World news | The Guardian

Mamady Doumbouya reneged on promise not to stand and hand west African country back to civilian rule

The head of Guinea’s junta, Mamady Doumbouya, who had pledged not to run for office after seizing power four years ago, has been elected president after the country’s electoral commission said he had secured a sweeping majority of the vote.

Doumbouya, 41, faced eight rivals for the presidency but the main opposition leaders were barred from running and had urged a boycott of the vote held over the weekend.

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Dispute has potential to create civil war in south of Yemen and spill over into neighbouring countries

Tensions between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia over the future of Yemen and the imminent possibility of the declaration of an independent southern state have reached boiling point with Saudi Arabia in effect accusing the UAE of threatening its future security.

The dispute has the potential to create a civil war within the south of Yemen and also spill over into other disputes including in Sudan and the Horn of Africa where the two countries often find themselves backing opposite sides. Yemen could yet become only one theatre in which the two vastly wealthy Gulf states vie for political influence, control of shipping lanes and commercial access.

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• British former boxing champion sustained minor injuries

• Sina Ghami and Kevin ‘Lateef’ Ayodel killed in accident

The British heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua has issued a statement after he was injured in a car crash in Nigeria on Monday morning which killed two of his close friends.

The former world heavyweight boxing champion was taken to an undisclosed hospital after his car hit a stationary vehicle at about 11am on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Ogun state police commissioner, Lanre Ogunlowo, said. The driver of Joshua’s vehicle was also injured, he added.

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Tighter border controls caused arrivals to decline sharply but forced people on to more dangerous routes, activists say

More than 3,000 people died trying to reach Spain by sea over the past year, a sharp fall from the previous 12 months.

However, activists cautioned that the drop reflected tighter border controls that have forced migrants to take increasingly dangerous routes.

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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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Report of a drone attack on a port facility signals new phase in US military campaign against Nicolás Maduro

• US wargames played out scenarios for Maduro’s fall. None of them ended well for Venezuela

Nearly a week after Donald Trump first announced what he said was the first US ground strike in a four-month-long military pressure campaign against Venezuela, details remain very thin on the ground.

CNN and the New York Times reported late on Monday that they had confirmed the CIA had used a drone to target a “port facility” allegedly used by the Tren de Aragua street gang. No casualties were reported, but the date, time and location of the attack remain unknown. Venezuela’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his government have remained silent.

If confirmed, the first strike on land would mark a new phase in a campaign that since August has involved the deployment of a massive US naval fleet, airstrikes that have so far killed 107 people, a “total blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers, the seizure of two vessels and the pursuit of a third.

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Former Brazilian president underwent a phrenic nerve block while temporarily released from prison for surgery

Jair Bolsonaro underwent a second “phrenic nerve block procedure” on Monday to treat persistent hiccups.

The treatment went well and the former Brazilian president’s condition is stable, according to his medical team.

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Train accident in Oaxaca is likely to raise criticisms about public works projects from the previous administration

At least 13 people were killed when a train derailed in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, in an accident which is likely to revive opposition criticisms of the speed and dealings with which the country’s government builds its flagship public works projects.

The incident took place on the Interoceanic Train, which was built to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, creating an alternative rail cargo route to the Panama canal intended to drive development in the region.

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Trump alleged that US forces hit ‘very hard’ in what would mark his team’s first land strike on Venezuela if confirmed

Donald Trump has claimed that US forces struck a “big facility” in Venezuela last week – but the president did not specify what it was, or where, and the White House has not commented further.

“We just knocked out – I don’t know if you read or you saw – they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump told Republican donor and New York supermarket owner John Catsimatidis on Friday.

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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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Reunification ‘is unstoppable’, says Chinese president, a day after the conclusion of intense military drills

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to reunify China and Taiwan in his annual New Year’s Eve speech in Beijing.

Speaking the day after the conclusion of intense Chinese military drills around Taiwan, Xi said: “The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable.”

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Carmakers such as MG, BYD and Chery are set to pass 200,000 mark in sales, analysis suggests, double 2024’s total

Chinese brands are on course to account for one in every 10 new cars sold in Britain during 2025, a marked increase on last year as sales increase across Europe.

Manufacturers led by MG, BYD, and Chery are on track to break the 200,000 mark in UK new car sales in 2025, meaning they are very likely to account for 10% of the market, according to Matthias Schmidt, an analyst tracking electric cars across Europe.

