Leave.EU co-founder says it went too far after anger over anti-German meme

China is destroying Uighur graveyards where generations of families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group’s identity in XinjiangSatellite images of a graveyard in Aksu, Xinjiang province, in 2015 where Uighur poet Lutpulla Mutellip was buried, and the same view in 2019 showing a new area called Happiness Park. Continue reading...

Protesters gathered outside the White House in Washington to demand Donald Trump reverse his decision to withdraw US troops from north-eastern Syria, warning that Kurds would be targeted in a Turkish offensive. The Turkish government claimed the US president had handed it the lead on the military campaign against Isis, and said its forces would be crossing into Syria 'shortly'

Activists say police racially profile black communities, despite Puerto Rico’s image as a melting pot without racial problemsWhen Nina Figueroa, 25, protested with fellow Puerto Ricans this summer to oust the then governor, Ricardo Rosselló, she believed she stood out to police. Figueroa, a college student studying comparative literature, had been arrested multiple times while in the streets and was starting to notice a pattern.“I have been arrested in protests three times and all three times I was doing nothing,” says Figueroa. “I asked myself: ‘Why do the police arrest me so much?’ And obviously it wasn’t until I understood that I’m an easy target for the police because I’m a black woman.” Continue reading...

Prospects look remote of deal before 31 October … Turkey poised to invade Kurd-held Syrian territory … and housing estate a ‘modest masterpiece’Hello – I’m Warren Murray, here to walk you through the news at a leisurely gallop. Continue reading...

As Kurds claim border is already being shelled, US appears to backtrack but Ankara says it will not be ‘controlled by threats’Turkey has signalled its intent to press ahead with an attack on US-backed Kurdish-led forces in north-east Syria despite confusion over US policy after officials appeared to backtrack on Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from the area.The vice-president, Fuat Oktay, said Turkey would execute its own plans regarding national security and would not be “controlled by threats”. Continue reading...

Clare Stokes says images that seemed to show couple fighting were ‘twisted’ by paparazziThe wife of the cricketer Ben Stokes has dismissed allegations of a physical altercation between the couple at an awards ceremony.Pictures have emerged of Stokes and his wife, Clare, appearing to be embroiled in a confrontation during a Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) prizegiving at the Roundhouse in Camden, north London. Continue reading...

Police failed to provide relevant investigation details into fictitious VIP abuse ring, says Howard RiddleThe judge who issued the search warrants during the disastrous Operation Midland investigation into a fictitious VIP abuse ring has suggested he was “misled” by police officers.Howard Riddle, who has since retired as a senior district judge and chief magistrate, has backed the findings of a damning report by Sir Richard Henriques, which concluded he would not have granted the warrants had police given him all of the relevant information. Continue reading...

The LGBT community criticised the comedian for associating with the former president who has a dismal record on gay rightsEllen DeGeneres typically kicks off her show with a set of jokes. Yesterday, she took a different approach.The 61-year-old comedian responded to online criticism brewing over her hanging out with former president George W Bush at a Dallas Cowboys football game on Sunday. Critics – who are predominantly part of the LGBT community – derided DeGeneres for getting close to a president who actively stood against the legalization of same-sex marriage. Continue reading...

British Divers Marine Life Rescue says body spotted near Kent townA humpback whale spotted in the Thames over the weekend has died, marine experts who were tracking its movements have said.Volunteers from British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) said they saw the body of the animal floating lifeless in the river near Greenhithe in Kent. Continue reading...

Liza Womack claims son’s overdose occurred after negligence from company that ‘fostered, promoted and encouraged’ illegal drug useThe mother of rapper Lil Peep has filed a lawsuit against his management company over negligence related to his death from an overdose in 2017.According to court documents obtained by the New York Times, Liza Womack has claimed that First Access Entertainment, the agency and label that oversaw her son’s career, plied and propped him up with illegal drugs. Continue reading...

Nobel-prize winning author remarks after president dismissed deputies as the country is rocked by a constitutional crisisNobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa has praised Peru’s president Martín Vizcarra for dismissing the country’s rightwing opposition-dominated parliament which he said was made up of “semi-illiterate swindlers”.Related: Mario Vargas Llosa quits writers' body over Catalan remarks Continue reading...

Compulsory purchase order could effectively block plans for parts of Earl’s Court siteHundreds of council housing residents in west London are celebrating after councillors agreed to take forward compulsory purchase order plans that could halt one one of the largest luxury developments in Europe.The West Kensington and Gibbs Green council estates are home to more than 2,000 people. For more than a decade, the residents have lived with uncertainty about whether or not they will lose their homes as part of a 31 hectare (77 acre) development in Earl’s Court by Capital & Counties, known as Capco, a FTSE 250-listed company. The developer has planned a £12bn redevelopment of the site and refers to the project as its Earls Court Master Plan. Continue reading...

