Minister of foreign affairs insists 19-year-old does not have dual citizenship
Shamima Begum is not a Bangladeshi citizen and there is ?€?no question?€? of her being allowed into Bangladesh, the country?€?s ministry of foreign affairs has insisted, despite Britain?€?s move to strip the teenager of her UK citizenship.
?€?The government of Bangladesh is deeply concerned that [Begum] has been erroneously identified as a holder of dual citizenship,?€? Shahrial Alam, state minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement issued to the Guardian, adding that his government had learned of Britain?€?s move to cancel her citizenship rights from media reports.
?€?Centres of decision making?€? will be targeted if west deploys new missiles in Europe
Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will develop new weapons and aim them at western ?€?centres of decision-making?€? if the west deploys new short and medium-range missiles in Europe.
The threat, which appears to describe Washington and other western capitals, came after the United States and then Russia suspended compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.
Three Conservatives have quit their party to join the new Independent Group of MPs, declaring that hard Brexiters have taken over and that the modernising wing of the party has been ?€?destroyed?€?.
Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen explained their decision to join the new group, founded this week by seven Labour MPs, who also left their party.
Report into conduct of Alexandre Benalla accuses president?€?s office of serious failings
Emmanuel Macron is under renewed pressure after a senate committee recommended his former security aide Alexandre Benalla should be investigated for perjury and accused the French president?€?s office of ?€?serious failings?€?.
Florida sculpture of George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman defaced as kiss comes under scrutiny
A statue in Florida depicting the US sailor famously photographed kissing a female stranger at the end of the second world war has been vandalised, with ?€?#MeToo?€? written in red spray paint across the woman?€?s leg the day after the serviceman?€?s death.
Although the image of George Mendonsa kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman has long been heralded for epitomising the joy shared throughout the world upon the ending of hostilities in 1945, it has come under scrutiny more recently, with many accusing Mendonsa of assault.
Human rights campaigners say 15 people executed recently were subjected to torture and unjust trials
Egypt executed nine men accused of killing the country?€?s former top prosecutor on Wednesday, bringing the total of those executed in the country to 15 in less than three weeks.
The men were among 28 sentenced to death for the murder of Hisham Barakat, Egypt?€?s former public prosecutor, who was assassinated when a car bomb struck his vehicle in 2015.
One of the six people to survive the 2018 shooting at Maryland?€?s Capital Gazette newspaper, Rachael Pacella, said Trump?€?s ?€?media-bashing?€? make her fear for her life and the lives of other reporters.
Pacella responded to Trump?€?s tweeted complaint that ?€?the press has never been more dishonest than it is today,?€? with a string of Tweets about her fears and the considerations she makes to protect herself.
I should say, far more importantly, that it makes me fear for my fellow reporters working on the local, state and national level.
It's snowing here, so I hopped up to shoot a video of snow falling over Annapolis from the window of our temporary office. It's gorgeous.
And then I realized I couldn't post it, because it would reveal our location.
These are the things I have to think about every single day.
Visa-free travel plan derailed again by Spanish demands over status of Gibraltar
British tourists travelling to continental Europe may need to pay £52 for a visa in a few weeks after Spanish demands over the status of Gibraltar again derailed Brussels?€? preparations for Brexit.
Agreement on legislation exempting UK nationals from requiring the travel permit is mired in a dispute over whether the British overseas territory should be described as a ?€?colony?€? in the EU?€?s statute book.
The actor had been due to voice a role in Luck but left the film after Skydance controversially hired the former Pixar chief who has been accused of sexual harassment
Emma Thompson has pulled out of a role in a large-scale animated film after former Pixar chief John Lasseter joined the production.
Student, 11, was arrested on 4 February for creating a disruption in the classroom, the Lakeland police department said
An 11-year-old Florida boy was arrested this month after a dispute with a substitute teacher over his refusal to participate in the pledge of allegiance at his school, it has emerged.
The student at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland, Florida, was arrested on 4 February for creating a disruption in the classroom, police said in a statement.
The recent court decision against the neighbours of Tate Modern in London belies a much wider problem - everyone is constantly being watched
Alexander McFadyen says that he and his family were ?€?more or less constantly watched?€? while they were at home. They had to be ?€?properly dressed?€? at all times, and even then they were often photographed or filmed, and sometimes spied on with binoculars. McFadyen set out to measure the problem. While working at the dining table, he counted 84 people taking photographs in 90 minutes. This is the reality of living in a glass-walled flat in Block C of Neo Bankside, just 34 metres from the viewing gallery at Tate Modern, which receives up to 600,000 visitors a year.
