First investigation into death of Pte Sean Benton at barracks in 1995 ‘woefully’ inadequateA young soldier fatally shot himself at Deepcut barracks hours after he was told he would be discharged from the army, a coroner has ruled.
Robben Island survivor Andrew Mlangeni, 93, in London for tribute event, remains an ANC stalwartDrawing on his second cigarette within half an hour, Andrew Mlangeni recalls how tobacco was hard to obtain in prison on Robben Island.“I try to stop, but it takes willpower,” the 93-year-old said. Continue reading...
Official logs reveal sum paid to Scottish hotel’s operating company, which is owned by US presidentDonald Trump’s Turnberry hotel was paid about £53,000 by the US government to cover the costs of the president’s two-day visit there last weekend, official payment logs reveal.State department documents show that two payments of $30,074 (£22,987) and $37,744 (£28,857) were authorised to cover President Trump’s accommodation costs, paid directly to the hotel operating company that he owns. Continue reading...
First commercial flight since peace deal takes off from Addis Ababa heading for AsmaraThe passengers fastened their seatbelts and settled in for the 80-minute morning flight. Ethiopian Airlines ET0312 took off, much as hundreds of other planes making short-haul hops between neighbouring capitals do.
Coastguard crackdown leaves thousands in overcrowded facilities, with many more at mercy of smugglers and militiaThe number of migrants in Libya’s overcrowded detention centres has almost doubled over the past three months, according to the UN’s migration agency.Amid a crackdown on Mediterranean crossings by the Italy and EU-backed Libyan coastguard, the number of people being held has swollen from 5,000 to 9,300, with thousands more at the mercy of smugglers in charge of unofficial detention facilities, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Continue reading...
Jury verdict highlights Met police failures before killing of Jeroen Ensink by Femi NandapAn inquest jury has criticised police failings over the killing of the academic Dr Jeroen Ensink, who was stabbed by a stranger suffering from psychosis as he posted cards announcing the birth of his daughter.
Former showjumper Lizzie Purbrick in court after writing lewd messages to David PriorA former Olympic showjumper used pig’s blood to daub lewd messages inside a Tory peer’s house after she found he had cheated on her, a court has heard.Lizzie Purbrick, 63, admitted using a key to enter the south London home of Conservative peer David Prior as a “cathartic” response to seeing her partner of several years “in the arms of another woman”. Continue reading...
Rosângela Freda, mother of Brazil’s Taison, taken by armed gang who lured her from homeThe mother of the Brazilian footballer Taison, a member of the World Cup squad who plays for the Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk, was kidnapped on Monday by an armed gang but released within hours after police located their hideout.Security camera footage showed Rosângela Freda being lured to the security gates in front of her home in Pelotas, southern Brazil, by a man delivering flowers and bundled into a car. Continue reading...
Jemma Neilson speaks after inquest into deaths of her husband, Cpl Darren Neilson, and Cpl Matthew Hatfield, who died last JuneThe widow of one of two soldiers killed when a tank exploded during a live firing exercise in the UK has called for changes to make sure such a tragedy never happens again.Jemma Neilson, whose husband, Cpl Darren Neilson, was killed alongside Cpl Matthew Hatfield, called for lessons to learned and said no other British military personnel should die in training. Continue reading...
BeLeave campaigner is also facing a possible police investigation over his links to Vote LeaveIn the summer of 2015, Darren Grimes was a Liberal Democrat activist from County Durham when he gave an interview to the BBC paying tribute to former leader Charles Kennedy.“He believed that in an increasingly globalised world, having Britain in Europe was the only way forward,” said the young campaigner. Continue reading...
It’s time now for honesty from politicians: we can’t have everything we want from Brexit – the EU is a bigger playerJust over a week ago the Chequers declaration led to headlines such as “Theresa May has pulled off a deal with her cabinet – and no one has resigned” and “Theresa May wins agreement for new UK Brexit offer”. Though to be fair the latter headline was followed by the line: “How long it lasts is another question.” As it turned out, the answer to that question was less than 48 hours. A week later the declaration and the white paper are widely derided on both sides of the EU debate, and there are now suggestions that the UK’s political problems over Brexit can only be solved by a new referendum.The seductive thought that only another referendum can fix our Brexit problems is based largely on wishful thinking, like so much of the EU debate. Let us assume that the outcome we want to achieve is one that has the support of a comfortable majority of the country and of MPs, based on a single set of verifiable facts agreed by most, and whose benefits and drawbacks are reasonably well understood. Why should a second referendum in two years deliver this when the first patently failed to do so? Continue reading...
Bianca Rinehart had sought documentary evidence from former deputy PM to use in family trust battleFormer deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, who once advised the Rineharts to keep their family problems “out of public view”, won’t have to provide documentary evidence in a legal battle over a multi-billion-dollar family trust.
