The agreement would resolve lawsuits and compensate the Hollywood producer’s alleged victimsHarvey Weinstein, women who accused him of sexual misconduct, his former film studio’s board members and the New York attorney general’s office have reached a tentative $44m deal to resolve lawsuits and compensate alleged victims of the Hollywood producer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people it said were familiar with the matter.The deal, if finalized, would resolve a civil rights lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general’s office last year that accuses Weinstein Co’s executives and board of failing to protect employees from a hostile work environment and Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, the Journal said. Continue reading...
Funds from auction of 82 cars worth total of £1m will go to deprived communitiesDozens of luxury cars seized from sticky-fingered politicians and mobsters will go under the hammer this weekend as part of a populist anti-corruption crusade being waged by Mexico’s leftist president.Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed that proceeds from Sunday’s auction will be channelled into social programmes and deprived communities. Continue reading...
Newly discovered species could soon be the first reptile on the Australian mainland to be declared extinctA newly reclassified species of lizard that is native to areas now paved by Melbourne’s suburbs could become the first reptile on mainland Australia to be declared extinct.A taxonomic survey of the grassland earless dragon, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal this week, discovered that the species classified as Tympanocryptis pinguicolla was in fact four species – one of which has not been seen since 1969. Continue reading...
The suspect, who told staff she had ‘killed someone’, has been placed in psychiatric care after the incident in FranceA woman aged 102 has been placed in psychiatric care in north-eastern France after she was suspected of murdering her 92-year-old neighbour in a care home, prosecutors said.The victim was found dead on Saturday night in her room at the care home in the town of Chezy-sur-Marne. Her face was swollen. Continue reading...
Peter Michael Komiazyk remanded in custody as bomber Craig Minogue charged with same 38 offencesA man acquitted of charges relating to Melbourne’s deadly Russell Street bombing has spent a night in custody after being accused of the abductions and rapes of two teenagers more than 30 years ago.Peter Michael Komiazyk, 61, also known as Peter Reed, faced Melbourne magistrates court on Thursday night and was remanded to appear again on Friday. He has been charged with 38 counts of abduction by force and aggravated rape relating to two separate attacks on the 19- and 18-year-olds in the 1980s. Continue reading...
Shares fall sharply in Asia, Europe and North America in intensifying war of wordsThe deepening trade and technology war between the US and China has sent global stock markets sharply lower and prompted a warning from the IMF of the increasing risks to the global economy.Shares fell sharply in Asia, Europe and North America on a day that saw investors alarmed by the intensifying war of words between Washington and Beijing, poor news on the American economy, and political chaos in Britain. Continue reading...
by Gwyn Topham, transport correspondent on (#4FRND)
Ride-hailing company hopes to expand to other London boroughs if local trial goes wellUber is to launch its electric bike hire scheme in the UK, trialling Jump bikes in London through its app.The global ride-hailing firm will be battling with Lime for the e-bike market, after the retreat of dockless bicycle firms from the UK. Continue reading...
Local media cites recent deaths of three people as cause for hours-long queue in freezing temperaturesHundreds of climbers hoping to make it to the summit of the world’s tallest mountain were forced to queue for hours in freezing temperatures at high altitude this week as congestion built up on Mount Everest.The delays have been linked to the deaths of at least three people on the mountain, according to local media. An American man and an Indian man and a woman all died as they descended, various sources said. Continue reading...
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has claimed a landslide victory in national elections that cements the Hindu nationalist leader as the country’s most formidable politician in decades. The emphatic victory has been greeted with dismay among some members of religious minority groups, who have voiced fears that a returned Bharatiya Janata party government would be further emboldened to prosecute its Hindu nationalist agenda
Friday: Towns to run out of water within months unless it rains. Plus: WikiLeaks founder faces fresh US indictmentsGood morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 24 May. Continue reading...
PM widely forecast to set out departure timetable in meeting with 1922 Committee chairTheresa May is widely expected to announce on Friday that she will resign as Conservative leader, amid deep concerns among centrist cabinet ministers that candidates to be the next prime minister will have to promise a hard Brexit.May’s allies believe that she will promise to step down as leader by 10 June after the state visit of US president Donald Trump and then stay on as prime minister until her successor has been chosen. Continue reading...
