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The leaders of Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland met to discuss their common security threats and how to further support Ukraine in the face of Russia's full-scale invasion.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz underscored his support for Ukraine at a meeting with the prime ministers of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland on Monday.

"We stand united in our support for Ukraine in its defense against the ongoing Russian aggression," Scholz said in Stockholm.

"We will continue to provide our support to Ukraine for as long as it takes."

The Swedish government said earlier that the leaders would "discuss security policy issues such as hybrid threats, civil preparedness and new technologies."

Upward of 20 American doctors are trapped in Gaza, some at the European Hospital, due to Israel’s post-invasion closure of the Rafah border crossing.Upward of 20 American doctors are trapped in Gaza as a result of Israel’s post-invasion closure of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, according to sources with knowledge of the plight of two ill-fated medical missions.

Israel has blocked fuel, food, and water from entering Rafah for over a week, leading to severe dehydration among the general population, as well as among the doctors on mission.

Relatives of the doctors were told by the State Department that rescue efforts were underway, including through coordination with the United Nations and the Israel Defense Forces. Yet on Monday, the Israeli military fired on a United Nations vehicle that was traveling to the European Hospital in Khan Younis, near Rafah, killing a U.N. employee and injuring another.

A family member of one of the doctors stranded at the European Hospital said that he suspected the vehicle was part of the rescue mission, but was uncertain. “We are aware that a car that is similarly supposed to be their rescue passage was shot at and UN employees were killed and injured and we fear for their ability to have a safe passage and exit,” said the relative. “We are aware that there is active shelling around the hospital and that staff has been told to stay away from windows.”

Among the stranded doctors is Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and Army veteran from New Jersey. While serving in Iraq, he was on duty when now-Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s mangled body was brought to the hospital after her helicopter was shot down. She credits him with saving her life. Hamawy’s friend Sami Shaban has been in touch with him the past several days and said that he is physically doing well. “He’s a tough dude,” said Shaban, who has lost 35 members of his own family in Gaza. “Now we just need to get him home. We funded the bombing of every single hospital there. You have to at least let the relief people in and out.”

The doctors are rationing water and at least one physician is in poor health and is on an IV drip to combat dehydration. The dire state of the medical mission underscores how difficult the conditions are for average Palestinians, who have spent seven months enduring the Israeli siege, whereas the medical mission arrived only recently. More than 1 million Palestinians are trapped in Rafah, which is at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip. As Israel threatens a full-scale invasion of Rafah, Israeli troops entered the area last week and took over the crossing into Egypt.... (more in article)

Via @Silverseren

Yuriy Merkotan played in a military band and, after being caught up in the Mariupol siege, spent nearly two years in various jails

Charity Sea Watch said the ordinance was aimed at preventing the world from seeing what was happening

Via @KAVOK

A group of around 1,500 homebuyers say they have yet to see the apartments they paid for about eight years ago, as challenges persist in China’s property sector. The promise was they would be ready by 2019, but the majority are still unfinished, according to five of the homebuyers, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “I feel like I’ve been tricked this whole time,” one buyer said on Monday in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

Israel has order the evacuation of parts of Gaza’s southern city of Rafah ahead of an imminent ground offensive in the region. "To all the residents and displaced people in Rafah area ... you are in a dangerous combat zone,” the evacuation leaflets read, before specifying certain parts of the region.

“The [Israeli military] will act with extreme force against terrorist organizations in your areas of residence. Everyone in these areas is risking their lives and the lives of their family members. For your safety, we ask you to evacuate immediately to the humanitarian zone.”

Army spokesman Avichay Adraee added that the military will also move into an area in northern Gaza where Hamas has regrouped.

It comes as the United Nations warned that food supplies in the southern Gaza region where Israel intend to conduct another ground attack “will run out tomorrow”.

The shortages have been caused by Israel’s closure of two crossings in the south through which humanitarian aid was being moved into Gaza. They are currently being blocked by Israeli forces ahead of a ground offensive in Rafah.