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#3V0T4)
President of French region calls on Macron to break EU ban on bilateral talks with UKDover and Calais are facing “economic catastrophe” because of Brexit, and both the UK and the EU are allowing the two ports to drift towards disaster, a leading French politician has said.Xavier Bertrand, a former French minister and president of Hauts-de-France, has called on Emmanuel Macron to break the EU ban on bilateral talks to salvage the situation and asked Theresa May to discuss prospects. Continue reading...
PM defends Dutton on ‘African gangs’ despite human rights commissioner warning against ‘racially divisive statements’Malcolm Turnbull has said there is “real concern about Sudanese gangs” in Melbourne and defended earlier remarks by Peter Dutton suggesting people were afraid to go out for dinner in the Victorian capital because of the fear of “African gangs”.On Tuesday, Turnbull defended the home affairs minister’s remarks in January, while insisting his government had “zero tolerance for racism”. Continue reading...
Cosmetics company apologises, promising to pay back millions to more than 5,000 employeesCosmetics firm Lush will be forced to pay employees millions of dollars in backpay after the discovery of a “significant” payroll error that meant it had been underpaying staff since 2010.The company announced on Tuesday that it had reported itself to the fair work ombudsman after discovering that it had underpaid more than 5,000 employees by $2m. Continue reading...
President says London has not provided evidence to back up claims that Moscow was behind poisoning of four people – one fatallyVladimir Putin has accused Britain of making baseless allegations against Russia over the former Soviet spy and three other people poisoned, one fatally, with the novichok nerve agent in Salisbury.
Trend concerns businesses that claim drop in immigration is costing economy billionsThe number of people moving to the UK from EU countries has fallen to the lowest level for four years, according to official figures.Data from the Office for National Statistics released on Monday showed net long-term migration to the UK from the EU was 101,000 in 2017 – the lowest level since the year ending March 2013.
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović saw all but one game at her own expense while sporting a national team shirtShe wore the team shirt and cheered as Croatia faced France in a thrilling World Cup final on Sunday. Later, soaked by the rain, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović smiled in defeat and hugged every player from both teams as the winners were given their medals.By the end of the day, it was the Croatian president who had emerged as her country’s star of the tournament. Mediatoolkit, a Zagreb-based analytics company, found 25% more focus on her in news stories about the final than any of the players on the pitch, including the Golden Ball award winner, Luka Modrić, as well as Ivan Perišić and Mario Mandžukić. Continue reading...
The UK’s hand car washes tend to be extremely competitive with pricing, but they have also been linked to modern slavery. Are they ever fair for workers?One night in August 2015, after a long shift at the Bubbles car wash in east London, Sandu Laurentiu was washing himself in the rat-infested shared flat provided by his employer. Shaip Nimani, 53, originally from Kosovo, had illegally bypassed the electricity meter at the property in Bethnal Green and tampered with the fuses to stop them blowing. The plumbing in the damp bathroom was not earthed. While he used the decrepit power shower, Laurentiu was electrocuted and killed.
Families living on £1.50 a day or less tell of the hardships of life in the oil-rich nation, which now has the greatest concentration of extreme povertyNkechi John, 39, lives in a single room with her four children and husband, who is a welder. Their daily lives are fairly typical of people in poverty in Nigeria, which according to the Brookings Institution now has the world’s greatest number of extreme poor.“Life is tough and everybody is complaining,” she says. “I used to sell akara [bean cake]. I could make around 1,000-1,200 naira [£2-£2.50] profit every day, but now I can’t even make 400 naira. People don’t have money to buy it because there are no jobs. Continue reading...
David Dungay died after telling five Australian police officers that he could not breathe while being restrainedShocking video footage of the death in custody of an Indigenous Australian man has been aired in court for the first time, depicting five officers restraining a man who said 12 times that he could not breathe.David Dungay Jr died in 2016 while he was being held down by officers in a Sydney jail.
Nelson Mandela’s long, thoughtful letters, written during his 27 years in prison, display an unwavering certainty that change would prevailNelson Mandela’s letters from prison seem to demand a spoiler alert. We know how this epic turns out – but the uncanny thing about reading this selection of close-written correspondence is the unavoidable sense that its author always knew the ending in advance, too.Mandela was born a century ago this week. The conviction that his story would make history, that it would have a triumphant last act of truth and reconciliation, hardly ever appears to have faltered within him. Not when the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment at the end of the Rivonia trial in 1964. Not when the door slammed behind him aged 45 as prisoner 466/64 in an 8ft by 7ft cell on Robben Island, his home for 18 years. Not even when, in 1969, his eldest son, Thembi, was killed in a car crash – a tragedy that followed less than a year after the death of Mandela’s mother – and he was refused permission to attend the funeral (just as he had been his mother’s). Continue reading...
