World news | The Guardian

Animal rights group suggested replacing the famous marmot with vegan cake to forecast the end of winterPennsylvania's governor, Josh Shapiro, is claws out in a dispute with animal rights organization Peta over Groundhog Day, pushing back against activists who suggested that the world-famous marmot Punxsutawney Phil should be replaced with a cake.Punxsutawney Phil headlines the yearly Groundhog Day festival in this small Pennsylvania town. The mythos surrounding this event maintains that this woodchuck can predict whether spring will start early, depending on whether he sees his shadow when exiting his nest. Continue reading...

Assault by the Rapid Support Forces in city of Omdurman also leaves more than 150 people woundedFighters with the opposition Rapid Support Forces have attacked an open market in the Sudanese city of Omdurman, killing 54 people.

Secretary of defense gave information about the military aircraft that collided with the passenger plane, killing 67Top US officials have said the military helicopter that collided with a passenger jet over the Potomac River on Wednesday was on a training mission for evacuating members of government in the event of a catastrophe or attack.The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, told Fox News that the helicopter was performing a continuity of government" drill designed to help pilots rehearse in ways that would reflect a real world scenario". Hegseth declined to go further, saying he didn't want to get into anything that's classified". Continue reading...

Meant to lend credibility to his nomination to head HHS, the letter is signed by some doctors disciplined for not following Covid guidelinesA letter submitted to the US Senate that states it was sent by physicians in support of Robert F Kennedy Jr's nomination as secretary of health and human services includes the names of doctors who have had their licenses revoked or suspended, or who have faced other disciplinary actions, the Associated Press has found.The letter was meant to lend credibility to Kennedy's nomination, which has faced strenuous opposition from medical experts due to his two decades of anti-vaccine activism. Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a medical doctor who boasts on his official website of an effort he created to vaccinate 36,000 children against hepatitis B, expressed hesitancy about Kennedy's nomination and is seen as a key vote. Continue reading...

James McMurdock, who did not publicly disclose before election his conviction 18 years ago, meets party vetting standardsA Reform MP who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend 18 years ago will not be suspended and would pass the party's new vetting process, the party's deputy leader has said.Richard Tice has defended James McMurdock's assault on his ex-girlfriend as a mistake" and said his fellow MP was doing brilliantly". Continue reading...

Trump's pick to lead national intelligence has upset foreign policy hawks by not condemning the NSA whistleblowerA smooth path to the pinnacle of America's intelligence pyramid was never in the cards for Tulsi Gabbard.Dogged by a catalogue of eyebrow-raising past statements about Russia, Ukraine and Bashar al-Assad, accusations of parroting Kremlin talking points, and a lack of experience in intelligence (not even having sat on a relevant congressional committee), Gabbard was always a counterintuitive choice to sit atop the 18 US spy agencies and their roughly 70,000 employees. Continue reading...

Investigation first published by the Guardian proved volunteers at 2022 Black Lives Matter protest were unarmedThe chief of police in Portland, Oregon, acknowledged this week that the force had misled the public about a deadly attack on traffic-safety volunteers before a Black Lives Matter protest in 2022, by wrongly telling the media that the gunman had been confronted by armed protesters".In fact, as a visual investigation by the research group Forensic Architecture first published by the Guardian last year showed, the traffic-safety volunteers at the 19 February 2022 protest were unarmed, and trying to de-escalate the rightwing gunman when he opened fire. Continue reading...

Latest anti-immigration agenda pushes to strip in-state tuition rates from tens of thousands of college studentsIt was a week in which two of Ron DeSantis's flagship culture war crusades - education and immigration - collided. And it did not end well for Florida's hard-right Republican governor.Alongside a revolt by previously loyal lawmakers upset by DeSantis's power grab" in trying to write and impose immigration law, he also found himself under fire from tens of thousands of undocumented college and university students furious at his push to strip them of in-state tuition rates. Continue reading...

Mourners applaud while member of the Nolans pop group is carried in a pink coffin as sisters and celebrities pay tributeFans of the singer Linda Nolan have gathered as her funeral took place in Blackpool.People applauded as a hearse, carrying a pink glittery coffin lined with flowers, arrived at St Paul's church in the Lancashire town. Continue reading...