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PM Sanae Takaichi joins petition asking for better facilities for women to match improved representation

Nearly 60 female lawmakers in Japan, including the prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, have submitted a petition calling for more toilets in the parliament building for women to match their improved representation.

Japanese politics remains hugely male-dominated, although the number of women in the parliament rose at the last election – and Takaichi became the first female prime minister in October. This is reflected by there being only one lavatory containing two cubicles for the lower house’s 73 women to use near the Diet’s main plenary session hall in central Tokyo.

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Foreign affairs department statement says Australia opposes any actions that ‘increase the risk of accident, miscalculation or escalation’

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Australia says it is deeply concerned about Chinese military exercises near Taiwan, and has raised the issue with Chinese officials.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) said the large-scale simulations risked destabilising the region and could result in an accident or escalation.

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Community leaders raise alarm over study links and Polynesian ties, with Tonga to face restrictions from January as US says too many overstay

The small Pacific nation of Tonga is one of more than a dozen countries to be hit with visa and entry restrictions on 1 January as the Trump administration tightens its crackdown on immigration.

In December, the US said it would further restrict and limit the entry of foreign nationals to protect the country from “national security and public safety threats”.

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Levy on beef exceeding quotas to begin immediately as Beijing seeks to protect domestic industry

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Australian beef producers said they were “extremely disappointed” after China announced a 55% tariff on imports that exceed quota levels in a move to protect a domestic cattle industry slowly emerging from oversupply.

China’s commerce ministry said on Wednesday the total import quota for 2026 for Australia and other countries such as Brazil and the US covered under its new “safeguard measures” is 2.7m metric tons, roughly in line with the record 2.87m tons it imported overall in 2024.

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Police said 25-year-old woman hit by a wave near a tidal rock pool at Maroubra, and another swimmer missing at Coogee

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A woman has been found dead after being swept out into the ocean from a Sydney beach in the early hours of New Year’s Day, as authorities issue a warning about dangerous surf conditions on the NSW coast.

Later in the morning another swimmer went missing in the water at Coogee.

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Terror attack victims remembered with menorah projected on to Harbour Bridge before dazzling display

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Australia paused to show solidarity with the Jewish community as New Year’s Eve festivities rolled across the nation.

Weeks on from the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, hundreds of thousands of people around Sydney Harbour observed a minute’s silence and shone a collective, defiant light after the recent atrocity.

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Draft bill to be submitted for legal checks as France aims to follow Australia’s world-first ban on platforms including Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube

France intends to follow Australia and ban social media platforms for children from the start of the 2026 academic year.

A draft bill preventing under-15s from using social media will be submitted for legal checks and is expected to be debated in parliament early in the new year.

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• The 54-year-old was admitted to hospital on Boxing Day

• Martyn played total of 67 Tests between 1992 and 2006

The former Australian Test cricketer Damien Martyn has been admitted to hospital and placed in an induced coma after being diagnosed with meningitis.

The sporting community is rallying around the 54-year-old, who “is in for the fight of his life”, according to the former AFL player Brad Hardie, who revealed Martyn’s condition on 6PR on Tuesday.

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Border guards say they found ship with anchor lowered into sea after detection of fault in Helsinki-Tallinn telecoms link

Finnish authorities have boarded and seized a cargo vessel sailing from Russia on suspicion of sabotaging two underwater telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea, where a series of similar incidents have occurred in recent years.

The vessel, the Fitburg, was on its way from St Petersburg to Haifa in Israel. Finnish coastguard officers boarded the ship at 11am, about six hours after disruption to the cables was first reported. Fourteen crew members, including several Russians, were taken into custody.

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Passengers told to expect knock-on impacts after power supply problem and broken-down train halted services on Tuesday

Rail traffic through the Channel tunnel slowly resumed on Wednesday with more cancellations and delays after an electricity failure on Tuesday stranded thousands of passengers and trapped some for a night in a powerless train.

Two London-Paris trains were cancelled and most trips were delayed in both directions as Eurostar warned of “knock-on impacts” on New Year’s Eve.

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Artwork by one of the most influential artists of 20th century raffled to fund Alzheimer’s research

His work is consistently ranked among the world’s most expensive art, with paintings fetching more than a $100m at auction. But you no longer need to be a multimillionaire to own a Picasso – for €100, anyone in the world has the chance to walk away with a painting by one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

The French charity Alzheimer’s Research Foundation announced recently it was raffling Picasso’s 1941 portrait, Tête de femme, which is worth more than €1m, to a single winner. Proceeds from the tickets will help fund Alzheimer’s research, one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide.