Marius Gustavson, 46, was involved in procedures that were ‘little short of human butchery’, UK court heard. The leader of a “grisly and gruesome” extreme body modification network who streamed mutilations on his “eunuch maker” website has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years.

Marius Gustavson, 46, was the “arch manipulator” of vulnerable victims and was said to have been involved in at least 29 procedures, which were “little short of human butchery”, the Old Bailey in London heard.

The “large-scale, dangerous and extremely disturbing” four-year enterprise included castrations, the use of clamps to crush testicles, penis removals, the freezing of limbs and administering electric shocks to a 16-year-old boy, which were streamed on Gustavson’s website.

The “busy and lucrative” business is estimated to have taken more than £300,000 from its 22,841 paying subscribers across the world between 2017 and 2021.

Gustavson, who had previously admitted charges including conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm, appeared for sentence via video link alongside six other men who had all admitted their part in the scheme. The charges relate to 13 victims who are being safeguarded by specialist detectives.

Judge Mark Lucraft, the recorder of London and most senior judge at the Old Bailey, said as he announced the sentence: “Gustavson, you are very much the mastermind behind this grisly and gruesome enterprise. The business you set up was one that was both busy and lucrative. As with all the others involved, you have no medical qualifications.”

He added: “The footage uploaded was extremely explicit and made available to paying subscribers no doubt so they could watch it for their sexual gratification […] Like-minded individuals were recruited by you, Gustavson, to assist in what became a large-scale, dangerous, and extremely disturbing enterprise.”

The prosecutor Caroline Carberry KC told the three-day sentencing hearing that there was “clear evidence” of cannibalism and that Gustavson had cooked testicles for lunch in an “artfully arranged salad platter”. He also kept numerous body parts as “trophies” in a fridge at his home in Harringay, north London and “sold” severed genitalia online.

A man arrested for allegedly attacking a woman with a box cutter shot and seriously wounded two officers in a Paris police station on Thursday, May 9, after grabbing one of their weapons. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) the incident happened in the French capital's 13th arrondissement shortly before 10:30 pm and that one of the officers' wounds were life-threatening.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez arrived at the scene around midnight, accompanied by prosecutor Laure Beccuau. Nunez told reporters that the suspect had been arrested at around 10:00 pm for a "very violent attack on a woman" with a box cutter. "The officers intervened and brought him back here (to the police station), and it was during his processing that he snatched the weapon" and "seriously" wounded the two officers, he said.

The officers were both immediately transferred to hospital, as was the suspect, who was himself seriously wounded by return fire, Nunez added. "We are very worried about the state of health (of the officers)," he continued, lauding the station staff's "courage and responsiveness". Nunez said an investigation was underway to establish the "circumstances" surrounding the incident.

Reached by AFP, the prosecutor's office said three investigations had been opened – one into the "attempted murder of the woman", and one into the "attempted murder of persons holding public authority".

The third was being carried out by the IGPN, the national police's internal affairs department, to look into the use of "intentional violence with a weapon by a person holding public authority", as is routine when an officer uses their weapon.

.Russian forces have captured five villages as part of a renewed ground assault in Ukraine’s northeast, the country’s Defense Ministry said Saturday. Ukrainian journalists reported Friday that Russian troops took the villages of Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha, all of which lie in a militarily contested “grey zone” on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia.

Russian officials said they had also captured another village, Pletenivka, in a renewed attack on the region that Ukrainian authorities said forced more than 1,700 civilians to flee.

Artillery, mortar, and aerial bombardments hit more than 30 different towns and villages, killing at least three people and injuring five others, said Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.

Ukraine rushed reinforcements to the Kharkiv region on Friday to hold off a Russian attempt to breach local defenses, authorities said.