David Fisher of Westfield, Indiana, and son Felix rescued man who had fallen in after trying to rescue dogIn an extreme instance of life imitating art, an author of children's books about a rope-wielding hero reportedly used his jump ropes to save both a dog and a young man from drowning after they fell into an ice pond in Indiana.Those exploits in December by David Fisher - who also jumps rope professionally - recently earned him recognition as a hero from the municipal government of Westfield, as the Indiana television news station WRTV told it. Continue reading...

Guerrilla protest against low-traffic neighbourhood is latest backlash against newly-elected councilKatie Sullivan points to the middle of a busy junction in east Bristol where she sat for four hours in the cold last week to stop council contractors installing a bus gate. It was the third time local people had come out en masse to prevent the rollout of a livable neighbourhood" trial backed by the Green-led city council.We're furious the council is doing this to us," says Sullivan, who lives nearby. [The scheme] doesn't solve the problem [the council] wants it to solve... the imposition on people's lives is huge." Continue reading...

Artist's fascination with string is focus of show opening next week with works not seen beyond private collectionsFor more than 60 years, Barbara Hepworth's Winged Figure has loomed over London's Oxford Street, hanging off the side of its John Lewis store. Made of aluminium and incorporating slender rods, it is one of dozens of string" sculptures the Cornwall-based artist created during her five-decade career.Unlike Winged Figure, many of these works have never been publicly displayed. That is about to change as they go on show in a London gallery in the first ever dedicated exhibition on Thursday. Continue reading...

Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32 and originally from Hungary, were last seen on CCTV near harbour on 7 JanuaryThe body of a second woman has been found in the search for two missing sisters who went missing in Aberdeen last month.Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32 and originally from Hungary, were last seen on CCTV near the Dee at Aberdeen harbour early in the morning on 7 January, walking towards a path along the river. Continue reading...

Outage comes on HMRC's deadline day for settling self-assessment tax returns and a pay day for many workersA serious IT glitch has left some Barclays customers locked out of their accounts throughout the night and almost 24 hours on from the bank's initial outage.Barclays has apologised to customers and said it was currently facing intermittent errors" with its payment system. We're working to fix this as quickly as possible," it said. Continue reading...

Experts say it is inevitable government will let English local authorities exceed 5% cap if they are likely to go bustMinisters are under pressure to allow cash-strapped English local authorities to increase council tax by as much as 25% to prevent them becoming bankrupt.Experts said it was inevitable that the government would give the green light to some of the most financially constrained local authorities exceeding a 5% cap to prevent them from issuing section 114 notices that indicate they are rapidly going bust. Continue reading...

About two dozen Justice Department employees involved in Capitol riot cases sacked and demand issued for list of FBI officersThe Trump administration has fired a group of Justice Department prosecutors involved in the 6 January criminal cases and demanded the names of FBI agents involved in those same investigations so they can possibly be ousted.The jobs of about 24 employees at the US attorney's office in Washington were terminated late on Friday, said a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel issues. Continue reading...

New safety regulations have led SMEs to stop sales to bloc and Northern Ireland while they work out how to comply

Incident reveals Russia's maritime presence in the area is in a state of disrepair and disarray, argue western sourcesA fire onboard a Russian spy ship off the coast of Syria has underlined the poor state of the Russian navy as its toehold in the Mediterranean hangs in the balance, analysts and western security services say.The 55-year-old Kildin got into trouble off the Syrian coast last Thursday, when flames and thick black smoke could be seen billowing from its funnel and it hoisted two black balls up its mast, signifying that the crew no longer had control of the vessel. Continue reading...

Legal action has begun to remove the tenants after the 80-acre site was sold to be turned into a healing retreatLunch around the huge sycamore and oak table in the farmhouse kitchen of the off-grid Brithdir Mawr community in the Preseli mountains of west Wales is a warm, gentle affair.Members of the housing co-operative share soup made from leeks and potatoes grown in the gardens, served with crumbly goat's cheese from its own herd, all washed down with mugs of mountain spring water. Continue reading...

Townsville warned of very serious and dangerous event', with flooding likely to continue into middle of next week for state's north

Immigration minister says such conduct must be nipped in bud' as lawyer referred to office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner for consideration

The 37-year-old was charged after police allegedly found him using a marker to write on a wall in the city's eastern suburbs

Samoa's prime minister says US withdrawal from Paris climate agreement is very disappointing' and puts the survival of Pacific countries at greater riskLeaders and environmental advocates in the Pacific have expressed alarm over Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and freeze foreign aid, warning the moves will accelerate the existential threats they face as nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.The Paris agreement is the world's main effort to address the impacts of the climate crisis. Trump has called it unfair" and a rip off". Continue reading...

