António Guterres warns in speech to general assembly that ‘chances of escalation and bloodshed are growing’
The head of the United Nations, António Guterres, has warned that further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict could mean the world is heading towards a “wider war”.
The secretary general laid out his priorities for the year in a gloomy speech to the UN general assembly that focused on Russia’s invasion, the climate crisis and extreme poverty.
Continue reading...‘Battles for the region are heating up’ as Russian forces are located in Donetsk
Russian forces are attempting to tie down Ukrainian forces with fighting in the eastern Donbas region as Moscow assembles additional troops there for an expected offensive in the coming weeks, perhaps targeting the Luhansk region, Ukraine has said.
Weeks of intense fighting continued to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said.
Continue reading...Agreement on food and animal health checks ‘close to being done’, but no progress on trickier issues
EU and UK negotiators have made a breakthrough in reducing checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as part of efforts to resolve the long-running dispute over the Northern Irish protocol.
A senior EU official confirmed to the Guardian that an agreement on food and animal health checks was “close to being done” as part of a deal that would create red and green lanes at Northern Irish ports to differentiate between goods staying in the region and those moving south to the EU’s single market.
Continue reading...Donetsk governor says Russian forces throwing new troops at frontline; António Guterres says ‘prospects for peace keep diminishing’. This live blog is now closed
Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, has proposed his country should provide some 75bn Norwegian kroner (£6.1 bn) in aid to Ukraine over five years.
Speaking at a news conference after meeting opposition leaders, Støre said:
We aim to secure a unified agreement on this in parliament.
Continue reading...President’s centrist group is without a majority as parliament begins debating proposal to raise retirement age to 64
As hundreds of thousands of people prepare to protest again this week against Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the pension age to 64, the French president’s domestic standing is at stake.
Macron, who came to power in 2017 promising a pro-business transformation of France to cut taxes and overhaul the social model and welfare system, has for months been under pressure to give some impetus to his second term in office.
Continue reading...Head of president’s parliamentary bloc seems to confirm reshuffle of Oleksii Reznikov as Russians close in on Bakhmut
Ukraine’s defence minister, under pressure from a corruption scandal, is to be reshuffled into another government job as Russian forces close in on Bakhmut amid heavy fighting, a close ally of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has announced.
The position of Oleksii Reznikov, one of Ukraine’s better-known figures internationally, has been under threat after it emerged the defence ministry paid twice or three times the supermarket price of food to supply troops on the frontline.
Continue reading...Nikos Christodoulides emerges as frontrunner and will face Andreas Mavroyiannis in vote next Sunday
The race to become the eighth president of Cyprus will extend into a second week after the Mediterranean island’s former foreign minister Nikos Christodoulides emerged as the frontrunner but failed to gain enough support to win outright.
The 49-year-old independent will face Andreas Mavroyiannis, a veteran career diplomat backed by the leftist Akel party, in a runoff on 12 February.
Continue reading...Naftali Bennett says Putin also dropped vow to seek disarmament of Ukraine and Zelenskiy agreed to give up on joining Nato
The former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett has said in an interview that Vladimir Putin told him he would not try to kill Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a promise made during a trip to Moscow shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
Speaking on a podcast with the Israeli journalist Hanoch Daum, published on Sunday, Bennett said he received assurance from Putin that the Ukrainian president’s life was not at risk during a secretive visit to the Russian capital last March aimed at mediation during the war’s early days.
Continue reading...More than 100 people fall ill after eating tortilla de patatas dish at well-known Madrid restaurant
Spaniards with a taste for oozing, fleetingly cooked tortilla de patatas have been urged to take care after more than 100 people fell ill with suspected salmonella poisoning from eating the famous egg and potato omelettes at a well-known restaurant in Madrid.
So far, 101 people have become ill – 13 of whom have required hospital treatment – after eating at Casa Dani, a longstanding gastronomic institution in the Spanish capital.
Continue reading...Subsidence from the world’s biggest iron ore mine threatens to swallow up the Arctic town of Kiruna. But what does its relocation mean for the local Sami reindeer herders?
In the far north of Sweden, 125 miles above the Arctic Circle, sits the church of Kiruna, once voted the most beautiful old building in the country. The cosy terracotta-coloured church, with its fairytale rooftop points, is designed to resemble a hut of the indigenous Sami people. It opened in 1912, with almost no religious symbols, and is described by the vicar, Lena Tjärnberg, as “the living room of the community”. But if Kiruna church is to stay the same, it must go.
In 2026, the entire 600-tonne wooden building will be loaded on to trailers and moved to a new spot near the local graveyard. It’s just one large – and technically tricky – piece of a project to move Kiruna to a new home, three kilometres (1.9 miles) east of the old town. Billed as the world’s most radical relocation project, Kiruna is moving because subsidence from the local iron ore mine is threatening to swallow the town. Cracks have already appeared in the hospital; a school is no longer safe for its pupils.
Continue reading...Discovery of Lope de Vega play could lead to other important finds, researchers say
Lost or misattributed works by some of the finest writers of Spain’s Golden Age could be discovered thanks to pioneering AI technology that has been used to identify a previously unknown play by the wildly prolific dramatist, poet, sailor and priest Lope de Vega.
This week Spain’s National Library announced that researchers trawling its massive archive had stumbled upon and verified a play that Lope is believed to have written a few years before his death in 1635.
Continue reading...Oleksii Reznikov insists Kyiv has the ability to hold back Russian forces if new push comes for anniversary of start of invasion
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has revoked the citizenship of several former influential politicians.
“Today, I signed the relevant documents to take another step to protect and cleanse our state from those on the side of the aggressor,” Zelenskiy said during his nightly video address on Saturday.