Ukrainian forces also launched a barrage of drones and missiles on Saturday night, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said, with air defense systems downing 21 rockets and 16 drones over Russia’s Belgorod, Kursk and Volgograd regions. One person died in a drone strike in the Belgorod region, and another in the Kursk region, local officials said.

A searing heat wave has prompted blackouts nationwide and pushed the power grid to the brink.Mexico registered record-high temperatures in 10 cities, including the capital, authorities said on Friday, amid a searing heat wave that has prompted blackouts nationwide and pushed the power grid to the brink.

In the normally temperate high-altitude capital of Mexico City, North America's largest metropolis, thermometers on Thursday peaked at 34.3 degrees Celsius, a tenth of a degree higher than the record hit just a month earlier.

Neighbouring Puebla broke its previous record of 34.3deg C - set in 1947 - when it reached 35.2C on Thursday.

In Ciudad Victoria, in the northern border state Tamaulipas, across from Texas in the United States, the temperature hit a sweltering 47.4C on Thursday, breaking the previous high set in 1998.

The intense heat caused blackouts lasting several hours in some areas of Mexico this week, mainly in the north, and caused classes to be suspended in the central state of San Luis Potosi, which this week reached 50C.

In a weekly report published on Thursday, Mexico's health ministry reported seven heat-related deaths this heat season between its start on 17 March 17 and 4 May, a tally that could rise after this week's brutal heat.

Human-caused climate change and El Nino have been pushing up temperatures worldwide and causing deadly heat waves.

Ceasefire and divestment calls have spread beyond US campuses, with more expected as Rafah offensive begins

University campuses around the world have been the stage of a growing number of protests by students demanding academic institutions divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.

The protests, which first spread across college campuses in the US, have reached universities in the UK, the rest of Europe, as well as Lebanon and India.
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Some students have begun hunger strikes in protest against their university’s “silence and inaction”.
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Russia and Ukraine have accused each other at the global chemical weapons watchdog in The Hague of using banned toxins on the battlefield, the organisation said on Tuesday.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that the accusations were "insufficiently substantiated" but added: "The situation remains volatile and extremely concerning regarding the possible re-emergence of use of toxic chemicals as weapons."

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has formally asked the OPCW to investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons, it said.
Last week, the U.S. said Russia had violated the international chemical weapons ban overseen by the OPCW by deploying the choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops and using riot control agents "as a method of warfare" in Ukraine.

It followed Ukrainian assertions in April that Russia had increased its use of tear gas in the trenches.
Russia denied the allegations.

Ukrainian officials on Tuesday did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The OPCW said it had been monitoring the situation since February 2022, when Moscow invaded Ukraine.
Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, any toxic chemical used with the purpose of causing harm or death is considered a chemical weapon.

Israel carried out airstrikes in eastern Rafah after issuing orders for the evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians from part of the city earlier on Monday, triggering an exodus of thousands of people. The Israeli military said late on Monday it was conducting targeted strikes against Hamas in Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinian civilians are sheltering.

There were reports of Israeli tanks being seen on the eastern outskirts of Rafah and a Palestinian security official and an Egyptian official said they had reached as close as 200 metres from Rafah’s crossing with neighbouring Egypt. The Axios news site cited unnamed sources as saying Israeli forces planned to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, the sole gateway between Egypt and Gaza for humanitarian supplies and people. The Guardian could not independently verify that report.

Palestinian hospital officials said one strike on a house in Rafah late Monday killed five Palestinians, including a woman and a girl. Twenty-two people including two babies and other children were killed in earlier strikes on Monday.

The strikes came as Hamas said it had agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal from mediators. Hamas said in a brief statement that its chief, Ismail Haniyeh, had informed Qatari and Egyptian mediators that the group accepted their proposal for a ceasefire, prompting initial celebrations from Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Seventy-five people are now known to have died in the flooding in Brazil’s southern Rio Grande do Sul state, while more than 100 people remain missing, local authorities said on Sunday. The state’s civil defence authority said 101 people were unaccounted for and more than 80,000 had been displaced after record-breaking floods swept across the state, which borders Uruguay and Argentina.