President arrives in Finland for talks with Russian leader … Brexiters prepare to challenge PM … and sands of Kent reveal historic shipwrecksHello, I’m Warren Murray, welcome to another week of news. Continue reading...
There is a difference between ordinary conservative provocateurs and those adjacent to fascist movementsLauren Southern’s signal talent is getting attention. The Canadian far right celebrity’s Australian visa dramas last week – wholly administrative in origin – were spun by her and her fans for a day or so as yet another attack on her freedom of speech.A temporary setback was repurposed as precious publicity, and News Corp papers continued to unfurl the red carpet ahead of her visit. Continue reading...
Andrew Farotade refused leave to remain under rules intended to tackle terrorismA widower who is the sole carer of his four-year-old son has been forbidden to work and ordered to leave the country – even though the Home Office’s own lawyers advised them to drop the case.Andrew Farotade, who is from Nigeria, won a £1,500 scholarship in 2009 to study his second master’s degree in engineering at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. He then worked for the Security Industry Authority in jobs in which he was responsible for the security of highly valuable, hi-tech equipment and intellectual assets worth millions of pounds. Continue reading...
Gambling experts are concerned about plans by major Las Vegas operators to set up in OsakaWhen she she looks back on her childhood, Noriko Tanaka isn’t surprised she grew up to be a problem gambler. Her grandfather spent every spare moment playing pachinko – a pinball-like game with payouts – while her father bet regularly on bicycle races.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo cites ‘firm commitments’ about return of remains of US service members killed in 1950-53 Korean warThe US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has said talks with North Korean officials about the return of remains of US service members killed in the 1950-53 Korean war “resulted in firm commitments” and that there would be a follow-up meeting on Monday.The meeting on Sunday was the first time in nine years that US and North Korean generals had held talks. The two sides met on the inter-Korean border and agreed to resume joint field activities to search for the remains of Americans missing from the war, Pompeo said. Continue reading...
Forty fire engines called to blaze on Wanstead Flats as smoke billows over capitalMore than 225 firefighters tackled a large grass fire in east London that sent smoke billowing over the capital throughout Sunday afternoon.The fire began at around 3pm and was still smouldering at 9pm by which time the flames had been extinguished and firefighters were damping down the scorched earth. Continue reading...
Catrin Huber and Newcastle University team’s installation opens at World Heritage sitesIn the cool shadowy interiors of houses whose owners died almost 2,000 years ago in one of the most famous disasters in history, the first contemporary art works, created by the German artist Catrin Huber with a team from Newcastle University, have just been installed in Pompeii and Herculaneum.Every centimetre of surviving original material is precious in the World Heritage sites that attract millions of visitors every year. Any damage, such as recent collapses at Pompeii, creates world headlines. Continue reading...
For young, multiracial France, the team is a source of joy but few now think of it as a healing forceI have been watching the World Cup in France, mainly in the bars and cafes of the lower end of the 14th arrondissement in Paris. This is a mixed neighbourhood that is partly gentrified but also home to council estates with a large immigrant population and the usual low-level social tensions – drugs, gangs, run-ins with the police. So far, however, watching the game has been relatively trouble-free. Each step by the French team towards victory has been followed by good-humoured delirium – flares are set alight, kids walk on the roofs of cars, there is much tooting of horns and showering of beer. The culmination of all these mini-parties came after the team’s victory over Belgium on Tuesday when, as if in response to some secret signal, hundreds and then thousands of fans converged on the Champs-Élysées.Watching all of this on the news, what was most striking about the fans was not their racial mix, although numerous ethnicities were represented, but how young they were. This is the new generation of millennials for whom the last great French victory in the World Cup is an event from history. A cartoon in Le Parisien said it all: “You’ve got to stop telling us stories from the last century,” young fans tell a portly, middle-aged white male (not unlike myself). The message is clear: this is our World Cup and this is our own triumph to celebrate. Continue reading...
60% of state schools already allowed girls to wear shorts or pants, but choice will be extended to allQueensland schoolgirls will have the choice to wear shorts or pants at state schools from next year following an overhaul of uniform policy.
John Magufuli says underemployment of inmates leads to drug use and homosexualityTanzanian president John Magufuli on Saturday ordered that prisoners be made to work “day and night”, that conjugal visits be ended and that lazy inmates should be “kicked”.The leader, who has come under fire from rights groups over his authoritarian leadership style and a crackdown on freedoms, was speaking at the inauguration of new prisons chief Faustine Martin Kasike. Continue reading...
by David Smith in London and Andrew Roth in Moscow on (#3TWFN)
Twelve Russians indicted by Mueller ahead of Putin summit but Stone tells Guardian: ‘No evidence of collaboration or collusion’The political operative Roger Stone has admitted he is “probably” the Donald Trump associate cited in a grand jury indictment as communicating with Russians who attacked the US presidential election in 2016.Related: Trump responds to Mueller indictments – by blaming Obama Continue reading...
