Sister Andrée was born in 1904 and survived an outbreak of Covid-19 in 2021 in her nursing home that killed 10 other residents
The world’s oldest known person, French nun Lucile Randon, has died aged 118, a spokesperson has said.
Randon, known as Sister Andrée, was born in southern France on 11 February 1904, when the first world war was still a decade away.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro supporters are also accused of armed criminal association and violent attempt to subvert democratic state of law
The office of Brazil’s prosecutor-general has presented its first charges against some of the thousands of people who authorities say stormed government buildings in an effort to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in the October election.
The prosecutors in the recently formed group to combat antidemocratic acts have also requested that the 39 defendants who allegedly ransacked the Brazilian congress building be imprisoned as a preventive measure, and that 40m reais ($7.7m) of their assets be frozen to help cover damages.
Continue reading...Death toll from Saturday’s Russian missile attack on a residential building in the Dnipro rises to 45
Rescue workers have this morning found the body of a child in the rubble of the high-rise residential building struck by Russia at the weekend, according to Ukrainian officials.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the office of president of Ukraine, posted an update to Telegram to say:
At 09.46am, the body of one dead child was found from under the rubble of a destroyed residential building on the 4th floor. A total of 41 people died (including four children), 79 people were injured (including 16 children), and 39 people were rescued (including six children).
Continue reading...Italian investigators discover designer clothes and expensive shoes inside ‘normal’ two-storey building
The mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the world’s most-wanted criminals who had spent 30 years on the run, lived in a modest apartment in western Sicily in his final months as a free man, Italian investigators said.
Denaro, 60, who was apprehended as he came out of a well-known private clinic in Palermo, lived in a small apartment inside a two-storey yellow building in the centre of the town of Campobello di Mazara, in the province of Trapani, in the heart of his territory.
Continue reading...Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers had never carried a verification tick mark before the launch of Twitter Blue
Twitter account verifications bought by the Taliban appear to have been removed, after many expressed outrage that the social media platform had given its blue check marks to Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers.
Twitter previously only gave blue “verified” check marks to accounts that were considered “active, notable and authentic accounts of public interest”. But since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, users can buy them from the Twitter Blue service for a fee – an option at least two officials of the Taliban government in Afghanistan had exercised.
Continue reading...Airline to continue aggressive post-Covid expansion, offering 10% more seats in the UK this summer compared with 2022
Ryanair took record numbers of bookings in January, the budget airline has announced, passing 2m sales in a weekend for the first time.
Its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said there was no sign of a slowdown in demand despite the economic uncertainty.
Continue reading...Almost two-thirds of sharks and rays living on world’s coral reefs at risk, with 14 of 134 species reviewed critically endangered
Almost two-thirds of sharks and rays that live around the world’s coral reefs are threatened with extinction with potentially dire knock-on effects for ecosystems and coastal communities, according to new research.
Overfishing was the main cause of the declines over the past half a century, with larger sharks and rays being particularly hard hit.
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Continue reading...One defendant says he and unnamed accomplice broke into the Green Vault and took valuables in November 2019
Three members of a notorious criminal gang have confessed to stealing priceless 18th-century jewels from a German state museum at their trial in Dresden.
Rabieh Remmo, one of six defendants, told the regional court in the eastern city that he and an unnamed accomplice broke into the Green Vault in a brazen night-time raid in November 2019.
Continue reading...Kyiv officials ask allies at World Economic Forum to step up military supplies to defeat Russia
Ukraine has urged world leaders to intensify efforts to remove Vladimir Putin’s troops from its soil as the country’s war with Russia dominated the first full day of the gathering of the global elite in Davos.
With the war clouding the outlook for the global economy in 2023, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Yuliia Svyrydenko, urged the country’s allies to step up supplies of military hardware so that Russia could be more quickly defeated.
Continue reading...Boris Pistorius is surprise pick for role as he has a low profile in Germany and is little known internationally
A veteran but low-profile politician is to be appointed as Germany’s new defence minister, the government has announced, filling the role at a crucial time when the country is under acute pressure to increase its commitment to Ukraine, especially by allowing it the use of tanks.
Boris Pistorius, 62, who has been the interior minister of the northern state of Lower Saxony for the past decade, will face his first major task on Friday when western allies meet at the US military’s Ramstein base in south-west Germany to discuss providing Kyiv with more weapons and equipment.
Continue reading...Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ‘submitted resignation from assigned positions, quit job and retired’, say reports
Vietnam’s president has resigned after days of rumours he was about to be sacked as part of an anti-corruption drive that has led to several ministers being fired, according to state media reports.
