The move, welcomed by UN, will allow thousands of people living in camps to support themselves and their families
Thailand is setting a global precedent this month by giving refugees permission to work in the country in an effort to tackle aid cuts and its own labour shortages.
More than 87,000 refugees living in nine refugee camps along Thailand’s border with Myanmar have been totally reliant on handouts of food and foreign aid.
Continue reading...Kosovo is an outlier in the region, whose other leaders say ‘looking for places to dump immigrants’ is evidence the UK is in ‘a very dark place’
Kosovo has become the first country to indicate it will accept Britain’s refused asylum seekers as part of government plans to set up “return hubs” in third countries.
Albin Kurti, the prime minister of Kosovo, said he “wants to help the UK” and confirmed discussions were taking place with officials from the UK, the Times reports. The plans would seek to send people whose asylum claims had been turned down to foreign detention centres once they had exhausted all avenues of appeal.
Continue reading...Defence secretary says UK will play ‘anchor role’ in US-led civil military coordination centre
British troops have been sent to Israel to help monitor the ceasefire in Gaza after a request from the US.
The defence secretary, John Healey, announced the deployment of a small number of planning officers, including a senior commander, at an event on Monday night. He said the UK would play an “anchor role”. Ten days ago the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the UK had “no plans” to send soldiers to Gaza.
Continue reading...Police continue to search for the criminal gang behind the brazen robbery targeting France’s crown jewels
The financial loss from France’s most dramatic heist in decades has been put at nearly €90m as the head of the Louvre prepared to face difficult questions over how thieves were able to steal priceless jewellery in broad daylight.
As police continued to search for the criminal gang behind the brazen robbery on Sunday, the Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told the broadcaster RTL that the museum’s curator had estimated the losses at about €88m (£76m).
Continue reading...Historic case over bribery and witness tampering has gripped nation and soured conservative strongman’s legacy
An appeals court has overturned the conviction of the former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe for bribery and witness tampering in a historic case that gripped the South American country and tarnished the conservative strongman’s legacy.
Uribe, 73, has denied any wrongdoing. He was sentenced to 12 years of house arrest in August following a nearly six-month trial in which prosecutors presented evidence that he attempted to influence witnesses who accused the law-and-order leader of having links to a paramilitary group in the 1990s.
Continue reading...Former president organised stage-managed departure from his Paris home before becoming first French postwar leader to be jailed
The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been jailed in Paris, after a court sentenced him to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
France’s rightwing president between 2007 and 2012 is the first former head of an EU country to serve time in prison, and the first French postwar leader to go behind bars.
Continue reading...Legal teams are midway through a hearing over whether one vote truly swayed an election in a Montreal suburb
The case of a single vote which determined the outcome of a federal election in Canada risks sending the “disastrous message” to voters that “some votes count more than others”, says the lawyer of a former MP as a court considers whether to void the controversial election and hold a new vote.
Legal teams in Quebec are midway through a three-day hearing over whether a single vote – and an administrative error – truly swayed a recent election in a suburb north of Montreal.
Continue reading...Former French president will reportedly be held in isolation and has a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo for company
Perhaps France’s most fabled jail, La Santé – where the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a five-year term for criminal conspiracy to raise campaign funds from Libya – is the last remaining prison inside the Paris city limits.
Located in the southern Montparnasse district of the capital, it opened in 1867 and was the scene of at least 40 executions, the last in 1972. Partially closed for renovation in 2014, the prison reopened five years later and houses more than 1,100 inmates.
Continue reading...Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the few places in the world without the insects
Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes the country more hospitable for insects.
The country was until this month one of the few places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica.
Continue reading...Air breathed by people in the city categorised as ‘severe’ in quality after fireworks contribute to thick smog
Delhi awoke to a thick haze on Tuesday, a day after millions of people celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali with fireworks, marking the beginning of the pollution season that has become an annual blight on India’s capital.
Those in the most polluted city in the world once again found themselves breathing dangerously toxic air that fell into the “severe” category on Tuesday morning.
Continue reading...Pause on move to freeze preferential trade pact comes amid scramble to shore up fragile ceasefire
The EU has been criticised for pausing sanctions against Israel’s government in response to Donald Trump’s peacemaking efforts in the Middle East, as the fragile ceasefire came under threat.
