World news | The Guardian

Analysis: UK going further than any other Nato country, which is of high value at a time of great tension say expertsBoris Johnson’s offer of British written security assurances to Sweden and Finland was more than a piece of symbolism designed to nudge the two countries over the line into making a joint application for Nato next week, Swedish security experts said.Although Johnson key guarantee is necessarily a political declaration, as opposed to an international treaty guarantee, the British commitment was of high value at a time of great tension, Anna Wieslander, the Atlantic Council’s northern Europe director said on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Shooting of Marcelo Pecci in front of his wife decried by Paraguayan president as ‘cowardly murder’A Paraguayan public prosecutor who led a string of high-profile cases against organised crime and drug trafficking has been shot dead as he honeymooned on a Colombian beach.Marcelo Pecci married Claudia Aguilera, a well-known journalist, on 30 April and they were spending their honeymoon at a hotel on the Barú peninsula on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Continue reading...

Amanda Blanc says sexism in business has actually got worse after being told she is ‘not the man for the job’The chief executive of the insurer Aviva has hit out at sexism in the industry, saying “unacceptable behaviour” has only increased since she took more senior roles in the sector.Amanda Blanc, who became the company’s first female boss in 2020, published a LinkedIn post thanking people for their support after shareholders made sexist remarks at the company’s annual general meeting on Monday. Investors said Blanc was “not the man for the job” and should be “wearing trousers”. Continue reading...

Johnson signs security pacts with the countries and says assistance may include ‘military means’

Matthew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad allege Ahmed Naser al-Raisi was responsible for abuse in detentionTwo British men who spent time in detention in the United Arab Emirates have testified in Paris that an Emirati security official who is now president of Interpol was responsible for their alleged torture.Matthew Hedges, an academic imprisoned in the UAE for seven months on espionage charges he denies, and Ali Issa Ahmad, who was detained in Dubai for wearing a Qatar football shirt, testified before the investigating judge of the specialised judicial unit for crimes against humanity and war crimes of the Paris tribunal. Continue reading...

Lee Anderson provokes furious response by telling Commons that food banks are largely unnecessaryThe Conservative MP Lee Anderson has been condemned by opposition MPs and campaigners after arguing in the Commons that food banks are largely unnecessary because the main cause of food poverty is a lack of cooking and budgetary skills.The comments by the MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire also prompted veiled criticism from a fellow Tory, Stephen Crabb, the former work and pensions secretary. Continue reading...

Plans to require lobbyists to register their work other countries delayed as key details yet to be worked outPlans to require lobbyists, PR firms and other professionals in the UK to register their work for Russia, China or any other foreign country have been unexpectedly left out of the national security bill published on Wednesday.Insiders said key decisions about what activities would have to be registered had yet to be taken, meaning the foreign agent scheme will have to be introduced via a government amendment to the bill in a few weeks. Continue reading...

Fears grow path is being laid for a military takeover, although this was denied by top defence officialTroops and armoured vehicles have been deployed across the city of Colombo and security officials given orders to shoot on sight anyone deemed to be participating in violence as anti-government protests continued to rock Sri Lanka.The crisis turned volatile earlier this week after pro-government supporters began attacking a camp of peaceful demonstrators who had been protesting against the government and the devastating economic crisis that has engulfed the island of 22 million people. Continue reading...

Unclear if Kremlin will agree to annex captured Ukrainian territory or use threat to put pressure on Kyiv

Money will support projects such as food banks, as church seeks to ‘raise its game in its service to the nation’The Church of England is to pump £3.6bn into its 12,500 parishes over the next nine years in a bid to halt its decline by increasing “mission activity” among young people and disadvantaged communities.The money – a 30% increase in funding from the church commissioners, who look after the C of E’s central assets – will support social action projects such as food banks, and help the church achieve its target to be carbon net zero by 2030. Continue reading...

Immigration investigators told of threats to stop the nightclub operating and ‘there would be a fire’, inquest hears

