World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

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World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk


Outspoken Saudi princess released after nearly three years in jail

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 07:06 PM PST

Human rights advocate Princess Basmah and her daughter were imprisoned without charge in 2019

Saudi authorities have released a princess and her daughter who had been detained without charge for nearly three years.

Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, 57, an outspoken human rights advocate and member of the royal family, went missing in March 2019 along with her adult daughter Souhoud al-Sharif.

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Djokovic pictured maskless at public event one day after positive Covid test

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 01:20 PM PST

Novak Djokovic faced fresh controversy over his attempt to enter Australia to take part in the Open tennis tournament after pictures emerged on social media of his appearances at public events after a positive Covid test was recorded in mid-December, which allowed him an exemption from the country's strict Covid rules.

Djokovic has spoken against vaccine mandates but has always refused to say what his own vaccination status is.

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As order is restored in Kazakhstan, its future is murkier than ever

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 12:10 PM PST

The tragic events of last week, in which dozens lost their lives, have exposed hidden political tensions

For many Kazakhs, the full story behind the unrest of the past week remains as murky as the mist that enveloped Almaty, the country's largest city and the centre of violence, at the same time.

People were unable to access accurate information, as an internet blackout froze almost all access to the outside world during a tragic few days of violence in which military vehicles rolled through the streets, government buildings burned and state television carried rolling threats that "bandits and terrorists" would be eliminated without mercy.

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Ashes 2021-22 fourth Test, day five: Australia v England – live!

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 09:49 PM PST

12th over: England 30-0 (Hameed 8, Crawley 22)

Boland kicks things off and there's a bat-pad appeal straight away, but it's non-committal. Hameed leaves the next and Carey takes it in front of his face. Continuing the theme, Boland gets another to jump as Hameed comes forward and it raps him on the gloves and chest. The next is much the same, but Hameed deals with it. Good signs for Boland. A maiden.

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Lowland gorilla born in DRC, boosting Virunga park population to seven

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 07:13 PM PST

The new arrival is a boost for the critically endangered species, which has been hard-hit by unrest in eastern Congo

A lowland gorilla, a critically endangered species, has been born in the Democratic Republic of Congo's famed Virunga national park, authorities said, boosting the population to seven.

Conservationists have long sought to protect the world heritage site's gorilla population even as violence and instability has plagued the DRC's eastern provinces for the past 25 years.

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Liz Truss ‘willing’ to trigger article 16 of Brexit protocol if talks falter

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 06:05 PM PST

As she prepares for crunch EU talks this week, the foreign secretary says her priority is to protect Northern Ireland's peace deal

The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has warned she is prepared to unilaterally override parts of the post-Brexit agreement on Northern Ireland if the negotiations she is newly leading fail.

Truss said she would suggest "constructive proposals" to her EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič, this week during their first face-to-face talks.

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Baktash Abtin, dissident Iranian poet, dies of Covid on prison furlough

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 05:08 PM PST

Abtin's death was 'aided and abetted' by the Iran's government, says US human rights group PEN America

The dissident Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin has died of Covid-19 in hospital after being released on a furlough from prison where he was infected.

Abtin was transferred to hospital in the capital Tehran "but the treatment did not succeed and he died", the semi-official ISNA news agency said on Saturday.

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At least 200 villagers killed by bandits in north-west Nigeria

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 05:24 PM PST

Attacks by militants in Zamfara state are believed to be in response to military air strikes on hideouts

At least 200 people are believed to have been killed in villages in the north-western Nigerian state of Zamfara during deadly reprisal attacks by armed bandits.

Residents returned to the villages on Saturday after the military organised mass burials. The state government said 58 people had been killed during the attacks.

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‘Hollywood Madam’ Heidi Fleiss plans to leave Nevada after pet parrot shot

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 02:37 PM PST

Heidi Fleiss, who achieved fame as the "Hollywood Madam" when she was accused in the mid-1990s of running a Los Angeles prostitution ring, has said she is moving out of a southern Nevada town where she has lived for about 15 years.

Fleiss told the Pahrump Valley Times she was angry that someone shot one of her cherished pet parrots with a pellet gun just before Christmas.

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Son of Sinéad O’Connor dies at age of 17 after going missing

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 03:43 AM PST

Irish musician says Shane O'Connor, last seen on Friday morning, 'was the very light of my life'

Sinéad O'Connor's 17-year-old son has died, two days after he was reported missing.

