independent Russian media distribute content in their home country and evade heavy censorship.
Vĕra Jourová, the European Commission vice-president in charge of values and transparency, said the EU had a moral duty to support democratic ideals in Russia. “We should not give up on the Russian society … regardless of how few or how many want to hear the real news, not Kremlin propaganda,” she said.
Continue reading...Presence of key distribution centres on list of more than 250 properties raises questions about grip on supply chain links
The Chinese government owns a vast network of UK real estate via offshore secrecy jurisdictions such as Luxembourg and the Isle of Man, the Guardian can reveal, raising questions about Beijing’s grip on links in the UK supply chain.
Disclosures made as part of a new government register of property owned via offshore entities show that China’s investment division owns more than 250 properties across Britain via dozens of companies. They include distribution centres that are key to the flow of food and goods in multiple regions of the UK including the south-west and south-east of England and the Midlands.
Continue reading...CJ Davis says department will release ‘alarming’ video of officers, now charged with murder, beating black man who died days later
The chief of the Memphis police warned on Friday morning that the video of officers beating Tyre Nichols is “perhaps worse” than the infamous footage of Rodney King being attacked by police in Los Angeles more than 30 years ago.
The police department intends to release the video to the public on Friday evening.
Continue reading...Politicians accused of stigmatising Muslims and migrants after man with machete entered two churches in Algeciras
Conservative and far-right Spanish political leaders have been accused of seeking to smear and stigmatise Muslims and migrants after a suspected Islamist terrorist attack on two churches in the southern city of Algeciras in which one man was killed and four other people were injured.
On Wednesday evening, a man with a machete entered the Andalucían city’s San Isidro church and seriously wounded a priest there before going to the nearby Nuestra Señora de La Palma church and killing its sacristan, Diego Valencia. Three other people were injured in the violence.
Continue reading...Birmingham-based Soffe family still fighting for compensation after fire in Gulf state left Elizabeth with life-threatening burns
A Birmingham family have revealed the distress they have endured in a six-year legal battle in Qatar to gain compensation for the severe injuries experienced by their youngest daughter when they lived in the Gulf state.
Elizabeth Soffe, now eight, received life-threatening burns as a baby in a fire at her family’s villa in Al Waab, near the country’s capital, Doha, in 2014.
Continue reading...Actor was attempting to stop six-tonne vehicle from hitting his relative after getting out without applying the emergency brake
Jeremy Renner’s snowplough accident happened as he was attempting to save his nephew and was hit by the vehicle after failing to apply the emergency brake.
According to an incident report from the Nevada sheriff’s office, obtained by Variety, Renner had used the snowplough to tow his nephew’s truck out of the snow, and after getting out without setting the brake, he attempted to stop the six-tonne plough sliding towards his nephew.
Continue reading...Klein Hollandia discovery ‘opens up fascinating chapter in rich, shared maritime history between UK and Netherlands’
• Shipwrecked: how tech is revealing world of 3m lost vessels
A remarkably preserved shipwreck known only as the “unknown wreck off Eastbourne” has finally been identified as the 17th-century Dutch warship Klein Hollandia which was involved in all the big battles in the second Anglo-Dutch war.
Its identity has been confirmed after painstaking research by archeologists and scientists after its initial discovery in 2019, having lain 32 metres (105ft) underwater on the seabed since 1672.
Continue reading...Behind in the polls, the former PM has resorted to a no-holds-barred attack on his presidential rival, Petr Pavel
The former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš faces a potentially career-defining reckoning this weekend when voters deliver their verdict in a presidential election that polls indicate he could lose heavily.
The combative Babiš, who together with his ally the outgoing president, Miloš Zeman, has dominated the central European country’s politics over the past decade, is up against a decorated military figure, Petr Pavel – a retired general and former Nato second-in-command – in a head-to-head runoff that many observers see as pivotal to the future of Czech democracy.
Continue reading...But reporting from inside China during the lunar new year period suggests rates of infection and fatalities exceeding official reports
China’s health authorities have said the Covid wave is past its peak, with rapid decline in both severe cases and deaths in hospitals, but experts remain wary of the government’s official data.
According to China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), the number of critically ill patients in hospital peaked in the first week of January, then rapidly declined by more than 70%. The number of deaths also reached its highest level that week, the data said.
Continue reading...Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza on Friday morning, to which Israel responded with missile strikes
Washington has raised concern over the escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence after Israeli forces on Thursday killed nine Palestinians during a West Bank raid in the deadliest single day in the territory in decades.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he feared the security situation could worsen after two rockets were fired from Gaza early on Friday and Israel responded with airstrikes on the territory.
Continue reading...Police protesting the killings of fellow officers by gangs stormed the airport and surrounded the prime minister
Disgruntled police officers have rampaged through the streets of Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, blocking roads and forcing their way into the country’s main airport where they briefly prevented prime minister Ariel Henry from leaving. Later there were reports of heavy gunfire near his official residence.
Police are protesting the killings of officers by Haitian gangs. At least 10 officers have been murdered in the past week; another is missing and one more has severe bullet wounds, according to the Haitian national police.
Continue reading...Police chief says 80 officers will be immediately dispatched to subways and stations as attacks bring city to ‘crisis point’
Toronto police has announced plans to deploy more officers on the city’s public transport system as a transit workers’ union warned that a string of random attacks on passengers had brought Canada’s largest city to “crisis point”.
The city’s police chief, Myron Demkiw, said on Thursday that 80 officers would be immediately dispatched to subways and stations “to enhance the safety and security” of transit users. Earlier in the day, police arrested one person following reports of teens shooting at a passenger with a BB gun.
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