World news | The Guardian

Rubaya mine produces about 15% of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum, used in mobile phones

More than 200 people were killed this week in a collapse at the Rubaya coltan mine in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Lumumba Kambere Muyisa, a spokesperson for the rebel-appointed governor of the province where the mine is located, told Reuters on Friday.

Rubaya produces about 15% of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum – a heat-resistant metal that is in high demand by makers of mobile phones, computers, aerospace components and gas turbines. The site, where local people dig manually for a few dollars a day, has been under the control of the M23 rebel group since 2024.

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Motorcycle-riding militants launch strikes using heavy weaponry and drones, damaging planes belonging to Ivorian carrier and Togolese airline

Islamic State in the Sahel has claimed responsibility for an audacious assault at the international airport and adjacent air force base in Niamey, the capital of Niger, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist activity and communications worldwide.

The attack, which began shortly after midnight on Thursday, reportedly involved motorcycle-riding militants who launched a “surprise and coordinated” strike using heavy weaponry and drones, according to statements released via IS in the Sahel’s propaganda arm, Amaq news agency.

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Ariel Seidman declared persona non grata and given 72 hours to leave country after remarks on social media

South Africa and Israel have engaged in a tit-for-tat expulsion of senior diplomats, after South Africa ordered Israel’s chargé d’affaires to leave within 72 hours, citing “insulting attacks” on South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, on social media.

Ariel Seidman, the chargé d’affaires at Israel’s embassy in Pretoria, was declared persona non grata by South Africa’s department for international relations and cooperation (DIRCO) in a statement on its website on Friday afternoon.

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General Tchiani accuses France, Benin and the Ivory Coast of links to attack near Niamey’s airport and thanks Russian troops for defence efforts

Heavy security has been deployed around the main airport in Niger’s capital, Niamey, after overnight gunfire and explosions that the country’s military ruler blamed without evidence on France, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire.

The shooting and detonations began shortly after midnight on Wednesday, according to residents of a neighbourhood near the airport, which is next to Base Aérienne 101, a military base previously used by US and then Russian troops.

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Fifty killed in one incident as Italian authorities estimate 380 people may have drowned last week

Up to 380 people may have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean last week as Cyclone Harry battered southern Italy and Malta, the Italian coastguard has said, as a shipwreck with the loss of 50 lives was confirmed by Maltese authorities.

Just one person, who was hospitalised in Malta, survived the shipwreck, which happened on Friday.

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After stories revealed high levels of contamination in neighborhood around factory processing US toxic waste, government announces sweeping array of tactics

The Mexican government has announced it will pursue a sweeping array of tactics to combat industrial pollution, from $4.8m in fines against a plant processing US hazardous waste to the rollout of a new industrial air-monitoring system, following investigations by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, a Mexican investigative unit.

Those stories revealed high levels of heavy-metal contamination in the neighborhood around the factory, Zinc Nacional, in the Monterrey metropolitan area, and showed the broader extent of industrial pollution in the region, linked to Monterrey’s role in manufacturing and recycling goods for the US market.

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Country is already suffering acute fuel shortage; experts say complete cutoff will be ‘catastrophic’ to its infrastructure

It’s just gone midday on Linea, one of the main roads through Havana’s Vedado neighbourhood, and Javier Peña and Ysil Ribas have been waiting since 6am outside a petrol station. They’re passing the time fixing a leak on Ribas’s 1955 gold and white Mercury.

A tanker has pulled up on the forecourt in front of them, and so the queue behind is growing fast. Although this station only takes US dollars, at a cost far out of reach of most Cubans, Peña says it’s their only choice. “There is no gas in the national pesos,” he says, shrugging.

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Voters to choose president and 57 members of congress, with current president’s hardline pick Laura Fernández expected to win first round

Costa Rica heads to the polls on Sunday in an election dominated by increasing insecurity and warnings of an authoritarian turn in a country long seen as a model of liberal democracy in the region.

Crime is a big concern for many voters as criminal groups battle to control lucrative cocaine trafficking routes to Europe and the US, casting a shadow on the Central American country famous for its wildlife tourism.

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Island country only has oil enough to last 15-20 days, and 12-hour blackouts have become commonplace

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has warned that Donald Trump’s move to slap new tariffs on countries sending oil to Cuba could trigger a humanitarian crisis on the island, which is already suffering from chronic fuel shortages and regular blackouts.