The musician shared the news on social media, writing that he "decided to end his earthly struggle" and asked that "no one follows his example".

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

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Virginia Giuffre told me in 2001 she slept with Prince Andrew, witness says

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 03:57 AM PST

The claims by Carolyn Andriano, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial, will add pressure on the prince

Carolyn Andriano, who testified in the trial of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in New York last month, has claimed that Virginia Giuffre told her in 2001 that she slept with Prince Andrew.

The claims, made in an interview with the Daily Mail, will ratchet up the pressure on the prince, as it is a contemporaneous report of his alleged sexual assault of the then 17-year-old Giuffre. He has vehemently denied the claims and his lawyers have been urging a US judge to dismiss Giuffre's civil suit against him.

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Coronavirus live – as it happened: UK passes 150,000 officially recorded Covid deaths; Sweden’s crown princess tests positive

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 02:55 PM PST

Latest developments as Philippines reports record 26,458 cases and scientist says Omicron variant could become endemic in UK

The north-east and north-west of England are seeing "concerning" rates of the Omicron variant, an expert has said.

Figures showed that three of the five UK areas with the biggest week-on-week rises in Covid case rates are Middlesbrough (748.8 to 2,651.4), Copeland (1,731.3 to 3,525.8) and Redcar & Cleveland (846.8 to 2,564.3).

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UK first country in Europe to pass 150,000 Covid deaths, figures show

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 09:54 AM PST

On Saturday, Britain became the seventh nation to reach the milestone after the US, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru

More than 150,000 people have died in the UK from coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, according to government figures.

Britain on Saturday became the seventh country to pass the milestone after the US, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru.

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‘We’ll piss you off’: French anti-vaccine protesters rally against Macron

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 09:42 AM PST

The French president is imposing more social curbs in bid to convince unvaccinated to get jabbed

Anti-vaccine protesters rallied in cities across France on Saturday, denouncing President Emmanuel Macron's intent to "piss off" people refusing Covid-19 shots by tightening curbs on their civil liberties.

Macron said this week he wanted to irritate unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting jabbed. Unvaccinated people were irresponsible and unworthy of being considered citizens, he added.

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Harlan Coben: ‘I used to write in the back of Ubers’

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 06:00 AM PST

The writer, 59, on working in a disco, being an introvert and growing up Jewish

In college I worked as a tour guide on the Costa del Sol. It was a weird scene. I saw some wild stuff; some violence I'd like to forget. I lived in one hotel room with four or five people for a while. I worked in a discotheque. But it inspired my first attempt at really writing. I needed to get it all down.

I think most writers have impostor syndrome. On the one hand you think, "I suck, I've got nothing to say, this isn't working at all," and the next moment you have the hubris to say, "I'm going to write 500 pages and people are going to pay me to read it."

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Duchess of Cambridge’s 40th birthday marked with trio of new photos

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 03:56 PM PST

Portraits by fashion photographer Paolo Roversi show Kate wearing Alexander McQueen dresses

The Duchess of Cambridge has marked her 40th birthday by releasing three glamorous portraits of herself.

Pictured in different Alexander McQueen dresses, Kate posed for fashion photographer Paolo Roversi, who has worked with stars such as Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss and described photographing the duchess as "a moment of pure joy".

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Don’t Look Up: four climate experts on the polarising disaster film

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 12:00 AM PST

Critics haven't been kind to Adam McKay's eco-satire, but many climate experts are lauding it. Here four give their views

Rarely has a film been as divisive as Adam McKay's climate satire Don't Look Up. Although it has been watched by millions, and is already Netflix's third most watched film ever, the response from critics was largely negative. Many found its story of scientists who discover an asteroid heading for Earth a clumsy allegory for the climate crisis, while others just found it boring. But many in the climate movement have praised the film, and audience reviews have been generally positive.

We asked four climate experts to give their views on the film. Warning: spoilers ahead.

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Royals await anxiously the fallout from Prince Andrew’s disgrace

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 05:30 AM PST

The Queen's favourite child, under siege in the press as he awaits a critical court ruling, is not the first obnoxious royal. But he has damaged 'the Firm' – and it will have to change

Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, KG, GCVO, CD, ADC, turns 62 next month. It is long past the age at which a man is expected to stop being a cause of concern and embarrassment to his parents. And yet Andrew, who is said to be the Queen's favourite child, has exposed his mother to the greatest threat to the royal family's reputation in living memory.