There are some show-stopping scenes in Bellocchio’s handsome true-crime movie about mafia informantsMarco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a big, handsomely shot, true-crime gangster movie, ranging over 30 years from the early 1970s to the late 90s, scripted by Bellocchio with screenwriters Valia Santella, Ludovica Rampoldi and Francesco Piccolo. The film has the authoritative air of official history: sometimes brash, sometimes stolid, sometimes with flashes of inspiration and sometimes with long stretches of courtroom dialogue. It is in these sections where Bellocchio is perhaps self-consciously concerned, as a major Italian film-maker, to be seen delivering a definitive cinematic account of an important period of modern Italian life. Well, it was certainly a sound instinct to show the courtroom scenes at some length, because however bizarre and chaotic it could be, the court of law is the moral centre of these events.His subject is Italy’s sensational anti-mafia Maxi trial of 1986, in which hundreds of Sicilian mobsters were convicted, on the testimony of a tiny number of high-up pentiti, or informers, of which the most important was Tommaso Buscetta, a bulkily intimidating, charismatic presence portrayed here by Italian character actor Pierfrancesco Favino. He was the important Cosa Nostra guy who astonished everyone by committing the ultimate sin: treason. He snitched to the cops. It was something that made him lower than the low: hated not merely by the police and the media but his own people, too. The film tells Buscetta’s story, flashing backwards and forwards between his life as a young Palermo guy starting out in crime, to the elderly, morose type in a witness-protection scheme in the United States, paranoically buying semi-automatics at the local supermarket because they were on a special discount. Continue reading...
Government will continue to supply aircraft to be used in war, says Jeremy HuntThe UK government has negotiated a loophole in a German arms export ban to Saudi Arabia that will ensure UK-supplied planes will continue to be used in the war in Yemen, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has confirmed.The news is contained in two unpublished letters from cabinet ministers to the parliamentary Committee on Arms Export Controls (CEAC). The aircraft, Tornado fighter bombers and Eurofighter Typhoons, are used in the Saudi bombing raids designed to push back the Houthi rebellion in the four-year civil war in Yemen. The aircraft were developed by consortiums of European companies and Germany supplies spares for them. Continue reading...
Footage shows Alex Crawford and her team under intense bombardment in IdlibThe Sky news journalist Alex Crawford and her camera crew were deliberately targeted by the Syrian government and repeatedly shot at while reporting on the regime’s assault on the province of Idlib.Crawford said she and her five-person team came under intense bombardment on Thursday when a Syrian military drone spotted them in the town of al-Habit. The area in the Idlib countryside is in a buffer zone between opposition and government forces. It is meant to be battle-free. Continue reading...
by Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent on (#4FQZM)
Investors complain shares are worth less than a pack of cigarettes following 40% slump in 10 monthsDeutsche Bank shares slid to fresh lows as its boss announced “tough cutbacks” for the investment bank following a fraught year of money laundering allegations, failed merger talks, and lawsuits by Donald Trump.At a marathon annual shareholders meeting in Frankfurt, still going on after eight hours, chief executive Christian Sewing said the bank would push ahead with a further €1bn (£880m) in cost cuts this year, following similar moves in 2018 that led to 6,000 job losses. Continue reading...
Party leader’s north Indian constituency was bastion of support for his famous familyAs India’s opposition Congress party went down to a landslide defeat on Thursday, its leader, Rahul Gandhi, was also convincingly beaten in his own parliamentary seat – a north Indian constituency that had sent three of his family members to parliament in the past half-century.The loss of the family bastion seat of Amethi underscored the dwindling relevance of south Asia’s most famous political dynasty in Narendra Modi’s “new India”, alongside the decline of the pluralistic vision of India that has been synonymous with the Nehru-Gandhi family for the past seven decades. Continue reading...
Former Southampton and Peterborough coach convicted of offences against 23 boysA former football coach who helped launch the careers of a string of household names has been found guilty of sexually abusing schoolboy players.Bob Higgins, who worked with hundreds of youngsters, was found guilty of 45 charges of indecent assault against teenage boys at Bournemouth crown court. Continue reading...
Politicians want at least one woman at helm of European commission and councilEU leaders are being urged to select at least one woman when replacing Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk as the presidents of the European commission and council, positions that have only ever been held by men.The call is being made by 70 leading politicians, including the top candidates for the jobs as well as former prime ministers and the former commission president Romano Prodi. Continue reading...
