World news | The Guardian

Month-long ordeal ends but no details released on how they regained their freedom or who was behind abduction

A final group of 130 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren freed by the government on Sunday are expected to be reunited with their families in the central Niger state on Monday, ending a month-long ordeal that drew global concern.

Last month, unknown gunmen took hundreds of schoolchildren and 12 teachers from St Mary’s Catholic school, Papiri community in Niger state, which runs west from the capital, Abuja, to neighbouring Benin.

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Presidential spokesperson says all those abducted from a Catholic school in Niger state last month are now free

Nigerian authorities say they have secured the release of a further 130 schoolchildren kidnapped from a Catholic school in November, after 100 were freed earlier this month.

“Another 130 abducted Niger state pupils released, none left in captivity,” presidential spokesperson Sunday Dare said on X, in a post accompanied by a photo of smiling children.

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New Africa Hub confronts colonial-era silences by asking visitors to share insights on 40,000 objects

It’s a rare thing for a museum to talk about what it doesn’t know. But unanswered questions and archival silences are at the heart of the new Africa Hub at Manchester Museum, north-west England, which is inviting people around the world to help fill the gaps.

The museum holds more than 40,000 items from across Africa, many of which were traded, collected, looted or preserved during the era of the British empire.

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Echoing the dismantling of USAID, other countries are changing funding priorities and health and hunger programmes in Africa will lose out

The notion of humanitarian aid being used to combat poverty and hunger is being replaced in Europe with geopolitical “games” as states redirect aid to Ukraine and to defence spending, analysts warn after recent announcements by Sweden and Germany.

Earlier this year, humanitarian groups called for European donors to fill the gap as President Donald Trump dismantled the USAID programme, but instead other nations are further pulling back from their commitments around the world.

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Attackers wound 10 others in Bekkersdal after opening fire at people in a bar and ‘randomly’ shooting in the street, police say

Nine people have been killed after gunmen opened fire at a bar near Johannesburg in the second mass shooting in South Africa this month.

Ten more were wounded in the early morning attack at the tavern in the impoverished Bekkersdal township in a gold mining area about 25 miles (40km) south-west of Johannesburg.

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Controversially appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss says: ‘I held that story and I held it because it wasn’t ready’

CBS News was dealing with internal and external uproar on Monday after it pulled at the last minute an investigation for its flagship 60 Minutes show into the harsh prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans from the US earlier this year.

The episode about the Cecot mega-prison was due to air on Sunday night. However, in an “editor’s note” posted on X late that afternoon, the broadcaster’s official account announced that “the lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside Cecot’ will air in a future broadcast.”

Additional reporting by Jeremy Barr

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Long sentences in case of Afro-Ecuadorian ‘Guayaquil Four’ focuses attention on president’s crackdown on crime

A court in Ecuador has sentenced 11 air force personnel to decades in prison over the forced disappearance” of four Afro-Ecuadorian boys aged between 11 and 15 during security operations in the country’s largest city last year.

The case of the “Guayaquil Four” is widely seen as the starkest example of human rights abuses under the iron-fist security policy pursued by the rightwing president, Daniel Noboa, who placed the armed forces at the centre of the fight against drug trafficking.

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Backlash after broadcaster announces investigation, due to air on Sunday night, ‘needs additional reporting’

CBS News is facing a backlash, including from one of its own correspondents, after it cancelled a 60 Minutes investigation into a brutal prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has deported hundreds of migrants.

The episode of its flagship program about the Cecot mega-prison was due to air on Sunday night. However, in an “editor’s note” posted on X, the broadcaster’s official account announced that “the lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside Cecot’ will air in a future broadcast.”

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Attorney general’s office also says 10 people received prison terms from 463 to 958 years amid crackdown on gangs under state of emergency

El Salvador has announced prison sentences for hundreds of gang members, with some of the convicted receiving terms of hundreds of years.

The attorney general’s office posted on X that 248 members of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang had received “exemplary sentences” for 43 homicides and 42 disappearances, among other crimes.

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Official indicates vessel is subject to sanctions after Trump’s ‘blockade’ on sanctioned tankers in and out of Venezuela

US Coast Guard officials said on Sunday they were tracking an oil tanker in international waters close to Venezuela, multiple unnamed US officials have told US media, marking the second such action over the weekend – and the third within the past week.

What officials described as an “active pursuit” in the Caribbean Sea took place a day after the coast guard seized another vessel off the coast of Venezuela, as Washington ramps up its pressure campaign targeting the South American country’s vital oil sector.