As he awaits the decision of a New York judge, Lewis Kaplan, in the sex assault case brought by Virginia Giuffre, the prince finds himself in the deeply unedifying position of trying to evade court with a secret silencing deal struck by his late friend and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.

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Goldfish who can drive: why scientists taught fish to navigate a watery tank on wheels

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 11:00 AM PST

Israeli researchers say their fish – named after characters from Pride and Prejudice – reveal navigation is a universal ability

It might be an imaginary character straight out of a Dr Seuss book: The goldfish who could drive. But it's real. Incredibly, Israeli researchers created a robotic car and report that they taught six fish – named after characters from Pride and Prejudice – to navigate it on land.

It's all in the name of science, of course. The team had been dreaming up ways to test fish navigation for a while, according to Shachar Givon from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, first author of a study published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.

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‘We take turns peering into a plastic bucket. Inside is a batch of freshly hatched turtles’

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 11:00 AM PST

Natasha Cica and a group of sea turtle-saving volunteers gently float away from daily life and find something exquisite off Magnetic Island in north Queensland

We're standing on sand dunes at the end of a hot December day. The light's fading fast and a thin crescent moon is rising in the clear sky. It's still really hot; hot enough to dip in the ocean. But nobody does – not because it's stinger season now, but because we're here for something better.

Here on Magnetic Island in Queensland, everyone's a volunteer and everyone's local except me. There are kids in school uniform, parents who've come from work, a retiree, a CSIRO scientist, a marine biologist called Paul, and an off-duty park ranger. We take turns peering into a blue plastic bucket. Now it's my turn. Inside is a batch of freshly hatched green sea turtles. Their easy exit from an underground nest was blocked by vegetation, so these volunteers have dug them free.

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Justin and Dan Hawkins of the Darkness look back: ‘People are terrified of us. And rightly so’

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 04:00 AM PST

The brothers recreate a family photo and talk about how they came back from a huge fallout – and a best man's speech starring a puppet testicle

Justin and Dan Hawkins are the Lowestoft brothers behind rock band the Darkness. Puncturing the genteel Dido and Keane-era mainstream of the early noughties with their stadium rock and low-cut catsuits, their music had a short-lived period of ridicule before their debut album Permission to Land went on to sell 3.5m copies. At the peak of their commercial powers they won three Brit awards, an Ivor Novello, and penned the modern Christmas classic, 2003's Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End). The band split in 2006 after the release of their second album, but they've since reformed and released five more records. They are currently on tour.

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Farm subsidy plan ‘risks increasing the UK’s reliance on food imports’

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 04:01 PM PST

Government scheme to replace EU agricultural payments fuelled by 'blind optimism' and still lacking crucial details, say MPs

The government's plans for a post-Brexit scheme to support British farming are based on little more than "blind optimism" and risk increasing the UK's reliance on food imports, a parliamentary inquiry has warned.

The EU's scheme of subsidies – known as the common agricultural policy (CAP) and worth £3bn-a-year to UK farmers – was one of the long-running complaints of Eurosceptics, who saw the ability of Britain to draw up its own scheme of payments as one of the major benefits of Brexit. Ministers had said the new scheme would be used to increase the environmental benefits of agriculture.

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Brazil: rock breaks from cliff and falls on boaters, leaving at least seven dead

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 07:43 PM PST

Another three people are missing after the accident on Furnas Lake in Minas gerais state

A towering slab of rock broke from a cliff and toppled on to pleasure boaters drifting near a waterfall on a Brazilian lake on Saturday, leaving seven dead and three still missing.

Minas Gerais fire department commander Edgard Estevo told a news conference that officials were seeking to identify the victims. Another nine people suffered serious injuries.

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‘My father will go down like the captain of the Titanic’: life on the Pacific’s disappearing islands

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 11:00 AM PST

Many in the Saposa Islands are wrestling with the dilemma of starting a new life on the mainland or staying to watch their homes vanish. Deputy editor, David Munk, introduces this story

You can read the original article here: 'My father will go down like the captain of the Titanic': life on the Pacific's disappearing islands


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Australia Covid live news update: deadliest day of pandemic for NSW; Qld delays start of school year; more than 99,000 new cases nationwide

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 09:49 PM PST

The health minister, Greg Hunt, has been asked about Novak Djokovic's court case.

