Category Archives: World News

Russia-Ukraine war live: Germany to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, reports say — as it happened

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Media reports say German chancellor Olaf Scholz has decided to send the vehicles and allow other countries to send their German-made tanks

Ukraine’s state broadcaster Suspilne has posted the following summary update to the Telegram messaging app, saying:

In the morning, Russian troops shelled Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region: residential buildings were hit, large-scale fires broke out.

In occupied Crimea, the Russian FSB [Federal Security Service] searched the homes of six Crimean Tatars. They were detained. Their relatives do not know where they are, Crimean Solidarity reports.

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UK government ‘let lawyers bypass sanctions’ to help Putin ally sue journalist

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Documents seen by Open Democracy show UK firm got approval to engage with Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin

British lawyers were given government dispensation to bypass sanctions in order to help Yevgeny Prigozhin, the controversial Russian businessman and Wagner group founder, sue a journalist, according to documents made available to the website Open Democracy.

The documents concern a libel case brought by Prigozhin against Eliot Higgins, the founder of the investigative group Bellingcat, in 2021. The revelations will raise further questions about the abuse of UK libel law by the super-rich.

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Yevgeny Prigozhin: the hotdog seller who rose to the top of Putin’s war machine

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Russian officials have said the Wagner group founder was on a plane that crashed outside Moscow. Some of those who knew him describe – what had been up to his abortive rebellion this summer – an extraordinary journey from prison to power

  • This article was first published on 24 January 2023

At the height of Russia’s first, covert invasion of eastern Ukraine, in summer 2014, a group of senior Russian officials gathered at the defence ministry’s headquarters, an imposing Stalin-era building on the banks of the Moskva River.

They were there to meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, a middle-aged man with a shaven head and a coarse tone whom many in the room knew only as the person responsible for army catering contracts.

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Zelenskiy ramps up anti-corruption drive as 15 Ukrainian officials exit

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Key officials have been dismissed or resigned since Saturday, with six facing corruption allegations

A number of Ukrainian officials have been dismissed or resigned over the last four days amid corruption allegations as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, attempts to take a zero-tolerance approach to the issue.

Fifteen senior officials have left their posts since Saturday, six of whom have had corruption allegations levelled at them by journalists and Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities.

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More journalists killed in Latin America and Caribbean than Ukraine in 2022

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Committee to Protect Journalist reports region accounted for almost half of the 67 deaths worldwide

More journalists were killed in Latin America and the Caribbean than in any other part of the world last year, including the Ukraine war zone, the press watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said.

In a report released on Tuesday, the group said that, globally, at least 67 journalists and media workers had been killed in 2022, nearly double the 2021 figure of 45.

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Campaigners criticise Japan firm selling whale meat from vending machines

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Kyodo Senpaku opened ‘stores’ at two locations in Tokyo after successful trial

A Japanese whaling company has sparked an angry response from animal rights campaigners after it started selling whale meat from vending machines in an effort to boost consumption.

Kyodo Senpaku, whose vessels led Japan’s whaling fleet during its controversial expeditions to the Southern Ocean, opened its first kujira (whale meat) “stores” at two locations in Tokyo this month after a successful trial late last year.

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Poland requests German permission to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine

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German defence minister says he expects quick response, as application increases pressure on chancellor Olaf Scholz

The Polish government has requested Berlin’s permission to send its Leopard tanks to Ukraine after the German government appeared to say it would not block their export.

The submission of the application by Warsaw increases pressure on German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to make a swift decision after he avoided the issue at an international meeting of defence ministers on Friday.

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Yazidi women kept as slaves by IS appeal to UN to intervene in their fight for compensation

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Lawyers demand support from Australia for five victims of Khaled Sharrouf in test case for international law on torture survivors

Five Yazidi women held as slaves by an Islamic State fighter are appealing to the UN to intervene in their case for compensation in a move lawyers hope will help fix a “lawless” global system that is failing torture survivors.

The women, captured in Iraq in 2014, were taken to Syria as slaves by IS fighters, including the Australian citizen Khaled Sharrouf, who was pictured standing next to his young son holding a severed human head.

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China’s shrinking population: what it means for the rest of the world – expert panel

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From climate change to women’s rights, what effect will the demographic time bomb at the heart of China’s economy have?

China has entered a period of “negative population growth”, an important moment in the history of the country. As recently as 2019, the UN projected the population would peak in 2031-32, but despite major government efforts to reverse the trend, China has now begun what is expected to be a long period of population decline.

The ongoing shift in demographics could have a profound effect on everything from how the economy operates to Xi Jinping’s legitimacy. The Guardian spoke to experts about the implications for everything from climate change to the Chinese Communist party.

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WHO urges action after cough syrups linked to more than 300 child deaths

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Deaths in the Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan due to kidney injury associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said

The World Health Organization has called for “immediate and concerted action” to protect children from contaminated medicines after a spate of child deaths linked to cough syrups last year.

In 2022, more than 300 children - mainly aged under 5 - in the Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan died of acute kidney injury, in deaths that were associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said in a statement on Monday.

