World news | The Guardian

Opposition hopes to tap into frustrations of people living in country where conflict remains a daily reality

Central African Republic goes to the polls on Sunday with the president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, seeking a third term.

As many as 2.3 million registered voters will cast ballots for what observers are calling a quadruple election: votes for the presidency and parliament as well as local and municipal offices.

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Mamady Doumbouya accused of betraying his promise to be the restorer of democracy after leading 2021 coup

In September 2021, a tall, young colonel in the Guinean army announced that he and his comrades had forcibly seized power and toppled the longtime leader Alpha Condé.

“The will of the strongest has always supplanted the law,” Mamady Doumbouya said in a speech, stressing that the soldiers were acting to restore the will of the people.

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Diplomatic breakthrough criticised by African Union, which said it could have ‘far-reaching implications for peace and stability across the continent’

Israel has become the first country to recognise Somaliland as a sovereign state, a breakthrough in its quest for international recognition since it declared independence from Somalia 34 years ago.

The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, announced on Friday that Israel and Somaliland had signed an agreement establishing full diplomatic relations, which would include the opening of embassies and the appointment of ambassadors.

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Family say campaigner, who has a son in Brighton, will be able to travel freely between UK and Cairo months after his release from Egyptian jail

The British-Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd el-Fattah has arrived in London after the Egyptian government lifted a travel ban that it had imposed on him despite releasing him from jail in September.

Abd el-Fattah had been held in jail nearly continuously for 10 years, mainly due to expressing his opposition to the treatment of dissidents by the Egyptian government. He had been detained in jail two years beyond his five-year sentence as the Cairo authorities refused to recognise the period he held in pre-trial detention as part of his time served.

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Some even celebrated ‘mass killing’ and the president’s ‘resolve’ in attacking Islamic State targets

The US’s Christmas Day strikes against Islamic State targets in Nigeria have been met with praise by Donald Trump supporters who for months had been agitating for the president to respond forcefully to the killings of Christians in the country.

“I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Christmas than by avenging the death of Christians through the justified mass killing of Islamic terrorists,” the far-right political activist Laura Loomer posted on X. “You’ve got to love it! Death to all Islamic terrorists! Thank you.”

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Government said the move was due to its ‘unrestricted respect for human rights’ in the face of US aggression

Venezuela has said it has carried out its largest release of political prisoners this year, claiming to have freed 99 people detained for taking part in protests after the 2024 election, widely believed to have been stolen by the dictator Nicolás Maduro, as it comes under increasing military pressure from the US.

Civil society organisations have treated the news with caution and stressed that the releases were insufficient, noting that at least 900 political prisoners remain in the country.

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Temperatures plunge below -50C in the Yukon, while swaths of US experience springlike weather

Northern Canada has been gripped by an intense and prolonged cold spell, with temperatures hovering between -20C and -40C for weeks. On Tuesday, Braeburn in the Yukon recorded -55.7C, its coldest December temperature since 1975.

Meanwhile, Mayo and Dawson endured 16 consecutive nights below -40C, with Mayo plunging to -50.4C on Monday. Whitehorse also recorded 10 nights when temperatures dropped below -30C.

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Low-cost tech and joined-up funding have reduced illegal logging, mining and poaching in the Darién Gap – it’s a success story that could stop deforestation worldwide

There are no roads through the Darién Gap. This vast impenetrable forest spans the width of the land bridge between South and Central America, but there is almost no way through it: hundreds have lost their lives trying to cross it on foot.

Its size and hostility have shielded it from development for millennia, protecting hundreds of species – from harpy eagles and giant anteaters to jaguars and red-crested tamarins – in one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. But it has also made it incredibly difficult to protect. Looking after 575,000 hectares (1,420,856 acres) of beach, mangrove and rainforest with just 20 rangers often felt impossible, says Segundo Sugasti, the director of Darién national park. Like tropical forests all over the world, it has been steadily shrinking, with at least 15% lost to logging, mining and cattle ranching in two decades.