US spy chief suggests Russia could use nuclear weapons if war continues to stall; Odesa comes under renewed missile attacksUkrainian forces have retaken villages in the Kharkiv region, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his nightly address. The liberation of Cherkaski Tyshky, Ruski Tyshki, Borshchova and Slobozhanske could signal a new phase in the war, Zelenskiy said, while cautioning against expecting “certain victories”.Belarus has said it will deploy special operations troops in three areas near its southern border with Ukraine. The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said Moscow had agreed to help Minsk produce missiles and warned Belarus could “inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy”.The number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war is “thousands higher” than official figures, the head of the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in the country said. The official UN civilian death toll in Ukraine stands at 3,381 as well as 3,680 injured.At least 100 civilians remained in the Azovstal steelworks under heavy Russian fire in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an aide to the city’s mayor said. Ukraine’s Azov Regiment made a plea to the international community for help, saying its soldiers were trapped in “completely unsanitary conditions, with open wounds” and without necessary medication or food.The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, will visit Finland and Sweden on Wednesday as they consider whether to apply for Nato membership. Downing Street said they would discuss “broader security issues”.Ukrainian officials said they found the bodies of 44 civilians in the rubble of a five-storey building that was destroyed in March in Izium, about 120km (75 miles) from Kharkiv.US lawmakers in the House of Representatives have approved more than $40bn more aid for Ukraine. The legislation was due to go the US Senate with hopes high for its passage.Vladimir Putin will “turn to more drastic means” to achieve his objectives in Ukraine, potentially triggering his resort to using a nuclear weapon, the US director of national intelligence has said. Avril Haines told the Senate armed services committee that the Russian president was “preparing for prolonged conflict” in Ukraine and that his strategic goals have “probably not changed”.The UN general assembly has voted overwhelmingly for the Czech Republic to replace Russia on the top human rights body.Ukraine has said it will suspend the flow of gas through a transit point that it says delivers almost a third of the fuel piped from Russia to Europe through Ukraine. GTSOU, which operates Ukraine’s gas system, said it would stop shipments via Sokhranivka from Wednesday, declaring “force majeure”, a clause invoked when a business is hit by something beyond its control, Reuters reported. Russia’s Gazprom said this would be “technologically impossible”.Four Russian regional governors reportedly resigned on Tuesday as the country braces for the impact of economic sanctions. The heads of the Tomsk, Saratov, Kirov and Mari El regions announced their immediate departure from office, while the head of Ryazan region said he would not run for another term.Ukraine has been voted through to the grand final in the Eurovision song contest. At the end of their semi-final performance, the folk-rap group Kalush Orchestra thanked viewers for supporting Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.The number of Ukrainians who have fled their country since Russia’s invasion on 24 February is approaching six million, according to the United Nations. Continue reading...

Non-disclosure agreement lets TSSA obtain injunction on former worker’s claims against general secretaryA trade union has enforced a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to stop a female former employee repeating allegations of sexual harassment against the union’s general secretary.The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) was granted an injunction on Sunday night to prevent a former organiser, Claire Laycock, from breaching a confidentiality clause in a compromise agreement signed in November. Continue reading...

Deaths yet to be accounted for in devastated port city of Mariupol likely to add significantly to total

Lawyers for Coleen Rooney claim loss of data was part of ‘deliberate and calculated’ campaignColeen Rooney has accused Rebekah Vardy of conducting a “deliberate and calculated” campaign to destroy evidence prior to their “Wagatha Christie” libel trial, which got under way at the high court.Rooney’s lawyers claimed potentially important WhatsApp messages involving Vardy had been manually deleted, pointed to an unfortunate incident in which Vardy’s agent accidentally dropped her mobile phone off the side of a boat in the North Sea, and discussed how Vardy’s own IT expert lost the password to a backup of her WhatsApp account. Continue reading...

John Allan also attacks Rishi Sunak’s national insurance rise as he says UK is facing real food povertyThe chairman of Tesco has said there is an “overwhelming case” for a windfall tax on energy companies to help those suffering the most from the cost of living crisis, as some customers have started rationing the amount of food they buy at the supermarket.John Allan said the country was facing “real food poverty for the first time in a generation,” and that people were finding it even harder to mitigate soaring energy costs. Continue reading...

Mistranslations falsely blame Ukrainians for atrocities perpetrated by Russian forces against civilians

Person 11, called as a witness by Roberts-Smith, tells court Ali Jan a threat to Australian troops and legitimately killed

Criminalising coercive control has been on the state’s agenda since the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children in 2020

Fitness coach to explore his parents’ mental health problems in new documentary, Joe Wicks: Facing My ChildhoodJoe Wicks has said he realised the scale of the UK’s mental health crisis when he was inundated with messages from fans during lockdown, saying he would sometimes spend seven hours a day responding to pleas for help.The 36-year-old fitness coach, known as the Body Coach, will explore his parents’ mental health issues in a new documentary, looking at how his mother’s eating disorder and severe obsessive compulsive disorder and his father’s drug addiction affected him as a child. Continue reading...