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arrived in Rio Grande do Sul on Sunday, along with most members of his cabinet, to discuss rescue and reconstruction works with local authorities.

Rescue workers are continuing to race against the clock to save people from raging floods and mudslides. Using four-wheel-drive vehicles and at times jetskis, rescuers made their way through waist-deep water, searching for those who had been left stranded by the rising waters.

Video posted online by Lula appeared to show a helicopter dropping a soldier on the roof of a house, and the soldier using a brick to pound a hole in the roof and rescue a baby wrapped in a blanket.

Storms have affected almost two-thirds of the state’s 497 cities, leading to landslides, destroyed roads and collapsed bridges as well as power outages and water cuts. More than a million people lacked access to drinking water, according to Brazil’s civil defence agency.

Israeli air attacks kill at least 10 Palestinians in Rafah as Hamas fires rockets at the Karem Abu Salem crossing, killing three Israeli soldiers and wounding 11 others. The latest round of negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza has ended in the Egyptian capital Cairo, but crucial gaps remain between Israel and Hamas.

Gaza’s civil defence office said its crews in Rafah are dealing with “several attacks” on inhabited and uninhabited homes in the southern city.

It said Israeli forces have hit 11 homes in the southern area between Sunday evening and the early hours of Monday. The attacks have resulted in dozens of people killed, wounded, and missing under the rubble.

Time is running out to prevent starvation in Darfur, in western Sudan, a UN agency has warned, as escalating violence devastates the African nation. People have been forced to consume “grass and peanut shells,” the regional director for Eastern Africa of the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. “If assistance doesn’t reach them soon, we risk witnessing widespread starvation and death in Darfur and across other conflict-affected areas in Sudan,” Michael Dunford added.

Sudan has been gripped by civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It quickly descended into a brutal conflict characterized by reports of sexual and genocidal violence and civilian casualties, triggering an exodus of refugees.

On Thursday, two International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) drivers were killed by gunmen in South Darfur, in an attack that left three other staff members injured, according to the humanitarian organization.

The ICRC team was attacked en route to assess the crisis among communities affected by armed violence in the region, the organization said.

The latest surge in violence comes as the RSF encircles North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher.

In the city and its surrounding localities, there have been “increasing arbitrary killings,” systematic “burning of entire villages” and “escalating air bombardments,” the UN deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Toby Hayward, said on Thursday.

Spread of Tory losses leads former minister to say there’s ‘no such thing as a safe seat any more’. The Conservatives are facing one of their worst local election results in 40 years, with striking Labour gains across England and Wales in key battlegrounds they need to secure victory at the general election.

The spread of the Conservative losses led one former minister to claim there was “no such thing really as a safe Tory seat any more”, but the prime minister appeared committed to clinging on until polling day, with rebels in his own party lacking the support to oust him.

The polling expert Prof John Curtice of Strathclyde University said the results added up to “one of the worst, if not the worst” performances by the Conservatives in four decades.

The party is expected to lose up to 500 seats when all votes are counted, with Labour advancing in areas of both the “red wall” north won by the Tories under Boris Johnson and the traditional southern Conservative heartlands.

Keir Starmer hailed “seismic” results, including winning a landslide byelection in Blackpool South, with the third largest swing since the second world war, as well as mayoralties in the East Midlands, North East and North Yorkshire, which covers Sunak’s own constituency.

Labour also ousted a number of Tory police and crime commissioners, and took control of at least seven new councils, including in Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hampshire and Sussex in the south of England.

Paris rubbish collectors could strike over the summer, a major French union said Thursday, raising the spectre of piles of stinking trash on the streets during the Olympic Games. Walkouts could start in May and continue from July 1 to September 8, the CGT union branch representing binmen warned, a period that includes the Games, which run from July 26 to August 11.