Drugs worth billions of pounds thought to have been smuggled in lorries from NetherlandsPolice have arrested 13 men across the country suspected of being part of the biggest drug smuggling gang ever uncovered in the UK.The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the men, aged between 24 and 59, were held in dawn raids on Tuesday in London, Manchester, Stockport, St Helens, Warrington, Bolton, Dewsbury and Leeds. Continue reading...

Cpl Joshua Hoole died within an hour of collapsing on a hot day in Wales in 2016An army officer was reported to military police after allegedly telling a more junior soldier to help change statements about a march on a very hot day in which a colleague died, an inquest has heard.Cpl Joshua Hoole, 26, died within an hour of collapsing on a hot day during an annual fitness test (AFT) in Brecon, south Wales, in July 2016. The tragedy came three years after three army reservists suffered fatal heat illness during an SAS selection march in the Brecon Beacons. Continue reading...

Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong is being held in conditions ‘conducive to mistreatment or torture’, says Human Rights WatchHuman rights groups have called for the immediate release of a Vietnamese activist arrested for criticising one-party Communist rule on his Facebook page.Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong, 28, from Ho Chi Minh city was arrested in late September and now faces charges of “making, storing, disseminating or propagandising information” intended “to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”, said Human Rights Watch (HRW). Continue reading...

With the country’s major cities set to run out of groundwater in 2020, volunteers are helping to conserve precious suppliesDrenched in perspiration on a muggy Sunday afternoon in New Delhi, Ashia Saifi climbs up and down the stairs of apartment buildings, ringing on doorbells and asking if residents have any leaking taps they want fixed.Sometimes, the door is slammed shut in her face. People are scared of intruders and strangers, even though Saifi sports a little white cap that’s the emblem of the Aam Aadmi party (Common Man), or AAP, which rules the Indian capital. Continue reading...

Hard discs of judge re-examining Northern Ireland killings were removed in 2002, BBC documentary saysMI5 removed and destroyed the files of a judge who was investigating security force collusion in the 1989 murder of the Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane, it has been reported.MI5 agents entered the office of Peter Cory, who was appointed in 2002 by the British and Irish governments to re-examine certain killings in the Northern Ireland Troubles, and removed computer hard discs that were then wiped, according to a BBC documentary to be aired on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Policy reversal by Trump raises fears captured militants could escape and return to the UKBritish Isis fighters held in north-east Syria could end up being released if the US allows Turkey to invade the territory, UK politicians and the parent of one detainee have warned.A cross-party group of MPs and peers who visited the region last month warned that Donald Trump’s unexpected Sunday night decision to give Turkey a free hand “risks global security” because it could allow Isis members to escape and regroup. Continue reading...

Mana ends city’s ‘ludicrous’ exclusion from prestigious guide to eating outManchester has been awarded its first Michelin star in 40 years, bringing an end to a situation that has been denounced in recent months as “ludicrous” and a “crime”.The star was earned by the former Noma chef Simon Martin whose Ancoats restaurant, Mana, opened in October last year to great fanfare. Continue reading...

MPs say thousands of jobs, many in rural Scotland, could be at risk from planned 25% taxMPs are calling on Boris Johnson to intervene directly with Donald Trump to prevent the US imposing punitive tariffs of 25% on imported scotch whisky later this month.The US announced last week that scotch would be among a range of European goods subject to hefty import taxes from 18 October, as it hits back against the EU in the long-running trade dispute over subsidies for Airbus. Continue reading...

Confidence in force’s leaders said to be shaken at senior levels after abuse claims furoreThere is “concern and dissatisfaction” at senior levels of the government about the Metropolitan police leadership’s handling of the disastrous investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring, according to sources.The furore forced the Met commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, to make her first remarks on the fallout from Operation Midland, and the police watchdog attracted intense criticism for a report clearing officers of deliberately misleading a judge to get search warrants and saying none deserved to face disciplinary action. Continue reading...

Westminster and Trafalgar Square among sites targeted as number of arrests rises to 217Almost 220 people had been arrested by late afternoon on the first day of Extinction Rebellion’s planned two-week shutdown of central London in protest against the lack of action to tackle the climate crisis.Westminster Bridge, Lambeth Bridge, Trafalgar Square, Smithfield market as well as several roads in Westminster were blockaded by activists, with a focus on the areas around parliament in an attempt to force politicians to heed their warning. Continue reading...