Hunt declined to comment, citing the fact the matter is before the court but did reveal that two other people connected with the Australian Open tournament have left Australia after their visas were cancelled.

In relation to Novak Djokovic, as this is now a matter before the courts, I will respectfully leave any commentary until after it has been heard by the court and my understanding is that there is a hearing tomorrow.

My other advice from border force is that their assessment of any visas relating to the Australian Open has now been completed and two other individuals have now voluntarily left the country – as is the case with an individual who has their visa cancelled is entitled to leave the country at any time, even while they are going through a court proceeding but that is a matter for them. Beyond that, the advice is that there is an ongoing court case so we respectfully are not making any additional comment.

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Desmond Tutu’s funeral and Kazakhstan clashes: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 12:30 AM PST

A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Hong Kong

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First female judge nominated for Pakistan’s supreme court

Posted: 07 Jan 2022 05:20 AM PST

Move to appoint Justice Ayesha Malik, who banned virginity tests for rape survivors, described as 'defining moment' for the country

Pakistan's top judicial commission has nominated a female judge to the supreme court for the first time in the country's history.

The move to pave the way for Justice Ayesha Malik to join the court has been widely praised by lawyers and civil society activists as a defining moment in the struggle for gender equality in Pakistan.

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‘They want to remove us and take the rock’, say Zimbabweans living near Chinese-owned mines

Posted: 07 Jan 2022 01:30 AM PST

As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted land

A convoy of trucks laden with huge black granite rocks trundles along the dusty pathway as a group of villagers look on grimly.

Every day more than 60 trucks take granite for export along this rugged road through Nyamakope village in the district of Mutoko, 90 miles east of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

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Taliban stop Afghan women from using bathhouses in northern provinces

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 10:00 PM PST

Decision to close public hammams – most people's only chance for a warm wash – sparks anger in light of country's mounting crises

The Taliban sparked outrage this week by announcing that women in northern Afghanistan would no longer be allowed to use communal bathhouses.

The use of bathhouses, or hammams, is an ancient tradition that remains for many people the only chance for a warm wash during the country's bitterly cold winters.

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UK faces legal action for approving firm accused of using forced labour as PPE supplier

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 06:43 AM PST

High court to review government's decision to include subsidiary of Malaysia's Supermax in £6bn 'framework' deal for buying gloves

The UK government is facing legal action over its decision to keep using a Malaysian company accused of using forced labour as a supplier of personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS.

Lawyers at the London-based law firm Wilson Solicitors have filed for a judicial review of the government's decision to name the UK subsidiary of the Malaysian company Supermax as one of the approved suppliers in a new £6bn contract for disposable gloves for NHS workers.

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Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 02:00 AM PST

Best-case scenario: a scaled down plan that saves popular programs and a billionaire tax to pay for it

Democrats were already facing a bleak landscape for this year's midterm elections, with Joe Biden's approval rating languishing in the low 40s and his party holding narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Now, with Senator Joe Manchin's refusal to support the Build Back Better Act, the chances of Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well, appear higher than ever.

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As a scientist commenting on Covid I’ve attracted a lot of haters – I won’t let them silence me | Siouxsie Wiles

Posted: 07 Jan 2022 11:00 AM PST

The people who harass me are executives and electricians; ordinary people. They can't imagine I'm simply motivated by wanting to save lives

On Christmas Eve I received an email to let me know I'd been added to the "accused" list on a website called Nuremberg NZ. "Kind regards", ended the sender. Those behind Nuremberg NZ want people like me to have "thier (sic) day of reckoning" in a similar way to how Nazi war criminals were tried after the second world war. According to the website, my crimes are "misleading the public" and "supporting a government to perform medical experiment (sic) on it's (sic) citizens". Nuremberg NZ gives people the opportunity to leave a comment about each accused and to vote on whether they should be listed. User bennyman88 comments with one word, "Murderer", and votes "agree".

Great Barrier Island is about 90 kilometres off the coast of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. Completely off-grid, the island is home to about 1,000 people and boasts calm bays and surf beaches as well as a dark sky sanctuary, natural hot springs, and native forests. In 2015, island local Gendie Somerville-Ryan started the 'No Barriers: Small Island Big Ideas' event series based on the BBC programme Big Ideas. The first event's theme was pandemics and brought together a virologist, a young adult fiction writer, a sociologist, and a representative from Civil Defence to discuss how the island's residents should behave if a pandemic was sweeping the world, killing all in its wake.