Ten-year-old girl from El Salvador died on 29 September ‘due to fever and respiratory distress’ after complications with surgeryThe Trump administration has been forced to reveal that a 10-year-old migrant girl died in its custody more than seven months ago, sparking further outcry after a spate of recent migrant child deaths while detained by the US government.The 10 year-old girl from El Salvador is the sixth child to die in custody in the past eight months. Her death was not previously reported by authorities and was only made public late on Wednesday after a report by CBS News. Continue reading...
Parents are accused of sending or trying to send money to Jack Letts after he went to SyriaThe parents of a Muslim convert suspected of joining Islamic State sent or attempted to send him money despite him telling them he wanted to behead a former schoolfriend who had joined the army, a jury has heard.John Letts and Sally Lane challenged their son Jack Letts after he responded to a Facebook post by Linus Doubtfire in 2015, the Old Bailey heard. Continue reading...
Plans aim to beef up defenses against potential Iranian threats as tensions between the countries continue to simmerThe Pentagon is considering a US military request to send 10,000 extra troops to the Gulf to beef up defences against potential Iranian threats, US officials have said.Officials told AP that the troops would be defensive forces, and the discussions include additional Patriot missile batteries, more ships and increased efforts to monitor Iran. The move was not in response to any new threat from Iran but was aimed at reinforcing security in the region, they added. Continue reading...
Book says officials manipulated children into making abuse claims, leading to convictions, family separations and deathsIn the early hours of 7 July 1997, Federico Scotta and his wife were woken by an incessant ringing of their doorbell. Police had arrived at their home in Mirandola, a town in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, with a search warrant.Officers found nothing incriminating, but the couple and their three-year-old daughter and baby son were escorted to the police station. The children were taken away by social workers that day and a few months later a third child was taken from the delivery room. The couple never saw the children again. Continue reading...
Inquest hears that armed response officers feared attackers were wearing suicide vestsAt least one of the London Bridge attackers was handcuffed as they were lying wounded on the ground before more shots were fired, an inquest has heard.The three terrorists murdered eight people by driving into pedestrians and going on a stabbing rampage before they were themselves killed by armed response officers who feared they were wearing explosive vests. Continue reading...
The hugely popular BJP Hindu nationalist leader brushes aside economic woes to claim another termProfile: from impoverished tea seller to master of political theatreIndia’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has claimed a landslide victory in national elections that cements the Hindu nationalist leader as the country’s most formidable politician in decades.Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) had been expected to easily form a governing coalition with smaller allies, but official results showed the party ahead in at least 300 seats, comfortably beyond the 272 seats required for a majority in the lower house of parliament. Continue reading...
Informant says American helped Cosa Nostra assassinate Giovanni Falcone in 1992New York’s powerful Gambino mafia family sent a bomb expert to Sicily to train Cosa Nostra mobsters to assassinate an anti-mafia investigator, a former hitman has claimed.Maurizio Avola, 56, who is believed to have killed about 80 people before becoming a pentito (informer) told prosecutors in Caltanissetta, Sicily, that an American man came to Palermo in 1992 to help the Sicilian mafia kill the prosecuting magistrate Giovanni Falcone, murdered in a car bomb the same year. Continue reading...
Woman in stolen campervan leads Los Angeles police on chase in which she smashes into cars and curbs before crashing to a stop against a palm tree with a large dog hanging out of the shattered windscreen. Another dog had jumped out of the moving vehicle and run away before the final crash. Continue reading...
The Clotilda was found by SEARCH Inc in collaboration with the Alabama Historical CommissionThe last ship known to smuggle slaves from Africa to the US has been discovered in Alabama’s Mobile River, nearly 160 years after it was deliberately sunk, a historical commission has said.The Alabama Historical Commission, in a post on its Facebook page, called the effort to locate the ship, the Clotilda, a “year-long scientific investigation.”. Continue reading...