The US president signed an executive order on Thursday declaring a national emergency and laying the groundwork for such tariffs, ratcheting up the pressure to topple the communist government in Havana.

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Panama’s president says strategic waterway will operate as normal after ruling that advances US policy aims

Panama’s president said ports at each end of the Panama canal would operate as usual after the country’s supreme court ruled the concession held by a subsidiary of a Chinese company was unconstitutional.

The court’s decision on Thursday, which helps US attempts to block any Chinese influence over the strategic waterway, immediately drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing.

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About 20 countries including G7 states in talks on rare earths including calls for US to guarantee minimum price

Ministers from the US, EU, UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will meet in Washington this week to discuss a strategic alliance over critical minerals.

The summit is being seen as a step to repair transatlantic ties fractured by a year of conflict with Donald Trump and pave the way for other alliances to help countries de-risk from China, including one centred on steel.

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Plaintiffs in case say they were lured from Japan, exploited for labour and cut off from families for generations

It has been more than six decades since Eiko Kawasaki left Japan to begin a new life in North Korea. Then 17, she was among tens of thousands of people with Korean heritage who had been lured to the communist state by the promise of a “paradise on Earth”.

Instead, they encountered something closer to a living hell. They were denied basic human rights and forced to endure extreme hardship. Official promises of free education and healthcare plus guaranteed jobs and housing had been a cruel mirage. And to their horror, they were prevented from travelling to Japan to visit the families they had left behind.

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PM flies out after courting world’s second biggest economy aware of difficult balance of risks and potential rewards

The last British prime minister to visit China was Theresa May in 2018. Before the visit, she and her team were advised to get dressed under the covers because of the risk of hidden cameras having been placed in their hotel rooms to record compromising material.

Keir Starmer, in Beijing this week, was more sanguine about his privacy, even though the security risks have, if anything, increased since the former Tory prime minister was in town.

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Prime minister suggests US president was ‘talking more about Canada’ when asked for reaction to Beijing visit

Prominent Hong Kong and Uyghur activists living in exile in the UK have accused Starmer of seeking China’s desperate approval, after the prime minister visited Beijing for the first time in eight years this week.

Pro-democracy campaigner and prominent critic of the Communist Party, Finn Lau said the Hong Kong community is disappointed by Starmer’s visit, but unsurprised by the government’s “short sightedness”.

“While British citizen Jimmy Lai remains imprisoned and Uyghurs continue to suffer atrocity crimes, we take no comfort in this decision and will not be silenced.

We look forward to receiving urgent assurances from the government regarding those who were placed under sanction together with us, and take this opportunity to express our ongoing solidarity with the Uyghur people, whose cause we will not drop.

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Starmer confirms immediate removal, but it is unclear if sanctions remain on former MP, academic and barrister

China has lifted the sanctions it imposed on serving British MPs and peers in a significant sign of warming relations after Keir Starmer travelled to Beijing for landmark talks with Xi Jinping.

Nine UK citizens were banned from China in 2021, including five Conservative MPs and two members of the House of Lords, targeted for highlighting human rights violations against the Muslim Uyghur community.

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Over 100 police and volunteers join five-day search in Mount Buffalo national park. Follow today’s news live

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Dan Tehan says ‘no reason’ good faith negotiations can’t reform Coalition this week

Dan Tehan, the shadow minister for energy, said senior leaders from the Nationals and the Liberal party need to meet in Canberra this week and work through their differences amid a split in the Coalition last month.

I think we need to quietly get senior people together and work through how we can get the Coalition back together. And that should be done behind closed doors, and there needs to be a meeting from both sides to say, “let’s put aside what has happened and let’s focus on what we need to do to reform the Coalition”.

There’s no reason, if everyone enters into this in good faith, that we can’t achieve that. And I think that should be an absolute focus this week.

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Documents released under FoI show Wells’ department worried about how gambling reforms would affect sporting codes and media companies

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There is growing frustration in the government caucus about the delay to gambling advertising reforms, according to a group of Labor MPs who say they want the communications and sports minister, Anika Wells, to take action.

Documents recently released under freedom of information laws revealing details of Wells’ meetings with major TV broadcasters about wagering restrictions show her department has conceded the popularity of an ad ban, but is concerned about what it could mean for sporting codes and media companies.