Refuse workers in the Paris region are demanding an extra 400 euros ($430) per month and a one-off 1,900-euro bonus for those working during the Olympics.

"We're going to be giving it our all and we want that taken into consideration," Nabil Latreche, a member of the CGT-FTDNEEA union, told AFP.

"The municipal police are getting a bonus and we have the same employer. We're going to have an excessive workload too with the 15 million tourists that are expected," Latreche said.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) director said the comprehensive famine in northern Gaza might spread south. Northern Gaza is experiencing "full-blown" famine, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) Director Cindy McCain. 

"Whenever you have conflicts like this, and emotions rage high, and things happen in a war, famine happens," she said during an interview with NBC aired on Saturday. 

"What I can explain to you is - is that there is famine - full-blown famine - in the north." 

McCain warned mass starvation was "moving its way south", where the vast majority of Gaza's population has fled fighting between Israel and Hamas. 

The UN has claimed since mid-March that northern Gaza is "nearing" a state of famine, though the organisation has not yet officially stated one had begun.

Human Rights Watch recently reported that children were dying from starvation-related complications in Gaza, claiming Israel was using starvation as a "weapon of war" - a war crime under international law.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also said in March that Israel was "provoking famine" as a weapon of war.

Mediators renew efforts to secure a truce ahead of invasion of city, where more than 1 million people are sheltering. Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will proceed with an offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah even if renewed efforts at internationally brokered talks with Hamas result in the release of hostages and a ceasefire.

Mediators led by Egypt have made fresh attempts to broker a truce in recent days after it became clearer that Israel is preparing for its long-threatened ground operation in Rafah. The city on the Egyptian border is the only part of the Palestinian territory that has not faced ground fighting, and more than half of the strip’s 2.3 million population has sought shelter there.

Speaking in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister said: “The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there – with or without a deal, in order to achieve total victory.”

BUENOS AIRES, April 30 (Reuters) - Argentina's lower house of Congress gave President Javier Milei a boost on Tuesday by approving his sweeping reform bill ahead of a final Senate vote and backing articles related to privatizing state bodies and labour reform.
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The US ambassador to the United Nations on Monday warned of an impending "large-scale massacre" in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher, a humanitarian hub in the Darfur region.

Niger’s military government sides with Russia in the latest sign of Moscow’s growing influence in Africa. Armed troops in Niger overthrew the government in July 2023, seizing power for themselves. The following months were rife with speculation that the military government would align with Moscow and possibly form ties with the Russian military or its associates.

This has now become a reality, to the detriment of western interests in the country. On Wednesday, April 10, a Russian plane arrived in the Nigerien capital, Niamey, reportedly carrying Russian military trainers and equipment, including a Russian air defence system. It marked the beginning of a new alliance between the Kremlin and Niger’s military leaders.

Following the arrival of Russian military equipment and advisers, hundreds of protesters gathered in Niamey to demand the withdrawal of American forces. Niger has been the centre of US operations in west and north Africa since the two countries signed a military pact in 2012.

The US has since announced that it will pull more than 1,000 military personnel out of Niger. This will result in the closure of Base 201, a key US drone facility that has been used in operations against jihadist terrorist groups in the Sahel region.

At least four people have been killed in a Russian missile strike that hit a Gothic-style building in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa.

Known to locals as the "Harry Potter Castle", its turrets were still burning at nightfall and emergency services graded the blaze severe.

Residents reportedly did not have enough time to take shelter as air raid alerts only happened a few minutes before the strike.

"The type of missile is currently being checked; forensic specialists are carrying out the appropriate evaluations to this end," said a spokesperson for Ukraine's Southern Defense Forces, Dmytro Pletenchuk.

"All services, including the State Emergency Service, are currently working to eliminate the consequences of the missile strike - yet another war crime."

Private job providers can claim public money when jobseekers find work. But they need their payslips to do so, and some resort to extreme methods to get them