Day: October 19, 2022

Australia has reversed a decision made four years ago to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the 2018 move had undermined peace and "put Australia out of step with the majority of the international community". She stressed that Australia remained a "steadfast friend" to Israel. Its embassy will stay in Tel Aviv. Israel's government called the U-turn short-sighted and deeply disappointing, and summoned the Australian ambassador. "In light of the way in which this decision was made in Australia, as a hasty response to an incorrect report in the media, we can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally," Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in ...

A record number of voters turned out in the US state of Georgia on the first day of early voting, with the state the site of several key races in the November midterm elections. Almost double the number of people - 131,000 - cast their ballots than in the same period of the 2018 midterms. The figure nearly matches the number of voters on the first early voting day of the 2020 presidential election. Georgia is home to some of the country's most closely-watched races. The midterm elections on 8 November will determine seats in the two chambers of Congress - one-third of those in the Senate and all in the House of Representatives - as well as some governors and local officials. As the elections will decide control of Congress, they wi...

At least three people have been killed by Russian strikes in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, as Moscow continues to target key infrastructure across the country. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said that the victims of the latest Russian attacks were employees of "critical infrastructure", adding that two facilities in the city had been hit. Meanwhile, thousands of towns and cities across the country have been left without power and President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian strikes had destroyed about 30% of Ukraine's power stations over the past eight days. The latest attacks came 24 hours after "kamikaze" drones - believed to have been supplied by Iran - killed at least nine people in Kyiv and Sumy, in the north-east. Ukraine has identified the dr...

Despite historic gains in the past two congressional elections, women hold just 27% of the seats. As Americans prepare to reshape Congress in the midterms, could Bolivia inspire change? Bolivia is one of the few countries in the world where roughly 50% of lawmakers at every level of government are women. This is no accident, but the result of an electoral law which requires half of all party nominees must be female. Quotas were introduced in 1997 when just 9% of Bolivia's national parliament were women. Later on it was made part of the constitution. "Lately we've seen certain countries backslide on women's rights," said Adriana Salvatierra, who was a senator from 2015 to 2019, and became the youngest ever president of Bolivia's Senate. ...

A Russian analyst who worked on a discredited dossier linking Donald Trump to Russia has been found not guilty of lying to the FBI. The Department of Justice charged Igor Danchenko, 43, as part of a probe into the FBI's inquiry into whether Mr Trump colluded with Russia to win in 2016. The so-called Steele dossier was used by the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants on a top Trump aide. Mr Danchenko was accused of lying to agents about the dossier's sources. Special counsel John Durham, who brought the charges, was appointed by Mr Trump's attorney general in 2019 to look into the FBI's inquiry of ties between Russia and Mr Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The Steele dossier, published by news website Buzzfeed 10 days before Mr Tr...

Jim Watson was testifying at a public inquiry looking into whether it was warranted for Canada to invoke emergency powers to end the protests. The so-called Freedom Convoy protests began at the end of January and gridlocked Ottawa for three weeks. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on 14 February. The Public Order Emergency Commission began six weeks of hearings last week to examine the Trudeau government's decision to invoke the federal act, the circumstances that led to that declaration, and the measures put in place by Ottawa to clear the anti-vaccine mandate and anti-government protests. Invoking the law requires that a formal inquiry be held. The hearings have given a behind-the-scenes look at the confusion ...