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Move made after first phase of anti-subsidy investigation widely seen as retaliation for bloc’s EV tariffs

China will impose provisional duties of up to 42.7% on certain dairy products imported from the EU from Tuesday after concluding the first phase of an anti-subsidy investigation widely seen as retaliation for the bloc’s electric vehicle tariffs.

The tariffs will range from 21.9% to 42.7% – although most companies will pay about 30% – and target products such as milk and cheese, including protected origin brands such as French roquefort and Italian gorgonzola.

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MPs vote to investigate crash amid accusations from victims’ relatives of cover-ups and delays

South Korea’s parliament has launched an independent inquiry into the deadliest air disaster on its soil amid accusations of investigation delays and cover-ups of last year’s Jeju Air crash.

On 29 December 2024 all but two of the 181 people onboard a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 died when it crashed at Muan international airport, 288km south of Seoul, after reporting a bird strike during landing.

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Six absurdist signs resembling official city council information boards have popped up across New Zealand’s second-largest city

Outside an abandoned building in New Zealand’s second-biggest city, a sign reads “slightly haunted but manageable”. In the middle of a busy shopping strip, pedestrians are warned to keep to a 2.83km/h walking speed. In another part of Christchurch, one piece of signage declares simply “don’t”.

The baffling boards are not an overzealous new council initiative, but a piece of art designed to “play with the way we take authority and signage so seriously”.

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Unexpected arrival is a boon for birdlife in New Zealand, where there are only 500 takahē left

A pair of rare native New Zealand takahē birds who were believed infertile have stunned staff at the world’s largest urban eco-sanctuary, after hatching a “miracle” chick.

The roughly seven-week old chick was discovered inside Zealandia, a fully fenced eco-sanctuary 10 minutes from Wellington’s city centre, in November, but its arrival has been a closely guarded secret to ensure its safety.

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Man, 27, from northern Taiwan reported to have fallen to his death in police chase after rampage through capital

At least four people have died in a rare mass stabbing incident in central Taipei after an attacker used smoke grenades to cause chaos as he went on a violent rampage through Taiwan’s capital. Several people were also injured.

The suspected assailant is among the dead after he fell from a building during a police chase through a busy shopping district on Friday evening.

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NSW Liberals voted with Labor to pass the legislation last night, while the Nationals opposed the bill. Follow live updates

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Shareholders have overwhelmingly thrown their support behind a deal to create an Australian media giant spanning television, radio, print and digital, Australian Associated Press reports.

Shareholders in the company that owns Seven Network and the West Australian yesterday approved its merger with the group that owns Triple M and the Hit Network radio stations.

The combination of these two great companies will bring together the best content creators in the country and deliver significant financial and strategic benefits.

This is an opportunity to create a national, diversified media organisation with extensive scale and reach across free-to-air television, streaming, audio and digital publishing assets.

There will be a public version of the report. I mean, there will be elements of it which necessarily deal with classified information and it’s, by definition, important that remains classified. But we’ve made clear there’ll be transparency in respect of this.

Dennis Richardson is a person with enormous experience, first-hand experience, in terms of being secretaries of departments, but also these intelligence agencies.

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The 79-year-old Vietnam war veteran and founding member of the Central Land Council ‘believed deeply in service’

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Warning: This article contains images of and references to Indigenous Australians who have died

One of Central Australia’s most highly respected Aboriginal leaders and Vietnam war veteran has died.

Kaytetye and Arrernte man, Geoffrey Shaw OAM, was born in the dry Todd riverbed in 1945 and began his military career at 18 in 1964, serving until the early 1970s before returning home to devote himself to his community in Alice Springs.

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Proposed changes to gun laws and protest rights in NSW need to be approached with forensic clarity – taking a pause might be wiser

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It is understandable that the Minns Labor government wants to rush new restrictions about guns and protests into law. A tragedy like the Bondi massacre demands action – and the unpredictable political wave of public feeling after a disaster can either wipe you out or see you riding high.

The risks are obvious in Anthony Albanese’s plummeting poll numbers.

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Rabbi calls for good deeds in memory of Dan Elkayam and other victims of attack at Jewish event

• ‘Left an immeasurable void’: Holocaust survivors, community heroes and ‘spirited child’ among victims of Bondi terror attack

Like many friendships, Jesse Singer and Dan Elkayam’s had its own rituals.

“Whenever it was a sunny day, we’d message each other throughout the day to see if we could finish work as early as possible and get down to the beach to play football.”

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Heavy rain and mountain snow forecast for northern and central parts, with river and flooding likely in Los Angeles

After prolonged heavy rainfall and devastating flooding across the Pacific north-west in the past few weeks, further flood watches have been issued across California through this week.