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Despite reviews of the district as a raucous tourist trap, improved policing has restored safety and an eclectic vibe

When Ireland redeveloped a swathe of central Dublin in the 1990s, the idea was to create a version of Paris’s Left Bank, a cultural quarter of cobbled lanes, art and urban renewal.

Planners and architects transformed the run-down Temple Bar site by the River Liffey into an ambitious experiment that drew throngs of visitors and won awards.

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Country’s six-month stint at helm begins with defence, migration and Ukraine still at top of agenda

Cyprus says it will bring “a new approach to the table” when it assumes the EU presidency on Thursday, as defence, migration and Ukraine continue to top the agenda at a time of acute geopolitical uncertainty.

As one of the bloc’s smaller member states, Cyprus will tackle its six-month stint at the EU’s helm with discipline and dedication but also “a different mindset”, the Cypriot foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, said.

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Demonstrations against deteriorating living conditions have widened to include criticism of how Iran is governed

Alborz, a textile merchant in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, decided he could no longer sit on the sidelines. He closed his shop and took to the streets, joining merchants across Iran who shuttered their stores and students who took over their campuses to protest against declining economic conditions.

The sudden loss of purchasing power pushed Alborz and tens of thousands of other Iranians into the streets, where protests are now entering their fourth day. Students have paralysed university campuses, traders have shut down their stores and demonstrators have blocked off streets in defiance of police. Protests have spread from the capital, Tehran, to cities across Iran.

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Government should have appointed an envoy to carry out checks on activist in citizenship row, says Emily Thornberry

The government could have avoided “embarrassing failures” in the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah by having a special envoy deal with complex cases involving Britons detained abroad, Emily Thornberry has said.

The chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee criticised “serious shortcomings” in information sharing, which she said could have been resolved by having a dedicated official carry out background checks.

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President calls for talks with leaders of demonstrations caused by decline in currency and living standards

Iran’s government has called for dialogue with protest leaders after the country’s largest demonstrations in three years over a plunging currency and declining living conditions.

Protests started on Sunday after Iran’s currency fell to a record low against the US dollar, causing traders and shopkeepers to close their stores in downtown Tehran. This was accompanied by mass protests in the capital as well as in major cities, including Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad.

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Attack was aimed at what Riyadh called a shipment of weapons for separatists backed by UAE

The United Arab Emirates has said it will withdraw its remaining forces in Yemen after tensions with Saudi Arabia escalated over a sweeping offensive by UAE-backed separatists.

The Emirati defence ministry announced the withdrawal on Tuesday, hours after Saudi Arabia bombed what it said was a shipment of weapons for Yemeni separatists that had arrived from the UAE.

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Isaac Herzog’s spokesperson says he has not spoken to Trump since US president wrote to urge him to stop trial

The office of Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, has denied a claim by Donald Trump that Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, would soon receive a pardon.

Speaking shortly before his meeting in Florida with the Israeli prime minister on Monday night, Trump said he had been told by Herzog that a pardon was “on its way”.

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Zia’s archrivalry with Sheikh Hasina defined the country’s politics for a generation

Khaleda Zia, the first female prime minister of Bangladesh whose long rivalry with Sheikh Hasina defined the country’s politics for a generation, has died aged 80.

Zia was one of the most significant and divisive political figures in the country since Bangladesh independence 50 years ago. Her death was announced on Tuesday morning by the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP).

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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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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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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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Elections will be first since military seized power in 2021, but analysts say vote is far from a step toward democracy

Myanmar is preparing to go to the polls for the first time since its military seized power in a coup in 2021, but with its former leader behind bars, its most successful political party disbanded and roughly a third of the country either disputed or in rebel hands, few believe claims by its military rulers that its 28 December election will be “free and fair”.

“This is not for the people, this is for themselves,” says Pai, 25, who fled Myanmar after the military seized power. “They [the ruling junta] are looking for a way out of the trap they are [in].”

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BBC reveals latest cast, which also features cybersecurity expert, sweet shop assistant and personal trainer

A retired police detective, a crime writer and a psychologist are among the next cohort of contestants to enter The Traitors’ castle, as the BBC revealed details of the latest series of its smash-hit sleuthing show.