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Government poised to officially protect 200,000 hectares of remote Patagonian coastline and forest

Chile’s government is poised to create the country’s 47th national park, protecting nearly 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of pristine wilderness and completing a wildlife corridor stretching 1,700 miles (2,800km) to the southernmost tip of the Americas.

The Cape Froward national park is a wild expanse of wind-torn coastline and forested valleys that harbours unrivalled biodiversity and has played host to millennia of human history.

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Winning margin of 28,000 votes announced a month late but before review of all ‘inconsistent’ ballots was completed

Donald Trump-backed candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura has been declared the winner of Honduras’s presidential election after a vote count that dragged on for almost a month and was marred by fraud allegations and criticism of interference by the US president.

The rightwing Asfura, 67, a construction magnate and former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, secured 40.27% of the vote, against 39.53% for the centre-right Salvador Nasralla, a margin of just 28,000 votes.

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Turnout appears low for vote in which most candidates seen as allies of junta and large areas excluded by war

Polls have closed in conflict-racked Myanmar, ending the first phase of an election that has been widely condemned as a sham designed to legitimise the military junta’s rule.

The military has touted the vote as a return to democracy almost five years after it seized power in a coup, ousting the country’s then de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, detaining her and sparking a spiralling civil war.

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As the military pushes ahead with a widely condemned election, Beijing’s priorities are proving decisive

• Myanmar’s first election since the 2021 coup: everything you need to know

Myanmar’s military has managed to regain momentum in its battle against a determined patchwork of opposition groups, retaking some territory, and pushing ahead with a widely condemned election that begins on Sunday.

It is a turnaround for the military, which had appeared so beleaguered that some dared to question if it could collapse.

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Two countries pledge in joint statement to halt all forms of attacks and further troop deployments in long-running dispute over contested territory

Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to an “immediate” ceasefire, pledging to end weeks of deadly border clashes that have killed more than 100 people and displaced more than half a million on both sides.

In a joint statement, the two south-east Asian neighbours said the ceasefire would take effect on Saturday at noon local time and involve “all types of weapons, including attacks on civilians, civilian objects and infrastructures, and military objectives of either side, in all cases and all areas”.

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New conviction over plunder of state fund substantially increases six-year term in separate case

The jailed former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has been sentenced to an additional 15 years after he was found guilty of abuse of power, in the biggest trial yet in the multibillion-dollar fraud scandal related to the state fund 1MDB.

Najib’s conviction substantially increases the six-year prison term he is already serving for a separate case related to the 1MDB graft scandal, one of the world’s biggest financial frauds in which billions were plundered from the now defunct sovereign wealth fund.

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$10bn Trump-approved sale to Taipei triggers Beijing sanctions against firms such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman

China’s foreign ministry has hit US defence companies including Boeing with sanctions after Donald Trump approved a large package of arms sales to Taiwan.

The ministry said on Friday that the measures – against 10 individuals and 20 US firms including Boeing’s production hub at St Louis in Missouri – would freeze any assets the companies and individuals hold in China and bar domestic organisations and individuals from doing business with them.

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Coral Adventurer says passengers and crew are safe while team tries to refloat ship and inspects the hull

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An Australian cruise ship being investigated after allegedly leaving behind a passenger who died alone has run aground off the coast of Papua New Guinea with more than 120 people aboard.

The Coral Adventurer ran aground early on Saturday morning, about 30km from PNG’s second-largest city, Lae. The vessel’s operator, Coral Expeditions, said no one was hurt in the incident.

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NSW premier also announces police will carry long-arm rifles at major New Year’s Eve event in Sydney

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Chris Minns has said his government is “actively” considering whether a Jewish security group should be armed in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, as he confirms police will carry long-arm rifles for the first time at Sydney’s major New Year’s Eve event.

The New South Wales premier said he was considering the extraordinary step of arming the Community Security Group (CSG) after fielding questions about reports police had failed to heed a warning from the group about the event posing a high security risk, and the need for a greater police presence.

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Livestock at risk as some areas expected to receive up to 500mm in the coming week, according to the Bureau of Meteorology

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Large parts of north Queensland are set to be battered by days of heavy rain, with some areas expected to receive up to 500mm in the coming week, according to the weather bureau.