The coalition government will be led by the conservative New Flemish Alliance party's Bart De WeverFive Belgian parties struck a coalition deal on Friday to form a new government headed by the Flemish conservative Bart De Wever, after more than seven months of tortuous negotiations.The agreement paves the way for De Wever to become the first nationalist from the Dutch-speaking Flanders region to be Belgian premier - although in recent years he has backed off on calls for it to become an independent country. Continue reading...

Victims in the crash included figure skaters, a group of friends traveling to hunt and the flight's pilots and crew

US secretary of state to visit region amid concern over Trump threat to take back' canal and tensions over ChinaMarco Rubio, the US secretary of state, will travel to Central America this week on a five-country tour that will focus on limiting migration to the United States, curbing Chinese influence in the region and on securing Donald Trump's ambitious goal of reasserting US control over the Panama canal.Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic from Saturday to Thursday this week, meeting with the presidents of each. It is the first time in more than a century that a secretary's first official visit abroad will be to Central America. Continue reading...

Dr Margaret Carpenter faces felony charges in state that has had near-total abortion ban since fall of Roe v WadeA New York doctor was indicted by a Louisiana grand jury on Friday for allegedly prescribing an abortion pill online in the deep south state, which has one of the strictest near-total abortion bans in the country.Grand jurors at the district court for the parish of West Baton Rouge issued an indictment against Dr Margaret Carpenter; her company, Nightingale Medical PC; and the mother of a minor who was allegedly provided with the abortion pill, according to a New Orleans public radio station. All three were charged with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, a felony. Continue reading...

Firefighters believe Palisades fire started from small blaze that may have reignited due to hurricane-force windsAs Los Angeles grapples with the aftermath of the devastating fires that killed dozens and laid waste to entire neighborhoods, the potential causes of the disasters are beginning to come into focus.The siege of wildfires, sparked amid powerful Santa Ana winds earlier this month, created chaos around the city for weeks. They scorched around 60 sq miles (155 sq km) of the city, destroying the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods, and killed at least 29 people. Preliminary estimates of the economic losses have exceeded $250bn. Firefighters have only recently managed to achieve near containment of the fires, and residents begin returning to what remains of their communities, looking for answers. Continue reading...

White House has claimed goods shipped from Canada and Mexico to the US would face a 25% levy starting Saturday

British-Israeli Emily Damari was taken hostage on 7 October 2023 and says Hamas denied her medical treatment after shooting her twiceThe freed British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari spoke to Keir Starmer on Friday and told the prime minister Hamas held her in facilities belonging to the UN refugee agency Unrwa, her mother, Mandy, has said.Damari, 28, who was released 12 days ago, after more than 15 months in captivity in Gaza, with two fingers missing, also told Starmer that Hamas had denied her access to medical treatment after shooting her twice. Continue reading...

Hundreds gather at Rafah crossing after Donald Trump says people from Gaza will accept being moved to Egypt and Jordan because we do a lot for them'Yarden Bibas, one of the hostages announced to be released by Hamas on Saturday, was taken on 7 October, with his wife, Shiri Babas, and their two sons, four-year-old Ariel and 10-month-old Kfir - the youngest hostage taken that day.Yarden is believed to be the only family member still alive. Continue reading...

Kemi Badenoch expected to appear at party's London conference, where wealthy donors have been invited to evening drinksThe Conservatives are fighting back in an attempt to stem the loss of high-value donors amid a shift in funders towards Nigel Farage's Reform UK party.The party's leader, Kemi Badenoch, is expected to appear at the Conservatives' London conference in Westminster on Saturday, where wealthy party donors say they have been invited to evening drinks. Continue reading...

Since the council declared itself bankrupt, and bin workers went on strike, the city's streets have become clogged with bin bags and fly-tippingAs he walks through the streets of Small Heath in east Birmingham, Gerry Moynihan threads as if he is tackling an obstacle course, avoiding piled-up bin bags, dumped cars and fridges, fly-tipped furniture and discarded nitrous oxide canisters that clutter the pavements.Residents across the city have raised alarm at the growing level of litter and fly-tipping, which they say has worsened since the Labour-run city council declared itself effectively bankrupt in 2022, and even more so since bin workers started strike action this month in a dispute over roles being scrapped to save money. Continue reading...