A sweet shop assistant, a cybersecurity expert and a personal trainer are also among those to be divided into plotting “traitors” and the “faithfuls” tasked with unmasking them.

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Exclusive: Pilot scheme launches as one in five start primary school with no protection against deadly diseases

Health visitors will be sent door-to-door to deliver vaccines to children in England amid alarm that one in five start primary school with no protection against deadly diseases, the Guardian can reveal.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that at least 95% of children should receive vaccine doses for each illness to achieve herd immunity. However, not a single one of the main childhood vaccines in England hit the target in 2024-25. There were also sharp differences in uptake across the country.

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PM to highlight energy bill and interest rate cuts, plus end to two-child benefit cap, and to invite his MPs to Chequers

Keir Starmer will attempt to rescue his relationship with disillusioned voters and his own fractious MPs in a new year push to reduce the cost of living.

The prime minister will give a speech in the coming days focusing on how his government is bringing down living costs, highlighting recent cuts to energy bills and interest rates and the end of the two-child benefit cap.

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Green party leader says he could see potential for political partnership with Labour under Andy Burnham

The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, has said he would refuse to work with Keir Starmer but could work with Andy Burnham, Starmer’s potential rival for the Labour leadership, to keep Reform out of power.

Polanski said he would not enter a political partnership with Labour under the current prime minister, but would consider it if the mayor of Greater Manchester took the helm.

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Food Standards Agency issues product alert for still and sparkling 750ml bottles of Waitrose No 1 Deeside mineral water

Waitrose customers are being urged to return and not drink large bottles of Deeside mineral water over fears they could contain shards of glass.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has issued a consumer alert over the still and sparkling 750ml bottles of Waitrose No 1 Deeside mineral water because of the possibility of glass fragments, making them unsafe to drink.

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Colorado lawmaker , who pushed for Epstein files release, points to bill’s unanimous passage through US House and Senate

Republican representative Lauren Boebert has fired back at Donald Trump for vetoing a bill that would have funded a drinking water project in her Colorado district, implying the president was playing at political retaliation.

The bill was aimed at funding a decades-long project to bring safe drinking water to 39 communities in Colorado’s eastern plains, where the groundwater is high in salt and wells sometimes unleash radioactivity into the water supply.

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Trump official says funds will be released ‘only when states prove they are being spent legitimately’

The Department of Health and Human Services is freezing all childcare payments to all states, an official for Donald Trump’s administration told ABC News in a report published Wednesday. States’ funds will be released “only when states prove they are being spent legitimately”.

The report came a day after Jim O’Neill, the HHS deputy secretary, and Alex Adams, an HHS assistant secretary who oversees the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), appeared in a Tuesday evening video message. O’Neill declared that the department had “activated our defend-the-spend system for all ACF childcare payments across America” and would now require “justification, receipt or photo evidence before we make a payment”.

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Ex-special counsel testified in front of judiciary committee about aborted federal prosecution of Donald Trump

Jack Smith, the former justice department special counsel who led the aborted federal prosecution of Donald Trump, told a congressional committee that he never spoke to Joe Biden about his cases, according to the transcript of a deposition released on Wednesday.

In his behind-closed-doors testimony to the House judiciary committee earlier this month, Smith defended the charges he brought against Trump for allegedly possessing classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 election, while warning of the consequences of allowing election meddling to go unpunished.

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Decision comes after DoJ stopped contesting California court’s ruling to return control of guard to state’s governor

Donald Trump has staged a sudden climbdown from his attempts to impose federal troops in law enforcement roles on Democratic-run cities, announcing on Wednesday that he was ending attempted deployments from Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland.

The unexpected shift came after justice department lawyers said they were no longer contesting a California court’s ruling that returned the national guard troops to the authority of Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor. It also followed a rare rebuke from the US supreme court, which blocked the White House’s efforts to deploy national guards in Illinois.

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Campaign will target rightwing ideologues to fill ranks to meet Trump deportation goals in 2026

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reportedly planned a $100m, one-year media blitz for what it’s calling “wartime recruitment”, targeting conservative radio show listeners, gun rights aficionados, military affairs followers and men’s interests enthusiasts – among others in the Maga-verse – for jobs in the Trump administration’s next phase of its mass deportation campaign.

“Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?” one of the agency’s ads says, directing interested readers to apply.

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