Donald Trump has called to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in Sunday’s elections, breaking a taboo among western leaders in appearing to endorse the Russian leader’s re-election to a fourth term in power. Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump confirmed he had called Putin to “congratulate him on his electoral victory”, and said the two would “probably get together in the not too distant future so that we can discuss the arms race”.

But the two leaders did not discuss Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election or the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the former double agent targeted with a nerve agent in the UK. The former US presidential candidate John McCain was quick to criticize Trump for his failure to raise allegations of widespread voter irregularities.  “An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections” McCain said in a statement. “And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin’s regime.”(theguardian)…[+]

New Caledonia has set a date for a referendum that will decide whether the French overseas territory should become independent. After decades of campaigning by separatists seeking to break away from France, the New Caledonia congress, the local legislative authority, has agreed to hold the vote on November 4. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his prime minister, Édouard Philippe, have both said they hope the territory, 750 miles (1,200km) east of Australia, will choose to remain part of France. Last year, Macron said France’s presence was “necessary to guarantee peace and development”. However, a 20-year agreement signed between Nouméa and Paris in 1998, which gave the archipelago greater autonomy, paved the way for a self-rule referendum to be held by the end of 2018 at the latest.The exact wording of the referendum has to be agreed and voting will be limited to long-term residents. If a majority of New Caledonia’s 275,000 inhabitants, 45% of whom are indigenous Kanaks who support autonomy, vote for independence, it will be the first French territory to break away since Vanuatu in in 1980.(theguardian)…[+]

The Kremlin has insisted the UK must prove Russia’s role in the poisoning of a former spy or apologise, as the EU calls on Moscow to provide “full and complete disclosure of its novichok programme” to international experts.  The demands for proof came as a team of international experts began a visit to Porton Down in Wiltshire on Monday to assess the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were invited by the UK to verify the nerve agent, but it will take at least two weeks before they have results.

During a meeting of 28 European foreign ministers in Brussels, the EU issued a statement expressing “unqualified solidarity with the UK”. But they stopped short of threatening sanctions against Russia and avoided pinning the blame on the Kremlin.

The bloc said it took “extremely seriously the UK government’s assessment that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible”. This did not go as far as an earlier joint statement by France, Germany, the US and UK, which concluded it was “highly likely that Russia was responsible for the attack”.(theguardian)…[+]

A British woman fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Afrin, northern Syria, has been killed, her Kurdish commanders have said.

Anna Campbell, from Lewes, East Sussex, was volunteering with the US-backed Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) – the all-female affiliate army of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – in the besieged city of Afrin when the convoy she was travelling in was struck by a Turkish missile on 16 March. Sources say the 26-year-old initially travelled to Syria to join the Kurdish struggle against Islamic State, but begged her Kurdish commanders to send her to the Afrin front after Turkey launched a ground and air offensive to oust Kurdish forces from its borderlands in January.

“They refused at first, but she was adamant, and even dyed her blonde hair black so as to appear less conspicuous as a westerner,” a YPJ source told the Guardian. “Finally they gave in and let her go.” She is not only the first British woman killed fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Syria, but also the first Briton to die there since Turkey launched its incursion into Kurdish-held territory on 20 January.(theguardian)…[+]

Donald Trump’s chief of staff called a sudden meeting on Friday to assure colleagues that their jobs were safe amid reports of upheaval, plummeting morale and more imminent departures from White House.

John Kelly’s unusual intervention came at the end of a week that saw the abrupt firing of Rex Tilllerson and widespread speculation that national security adviser HR McMaster could be next. “The chief of staff actually spoke to a number of staff this morning, reassuring them that there were personnel changes – no immediate personnel changes at this time – and that people shouldn’t be concerned,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said. “We should do exactly what we do every day and that’s come to work and do the very best job that we can. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.” She added: “That’s exactly what we’re focused on, and many of us have relayed that to other staffers that weren’t part of that meeting. And we’re going to continue to focus on having record success in this second year as we had in our first year. We fully expect to do that and we expect to do that as a staff and as a team.”(theguardian)…[+]

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Slovakia on Friday to call for snap elections, saying the premier’s resignation was not enough to address what they see as a corrupt government. The local Dennik N newspaper said about 50,000 people turned out in the capital Bratislava alone, where protesters carried signs bearing slogans such as “Slovakia is going the wrong way” and “We want elections”.