Giles Cooper-Hall died at Derriford hospital at 16 hours old after overstretched staff failed to carry out checksA baby died after maternity staff repeatedly missed chances to intervene to save his life, an official investigation has found.Giles Cooper-Hall was just 16 hours old when he died after a catalogue of errors in the maternity care of his mother, Ruth Cooper-Hall, at Derriford hospital in Plymouth. Continue reading...

Home secretary attacks ‘specialist lawyers’ as Labour calls delayed plan little more than a press releasePriti Patel has admitted that it will take time to establish the government’s high-profile plan to send people who arrive in the UK without authorisation to Rwanda, amid growing suspicion that it will not solve the migration crisis in the Channel.In a further attack on the legal profession, the home secretary blamed “specialist lawyers” as the main reason for the delays in setting up the scheme. Continue reading...

Locals in two key Sydney seats brave wet weather to cast their votes before 2022 federal election on 21 May. Guardian Australia was there to ask: who and why?

Government to announce new offences to stop protesters from ‘locking on’ to infrastructureBoris Johnson’s government will force through police powers to prevent disruptive yet peaceful protests as one of 38 new bills in Tuesday’s Queen’s speech.In a move to reinstate measures thrown out by the House of Lords in January, the government will announce new offences to stop protesters from “locking on” to infrastructure, extend stop and search powers, and make it illegal to obstruct transport projects.New criminal offences of locking on, and going equipped to lock on to others, objects or buildings – carrying a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine.The creation of a new criminal offence of interfering with key national infrastructure, such as airports, railways and printing presses – carrying a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison and an unlimited fine.Measures to make it illegal to obstruct major transport works, including disrupting the construction or maintenance of projects like HS2 – punishable by up to six months in prison and an unlimited fine. Continue reading...

Son of late dictator wins more than twice as many votes as nearest rival after campaign marred by extensive social media disinformationFerdinand Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, has won a landslide presidential election victory, signalling an extraordinary rehabilitation for one of the country’s most notorious political families.With more than 90% of an initial count concluded, Marcos Jr had almost 30 million votes, more than double the tally of his closest rival, the current vice-president, Leni Robredo, a former human rights lawyer. Continue reading...

Praise for the ‘prince of tennis’ and ‘super scholar’ is targeting the Kooyong community whose votes will be critical on election day

Analysis: Russian leader’s bitter address stands in stark contrast to Zelenskiy’s impassioned message

Analysis: List of expected bills appears shot with contradictions, trying to keep red wall and blue wall onside

Convenience store chain expected to be put into administration as soon as Monday morningMorrisons is poised to beat the owners of Asda in the race to buy McColl’s, the struggling convenience store chain that is expected to be put into administration as soon as Monday morning.The bid from Morrisons is expected to be announced as the preferred bidder for McColl’s, despite an improved offer from EG Group, the petrol forecourts operator owned by the Blackburn-based Issa Brothers, as first reported by Sky News. Continue reading...

Exclusive: PM is told tearing up act could endanger women and girls and damage peace in Northern IrelandTearing up the Human Rights Act would have “dire consequences” including removing obligations to properly address violence against women and girls and destabilising peace in Northern Ireland, more than 50 organisations have warned.In a letter to Boris Johnson, Amnesty, Liberty, the British Institute of Human Rights and others have spelled out the “significant implications” of repealing the act, which is expected to be announced in the Queen’s speech on Tuesday, asking for an urgent meeting to discuss the plans. Continue reading...

Education minister has not addressed the media, has announced no education policy and has ignored repeated requests for interviews

Services across country are patchy with some areas ‘treatment deserts’ when it comes to trauma, say experts

Comedy On Referral will help vulnerable adults in London after successful course in Bristol for trauma survivorsStandup comedy is regularly listed as one of the toughest jobs in the world, featuring heavily in 90% of people’s top 10 fears.But a course helping some of the most vulnerable people in the country by teaching them to be comedians is proving so successful that it is being socially prescribed by NHS trusts and private practices across the country.In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or by email at pat@papyrus-uk.org. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by email at jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org Continue reading...

Survey underlines lasting impact that career breaks or working part-time can have on payoutsHalf of older women fear they will have to keep working beyond the state pension age in order to make ends meet, according to research.As many as 53% of women aged 45 and over surveyed by the older worker advice website Workingwise.co.uk said they were concerned that their pension would not be enough for them to be financially independent in later life. Continue reading...

After two months sheltering in besieged Mariupol, civilians arrived in Ukraine-held Zaporizhzhia exhausted and with few possessions

Restricting access to loans and limits on ‘low value’ courses would hit disadvantaged groups, say leadersUniversities across England have come out against proposals for limiting student numbers and access to loans, describing the plans as likely to crush aspirations and entrench disadvantage.Responding to the government’s consultation, the three main university groups have lined up with the National Union of Students in opposing plans to limit undergraduates taking “low value” courses and stop students from receiving government-backed tuition fee and maintenance loans if they do not have minimum GCSE or A-level grades. Continue reading...