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Labor set to take advantage of shambles with blistering attacks in question time as Sussan Ley presides over barest opposition benches since 1943

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Normally this column focuses on the agenda for the coming parliamentary week, unpacking a dense policy issue or two that will dominate the political discussion.

This week is a little different. You would expect the government’s big agenda would be front and centre in the first regularly scheduled programming sitting week of the year – but not this Monday.

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Recreating cosmic dust may help answer questions about how meteorites hitting Earth came to contain organic matter

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How does one acquire star dust? One option, as the Perry Como song suggests, is to catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, so to speak.

Thousands of tonnes of cosmic dust bombard the Earth each year, mostly vaporising in the atmosphere. The asteroid and comet fragments that do not burn up – known as meteorites and micrometeorites if they hit Earth – provide scientists with valuable clues about the cosmos.

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Exclusive: ‘This is a blatant and disturbing disregard for the law and for people’s security,’ digital rights advocate says

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Australian platforms used by real estate agents to upload documentation for renters and landlords are leaving people’s personal information exposed in hyperlinks accessible online.

An analysis of seven rent platforms provided to Guardian Australia by a researcher, who wished to remain anonymous, revealed millions of leasing documents could be accessed by threat actors.

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PM says Europe must ‘step up’ and signals he wants to work more closely with other states to build military capability

The UK should consider re-entering talks for a defence pact with the EU, Keir Starmer has said, arguing that Europe needs to “step up and do more” to defend itself in uncertain times.

The prime minister signalled that he wanted to work more collaboratively with other European countries to increase defence spending and build up military capability, and doing so through the EU’s scheme is one option available.

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Mette-Marit apologises for ‘poor judgment’ as documents reportedly include scores of email exchanges with child sex offender

Norway’s crown princess has become embroiled in another scandal after newly unsealed files appeared to show her years of extensive contact with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department, appear to include nearly 1,000 mentions of the crown princess, Mette-Marit.

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Employees of Ukraine’s largest private energy firm, DTEK, were travelling about 40 miles from frontline, says police

A Russian drone attack on a bus carrying mine workers in Ukraine’s central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region has killed at least 12 people, officials said.

The bus was driving about 40 miles (65km) from the frontline, according to police. Images published by Ukraine’s state emergency service showed what appeared to be an empty bus, its side windows shattered and windscreen hanging from the front.

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Cherub at landmark church causes ecclesiastical and political uproar with alleged resemblance to Italian PM

Italy’s culture minister and the diocese of Rome have launched investigations after claims were made that an angel in a landmark church in Rome was restored in the likeness of the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

The resemblance was first flagged by the newspaper La Repubblica, which noted that one of the two angels flanking a marble bust of Italy’s last king in the Basilica of St Lawrence in Lucina now had “a familiar, astonishingly contemporary face”.

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Film with a cast headed by Anthony Hopkins tells the story of a supercar marque that began in a small Bologna garage

Dozens of Maseratis of 1920s and 1930s designs have been built specially for a feature film about the Italian car company’s earliest days, with a cast headed by Anthony Hopkins.

Maserati: The Brothers tells the story of siblings driven by their love of cars to create an automotive company from scratch. It all began in a little garage in the Italian city of Bologna: in 1914 they founded a sports supercar company that went on to make some of the fastest vehicles on the planet.

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US naval battle group gathers off Iran’s shores as supreme leader in Tehran warns attack would spark regional war

Donald Trump has said Iran is talking to the US, hinting at a deal that would avoid the use of military strikes, as Iran’s supreme leader warned that any attack by the US would spark a regional war.

The US president’s comments came as Washington deployed a naval battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off Iran’s shores, after Trump’s threats to intervene in Iran’s deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.

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Officials say Gaza residents travelling on foot only will be allowed through border point, which was shut in May 2024

Gaza’s main border crossing in Rafah will reopen for Palestinians on Monday, Israel has said, with preparations under way at the war-ravaged territory’s gateway, which has been mostly closed for almost two years.

Before the war, the Rafah crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Palestinians in Gaza to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid. It has been largely shut since May 2024.

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Pressure mounts after government said it would publish names of those killed during recent unrest

Calls are growing inside Iran for an independent inquiry into the number of people killed during recent protests after the government said it would oversee the publication of the names of the deceased.