A neighbour, Claire Fearn, said being watched like that made her ?€?sick to her stomach?€?. People waved and made obscene gestures at her and her family. Her husband, Giles Fearn, found pictures of their home posted online by strangers. Many of the images are still on Twitter, often with amused remarks about the misfortune of their wealthy owners. (The flats are worth an average of £4.35m each.) Another neighbour, Lindsay Urquhart, visited the viewing gallery and heard someone remark that she and the other residents of Block C deserved to lose their privacy because they were ?€?rich bastards?€?.
The next 15 megacities #15: The fast-growing South Korean capital is about to wipe out Euljiro, a neighbourhood home to 10,000 shops and 50,000 tradespeople that was integral to the country?€?s postwar boom
From the main street, the Euljiro neighbourhood doesn?€?t look like much: some shabby retail stores, cold-noodle restaurants, a Starbucks.
Enter one of the small alleys, however, and you?€?ll find yourself in a kind of manufacturing anthill: thousands upon thousands of shops, each crammed to the rafters with bolts, circuit boards, iron castings, gauges, wires, lights, switches, tools and innumerable tiny objects that defy description.
Hans Leo Maes captures the bridges and stairways that link up the hilly, population-dense city
Hong Kong is known for its flashing lights, neon signs and high-rise skylines. But the architect and photographer Hans Leo Maes documents an alternative side - the city?€?s interconnecting staircases and bridges.
?€?The extreme population density in Hong Kong means [structures] are stacked and linked by stairs, often external and very visible,?€? Maes says.
Pontif disturbed over tide of accusations prior to Vatican summit on sexual abuse
Pope Francis said on Wednesday that those who constantly criticise the Catholic church are ?€?friends of the devil?€?. Speaking to pilgrims from southern Italy, the pontiff said that defects of the church needed to be denounced so they could be corrected, but that those who condemned ?€?without love?€? were linked to the devil.
?€?One cannot live a whole life accusing, accusing, accusing, the church,?€? he said. People who did, he said, were ?€?the friends, cousins and relatives of the devil?€?.
Attempt to become fourth country to send spacecraft to the surface blasts off this week
A team of Israeli scientists is to launch what will be the first privately funded mission to land on the moon this week, sending a spacecraft to collect data from the lunar surface.
Named Beresheet, the Hebrew word for Genesis, the 585kg (1,290lb) robotic lander will blast off from Florida at 01.45 GMT on Friday, propelled by one of Elon Musk?€?s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. Once it touches down, in several weeks, it will measure the magnetic field of the moon to help understand how it formed.
Stalled relief supplies for Venezuela at the Colombian border are a stark illustration of Trump?€?s crudely transactional approach to aid
In their grey livery, the US Air Force C-17s shuttling into Camilo Daza airport in Cúcuta, Colombia, look more belligerent than friendly - which is, perhaps, the point.
In the city itself, the planes?€? cargo - boxes labelled USAid and intended for distribution by the Venezuelan opposition just across the border - are accumulating in the town?€?s warehouses.
Scandal over $423m contract appears hypocritical given Australia?€?s efforts to strengthen anti-corruption measures in the region, critic says
A former Papua New Guinea official has warned the Paladin scandal is undermining Australia?€?s efforts to stamp out corruption in the Pacific nation.
Paul Flanagan, a former Australian treasury bureaucrat who worked as a senior adviser to the PNG government, said news of the Paladin affair had spread quickly through the nation?€?s parliament, where it had become a ?€?hot issue?€?.
Constant hunger and thirst haunt those stranded in the desert, where escape means paying vast sums to smugglers
Between the southern border of Syria, Jordan and Iraq lies a stretch of land akin to purgatory. More than 40,000 people are stranded in Rukban, almost 300km from Damascus.
Families here are cut off from the world, facing hunger and lacking healthcare, transport and education.
Campaigners say resurgence of deadly virus threatens despite huge successes of vaccination drive
The unmonitored movement of people across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan threatens efforts to eradicate polio from the two countries, as the year?€?sfirst cases of the virus are recorded in the volatile region.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative said people travelling through unchecked crossings is believed to be one of the main causes of the spread of the disease in the area.
More than 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation and about 3 million more are at risk every year. Africa has the highest numbers, but its young people are fighting back
A clinic making artificial limbs in CAR - the country?€?s only centre of its kind - is changing lives devastated by conflict
Exaucé Bagaza can?€?t keep his eyes off his feet. A moment ago the five-year-old boy had one foot and now he has two: they are tucked into a pair of white tennis shoes adorned with flecks of green glitter.