Donald Trump encounters further protests as he plays golf at his golf resort in Ayrshire. He waves several times at the protesters and they continue to chant ‘no Trump, no KKK, no racist USA’
Peter Dutton says reduction by more than 20,000 migrants caused by weeding out of ‘fraudulent claims’Australia accepted just 162,417 permanent migrants in the past year, a decrease of more than 10% on the previous year and the lowest level in a decade.The reduction, confirmed by the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, on Friday, was the result of a departmental crackdown after Dutton and former prime minister Tony Abbott unsuccessfully advocated for a lower migration cap, prompting accusations the government has cut migration by “backdoor means”. Continue reading...
Labor says leaflets handed out in electorate of Keysborough are ‘nasty and bigoted’The Victorian Liberal opposition has defended distributing election leaflets that warn of “gangs hunting in packs” in Melbourne, which Labor has denounced as “nasty and bigoted”.The leaflet, which features the opposition leader, Matthew Guy, and the Liberal candidate for Keysborough, Darrel Taylor, was handed out in Keysborough on Thursday morning. It comes amid a growing backlash to a recent Channel Seven story suggesting the city was gripped by an “African gangs” crisis. Continue reading...
The only US facility using shocks on children with learning disabilities has fought off another legal challengeIn 2012, video of electric shock conditioning used inside the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center was released to the public for the first time. It showed 18-year-old Andre McCollins being restrained face down, shouting for help from the people around him. His calls go unanswered, and he is given repeated shocks which cause him to scream in pain.
Tressa Reeves claimed she was given the brush-off when she tried to track down her sonA British woman who spent 40 years searching for her son after he was allegedly illegally adopted through a Catholic agency in Ireland in the 1960s has settled a court action.Tressa Reeves, 79, who now lives in Cornwall, and her son, Patrick Farrell, sued St Patrick’s Guild, an adoption society run by the Sisters of Charity, and the Irish state. They alleged he was never properly adopted, a claim that was denied.
President tweeted ‘a very nice note’ from North Korean leader just hours after officials failed to show up at the planned meetingDonald Trump has released a letter he received from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un while touting “great progress” in negotiations between the United States and Pyongyang – despite reports of a breakdown in talks.
Winchester College boarder Nicholas Elger said he wanted to take motorist’s lifeA teenager with a talent for chemistry has been jailed for throwing firebombs on to a motorway because he wanted to kill someone. Continue reading...
Online streaming and the country’s proximity to the US have led to the likes of Despacito topping the charts – and now the island’s musicians are embracing politicsIt sometimes feels as if there is no getting away from Despacito. At more than 5bn views, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s track is now the most streamed video of all time on YouTube. But there is plenty more where that came from: Puerto Ricans such as the Despacito duo were responsible for 27 of the top 100 most-viewed music videos on YouTube in 2017. Over on Spotify, four of the six most popular Latin artists are also Puerto Rican: Fonsi and Yankee again, plus Bad Bunny and Ozuna.All this from an island of just three and a half million souls, plus the other five million Puerto Ricans who live in the US. How did they become such a colossal musical force? Continue reading...
by Philip Oltermann and Stephen Burgen on (#3TRJ5)
Former Catalan leader could be extradited over misuse of public funds but not rebellionGermany would only extradite the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to Spain on a charge of misuse of public funds, not the more serious charge of rebellion, a court has ruled.The separatist leader was held on a European arrest warrant in March while crossing into northern Germany on the way to Brussels, where he was living in self-imposed exile. Continue reading...
Planned census of civil war and dictatorship victims aims to help families trace relativesSpain’s new government has announced plans to establish a truth commission to investigate crimes against humanity committed by the regime of the former military dictator Francisco Franco, more than 40 years after his death.Under a new law of historical memory, the criminal records of those convicted for opposing the regime will be wiped and organisations that venerate the memory of the dictator, such as the Fundación Francisco Franco, will also be outlawed. Continue reading...
Donald and Melania Trump have landed in the UK at the start of a four-day visit during which the US president will have talks with Theresa May at Chequers, travel to Windsor to meet the Queen and play golf at Turnberry in Scotland Continue reading...
German court rules parents can inherit contract between a child and a social media siteFacebook must grant a grieving mother access to her late daughter’s profile and private messages on the social network, Germany’s highest court has ruled.In a landmark judgment for the treatment of social media data after its owner’s death, Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsruhe ruled on Thursday that parents can inherit the contract between their child and a social media platform in the same way they would be able to inherit physical documents such as diaries and private letters. Continue reading...
When asked by the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill how he feels about planned protests in London and elsewhere in the UK ahead of his visit, Donald Trump insisted he was popular in Britain, citing his strong line on immigration. The US president also said he told EU leaders they had to be careful because immigration was 'taking over Europe'