The highly unusual government move, announced on Thursday, is designed to head off claims that crimes against humanity have been committed and that as many as 30,000 Iranians have been killed. Iran’s official death toll released by the Martyr’s Foundation is 3,117, including members of the security services.

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Nick Carter says easing controls on MDMA will allow drug to be used as alternative treatment for those with PTSD

A former head of the British military is calling for the government to ease restrictions on the party drug MDMA so that it can be tested more cheaply as a treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Sir Nick Carter, who was chief of the defence staff until 2021, said existing regulations meant a single gram of “medical grade” MDMA cost about £10,000 compared with a street price of about £40, inflating the cost of trials.

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Deadly attacks launched day before border crossing due to open as part of ceasefire deal

Israel has carried out some of its deadliest airstrikes on Gaza in months, killing at least 30 Palestinians, some of whom were sheltering in tent cities for displaced people.

Despite a nominal ceasefire, the Israeli military struck a police station in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood west of Gaza City on Saturday, killing 10 officers and detainees, the civil defence said. It indicated the death toll could rise as emergency responders searched for bodies.

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Officials say calm restored to province day after dozens killed in suicide and gun attacks in at least 10 cities

Pakistan’s security forces have intensified their operations against separatist militants in Balochistan province who launched a large-scale assault on Saturday in which at least 31 civilians and 17 security personnel were killed.

A day after the militants carried out suicide attacks in the heart of the province’s capital, Quetta, the chief minister of the south-western region, Sarfraz Bugti, said 145 people he described as militants had been killed in 40 hours and that their bodies were in the custody of the authorities.

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Five years after the junta’s coup, the civil war devastating Myanmar has reached a turning point. The military is carrying out large-scale counter-offensives across the country to reclaim territory seized by pro-democracy rebels of various ethnic and religious backgrounds

In Tanintharyi, the southernmost region of Myanmar, the local resistance has managed to contain the military. After five years of guerrilla warfare, the revolutionary youth there remain determined to restore democracy through armed struggle.

A long, narrow stretch of land at the southern tip of Myanmar, between the Andaman Sea to the west and Thailand to the east, Tanintharyi region is one of the areas where the resistance challenges the military’s authority. For decades, the region has been home to an armed rebellion led by the Karen ethnic minority, which operated mainly in the peripheral mountains.

Soldiers from the Karen National Union (KNU) inspect the ruins of a Buddhist monastery destroyed by a junta airstrike in Myeik district, Tanintharyi region

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• Concern raised over politicisation of sport

• Bangladesh pulled out of men’s World T20 after row

Bangladesh’s withdrawal from the men’s T20 World Cup could have implications for India’s 2036 Olympic bid amid concern at the International Olympic Committee over the potential politicisation of sport.

Bangladesh pulled out of next month’s tournament last weekend after the International Cricket Council declined a request to move their group matches from India to the co-hosts Sri Lanka, after a long-running political row triggered by Kolkata Knight Riders’ decision to remove the Bangladeshi bowler Mustafizur Rahman from their Indian Premier League squad.

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Human rights groups and some western countries have denounced the election, the first held since the 2021 coup, describing it as neither free nor fair

Myanmar’s military-backed party has completed a sweeping victory in the country’s three-phase general election, state media said, cementing an outcome long expected after a tightly controlled political process held during civil war and widespread repression.

The Union and Solidarity Party (USDP) dominated all phases of the vote, winning an overwhelming majority in the two legislative chambers in Myanmar. It secured 232 of the 263 seats up for grabs in the lower Pyithu Hluttaw house and 109 of the 157 seats announced so far in the Amyotha Hluttaw upper chamber, according to results released on Thursday and Friday.

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Voting ends in month-long poll derided internationally as sham designed to cement army’s grip on power

Voting in Myanmar has ended with the military-backed party expected to win a landslide victory after a month-long election that has been widely derided as a sham designed to cement the army’s grip on power.

The junta leader, Min Aung Hlaing, has rejected criticism of the vote, saying it has the support of the public and presenting it as a return to democracy and stability.

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This live blog is now closed. For the latest, you can read our Epstein coverage here.

• Handling of Epstein files is ‘outrageous’, say attorneys of his survivors

We can bring you more from the interview with housing secretary Steve Reed on Sky News’ Trevor Phillips programme this morning (see this post for what Reed said about Peter Mandelson in the same interview).

When asked if the British government would comply with an extradition request from the US if there was a charge brought against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Reed said he could not answer that question as it was an “entirely hypothetical” one.