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Putin taking a risk in Kazakhstan and may hope for reward

Posted: 07 Jan 2022 06:41 AM PST

Analysis: CSTO may be an alliance but decision to intervene was almost certainly taken in Moscow

The old joke about the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was that it was the only military alliance to attack itself, after its tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 to crush a reform movement there.

With the deployment of troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to Kazakhstan on Thursday, some heard "eerie echoes" of the so-called Prague spring of 1968, and the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.

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Assault on American democracy has gained pace since US Capitol attack

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 11:00 PM PST

Analysis: Republican strategy has focused on sowing doubt about 2020's result, passing new laws and taking over key election offices

On 6 January 2021, it seemed like the stitching holding America's democracy together might finally collapse. As armed supporters of a defeated president laid siege to the Capitol, the US Congress did something extraordinary – it suspended the official procedure to certify the winner of a presidential election.

The attack was eventually put down and Congress returned to officially certify Joe Biden's victory. "They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed," Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said when the Senate came back into session.

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At least 22 stranded tourists dead at Pakistan hill station after heavy snowfall – video

Posted: 08 Jan 2022 06:52 AM PST

At least 22 tourists died in freezing temperatures after being stranded in their vehicles in northern Pakistan, where thousands had flocked to enjoy the snow. 

Some 1,000 vehicles are still stranded in Murree, 40 miles north-east of the capital Islamabad. 

'The local people are delivering blankets and food. Now we are only allowing vehicles carrying blankets and food towards Murree,' Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan's interior minister, said.

Army platoons and paramilitary forces have been deployed to help the civil administration in rescue operations, he said.

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'Devastated': family members pay tribute to Ahmaud Arbery at sentencing of killers – video

Posted: 07 Jan 2022 12:12 PM PST

Ahmaud Arbery's family bared their grief and loss to the judge during the sentencing of three white men convicted of his murder.

The men, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William 'Roddie' Bryan, chased down Arbery, who was jogging in his neighbourhood, in pickup trucks and shot him dead. 

At the start of the hearing, superior court judge Timothy Walmsley rejected last-minute legal motions by Bryan's defense attorney to throw out his murder conviction and spare Bryan from the life sentence that state law imposes automatically

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England 'global outlier' in terms of Covid policy, says Welsh first minister – video

Posted: 07 Jan 2022 08:42 AM PST

Mark Drakeford said the Welsh government was capable and determined to act to protect its population from coronavirus.

He said that in England the government was 'politically paralysed' and that Boris Johnson was unable to secure an agreement among his MPs to take actions that would keep the population safe


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Joe Biden blames Donald Trump’s ‘web of lies’ for US Capitol attack – video

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 09:17 AM PST

The US president spoke directly against Trump, saying the former president had created and spread a 'web of lie's that resulted in the deadly insurrection.

On the one-year anniversary of the 6 January Capitol attack, the US president said his predecessor had refused to accept the result of an election, like no former president had ever done

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James Pond: Chinese state news agency releases spoof mocking MI6 focus on Beijing – video

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 01:19 AM PST

Britain's spy chief has thanked China's state news agency for 'free publicity' after it posted a James Bond spoof that mocked the western intelligence community's growing focus on threats posed by Beijing. The rare response by the head of MI6, Richard Moore, on Thursday comes as China and Britain clash over Beijing's treatment of its Uyghur minority and creeping authoritarianism in the former British colony of Hong Kong

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Gunfire heard during protests in Kazakhstan's biggest city – video

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 11:12 PM PST

Footage taken on the streets of Almaty appears to show guns being fired as unrest continues. Initially angered by a fuel price rise, protesters have been storming buildings and chanting against President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev. State buildings have been torched and eight security personnel reported dead in the demonstrations. The internet was shut down and 'peacekeeping forces' from a Russian-led alliance of former Soviet states will be sent to Kazakhstan to help stabilise the country

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Victoria Covid update: state to mandate reporting of positive rapid test results – video

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 08:42 PM PST

It will now be mandatory to report positive rapid antigen test results to the health department by phone or using an online form. A positive home test will carry the same obligations as a positive PCR test. Acting chief health officer, Prof Benjamin Cowie, says with significant transmission of the Omicron variant, pressure on the PCR testing system, and millions of rapid tests being ordered by the Victorian government, the rapid antigen tests will now have the same 'authority' as a PCR test

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