Rolling coverage of the day’s political events as they happen as the UK votes in the European elections 2019 and pressure continues on Theresa May to resign1.04pm BSTDuring an urgent question in the Commons earlier Caroline Dinenage, the care minister, apologised on behalf of the NHS for the abuse of people with learning disabilities and autism at the specialist hospital Whorlton Hall. The abuses were exposed in a harrowing report by an undercover reporter working for the BBC’s Panorama which has led to a police investigation, 16 staff being suspended and the hospital being closed.Dinenage said:On behalf of the health and care system, I am deeply sorry that this has happened.Where it is essential that somebody has to be supported at distance from their home, we will make sure that those arrangements are supervised.We won’t tolerate having people out of sight and out of mind. Where someone with a learning disability or an autistic person has to be an inpatient out of area, they will be now visited every six weeks if they are a child or every eight weeks if they are an adult.12.47pm BSTThere are a lot of reports on social media of EU nationals being denied a vote in today’s European elections.EU nationals can vote in the UK in European elections. They have to register, like UK nationals. But they also have to fill in a form, known as the UC1 or EC6 form, saying they will only be voting in the UK, and not in other EU countries.Related: Many EU citizens will be unable to vote in UK, campaigners warnJust been to polling booth in London Tower Hamlets where two German nationals denied vote. They returned their UC1 form by hand on 2 May. I witnessed Kat phone the no she was given by officials and she was told the form was not processed until 16 May - 9 days after deadline.EU citizens denied their legal right to vote because local council did not process their forms...man on phone told them they could no nothing about it#deniedmyvote
RAC survey suggests 22m planned leisure trips will cause congestion and delaysSevere traffic congestion and rail closures will hamper this weekend’s bank holiday getaway.An RAC survey suggests 22m leisure trips have been planned between Friday and Monday, which will lead to “some extensive jams”. Continue reading...
Former black-cab driver is accused of drugging women after picking them up in his taxiJohn Worboys has appeared in court accused of drugging four women in an attempt to carry out sex attacks.The former black-cab driver is said to have told his alleged victims he had won money gambling after picking them up in his taxi between 2000 and 2008 in London. Continue reading...
In its Brexit delirium, the party is tearing itself apart on an election day, its voters rampaging off into the Farage wildwoodsWelcome to an extraordinarily bizarre election day. Pause on the way to the polling station to wonder at the astounding mayhem within our “ruling” party, soliciting votes even while wrenching its leader from Downing Street. We may be so used to the Tory party in meltdown that we forget to be amazed at what is unfolding before our eyes – on election day.Even allowing for all Andrea Leadsom’s fantastical ambitious absurdities, ponder how astonishing it is to see the leader of the house, no less, resigning on election eve just to steal a march on all her improbable leadership competitors. Jeremy Hunt is marching in to see the prime minister in publicly threatening mode – on election day. Forget any sense of decorum towards their party or their country, or the electoral process. Continue reading...
The creation of this post is pure self-delusion, and doesn’t change the UK’s dire record in Yemen, India, Iraq …The foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has created a new role of ambassador for human rights, which, according to a Foreign Office statement, “demonstrates the UK’s commitment to defending human rights globally”. Plainly it does nothing of the sort. What it demonstrates is the government’s desperation to repair the reputational damage incurred as its support for the worst human rights abusers of the Middle East comes under increasing scrutiny.Consider a few dramatic episodes in the past year, from Israel’s massacring of unarmed civilians in Gaza, to the murder and dismemberment of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, to the carnage caused by the Saudi-UAE assault on Yemen. In each case, Hunt has performed his now familiar impersonation of an innocent bystander, expressing his “concern” while arms sales and diplomatic support to the culprits continue uninterrupted. In Yemen, substantial British and American assistance has been indispensable in sustaining a Saudi-UAE war effort that is the primary cause of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe, with an estimated 85,000 children under five dead from starvation or preventable disease, and thousands more killed in indiscriminate bombing. Continue reading...
23 May 1974: Peter Cole on the trial of the first person to attempt to kidnap a member of the royal familyThe first man ever to attempt to kidnap a member of the Royal Family, Ian Ball, was yesterday in the Hampton special hospital after the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, had made an order under the Mental Health Act. He was sent to the hospital for an unlimited length of time.Mr Ball forced a car carrying Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips to stop in the Mall, London, on March 20 by driving his own car in front of it. He was carrying two guns, and in the skirmish which followed he shot and wounded two policemen and two civilians. Continue reading...