Nguyen Xuan Phuc has “submitted his resignation from his assigned positions, quit his job and retired”, the VNA said.
Continue reading...Video purportedly shows 26-year-old editor, who accuses police of forcing her and friends to sign blank arrest warrants
A Chinese woman has accused police of forcing her and friends to sign blank arrest warrants and detaining them in secret locations over their attendance at a protest vigil in Beijing last year.
A video, purported to be of Cao Zhixin, a 26-year-old editor at Peking University Press, began spreading online on Monday. In it, Cao said she and five friends attended a riverside vigil in Beijing on 27 November, to mourn the victims of a building fire in Urumqi. The fire had been linked to the enforcement of China’s strict zero-Covid policy and became a catalyst for vigils and protests.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Charities and activists call on PM to follow through on pledge to allow families to resettle in UK
More than 100 charities and activists are calling on the prime minister to facilitate the resettlement of family members of thousands of Afghans who came to the UK under a government scheme.
The government pledged to resettle family members in the UK but at the moment there is no mechanism for them to do this. Campaigners have accused the government of abandoning Afghans in danger who were promised the right to reunite with family members in the UK.
Continue reading...Toxic pesticides used to eradicate grain-eating quelea may harm the country’s endangered raptors, say conservationists
A drive by the Kenyan government to kill up to 6 million red-billed quelea birds that have invaded farms will have unintended consequences for raptors and other wild species, experts have warned.
The continuing drought in the Horn of Africa has reduced the amount of native grass, whose seeds are queleas’ main food source, causing the birds to increasingly invade grain fields, putting 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of rice under threat. About 300 acres of rice fields have been destroyed by the birds.
Continue reading...The economy grew 3% in 2022, exceeding some forecasts, but still well below China’s official target for the year
China’s GDP expanded at its slowest pace since the mid-1970s bar the Covid-hit 2020 year, as the world’s second-largest economy struggled under tight pandemic restrictions that were abruptly ditched late in 2022.
The economy grew 3% last year, well shy of the 5.5% pace the government had targeted at the start of the year and the 8.1% recorded for 2021. The actual rate though, was better than the 2.7% predicted by the World Bank earlier this month.
Continue reading...Anju Khatiwada joined Yeti Airlines in 2010, four years after her husband died while piloting a plane for the same airline
The co-pilot of the Yeti Airlines flight that crashed on Sunday in Nepal was the widow of a pilot who flew for the same airline, and also died in a plane crash 16 years ago.
In 2010, Anju Khatiwada joined Yeti Airlines, following in the footsteps of her husband. Dipak Pokhrel also flew for the Nepali airline, but died when a small passenger plane he was flying went down minutes before landing.
Continue reading...More than 20 injured in incident involving a truck, after 40 died in two-bus collision in Kaffrine region
A collision between a truck and a bus in northern Senegal has killed 22 people, firefighters have said, a week after a crash between two buses left 40 people dead.
More than 20 people were injured in the latest accident, which occurred on Monday near Sakal in the Louga region, Papa Ange Michel Diatta, a colonel with the national firefighting service, told AFP. Amadou Ba, the country’s prime minister, visited the site, pledging to enforce new rules of the road.
Continue reading...Ben Wallace wants Berlin to allow its Leopard 2 tanks to be re-exported from Nato countries to join British heavy armour
Britain’s defence secretary has called on Germany to release Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine after he confirmed that the UK would send 14 of its own Challenger 2 tanks, the first time a western nation has given its own heavy armour to Kyiv.
Ben Wallace said the UK would allow Ukrainians to start training with the tanks immediately as part of a fresh package of British military aid, unveiled before a western defence ministers’ conference in Ramstein, Germany, on Friday.
Continue reading...Alireza Akbari’s sister and daughter went to cemetery to collect his remains but were told he had already been interred
The Tehran-based family of the executed British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari have been prevented from seeing his body or burying him in the grave in which he had asked to be laid to rest in Shiraz, his birthplace, family members have told the Guardian.
Akbari was executed for spying for M16, charges he vehemently denied and for which there is no substantive evidence, save a confession extracted under torture.
Continue reading...‘Cease and desist’ letter signed by over 650,000 people sent to oil and gas CEOs follows removal of Greta Thunberg from coal protest
Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels, a day after Greta Thunberg was removed by German police from a condemned village atop a massive coal deposit.
In a cease-and-desist letter to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies, youth campaigners accuse them of a “direct violation of our human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, your duties of care, as well as the rights of Indigenous people”.
Continue reading...