Organisers of the “For a decent Slovakia” protest had announced there would be rallies in 34 cities at home and 25 cities abroad. The EU member has been in political crisis since last month’s killing of an investigative journalist who had been probing alleged ties between top politicians and Italian mafia.(theguardian)…[+]

Police have launched a murder investigation into the death of the Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov after a pathologist concluded he died from compression to the neck, suggesting he may have been strangled by hand or ligature.

The Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command is retaining its lead role in the investigation “because of the associations Mr Glushkov is believed to have had” but has cautioned that there was no suggestion of a link with the attempted murders of the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury almost two weeks ago. At the time of his death, Glushkov was about to defend a claim against him by the Russian airline Aeroflot at the commercial court in London, where he was accused of fraud. In 2017, during a trial in absentia in Russia, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing $123m from the airline, which then pursued the case in London. Glushkov failed to show up at court in central London on Monday and his body was discovered in south-west London that evening.(theguardian)…[+]

Myanmar has said it is willing to take back fewer than 400 Rohingya refugees of the 8,000 who have said they would voluntarily return from Bangladesh. U Myint Thu, Myanmar’s permanent secretary for foreign affairs, said that of the list of thousands of returnees submitted by the Bangladesh government, they had deemed only 374 eligible for repatriation.

Myanmar blamed Bangladesh for the slow process, accusing its neighbour of submitting missing or “incomplete” information for the majority of the refugees, and accused three on the list of being terrorists. “These 374 will be the first batch of the repatriation,” said Myint Thu at a press conference in the capital Naypidaw. He did not give a timeline for the return, but simply said: “They can come back when it’s convenient for them.”

This move towards repatriation will barely make a dent in the 700,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees currently living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing a violent and targeted campaign by the Burmese military in Rakhine state which began in August 2017 and destroyed their homes and left thousands dead. Even if Myanmar finally allows a process of repatriation to begin, after two stalled efforts in December and January, there are still concerns for the safety of the Rohingya and the conditions they will be returned to. Satellite imagery in a report by Amnesty International on Monday showed how most Rohinga villages have been bulldozed, with large concrete structures and military bases being built in their place.(theguardian)...[+]

A Minnesota woman has been sentenced to six months in prison for shooting dead her boyfriend in a YouTube stunt that went wrong. Monalisa Perez, now 20, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the death of Pedro Ruiz, 22, who she had been dating for five years.

On Wednesday, Minnesota judge Jeffrey Remick set out the terms agreed under plea bargaining. He said Perez would serve a 180-day jail term, alternating between 10 days in jail and 10 days out for the first six months, amounting to 90 days behind bars. The judge said the remaining 90 days could be served in home confinement. Perez was asked by Ruiz, 22, to fire a gun from a 30cm away, as he held a hardback encyclopaedia to protect himself from the bullet, in June last year. Perez had previously experimented and thought that the thick book would protect him. The clip was filmed by two cameras and the couple’s three-year-old daughter witnessed the shooting.(theguardian)…[+]

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced a review into the potential risks of plastic in drinking water after a new analysis of some of the world’s most popular bottled water brands found that more than 90% contained tiny pieces of plastic. A previous study also found high levels of microplastics in tap water. In the new study, analysis of 259 bottles from 19 locations in nine countries across 11 different brands found an average of 325 plastic particles for every litre of water being sold.

Concentrations were as high as 10,000 plastic pieces for every litre of water. Of the 259 bottles tested, only 17 were free of plastics, according to the study. Scientists based at the State University of New York in Fredonia were commissioned by journalism project Orb Media to analyse the bottled water. The scientists wrote they had “found roughly twice as many plastic particles within bottled water” compared with their previous study of tap water, reported by the Guardian.According to the new study, the most common type of plastic fragment found was polypropylene – the same type of plastic used to make bottle caps. The bottles analysed were bought in the US, China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Lebanon, Kenya and Thailand.(theguardian)…[+]