Court hears that actor offered to settle for $50,000 and an apology but never heard back from News CorpGeoffrey Rush will receive $2.9m in damages from the Daily Telegraph after a series of articles accusing the Oscar-winning actor of “inappropriate behaviour” towards a female actor.On Thursday the federal court heard lawyers for Rush and the Telegraph had agreed the actor would receive $2m for past and future lost earnings after tax, on top of an $850,000 payment ordered by Justice Michael Wigney in his judgment in April. Continue reading...
Brussels chief criticises MPs for prioritising May’s removal above finding agreementJean-Claude Juncker has suggested that Brussels is expecting another Brexit extension in October as he criticised MPs for prioritising the prime minister’s removal over finding agreement on a Brexit deal.With May appearing on the brink of resignation, the European commission president spoke of his admiration for her resilience and his disdain for the attempts to remove her. Continue reading...
A teenager seeks to escape from her remote commune just after the fall of Pinochet in this atmospheric but elusive dramaHistory provided a resplendent context for simple domestic events in last year’s Latin American standout Roma. But in Dominga Sotomayor Castillo’s Too Late to Die Young – which also features a showpiece New Year’s brushfire – history rises up almost unseen like smoke and hangs in the air around the inhabitants of the Chilean rural commune where this film is set.It’s set in 1990 just after the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship, and 16-year-old Sofia (Demian Hernández) is seeking a route out of the stifling inertia of the backwoods setup her father has chosen for her. A few ominous incidents – a dead horse poisoning the watercourse, a break-in – hint at the outside world encroaching, but the community’s dope-smoking adolescents barely notice. It’s unclear if anyone, not least the adults dithering about organising a power supply, has much appetite for the future. Continue reading...
In a country where dirty water and poor sanitation jeopardise the lives of millions, moves are afoot to improve health facilitiesIt was midnight when Kalpana and Rohit Agri had to take their three-day-old daughter, Kritima, to Bardiya hospital in western Nepal. She was listless and, despite the antibiotics she’d been prescribed, had developed a high fever. Hearing her struggling to breathe, they woke a neighbour to take them.Kritima was admitted with life-threatening neonatal sepsis, probably an infection she had picked up in the hospital where she was born. Continue reading...
Dr Mohammad Haqmal, who developed groundbreaking health initiatives in Aghanistan, granted refugee statusA senior Afghan government official has been given sanctuary in the UK after being kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban.Dr Mohammad Haqmal, 42, is a public health chief of international standing, who developed a series of groundbreaking programmes in his home country. He was forced to flee Afghanistan after his kidnap. On Monday he was awarded Public Health National Hero 2019 – the second time he has won the award – in absentia for his work by the Afghanistan parliament. Continue reading...
Debate rages after dog was euthanised according to owner’s dying wishThe unusual death of a woman’s dog in Virginia has sparked outcry and a debate over whether it is ok to kill a healthy pet and bury it with its owner according to their dying wish.Emma, a shih tzu mix, was euthanised and cremated in March as per its owner’s will. The dog was put down despite the efforts of animal shelter workers who spent two weeks trying to talk the executor of the woman’s estate out of the plan. Continue reading...
Europe’s 10 million Roma badly underrepresented at a time when populist forces are trying to villify communitiesPata-Rât is just a few miles outside Cluj-Napoca, in north-west Romania, but it feels a world away from the pretty streets and baroque architecture of the bustling city centre. Here, rubbish from the city and region is deposited in vast mounds, and the air is thick with the smell of rotting waste.About 1,800 people call Pata-Rât home, almost all of them of Roma origin, living in depressing and unsanitary conditions in a makeshift camp backing onto a landfill site. Many were evicted from housing in the city centre and forced into the camp’s crowded huts. Continue reading...
by Bethan McKernan Middle East correspondent on (#4FPJJ)
Renewed regime attacks have killed hundreds in the Syrian opposition’s last strongholdInstead of looking forward to the pre-dawn Ramadan meal of suhoor, Dr Firas al-Jundi was cradling his scared children and surveying the damage done to his home by Syrian government airstrikes.At least 11 people died in the overnight bombing on Wednesday of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, the Syrian opposition’s last stronghold in the country, in the latest spasm of violence in an escalated campaign on the area by Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Continue reading...