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning for heavy rainfall in the gulf region, and is expected to issue another for the coastal region around Townsville later today.

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Man spotted at beach in Newcastle on Wednesday with tattoos linked to white supremacist ideology

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A man who allegedly displayed Nazi hate symbols by showing off his tattoos at a popular beach in New South Wales has been charged.

Ben Parsons was at Bar beach in Newcastle on 24 December with his children, when he noticed a man with tattoos linked to white supremacist ideology, including symbols associated with the Nazi SS.

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Woman in her 30s found dead at home in Quakers Hill on Sunday morning while man in his 30s died in hospital

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A man has been arrested after allegedly stabbing his former partner and another man to death in Sydney.

Police said emergency services were called to the home in Quakers Hill just before 5am on Sunday, responding to reports of a disturbance.

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Ukrainian president will meet US president at his Mar-a-Lago home later today for their first in person meeting since October

The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that it hit the Syzran oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region in an overnight drone attack.

The strike caused a fire and damages were still being assessed, Kyiv’s General Staff said.

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Key topics include security guarantees from Europe and the US, with Putin yet to signal interest in latest negotiations

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are to meet on Sunday to discuss a plan to end the war in Ukraine, amid continuing Russian attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, and scepticism that Moscow is willing to drop any of its maximalist demands.

Zelenskyy arrived in Florida on Saturday night with a Ukrainian delegation, before talks with the US president at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The two leaders are expected to discuss the latest iteration of a 20-point peace plan and the unresolved question of the future of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

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Emmanuel Macron leads tributes to​ actor who became an international sex symbol ​and later embraced animal rights​ and far-right politics

• Brigitte Bardot: a life in pictures

• Peter Bradshaw on Brigitte Bardot – a zeitgeist-force and France’s most sensational export

Brigitte Bardot, the French actor and singer who became an international sex symbol before turning her back on the film industry and embracing the cause of animal rights activism, has died aged 91.

Among those paying tribute on Sunday was the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who wrote on social media that Bardot had “embodied a life of freedom” and “universal brilliance”. France was mourning “a legend of the century”, he said.

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Russia’s “barbaric” attack on capital draws condemnation as Ukrainian leader readies for Florida meeting

Power supplies to Ukraine’s capital remained patchy on Sunday after a Russian drone and missile barrage that left hundreds of thousands of people facing freezing temperatures.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is preparing to hold face-to-face talks on Sunday with Donald Trump, said Moscow had used nearly 500 drones and 40 missiles, including ballistic missiles, in the attack early on Saturday.

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PM Albin Kurti’s Self-Determination party may struggle to win majority after rival parties refused alliance

Voters in Kosovo are casting ballots in an early parliamentary election in the hope of breaking a political deadlock that has gripped the small Balkan nation for much of this year.

The snap vote was scheduled after the prime minister Albin Kurti’s governing Vetëvendosje, or Self-Determination, party failed to form a government despite winning the most votes in a 9 February election.

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Defence minister instructs military to respond with force in West Bank, where he said attacker was from

A Palestinian motorist ran over a man and stabbed a woman in northern Israel, killing both, Israeli emergency services say.

The assailant, from the occupied West Bank, was shot and wounded by a civilian at the scene on Friday and taken to hospital, Israeli police said.

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Alleged strikes close to UAE-backed forces follow Riyadh’s call for STC to withdraw from newly seized provinces

A separatist group in southern Yemen that this month seized two oil-rich provinces has claimed that Saudi Arabia has fired warning airstrikes directed at its forces.

Videos issued on Friday by media linked to the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) showed airstrikes that it said were close to its positions in Wadi Nahab, Hadramaut province.

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Fourteen countries, also including France, Italy, Ireland and Spain, say actions ‘violate international law and risk fuelling instability’

Fourteen countries, including Britain, Canada and Germany, have condemned the Israeli security cabinet’s approval of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they violate international law and risk fuelling instability.