Warning issued over improvised open fires after house set ablaze by man burning timber to keep warmPeople should not try to reduce their energy bills by improvising open fires at home, fire chiefs have warned, after a man in south-west London set fire to his property by burning timber in his living room to keep warm.The man was trying to avoid putting on the central heating in his home, fire investigators said. Continue reading...

Tories claim document published in Mail on Sunday proves Labour leader is guilty of ‘rank double standards’Labour has rejected claims that a leaked planning memo about Keir Starmer’s visit to Durham last year undermined his assertion he did not break lockdown laws, insisting he is “Mr Rules”.The Labour document, published by the Mail on Sunday, shows that an 80-minute dinner with the Labour MP Mary Foy, featuring a takeaway curry, was planned as part of his schedule. Continue reading...

Person 11 to give evidence on allegation by newspapers that Roberts-Smith kicked handcuffed man off cliff before ordering him shot

First Nations leaders call for referendum to ‘do what 1967 didn’t do, which is empower our people’

Workers concerned they will be covering flu-related teacher absences in coming months with no end date for scheme given

Policy will aim to double number of high achievers studying education and include places for qualified professionals to retrain

German chancellor draws parallel with second world war defeat of Nazi dictatorship in TV address

Jagtar Singh Johal has been detained since 2017 and allegedly tortured, accused of helping to fund assassination plotThe UK is under pressure to insist India release Jagtar Singh Johal, a British citizen, after a UN working group ruled he had been arbitrarily detained by India and his detention lacked any legal basis.Boris Johnson apparently raised the case when he met the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, last month and provided a written note of consular cases, but Foreign Office ministers have not confirmed whether they regard his detention as arbitrary. Continue reading...

Sinn Féin has called for debate on Irish unification, but many obstacles exist to a referendum on the issueSinn Féin hailed its first victory in a Northern Ireland assembly election as a defining moment for the British-controlled region and called for a debate on a united Ireland.The party’s president, Mary Lou McDonald, had a simple message for unionists on Saturday, telling them: “Don’t be scared, the future is bright for us all.” Continue reading...

Two thousand Ukrainian troops thought to be trapped inside steelworks after civilian evacuation

Ferdinand Marcos Jr leads polls but analysts point to huge rallies of his opponent and the vice-president, Leni RobredoVoters in the Philippines will go to the polls for a presidential election that pits frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, against a human rights lawyer who has promised a transparent government.Marcos Jr, known as “Bongbong”, whose authoritarian father plundered billions of dollars from the state and presided over rife human rights abuses, has maintained a strong lead in opinion polls in the run-up to Monday’s vote. If elected president, it would mark an extraordinary rehabilitation of one of the country’s most controversial political families. Continue reading...

Pair suspected of killing three Israelis caught outside town of Elad after massive manhuntTwo Palestinians believed to have killed three people in a terrorist attack on Israel’s independence day – the latest incident in the worst wave of attacks in Israel in years – have been apprehended by police after a three-day manhunt.The suspects, identified as As’ad Yousef As’ad al-Rifa’i, 19, Subhi Emad Subhi Abu Shqeir, 20, both from the occupied West Bank village of Rumana, were caught near a quarry outside the town of Elad in central Israel on Sunday, according to a statement by Israel’s police, military and internal security agency. Continue reading...

Otoniel’s Gulf Clan militiamen shut down northern regions, blocking roads and holding residents hostage in their housesJorge, a community activist from Colombia’s conflict-ridden Chocó province, was already traveling to the city of Medellín when he heard news that made him turn back towards home.Paramilitary militiamen in balaclavas and military fatigues had thrown up a string of roadblocks and declared an “armed strike”, torching vehicles, forcing businesses to close, and stopping all traffic. Continue reading...

Review by Common Wealth reveals that UK pension funds hold tiny fraction of Shell and BP sharesBritain’s main pension funds own less than 0.2% of Shell and BP shares, undermining claims that a windfall tax on big oil companies would harm the retirement incomes of UK savers.A review of the oil giants’ shares by the Common Wealth thinktank shows the largest holdings are by US investment companies, including BlackRock and Vanguard, and the wealthy Norwegian pension funds. The UK’s multibillion-pound defined contribution occupational pension funds, which hold the savings of tens of millions of workers, rank among the least important investors after decades of spreading their investments in different markets around the world. Continue reading...