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Patients missing out on effective new radiotherapies widely used in other countries, health secretary told

Cancer patients are being denied access to cutting-edge treatments on the NHS because of a “deadly postcode lottery” in access, doctors have warned.

Patients in England are missing out on two innovative forms of radiotherapy that are known to be effective against several forms of the disease and are widely available in other countries, due to “red tape” and lack of funding.

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Families allege Bright Horizons brushed concerns aside allowing Vincent Chan to commit dozens of offences

Families of victims of a paedophile are taking legal action against a north London nursery where their children were abused, as they allege a “consistent culture of brushing concerns aside”.

Vincent Chan, 45, is facing prison for molesting girls aged between two and four while working at the now-closed Bright Horizons nursery in Finchley Road, West Hampstead.

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Three bishops accuse British government of contributing to ‘culture of impunity’ in the occupied territory

Three prominent Church of England bishops have accused the UK government of contributing to a “culture of impunity” in which Israel has accelerated its de facto annexation of the West Bank.

Guli Francis-Dehqani, the bishop of Chelmsford, Rachel Treweek, the bishop of Gloucester, and Graham Usher, the bishop of Norwich, visited Palestinian Christian communities in the occupied West Bank last week.

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Exclusive: Dr Susan Gilby, who won £1.4m bullying payout, says whistleblower protections must be strengthened

Patients are being put at risk by NHS bosses launching “sham investigations” into whistleblowers to shut down concerns, a former hospital chief executive who won a £1.4m bullying claim has said.

Dr Susan Gilby took over as chief executive at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2018 after it was rocked by the Lucy Letby case. She was awarded the payout – one of the biggest in NHS history – last month after a tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed after raising concerns about alleged bullying and harassment by the chair of the hospital board.

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Late singer said kids loved his personality and wanted to touch and hug him, and ‘sometimes it got me into trouble’

As Michael Jackson saw it, children would become enamored with his personality as well as want to touch and hug him – and “sometimes it [got] me into trouble,” the late US pop superstar says in previously unheard audio recordings contained in a new documentary.

The UK’s Wonderhood Studios included the recordings of Jackson voicing those thoughts for a new four-episode documentary series beginning on Wednesday that explores his acquittal on child sexual abuse charges after a 14-week criminal trial near Los Angeles in 2005.

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Funds, paid to former security guard Matthew Ammel, were from former US senator’s campaign committee in October

A man identified in court filings as having an affair with former senator Kyrsten Sinema received almost $9,000 from Sinema’s former campaign committee in October, according to newly filed documents. The filings come just weeks after the man’s estranged wife accused Sinema of wrecking their marriage.

According to a report from Notus, which cites a newly filed Federal Election Commission (FEC) document, the recipient was Matthew J Ammel, who worked as a security guard for Sinema. He was paid $1,815.91 on 15 October and $7,136.14 on 31 October in payments listed as “payroll”, according to a filing submitted on Saturday by Sinema for Arizona.

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Melania, however, cost quite more than a typical documentary, at $40m to make and $35m to promote.

Amazon’s Melania Trump documentary has reportedly beaten box office expectations and recorded the strongest start of any documentary in over a decade, taking $7m at the US box office during its lavishly-promoted opening weekend. But it also cost quite more than a typical documentary, at $40m to make and $35m to promote.

And Amazon – which recently cut 16,000 corporate jobs – has been hit with criticism that making the documentary about the first lady, and paying so highly for it, was little more than a ploy to curry favor with her husband, Donald Trump, during his second presidency.

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Boy and his father back in Minneapolis after being detained by ICE and held in immigration facility for more than a week

A five-year-old boy and his father were back in Minneapolis on Sunday after being released from a Texas immigration detention center where they were held for more than a week, according to US House representative Joaquin Castro.

“Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack. Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam,” Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said in a post on X. “We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”

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Deputy US attorney general says victims ‘want to be made whole’ but that doesn’t mean ‘we can just create evidence’

The deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, the point person on the Trump administration’s Epstein files release, told ABC News on Sunday that prosecutors’ review of the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case “is over”.

Separately, in comments to CNN about Epstein, Blanche said that “victims want to be made whole” after surviving the scheme attributed to the late convicted sex offender and which led to a 20-year prison sentence for Maxwell beginning in 2022.

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