Wobbling a little, the child presses his right hip on to his new leg, a prosthesis made of polypropylene. His physiotherapist leans forward, reaching for his hands: ?€?Come here,?€? he says.
Though Trump himself suggested there is no real emergency, courts are unlikely to second-guess a president?€?s broad leeway
Many legal analysts who watched Donald Trump declare a national emergency over immigration on Friday thought the president had weak legal grounds for doing so. In particular, many thought Trump hurt his own case by admitting, right there in the White House Rose Garden: ?€?I didn?€?t need to do this, but I?€?d rather do it much faster.?€?
?€?This quote should be the first sentence of the first paragraph of every complaint filed this afternoon,?€? tweeted George Conway, a top Washington lawyer and the husband of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway.
Attempt to hustle Japan into a trade deal highlights the problems facing ?€?global Britain?€?
It takes a lot to anger the unfailingly polite, anglophile Japanese. But Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, appear to have managed it with their ill-judged attempt to hustle Tokyo into a quick-fire Brexit trade deal.
The diplomatic fumble has highlighted rapidly escalating difficulties facing ?€?global Britain?€? - the government?€?s nebulous vision for life after the EU - in forging new business and trade relationships around the world without an agreed post-Brexit strategy.
I had to gain the confidence that always seemed to come naturally to my partner to release my inner handywoman
Last year my partner and I moved into a new house. The whole exercise was exhilarating - finally, a place we owned - but it also unearthed in me a desperation, a deep frustration. For a long time I?€?ve wanted to be someone who fixes things, builds things, someone who is capable in practical day-to-day tasks. I own tools, I have ideas and I tinker with my surroundings, but I?€?ve never felt completely at ease in the tasks that various men in my life seem to take on with no backward glance.
In our just-built house there were so many jobs to do with drills, hammers, caulking guns. My drive to learn by doing was offset by disorientation and self-doubt. I wanted to begin improving our house, but I didn?€?t know what sort of screws I needed for the curtain rod brackets, or whether I could just drill straight into the plasterboard. My partner, a man, didn?€?t have much more experience in these things than I did, but approached the situation with a confidence and bluster that only confused me more.
Cardinals around the world are joining the pope at a forum on tackling abuse. But only radical reform can solve the crisis
When the first meeting in the Vatican of cardinals from around the world to discuss clerical sexual abuse was announced, hopes were high among Catholics. Finally, it seemed, the courageous, mould-breaking Pope Francis was going to force through root-and-branch reforms to tackle the scandal that has done such damage to the reputation of the institution he leads.
Yet even before 180 cardinals assemble on Thursday in Rome for this unprecedented four-day summit, the chance of such prayers being answered is looking increasingly remote. The Vatican press office has been downplaying the event as simply an opportunity to remind senior clerics of the patchy efforts that global Catholicism has made this past quarter of a century to address the thousands upon thousands of cases of priests molesting, abusing and traumatising children in their care.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets across France in protest against an increase in the number of antisemitic attacks in the country. Recent incidents have included a Jewish cemetery being desecrated with swastikas and the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut being subjected to a torrent of hate speech on the fringe of a gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protest in Paris
For the first time in its history, Beijing?€?s famous landmark is bathed in light as part of the Lantern festival marking the end of the lunar new year celebrations
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who ran against Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination, has announced his run for the presidency in 2020. Sanders, 77, running as a Democrat, will be up against a more crowded and diverse field this time round
Donald Trump has used a speech in Miami, Florida, to issue a direct appeal to members of the Venezuelan military to back opposition leader Juan Guaidó. The influential Venezuelan military has so far remained largely loyal to current president, Nicolás Maduro. The US president told the crowd: 'We seek a peaceful transition of power, but all options are open'
Four years ago, 24-year-old Hoda Muthana left her family in the US to travel to Syria and join Islamic State. Now, after being captured by Kurdish forces, she is pleading to return home to Alabama
* Hear the Guardian's Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, speak to Hoda Muthana about her life with Isis and eventual escape on tomorrow's Today in Focus
Since 1992, more than 11,500 Colombians have been killed or injured by landmines, a legacy of more than 50 years of internal conflict. Many impoverished amputees without access to the healthcare system have resorted to making homemade prosthetics from wood, leather, metal and plastic bottles
Radziwill, the younger sister of Jackie Kennedy, has died at the age of 85. Married three times, she was a well-known socialite and a successful interior designer
Large number of US citizens demonstrated against the war in Iraq (and the possible war in Iran) during this October weekend. Massive turnout in Boston and San Fransisco, and also in Chicago, LA and DC people took to the streets. The message was: NO more war in Iraq! NO to a war with Iran!