With 50-75mm (2-3in) of rainfall already reported across northern California this weekend, a series of atmospheric rivers will continue to bring periods of heavy rain and mountain snow across the northern and central parts of the state, with flood watches extending until Friday.

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Russia’s Investigative Committee says it is looking into whether Ukraine intelligence services were behind attack

A Russian general has been killed after an explosive device detonated beneath his car in what Moscow described as a likely assassination carried out by Ukrainian intelligence services.

Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, the head of the operational training directorate of the Russian armed forces’ general staff, died of his injuries, a spokesperson for Russia’s investigative committee said in a statement.

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Wes Streeting’s wish for deeper trade relations to help fight against Farage is shared by growing number of MPs

When Keir Starmer stood on the Labour conference stage in 2018 and defied Jeremy Corbyn to call for a second Brexit referendum with remain as an option, it put him in pole position to become the next Labour leader.

Starmer must now feel a sense of deja vu watching Wes Streeting, the most out-and-out pretender for the leadership, follow a similar playbook. In an interview over the weekend, the health secretary strayed from the official government line to call for “a deeper trading relationship” with the EU.

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La Poste’s websites, apps and banking service affected by a DDoS incident, which is also delaying postal deliveries

The websites and apps of France’s national post office and its banking service have been hit by a suspected cyber-attack, disrupting deliveries and hampering online payments and transfers at the busiest time of the year.

Three days before Christmas, La Poste said on Monday that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, had “rendered its online services inaccessible”. Customer data was safe, it said, but mail distribution, including parcels, had been slowed.

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Lisbon court rules the posters could incite hatred and tells party leader Andre Ventura to remove them within 24 hours

The leader of Portugal’s far-right Chega party has been ordered to remove street posters attacking the Roma community, after a Lisbon court ruled they were discriminatory and could incite hatred.

Judge Ana Barao said the posters’ wording “attacks an ethnic minority” and she gave Andre Ventura 24 hours to remove them or face a daily fine of €2,500 (£2,200) per poster.

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Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen demand respect for borders after US appoints Greenland envoy

The prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland have demanded respect for their borders after Donald Trump appointed a special envoy to the largely self-governing Danish territory, which he has said repeatedly should be under US control.

“We have said it very clearly before. Now we say it again. National borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law … You cannot annex other countries,” Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement.

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Justice secretary urged to ‘show a bit of humanity’ with protesters severely ill after refusing food for weeks

• Who are the Palestine Action hunger strikers and what are the health risks?

Families and supporters of Palestine Action-affiliated hunger strikers have pleaded with David Lammy to meet them in an attempt to end the impasse over the protest that has left some of them severely unwell.

On Monday, as the protest reached a dangerous stage, lawyers for the hunger strikers sent a legal letter claiming that by refusing a meeting the justice secretary had failed to comply with the Ministry of Justice’s own policy on handling of hunger strikes.

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Decision takes the total number of new settlements to 69 in past few years as construction binge continues

Israel has approved a proposal for 19 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as the government pushes ahead with a construction binge in the territory that poses a further threat to the possibility of a Palestinian state.

It brings the total number of new settlements over the past few years to 69, a new record, according to the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who has pushed a settlement expansion agenda in the West Bank. The latest include two that were previously evacuated during a 2005 disengagement plan.

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Attack brings total number of Palestinians killed by Israel to 401 since October ceasefire took effect

The Israeli military killed six Palestinians, including a baby, who were in a school that sheltered displaced people in Gaza City on Friday, hospital officials have said. The attack brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israel to 401 since the October ceasefire took effect.

Israeli troops fired over the ceasefire line which they have withdrawn to, killing the Palestinians and wounding a number more, the Palestinian civil defence said in a statement. It added that it was only able to recover the bodies after coordinating with the UN, to ensure they did not also come under Israeli fire.

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Monitor says almost one in eight people face food shortages as flooding and cold exacerbate humanitarian emergency

The famine in Gaza has ended as a result of increased humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory, the UN said on Friday, though it warned that levels of hunger and the humanitarian situation remained critical.

Almost one in eight people in Gaza still faced food shortages, the UN said, adding that persistent hunger had been made worse by winter flooding and the colder weather. Most people in Gaza live in tents or other substandard accommodation as Israel destroyed much of the housing and civilian infrastructure during its two-year war.

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Manar al-Houbi’s family had been denied entry despite a scholarship covering their living costs, but other students remain stranded

The UK government has finally evacuated Manar al-Houbi, the Gaza student who won a fully funded scholarship to pursue her PhD at the University of Glasgow, along with her family from the war-ravaged territory this week.

