UK wants peaceful transition of power in Iran, says minister
Heidi Alexander calls for end to violence while Tory leader says she would ‘not have an issue’ with regime changeThe UK wants to see a peaceful transition of power in Iran, a cabinet minister has said, after Donald Trump said he could support protesters with military force.As the US weighs the option of military strikes, Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, said she would not be drawn on America’s foreign policy towards Iran, where protests have been met with a violent police response. Continue reading...
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Mandelson praises Trump’s ‘graciousness’ and declines to apologise for friendship with Jeffrey Epstein – UK politics live
In first TV interview since he was sacked as UK ambassador to US, Mandelson says association with Epstein was ‘terrible mistake’ but adds: ‘I was not culpable’Laura Kuenssberg asks Peter Mandelson if he liked Donald Trump when he was the UK ambassador.Mandelson says he did like Trump, listing of numerous reasons why, but said he did not like all of his “language”.I like him, yes, I liked his humour, his graciousness…I liked his directness. You knew exactly what he was thinking and where you stood and what he wanted. And how he was proposing to engage, with you. Did I like in all his language? No, I didn’t, did I? Did he make me gasp? What’s going to happen is there’s going to be, another discussion, a lot of consultation and a lot of negotiation.At the end of the day, we are all going to have to wake up to the reality that the Arctic needs securing against China and Russia. Continue reading...
Ukrainian drone attack kills one in Russia’s Voronezh, local officials say
Three people also wounded in attack, governor says, as Ukraine reports a number of injuries in Russian attacks.
Parents of critically ill children ‘crushed’ by lack of support, say campaigners
Frances and Ceri Menai-Davis, who lost their son Hugh to cancer, say gap in financial help is ‘devastating’Parents of critically ill children are being “crushed” by a lack of statutory financial support when they need to take time off work, the parents of a six-year-old boy who died of cancer have said.Hugh Menai-Davis was diagnosed with a rare form of the disease when he fell ill suddenly in October 2020. The boy, then aged five, had been happy and healthy before he developed severe stomach pains. Continue reading...
Fourth Palestinian baby freezes to death in Gaza since November
Gaza infant freezes to death as doctors battle power cuts and displaced families struggle to survive in flooded tents.
Syrian forces expel Kurdish fighters as US strikes Islamic State targets
Three hundred Kurds detained and further 400 evacuated following clashes in AleppoSyrian government forces have detained 300 Kurds and evacuated more than 400 Kurdish fighters after clashes in Aleppo, the interior ministry has said, as US and allied forces carried out separate “large-scale” strikes against Islamic State targets.An interior ministry official told Agence France-Presse that about 360 Kurdish fighters and 60 wounded had been bussed to the Kurds’ de facto autonomous zone in the north-east from the Sheikh Maqsoud district, the last area of Aleppo to fall to the army. Continue reading...
‘Lots of people don’t want to do it’: Paul Nurse on his controversial second term as Royal Society president
The Nobel prize winner discusses claims of a ‘boys’ club’, Elon Musk’s fellowship and rightwing attacks on sciencePaul Nurse is a turn up for the books. A Nobel prize-winning geneticist, former director of the Francis Crick Institute and erstwhile head of Rockefeller University in the US, his CV marks him out as one of this generation’s most eminent scientific figures.But his presidency of the Royal Society, a position he has taken up for a second time, makes him rarer still. No other scientist in centuries has had a second term at the head of the academy. Continue reading...
Council member who lost eye in George Floyd protest sees echo in Ice killing
Soren Stevenson says Minneapolis shooting ‘reminiscent in a scary way’ – but he and his neighbors are feeling activatedIt was Soren Stevenson’s third day in office as a Minneapolis city council member on Wednesday when Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by ICE on the edge of his district.On Thursday, he sat in an eerily quiet food court at lunchtime in Plaza Mexico, a mall of mostly Latino businesses in south Minneapolis, eating carne asada and talking about how his neighborhood was once again the center of a national firestorm. Continue reading...
Venezuela's exiles in Chile caught between hope and uncertainty
Initial joy among Venezuela's diaspora in Chile has given way to caution, as questions grow over what Maduro's capture means for the country — and for those who fled it.
Bride and groom among eight killed in explosion at wedding
A bride and groom were among eight people killed in a gas cylinder blast just hours after a wedding reception in Pakistan.