Appeal court rules that Mr Justice Williams was misguided and wrong to anonymise three judges connected to caseThe judge who decided that Sara Sharif should live with her father who went on to kill her can be named after a court of appeal ruling.Sara was murdered by Urfan Sharif and his wife, Beinash Batool, in August 2023, less than four years after the designated family judge for Surrey made the decision. Continue reading...

Low pressure strengthens to tropical cyclone status in Indian Ocean, while European windstorm season rages onA compact and stationary area of low pressure brought a sustained period of heavy rain to southern parts of Madagascar this week, with weather stations at Taolagnaro and Toliara recording five-day rainfall totals of 178mm and 196mm respectively, with a peak 24-hour total of 93mm at Toliara.This area of low pressure strengthened to tropical cyclone status on Tuesday and was given the name Elvis. Although southern Madagascar experienced gusty winds owing to the storm, Elvis's primary impacts on land were the result of the persistent rainfall. As of 9am on Thursday, Elvis contained maximum sustained winds of 40 knots and was tracking south-south-east, with no further effects on land expected before the storm undergoes extratropical transition by Sunday. Continue reading...

After Ariel Bombara claimed WA police ignored repeated warnings her father was dangerous and had guns, eight officers now face disciplinary action

Increase in January of 0.1% on previous month but annual rate slows to 4.1%, says Nationwide

Victoria police say Yarraville man, 21, is accused of vandalism on Flinders Street station clock and other prominent locations

Exclusive: Researchers say poverty and special educational needs are main reason - but equality campaigners urge caution

Federal court file indicates Buttrose, Anderson and ABC chief content officer communicated on 19 December before Lattouf was taken off air on 20 December

Teenagers face lifelong trauma from untreated chronic pain while children as young as four waiting 18 months, say physiotherapistsChildren in the UK are suffering irreversible harm" and lifelong consequences as a result of unacceptable" delays in accessing physiotherapy, experts have warned.Teenagers face lifelong trauma from untreated chronic pain while children as young as four are waiting 18 months for critical treatment, according to a survey of paediatric physiotherapists. Continue reading...

Claimants say tech giant's actions have led publishers receiving less in ad revenue, but company says there is intense' market competition

Sovereign citizens, conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors want to stir the pot' with federal election coming, says AEC

The announcement comes one week after another major festival, Splendour in the Grass, also cancelled this year's edition

Grammy award-winning singer's presence eclipsed key testimony about the 2021 street shootingThe most important testimony at the trial of the rapper A$AP Rocky got second billing for a second day as superstar Rihanna sat quietly in the audience.Rihanna, A$AP Rocky's partner, appeared at his Los Angeles trial again on Thursday, sitting between his sister and mother. Continue reading...

The Oscar-nominated star of Netflix's musical made racist and Islamophobic remarks in several tweets from 2020Emilia Perez star Karla Sofia Gascon is under fire after old tweets uncovered a range of troubling opinions on subjects including Islam and George Floyd.The Spanish actor, who recently became the first ever openly transgender person to receive an acting nomination at the Oscars, has since deleted a number of tweets after users, including writer Sarah Hagi, uncovered them. Variety and the Hollywood Reporter have since reported the news and translated older posts. Continue reading...

Israel freed 110 Palestinians in exchange for three Israelis and five Thai nationals held in GazaAs the line of white buses drew closer to the West Bank city of Ramallah at dusk, their most notorious passenger stood at the window of one of the buses and waved. Skinny in his grey Israeli prison tracksuit, his head shaved, Zakaria Zubeidi lifted two fingers to make a peace sign and gestured at jubilant crowds.The 49-year-old, a former leader of a Palestinian militant group jailed for attacks that killed several Israelis, was among 110 Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for three Israelis and five Thai nationals held by Palestinian militants in Gaza. The prisoners' release was delayed by Israeli officials, who expressed dismay at the chaotic scenes in Gaza that accompanied the Israelis' transfer to the custody of the Red Cross. Continue reading...

Steve Samson given whole-life order and Gemma Watts at least 30 years after killing and dismembering 38-year-oldA couple who killed a woman and dumped her dismembered body in different parts of south London have been jailed for murder.Steve Samson was out of prison on a life licence for the murder of a taxi driver in 1998 when he and his partner, Gemma Watts, killed Sarah Mayhew, 38, at his flat in Sutton last spring. Continue reading...

Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on American Airlines plane that crashed near Washington DC, among six members of the Skating Club of Boston

President scapegoats diversity and inclusion initiatives while addressing air traffic disaster that left 67 dead