Helena Bonham Carter says she discussed her part in The Crown with the deceased royal. What advice might Her Royal Highness have for Boris Johnson?Oh, it’s you, Johnson. I suppose once that silly Bonham Carter woman had blabbed about our conversation then it was inevitable that you would come out of the woodwork. Not that you can even trust her to report what was said accurately. All I said was that I had been dead for more than 17 years and I didn’t give a damn if she played me or not. Personally, I could think of several others – Grace Kelly, for one, who would have done a better job – but as they have all croaked as well, I suppose that might have been tricky.Will you please stop talking while I’m interrupting? And why did you have to call at such an inconvenient time? Didn’t anyone tell you that I spend the hours between two and four sleeping off the first few drinks of the day? Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

Child’s mother was also stabbed in incident in Wallsend and is in stable conditionA three-week-old boy who was stabbed along with his mother last week has died in hospital.The child was taken to hospital with his 21-year-old mother after they were found with life-threatening injuries at their home in Wallsend, Newcastle, last Wednesday. Continue reading...

Many mothers and fathers admit to having a preferred child – and experts say that being a sidelined sibling can cause serious problemsDiya says she was never in any doubt her mother had a favourite child – and that it was not her. Now, with three young children of her own, the 27-year-old thinks it is because she looks like her father, who left when she and her sister were very young.“I remember my dad coming to my defence once when I was about 12, telling my mum that she couldn’t choose to love one daughter more than the other. That was the last time my mum let him in the house,” she says. Continue reading...

White House reveals policy shift following conversation between Trump and ErdoğanThe White House has given the green light to a Turkish offensive into northern Syria, moving US forces out of the area in an abrupt foreign policy change that will in effect abandon the Kurds, Washington’s longtime military partner.Kurdish forces have spearheaded the campaign against Islamic State in the region, but the policy swerve, after a phone conversation between Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday, means Turkey would take custody of captured Isis fighters, the White House said. Continue reading...

It is unclear whether Turkey has the will or capacity to take over detention campsIn early 2015, as Islamic State trampled over armies of the Middle East and menaced the west, the US turned to the Kurds for help. It was a familiar call, having been repeated over the decades whenever Washington needed a friend in the region. The outcome has been similar too.Four years on, the people who helped safeguard the global order have been abandoned by the US on the eve of a Turkish push into Kurdish lands across north-eastern Syria. Betrayal has been an enduring theme whenever the US and the Kurds have partnered, but never before as nakedly as this. Continue reading...

Scottish court rejects request to order Boris Johnson to seek extension if he cannot get deal passed by MPs

Exclusive: in majority of cases, authorities do not perform postmortems, despite recommendations from regime’s lawyersQatar is failing to investigate the sudden deaths of hundreds of migrant works, the Guardian can reveal.Hundreds of labourers in the World Cup host nation die each year, with the majority of the fatalities attributed to heart attacks or “natural causes” by the Qatari authorities. Many are young men who die in their sleep – a phenomenon locally dubbed “sudden death syndrome”. Continue reading...

Pressure on ministers to explain how warnings were missed before deadly attackPressure is growing on France’s government to explain how the radicalisation of a man who killed four colleagues at the Paris police headquarters failed to raise red flags inside the intelligence unit where he worked.The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, summoned before two parliamentary committees this week, conceded there had been a “malfunction” as he promised to “tighten the net”. Continue reading...

A letter from the British government classifying Paulette Wilson as an illegal immigrant shook her sense of identity and belonging. ‘Hostile environment’ policies years in the making meant that Wilson and other victims of the Windrush scandal had their right to residency in the UK called into question. She had been detained for a week pending imminent deportation though she had done nothing wrong. It was devastating, but luckily she was released before she was deported. Here we follow Wilson as she returns to Jamaica for the first time in 50 years, trying to make sense of her place in the world and rebuild a sense of security and belonging Continue reading...

Regulator said it had ‘serious concerns’ around transparency of BBC’s complaints process

Repatriation of sacred objects is part of project to mark 250th anniversary of Cook’s voyageManchester Museum is returning a number of sacred artefacts to Indigenous Australians, nearly a century after the items came into its possession.The repatriation of 43 ceremonial objects is the first of its kind from the UK under a project to mark the 250th anniversary next year of Captain James Cook’s first voyage to Australia. Continue reading...

Discovery comes two months after Shohfah-El Israel was jailed for her murderDetectives in London are investigating whether human remains found in woodland could be those of a missing student.Joy Morgan, 20, was murdered in December 2018 by a fellow worshipper at the Israel United in Christ church in Ilford, east London. Continue reading...

Woman who fled country is a suspect in relation to a collision that killed Harry Dunn, 19Police chiefs have written to the US embassy in London to demand immunity is waived for an American diplomat’s wife who is a suspect in relation to a fatal road crash.Nick Adderley, chief constable for Northamptonshire police, said US authorities had been appealed to in “the strongest terms” to apply a waiver and “allow the justice process to take place”. Continue reading...