Continue reading...Three years on, the reality of the split with the EU has changed minds. But dashed hopes could come to haunt Labour, too
Brexit is three years old and less popular than ever. More people are unhappy with Brexit outcomes to date, and pessimistic about the gains to come today than at any point in the Brexit process so far. “Rejoin” has opened up a double-digit lead over staying out in polls asking voters how they would choose in a second referendum on EU membership.
While voters have swung against Brexit before, the current shift is different. Earlier remain gains were driven by abstainers and those too young to vote in 2016 breaking against Brexit and by demographic changes which have slowly pulled the electorate in a pro-EU direction. The vast majority of leave and remain voters have hitherto stood by the choices they made in June 2016. That is now changing, and it is Brexiters who are reconsidering. One in five leave voters now say they would vote to rejoin the EU, while remain switching has stayed much lower. The scales of opinion are being tipped against Brexit by growing doubts among its original supporters.
Continue reading...Arming Ukraine is swiftest path to peace, says UK foreign secretary; Ukraine warns of renewed Russian offensive this month
Helping to arm Ukraine so it can defend itself against Russia is the swiftest path to achieving peace, the British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said, writing in the Times of Malta before a visit on Tuesday to the Mediterranean island.
Ukraine will not use longer-range weapons pledged by the United States to hit Russian territory and will only target Russian units in occupied Ukrainian territory, said Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov.
Ukraine expects a possible major Russian offensive this month, but Kyiv has the reserves to hold back Moscow’s forces even though not all the west’s latest military supplies will have arrived in time, Reznikov said.
Germany’s prosecutor general, Peter Frank, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper his office had collected “hundreds” of pieces of evidence showing war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine.
The former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said Vladimir Putin made him a promise he would not try to kill Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during a trip to Moscow shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
The head of Russia’s private Wagner militia said fierce fighting was continuing in the northern parts of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has been the focus of Russian forces’ attention for weeks. Yevgeniy Prigozhin rejected reports in the Russian media that Ukrainian troops were abandoning Bakhmut, saying: “Fierce battles are going on in the northern quarters for every street, every house, every stairwell.”
The situation on the frontlines in the east of the country was getting tougher and Russia was throwing more and more troops into battle, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Saturday.
The embattled eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut has become “increasingly isolated”, according to the latest assessment by the UK Ministry of Defence. “Over the last week, Russia has continued to make small advances in its attempt to encircle the Donbas town of Bakhmut,” the MoD wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
Ukrainian forces remained in control of the village of Bilohorivka, the Luhansk region governor, Serhiy Haidai, said, adding that the situation there was tense but under control.
Zelenskiy has revoked the citizenship of several former influential politicians. He would not list the names but said they had dual Russian citizenship.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said Putin “has not made any threats against me or Germany” in his telephone conversations with the Russian president, Bild am Sonntag reported. The former British prime minister Boris Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary broadcast last week, said the Russian leader had threatened him with a missile strike that would “only take a minute”. The Kremlin said Johnson was lying.
Price caps on Russian oil probably hit Moscow’s revenues from oil and gas exports by nearly 30% in January, or about $8bn (£7bn), compared with a year before, the International Energy Agency (IEA) chief, Fatih Birol, said on Sunday.
The European Union took another big step toward cutting its energy ties with Russia. In a move that took effect from Sunday, the 27-country bloc banned Russian refined oil products such as diesel fuel and joined the US and other allies in imposing a price cap on sales to non-western countries.
Continue reading...Announcement from Ukrainian president’s office follows Russian statement on 63 of its own soldiers
The head of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, Andriy Yermak, has said that Ukraine has got 116 soldiers back as part of a prisoner of war swap.
Earlier on Saturday, Russia said it had got 63 PoWs back in an exchange.
Continue reading...Leading European politicians have warned that the prime minister’s plan to ditch EU legislation will trigger retaliatory countermeasures, including imposing tariffs on goods
Rishi Sunak’s plan to scrap thousands of EU laws by the end of this year risks triggering a full-scale trade war between the UK and Brussels, senior figures in the European Union have warned.
Letters from leading EU politicians, seen by the Observer, reveal deep concern that the UK is about to lower standards in areas such as environmental protection and workers’ rights – breaching “level playing field” provisions that were at the heart of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement (TCA).
Continue reading...Chris Parry and Andrew Bagshaw died in Soledar area while helping to evacuate people from frontline
The bodies of two British volunteers killed in Ukraine while carrying out a humanitarian evacuation have been recovered, a Ukrainian official has said.
Chris Parry, 28, and his colleague Andrew Bagshaw, 47, who held dual UK and New Zealand citizenship, had been trying to evacuate an elderly woman from Soledar when their car was hit by an artillery shell.
Continue reading...Oxford and Cambridge universities, once given more than £130m a year in total by European research programmes, are now getting £1m annually between them
One of the UK’s most prestigious universities has seen its funding from a large European research programme plummet from £62m a year to nothing since Brexit, new figures show.
The latest statistics from the European Commission reveal that Cambridge University, which netted €483m (£433m) over the seven years of the last European research funding programme, Horizon 2020, has not received any funding in the first two years of the new Horizon Europe programme.
Continue reading...Thirty-year-old Bobi snatched title from US pup in upset; longevity credited to human food and ‘calm, peaceful environment’
It’s a dog’s life for one small US pup this weekend after a European rival essentially stole his bone.
Two weeks ago, Spike, an Ohio-based chihuahua mix rescue dog, was crowned the world’s oldest dog. But two days ago Bobi, a dog that guards livestock in Portugal, grabbed the title faster than a string of sausages, CNN reported.
Continue reading...New $2.2bn US military aid package for Ukraine includes bomb that will double strike range; Zelenskiy vows to hold Bakhmut as long as possible
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