Israel approved a proposal last Sunday for the new Jewish settlements, which brings the recent total to 69, according to the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

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Strikes were latest violation of year-long ceasefire and targeted what Israel said were Hezbollah sites

Israel has carried out several airstrikes in southern Lebanon on what it said was Hezbollah infrastructure, as a new year’s deadline for the Lebanese state to disarm the group in the south of the country loomed.

Israeli warplanes bombed the valleys of Houmin, Wadi Azza and Nimeiriya in the southern Nabatieh area on Wednesday morning. Residents reported that Israeli drones continued to hover over the area and other areas of south Lebanon and its eastern Bekaa valley after the strikes.

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Libyan PM says Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad died after aircraft lost radio contact above Ankara

The Libyan army’s chief of staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad, has been killed in a plane crash after leaving Turkey’s capital, Ankara.

The prime minister of Libya’s internationally recognised government confirmed on Tuesday evening that Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad had died and that four others were on the jet with him.

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Kathmandu mayor Balendra ‘Balen’ Shah will run for prime minister with presenter Rabi Lamichhane’s party after deadly protests that ousted government

Two of Nepal’s most popular political leaders have formed an alliance ahead of next year’s election in the wake of deadly youth-led protests earlier in the year that ousted the government.

Television host Rabi Lamichhane, the 51-year-old chairperson of the Rastriya Swatantra party (RSP), and the 35-year-old rapper turned Kathmandu mayor Balendra Shah pledged to address the demands of the younger generation following September’s deadly anti-corruption protests.

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Group of 120 experts including Joseph Stiglitz urge fresh debt restructuring plan given scale of destruction

A group of the world’s top economists – including the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz – have called for Sri Lanka’s debt payments to be suspended as it tackles the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah.

More than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed across the island, in what Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, called the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.

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UN body to study possibility of integrating centuries-old practices into mainstream healthcare

From herbalists in Africa gathering plants to use as poultices to acupuncturists in China using needles to cure migraines, or Indian yogis practising meditation, traditional remedies have increasingly being shown to work, and deserve more attention and research, according to a World Health Organization official.

A historical lack of evidence, which has seen traditional practices dismissed by many, could change with more investment and the use of modern technology, according to Dr Shyama Kuruvilla, who leads the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre.

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Researcher in Kerala rainforest sounds alarm after being told frogs had died after being handled by humans

A group of endangered “galaxy frogs” are missing, presumed dead, after trespassing photographers reportedly destroyed their microhabitats for photos.

Melanobatrachus indicus, each the size of a fingertip, is the only species in its family, and lives under logs in the lush rainforest in Kerala, India. Their miraculous spots do not indicate poison, as people sometimes assume, but are thought to be used as a mode of communication, according to Rajkumar K P, a Zoological Society of London fellow and researcher.

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British Indian Ocean Territory commissioner’s appeal against decision last year rejected by judges in London

Appeal court judges have backed a decision that dozens of asylum seekers were unlawfully detained on one of the world’s most remote islands, rejecting an appeal on Tuesday by the commissioner for the territory.

Exactly a year ago, on 16 December 2024, a judge ruled that Tamils who arrived on the island of Diego Garcia, a UK and US military base, after a shipwreck while they were trying to reach Canada to seek asylum, were unlawfully detained there for three years in conditions described as “hell on Earth”.

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• Carroll charged with breaching non-molestation order

• Former England striker due in court on Tuesday

The former England striker Andy Carroll has been charged with breaching a non-molestation order and is set to appear in court on Tuesday.

Carroll, who was capped nine times by England and played for Newcastle and Liverpool, was arrested in April after allegedly committing an offence the previous month.

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The chipmaker’s sprawling partnerships are driving extraordinary growth but also bank its future on the AI boom paying off quickly

Nvidia is, in crucial ways, nothing like Enron – the Houston energy giant that imploded through multibillion-dollar accounting fraud in 2001. Nor is it similar to companies such as Lucent or Worldcom that folded during the dotcom bubble.

But the fact that it needs to reiterate this to its investors is less than ideal.