António Costa bucks the trend of declining fortunes for Europe’s left, but remains short of an outright majorityPortuguese prime minister António Costa’s Socialist party has won the country’s general election but has fallen short of an outright majority, according to exit polls.The Socialists (PS) took 36.65% of the vote, followed by the centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) with 27.9%, according to near total results released by the interior ministry early on Monday. Continue reading...

Burundians who fled political violence at home complain of pressure tactics as 600 people are repatriated voluntarilyNearly 600 people who fled political violence in Burundi have been repatriated voluntarily from Tanzania amid warnings from the country that it plans to return all Burundians taking refuge there, willing or not.The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, announced the return last week, saying that about 590 Burundian refugees had left Tanzania in buses for Gisuru, in eastern Burundi, where there is a transit centre for returning refugees, witnesses said. Continue reading...

Photos taken by official photographers show how Ugandan dictator exploited media ‘to amplify ego and political will’For decades he has been reviled as a simple-minded and sadistic dictator, or lampooned as a clownish thug.Now tens of thousands of newly discovered images have shown how Idi Amin exploited cutting-edge media technology, populism and radical ideologies to maintain his bloody grip on power in the 1970s. Continue reading...

Agreement this week unlikely but talks are ongoing and PM is building Commons support

Escalating brutality has been central to the long standoff between the city’s authorities and its peopleWhen Hong Kong’s summer of protests began in June, the city was so shocked by police unleashing 150 canisters of tear gas and using their batons, it helped bring two million people into the streets to demonstrate again and denounce police brutality.Four months of rolling protests later, they used nearly 10 times as many tear gas rounds in 24 hours in a futile bid to control the city as China celebrated 70 years of communist rule last Tuesday. That day police shot a protester with live ammunition for the first time, seriously injuring the teenager. Three days later another schoolboy was shot in the thigh. Continue reading...

One man arrested following reports of an altercation at a property on Saturday eveningDetectives have launched a murder investigation after three men were found dead at an address in Colchester, Essex.Police were called to Wellesley Road at about 10.15pm on Saturday over concerns for the welfare of two men following reports of an altercation. Officers found two men dead inside a property and the body of a third man was discovered in a car outside. Continue reading...

Concerns raised over appropriate use of legal defence for youths exploited by drug gangsA legal defence for children who claim they are being exploited by county lines drug gangs needs to be monitored more closely, the Magistrates’ Association has warned.Judicial concern about the way section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act operates has emerged as gang violence escalates and the government focuses on the disproportionate outcomes for ethnic minority defendants in the criminal justice system. Continue reading...

Demonstrators in Hong Kong wore face masks on Sunday in defiance of a new law imposed after the government invoked colonial-era emergency powers. Protesters, who could face a year in prison for hiding their faces, threw teargas canisters back at police as tens of thousands marched through central Hong Kong

The actor says she discussed her part in The Crown with the deceased royal herselfSome actors avoid excessive research, but for Helena Bonham Carter to play Princess Margaret in The Crown meant reading all the biographies, talking to friends, ladies-in-waiting and relatives, and consulting an astrologer, a graphologist and a psychic.The last meeting meant she could talk to the princess herself, the actor told Cheltenham literature festival. Continue reading...

Record 2.4 million fans tried to secure ticket for festival’s 50th year next JuneTickets for the 50th year of Glastonbury have sold out in 34 minutes, as a record number of fans tried to secure a ticket for the event at Worthy Farm next June.Emily Eavis confirmed that a record number of people had registered to be eligible for the sale, which started at 9am on Sunday and was finished in little over 30 minutes. A record 2.4 million people signed up to have a chance of securing a ticket. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals are filling those in rural County Fermanagh with dread and confusionTwo very different storms barrelled into Gortmullan last week, one from the west, the other from the east.Remnants of Hurricane Lorenzo unleashed wind and rain from the Atlantic across the area, a rural pocket of County Fermanagh that marks Northern Ireland’s border with the Republic. “Stay back, stay high, stay dry,” advised the authorities, and residents duly hunkered down. Lorenzo passed without major damage. Continue reading...

BBC investigation exposes Shia clerics in Baghdad advising men on how to abuse girlsI’m walking through the security cordon that leads into Kadhimiyah, one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites. I’m in a queue, along with dozens of pilgrims who have come from all over the world to pay their respects to the shrine of Imam Kadhim. At the gate, a female security guard pats me down and looks into my handbag, a reminder that the story I’m reporting on here isn’t going to be easy.As I walk around the market stalls surrounding the shrine, I notice the many “marriage offices” dotted around the mosque, which are licensed to perform Sharia marriages. I’d received tips that some clerics here were performing short-term mutaa [pleasure] marriages, a practice – illegal under Iraqi law – whereby a men can pay for a temporary wife, with the officiating cleric receiving a cut. Continue reading...