After meeting EU foreign ministers on Monday, the European foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, announced a pause on efforts to suspend preferential trade with Israel and sanctions against people responsible for fuelling the conflict on both sides.
Continue reading...Myanmar's military moved in to tackle a major online scam operation near the Thailand border, state media reported
Myanmar’s military has raided a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media has reported.
According to a report in Monday’s Myanma Alinn newspaper, Myanmar’s army raided KK Park, a well-documented cybercrime centre, as part of operations starting in early September to suppress online fraud, illegal gambling, and cross-border cybercrime.
Continue reading...The tornado killed one construction worker on a building site, injured 10 others and left four in critical condition
A tornado tore through districts north of Paris on Monday, toppling three construction cranes that killed one person and left four others with critical injuries, authorities said.
The town of Ermont, about 20km (13 miles) north-east of Paris was worst hit by the sudden twister that caused damage across about 10 districts.
Continue reading...Expected reduction in contributions by wealthy countries likely to cost millions of lives and billions in lost growth
Slashed contributions from wealthy countries to an anti-malaria fund could allow a resurgence of the disease, costing millions of lives and billions of pounds by the end of the decade, according to a new analysis.
The fight against malaria faces new threats, including extreme weather and humanitarian crises increasing the number of people exposed, and growing biological resistance to insecticides and drugs, the report warns.
Continue reading...Nicholas Rossi, who fled US, receives first of two sentences after being convicted of raping two women in Utah in 2008
A judge has sentenced a Rhode Island man who appeared to fake his death and flee the United States to avoid arrest of at least five years in prison for rape.
The sentence handed down Monday for Nicholas Rossi, 38, was the first of two he faces after being convicted separately in August and September of raping two women in northern Utah in 2008. He is scheduled to be sentenced in November for the second conviction.
Continue reading...Report says snapped cable between cabins was substandard and city’s other funiculars should fix risk before reopening
The funicular that crashed in Lisbon killing 16 people in early September had a faulty cable, the official inquiry said on Monday as it recommended the city’s vehicles stay out of service until their safety can be confirmed.
The accident, which saw the picture-postcard 19th-century Elevador da Glória hurtle into a building after careering off the rails, shocked the Portuguese capital and laid bare fears over the safety of the popular yet ageing tourist attraction.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president will seek to win security guarantees at ‘coalition of the willing’ meeting before any US-Russia talks
Volodmyr Zelenskyy will travel to London on Friday for a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” before an expected summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Hungary, amid mounting European disquiet over Ukraine’s exclusion from the Budapest meeting.
Posting on social media, Zelenskyy said the aim of the London visit was to win security guarantees for Kyiv and there would be “many meetings and negotiations in Europe” this week.
Continue reading...Justice minister says ‘we have failed’ after thieves take seven minutes to steal priceless jewels from museum
The French government is under increasing pressure over museum security as police continued to search for thieves who took seven minutes to steal priceless jewels from the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum.
“What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of Paris, get people up it in several minutes to grab priceless jewels, and give France a terrible image,” the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, told France Inter radio on Monday.
Continue reading...Volunteers defy their government and public opinion in China to risk their lives for an adversary of Beijing’s main geopolitical partner
In a war that has been characterised by merciless attacks on civilians, one of the worst took place on 8 July 2024. Russian missile strikes killed at least 43 people in cities across Ukraine in one of the deadliest days of the war last year. One of the most shocking blows was to the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in central Kyiv, which reduced the country’s largest paediatric clinic to rubble.
Tim, 43, was delivering aid on the outskirts of Kyiv when he heard a missile fly overhead. A short while later, he saw the news on his phone that the children’s hospital had been hit. Along with a British friend, the Chinese national, who asked to be referred to by just his English name, rushed to the scene to help with the recovery efforts. “Seeing the severed limbs, some of them belonging to children, I started crying,” the father-of-two said, tears in his eyes at the memory. “I thought about the kind of anger that Chinese people have. Once it’s ignited … It’s intense. I decided to join the army.”
Continue reading...GDP rises by 4.8% year on year between July and September, down from second-quarter growth rate of 5.2%
China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in a year in the latest quarter amid a trade war with the US and long-running woes in its property market.
Fragile domestic demand has left China’s economy heavily reliant on manufacturing and trade, at a time of mounting tensions with the Donald Trump administration.
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