World

At least one person has been killed and dozens of others injured after a car was driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany, local media reports. News agency dpa said the driver had been arrested following the incident in the eastern city of Magdeburg, while AFP news agency reports 60-80 people have

Vladimir Putin has said Russia should have invaded Ukraine earlier, in a national address spanning more than four hours. Russia began the conflict with its neighbour in February 2022 and at his annual televised news conference, Mr Putin claimed the war has made Russia “stronger”. The decision to invade “should have been made earlier” he

It is a crime so brutal and depraved it defies words – so outside the court, they applaud instead. Warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual abuse Since September, people have lined the route in Avignon clapping as Gisele Pelicot walks past. It is a wordless act of support for the 72-year-old woman at the

A man who repeatedly drugged his then wife and invited strangers to rape her while she was unconscious has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after a historic mass trial. Dominique Pelicot, 72, had confessed to all the charges and admitted he mixed sedatives into the food and drink of his wife, Gisele Pelicot,

Ukraine cannot remove Russian troops from the land they occupy in the east of the country and Crimea, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has admitted. While Kyiv would never recognise Russia’s rule, he said diplomacy is the only option to get President Vladimir Putin to withdraw his army. It comes less than a month after he gave similar

A husband described as one of France’s worst sex offenders is expected to be sentenced tomorrow – as the verdicts for all 51 defendants come back in the Gisele Pelicot mass rape trial. Dominique Pelicot, 72, has admitted drugging and raping his then-wife Ms Pelicot, 72, for almost a decade. During the four-month trial, he

A well-known former boss of Australia’s national rugby team has denied dozens of sex charges against 10 males. Alan Jones – who was also a radio presenter for many years – appeared in court for the first time since his arrest last month. The 83-year-old is accused of 34 charges of aggravated indecent assault, indecent

For Ukraine – pitched against Russia’s larger and more powerful military – the use of unconventional tactics such as assassinations is seen as a vital way to fight back. There is no official confirmation yet of who was behind the killing on Tuesday in Moscow of the head of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical defence

Now Bashar al Assad has gone, there is so much to see and film in Syria which was impossible to document before. The extent, for example, of the regime’s involvement in the captagon trade, a speed-like amphetamine which flooded out of Syria and across the Middle East, was widely known but impossible to film, barring

Former Syrian leader Bashar al Assad has issued his first statement since the fall of his regime. In a social media post, he claimed he had planned to keep fighting rebel forces before Russia evacuated him. The comments, the first in public since his regime was toppled more than a week ago, were made on

Close to a thousand people may have been killed as Cyclone Chido hit the French island of Mayotte on Saturday, according to the island’s top official. It was the strongest storm in more than 90 years to hit the islands, said the forecaster Meteo-France. The nearby islands of Comoros and Madagascar were also affected. Image:

Nobody should ever have to die in a place like this, in this sorry bit of northern France where these two Kurdish migrants were shot. They died, surrounded by rubbish, on a patch of unloved scrubland between a road and a railway line. The grass is still stained with their blood, and the blankets that

The billionaire founder of fashion chain Mango Isak Andic has died in a mountain accident today, according to police. The 71-year-old businessman reportedly slipped and fell from a 150-metre cliff while hiking with relatives in the Monserrat caves near Barcelona, a police spokesperson said. His family called the emergency services at about 12.30pm local time,

A former Premier League footballer has been appointed president of Georgia amid heightening tensions over the country’s relationship with Russia. Mikheil Kavelashvili, 53, was a striker for Manchester City between 1996 and 1997, and later played for several clubs in the Swiss Super League. He was elected to parliament in 2016, and in 2022 co-founded

Children are among the dead after an Israeli airstrike on a block of flats in a Gaza refugee camp killed at least 33 people, according to Hamas-run health authorities. The attack – which Israel said targeted a “senior terrorist” but may have caused a secondary blast – came hours after the US national security adviser

Russia has established “direct contact” with Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) rebel group, according to state media outlet Interfax. It reported that deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov told journalists that Russia was aiming to maintain its military bases inside Syria. Mr Bogdanov said contact with HTS was “proceeding in constructive fashion” and that Moscow

The head of NATO has warned the alliance is not ready for the threats it will face from Russia in the coming years and that it is time to shift to a wartime mindset. Mark Rutte, the secretary general of the organisation, said NATO members had spent more than 3% of GDP on defence during

Ireland is to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to broaden its definition of genocide – claiming Israel has engaged in the “collective punishment” of people in Gaza. An intervention will be made later this month, deputy prime minister Micheal Martin said, and will be linked to a case South Africa has brought under

The last time I came to Homs, I crossed the border from Lebanon on the back of a motorbike. I recall ducking beneath somebody’s washing hanging on a line and crisscrossing through a minefield, the driver shouting: “Don’t worry, Habibi, I do it all the time!” This time, I drove past the burnt-out hulks of

Football has never seen a stadium as audacious and outlandish before. A futuristic cliff-top venue will be built 350m above ground when the $1.5trn NEOM megaproject springs up from the Saudi Arabian desert. There are no limits on ambition or spending to bring the World Cup to the kingdom in 2034 – and no need