In October, the Guardian highlighted Houbi’s desperate battle to get her family evacuated after they were denied entry to the UK, despite her scholarship and visa permitting her to bring them.

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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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Opposition claims SIR process being used to disenfranchise minority groups to benefit Narendra Modi’s government

India’s political opposition has warned that democracy is under threat amid a controversial exercise to revise the voter register across the country, which critics say will disenfranchise minority voters and entrench the power of the ruling Narendra Modi government.

An debate erupted in India’s parliament last week over the special intensive revision (SIR) process, which is taking place in nine states and three union territories, in one of the biggest revisions of the country’s electoral roll in decades.

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Major incident declared as 50-metre-long breach opens up in waterway previously flagged as ‘amber risk’

A man has told of his narrow escape after waking up just in time to raise the alarm as his canal boat and those of others were swallowed by a fast-appearing giant hole.

Emergency services declared a major incident after the 50-metre-long crater – initially described by emergency services and other agencies as a sinkhole – breached the Llangollen canal in England’s West Midlands, leaving boats teetering on the edge of a steep drop or stuck at the bottom of the cavity.

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Seven prisoners have been taken to hospital since starting their strikes, with some claiming a lack of medical attention

• Families of Palestine Action hunger strikers seek urgent meeting with Lammy

Eight prisoners have been on hunger strike while awaiting trial for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action before the group was banned under terrorism legislation. What do we know about the activists and their demands?

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Move is part of a long-awaited Labour strategy including outlawing hen cages and ending puppy farming

Boiling lobsters alive will be banned under proposals to improve animal welfare in England.

Government ministers say that “live boiling is not an acceptable killing method” for crustaceans and alternative guidance will be published.

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Artist confirms image in Bayswater is by him, but gives no indication about another outside Centre Point tower

A new Banksy mural that shows two children lying down and looking at the sky has appeared in west London.

The artist revealed he was behind the artwork above a row of garages on Queen’s Mews in Bayswater by posting a photo of it to his Instagram account on Monday afternoon.

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Philip Young, 49, is accused of 56 sexual offences, including drugging and raping his now ex-wife

A man has been charged with drugging and raping his then wife over a period of 13 years, with five other men also charged with sexual offences against her.

Philip Young, 49, formerly from Swindon but now living in Enfield in north London, has been charged with 56 sexual offences.

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Game developer, who was also involved in Medal of Honor and Titanfall, reportedly killed in a car crash

Vince Zampella, the co-creator of the Call of Duty video game series, has died aged 55.

The head of the video game developer Respawn Entertainment and the co-founder of Infinity Ward was killed in a car crash in California, NBC Los Angeles reported.

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The statement says the release was ‘a fraction of the files, and what we received was riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation’

• Schumer to ask Senate to back legal action over partial Epstein files release

CNN reports that some CBS staffers are “threatening to quit” over the controversial cancellation of a 60 Minutes investigation into the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has deported hundreds of migrants.

Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’s decision to pull the story – taken last night three hours before broadcast - has been blasted by members of Congress and the veteran correspondent involved, Sharyn Alfonsi, who had interviewed people deported by the Trump administration to the notorious mega-prison about the “brutal and torturous conditions” they faced.

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Top Democrat to introduce resolution after Department of Justice misses deadline for all files linked to sex offender

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The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, announced on Monday he will introduce a resolution directing the Senate to take legal action against the justice department over its incomplete release of files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“I am introducing a resolution directing the Senate to initiate legal action against DoJ for its blatant disregard of the law in its refusal to release the complete Epstein files,” Schumer said in a statement on social media. “The American people deserve full transparency, and Senate Democrats will use every tool at our disposal to ensure they get it. This administration cannot be allowed to hide the truth.”

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Governor calls accusations that students with disabilities may have been confined in boxes ‘highly disturbing’

A school district board in upstate New York is investigating school officials amid accusations that the district may have confined elementary school students inside wooden “timeout” boxes.

Images of the boxes, which resemble tiny padded cells, first spread on social media last week, after a former member of the Salmon River school district school board accused officials of building them to seclude children with disabilities. The images unleashed an immediate uproar in the small district, which teaches about 1,300 children and lies on the border between New York state and Canada.

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ICE held more than 68,400 people as of 14 December, breaking previous high set at beginning of December

The number of people in immigration detention in the US has hit an all-time high according to data published by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The data, which comes out every two weeks, shows that as of 14 December 2025, ICE held more than 68,400 people.

This many people in immigration detention is a new record, breaking the previous high set at the beginning of December.

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