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Mike Pompeo dismisses ‘faux outrage’ over murder of Jamal Khashoggi

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Former Trump secretary of state claims US media depicted Washington Post columnist as ‘a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward’

The former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has dismissed the indignation prompted by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi as “faux outrage” – and cast doubt on whether the Washington Post columnist was a genuine journalist at all.

In his new book, Pompeo says that Khashoggi – who was killed by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018 – was not “a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward martyred for bravely criticising the Saudi royal family”.

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Labour will reconnect ‘tarnished UK’ with European allies, says Lammy

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Shadow foreign secretary to mark out diplomatic mission of a future Labour government in landmark speech

Labour will make closer cooperation with Europe across security, trade and foreign policy a central plank of a plan to reconnect “a tarnished UK” with its closest allies, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, will say in a landmark speech designed to mark out the diplomatic mission of a future Labour government.

Addressing the thinktank Chatham House on Tuesday, he will say the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has not been given a clear set of goals post-Brexit. “Ideological leadership and reckless choices have left Britain increasingly disconnected from its closest allies, an economy in crisis, and a tarnished international reputation.”

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Monterey Park shooting death toll rises to 11, including dance hall manager

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California officials name two of those killed, while friends and colleagues say much-loved ‘Mr Ma’ was among dead

The death toll in a mass shooting at a ballroom dance studio in California has risen to 11 people, after health officials said that one of the people wounded in the shooting had died.

According to friends and colleagues, the beloved manager of the dance hall was among the 11 victims of Saturday’s gun massacre, which took place during a lunar new year celebration in Monterey Park, a majority Asian American community in the Los Angeles area.

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Brazilian police name alleged ‘mastermind’ behind murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

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Police chief says Rubens Villar Coelho, whose nickname is Colômbia, ordered the murders of the British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert

Brazilian police have named the alleged mastermind behind the murders of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon last year.

Rubens Villar Coelho, whose nickname is Colômbia, was first arrested on separate charges last July – one month after the two men were murdered in the Javari valley region of the Amazon. He was released in October but was rearrested last month for breaking his bail terms.

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Ukraine deputy minister sacked for alleged theft of $400,000

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Infrastructure deputy Vasyl Lozinskyi detained after allegedly siphoning money from winter aid budget

Ukraine’s deputy infrastructure minister, Vasyl Lozinskyi, has been detained and dismissed from his post for allegedly stealing $400,000 (£320,000) intended for purchasing aid, including generators, according to Ukraine’s state anti-corruption detectives and prosecutors.

After the news emerged, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, vowed that the old ways of corruption would not return to Ukraine.

“I want this to be clear: there will be no return to what used to be in the past, to the way various people close to state institutions or those who spent their entire lives chasing a chair [a state position] used to live,” said Zelenskiy in his nightly address on Sunday without specifically mentioning the case.

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Mexico’s ex-security chief took ‘millions in bribes’ from cartel, US court hears

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Trial begins in Brooklyn court for Genaro García Luna, who is accused of protecting the violent Sinaloa cartel

The trial of a former top Mexican law enforcement official got under way in a Brooklyn court on Monday, one of the most significant drug trafficking cases since the prosecution of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán more than four years ago.

Genaro García Luna, who ran Mexico’s version of the FBI before being appointed to lead the country’s security ministry – and therefore its war on drug trafficking groups – is accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for granting protection to the violent Sinaloa cartel.

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Poland ups pressure to send German-made tanks to Ukraine

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PM Mateusz Morawiecki says Poland will ask for Germany’s go-ahead but answer is of ‘secondary importance’

Poland has reiterated that it is ready to send tanks to Ukraine without Germany’s consent, as pressure builds on Berlin to supply the heavy weapons that Kyiv has been calling for.

The Polish prime minister said his government would seek permission from Berlin to send its German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but described that consent as of “secondary importance”.

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Five charged over second alleged far-right plot against German government

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Four men and a woman accused of planning to abduct health minister and overthrow government

Five Germans have been charged with treason over an alleged far-right plot to overthrow the government that included plans to abduct the health minister, prosecutors have announced.

The four men and a woman were arrested in recent months over the plot, with the health minister, Karl Lauterbach – unpopular among far-right groups because of anti-Covid measures – confirming he was targeted.

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Herculaneum fresco among looted relics returned to Italy from US

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Italy celebrates return of 60 artefacts, some dating back to first century BC, with total value of more than $20m

Italian art investigators have exhibited a fresco that survived the destruction of the ancient Roman beach town of Herculaneum in the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius only to be plundered from its ruins and smuggled to the US, among 60 relics returned to home soil.

The total value of the works, some of which date back to the first century BC, looted from Italy over the past five decades and eventually traced to the US is estimated at more than $20m (£16m). The relics, which were displayed during a press conference in Rome on Monday, include a terracotta Etruscan kylix, bronze busts, ancient vases and kitchenware.

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Japan’s ageing population poses urgent risk to society, says PM

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Fumio Kishida says country may be unable to function if birthrate does not rise

Japan’s low birthrate and ageing population pose an urgent risk to society, the country’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has said, as he pledged to address the issue by establishing a new government agency.

Birthrates are declining in many developed countries, but in Japan the issue is particularly acute because it has the world’s second highest proportion of people aged 65 and over, after the tiny state of Monaco, according to World Bank data.

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