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Big names can attract audiences as venues struggle with fallout from pandemic, austerity and high costs, Rebecca Dawson says

Casting big stars in stage productions is sometimes needed because theatre is in an “undeniably challenging” moment and must compete with streaming services for people’s time and money, the incoming director of the Bristol Old Vic has said.

Rebecca Dawson will start as executive director and joint chief executive on 6 January, leading the oldest continually operating theatre in the English-speaking world into its 260th anniversary year.

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In towns such as Northampton, in-person help with finances is a promise many customers still depend upon

On a crisp Friday morning in early December, Abington Street in Northampton is starting to stir. Despite having lost high street stalwarts like Marks & Spencer, Moss Bros and H&M in recent years, it is drawing in locals for one end-of-week errand: banking.

Along the pedestrianised road, customers are streaming in and out of HSBC, Barclays, Metro Bank and the building society Nationwide. But it is a rare scene that defies a wider trend: more than 6,000 bank branches in the UK have closed since 2015 as bosses try to cut costs and push millions of customers towards online services.

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Charities and MP Bob Blackman urge government to implement law to tackle scandal of ‘exempt’ accommodation

People are dying in unsafe accommodation and communities are being irreversibly damaged due to delays to a new law to clamp down on unregulated supported housing in England.

It has been more than two years since the Supported Housing Act, a private member’s bill brought by the Conservative MP Bob Blackman, that applies to England and Wales, was given royal assent but it has yet to be implemented due to delays in creating the regulations.

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Authorities say they arrested a man, 23, for kidnapping teen in a Houston suburb as she walked her dog on Christmas

A Texas father used the parental controls on his teenage daughter’s cell phone to find and help rescue her after she was kidnapped at knifepoint while walking her dog on Christmas, authorities allege.

The 15-year-old girl at the center of a case, which quickly gained national attention in the US over the weekend, was reportedly kidnapped in the Houston suburb of Porter. Her parents said she took her dog for a walk and had not returned by the time she was supposed to, according to a statement from the Montgomery county sheriff’s office.

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Crisis intervention training helps police recognize substance use disorders and connect people with treatment

Overdoses have been declining nationally since the fall of 2023, and public health experts have been unable to agree as to why. The decline has been uneven across states, and West Virginia, long known as the epicenter of the opioid crisis, is also among the states that have most reduced overdose fatalities, as noted in a recent Guardian analysis.

One little explored factor is the increased adoption of crisis intervention training (CIT) for law enforcement. Early research that compares jurisdictions that have CIT programs to those that do not show that this intervention is associated with a decline in overdose fatalities.

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More than 17in of rain fell in Ventura county, with trees felled and hundreds of car crashes throughout the region

Southern Californians are facing an epic clean-up operation after the region’s wettest Christmas holiday in recent history turned areas of the state into a panorama of mud and debris.

A year ago, record wildfires scorched the dry neighborhoods of Altadena and Pacific Palisades. But now, in what scientists call “hydroclimate whiplash”, the picture is reversed after an atmospheric river off the Pacific Ocean brought the elemental opposites of wind and rain.

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Nearly 15,000 flights canceled or delayed as both states declare weather emergencies after snowstorm

A mix of snow and ice bore down on the US north-east early on Saturday, disrupting post-holiday weekend airline traffic and prompting officials in New York and New Jersey to issue weather emergency declarations even as the storm ebbed by mid-morning.

More than 14,400 domestic US flights on Saturday were canceled or delayed as of mid-morning, with the majority in the New York area, including at John F Kennedy international airport, LaGuardia airport and Newark Liberty international airport, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

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Rule allows minority party to block legislation, but GOP is reluctant to scrap it as they could lose majority

Donald Trump has floated the idea of ending the filibuster – a procedural technique in Congress that allows a minority of senators to block legislation from passing – which would make pushing through his political agenda in 2026 much easier.

In an interview with Politico, the president urged Republicans in the Senate to scrap the filibuster, saying it had become an obstacle to effective governing and removing it would prevent another government shutdown and pave the way for his party to push through its legislative priorities.

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