Dozens of West Papuans were tortured and thrown into the sea 23 years ago. Days later, Australia knew details of the attack, yet remained silentIn the pre-dawn light, beneath a water tower on the West Papuan island of Biak, Yudha Korwa lay bleeding in the dirt.Four days earlier, the young high school student, full of hope in post-Suharto, Reformasi Indonesia, had joined hundreds of other independence activists to fly the Morning Star, the banned West Papuan flag, near Biak’s harbour. Continue reading...
by Rebecca Ratcliffe and Carmela Fonbuena on (#5PPSN)
Sara Duterte ahead in the polls despite refusing to commit to presidential raceIt was a decade ago, before her father had become Philippine president, that Sara Duterte attracted national attention. A local sheriff had ignored orders issued by her, the mayor of Davao City, to delay the demolition of a shantytown. She arrived at the scene furious and punched him, not once, but four times in the head, in front of reporters.Duterte, 43, a motorbike lover and tough talker, has a combative image that echoes that of her 76-year-old father, the populist president Rodrigo Duterte. It is widely believed that, as he nears the end of his six-year term limit, she will follow in his footsteps to Manila’s Malacañang Palace. Continue reading...
West Midlands police said the 5ft-long female python was ‘very friendly’A couple from Dudley were left shocked after discovering a 5ft python in their bedroom.The yellow snake was removed by West Midlands police after it was found wrapped around a vanity mirror at the couple’s home in Quarry Bank, Dudley. Continue reading...
Initial reports suggest a Taliban convoy may have been targeted in the ISKP’s stronghold regionAt least three people have been killed and more than 18 people injured in three explosions in Jalalabad in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.It is reported that the intended target may have been a passing convoy of the Taliban in the provincial capital. It is the first attack in the province since the Taliban came into power in mid-August. Continue reading...
Polish director Patryk Vega’s usually slick technique fails him utterly here in this lurid story about a cop investigating a girl’s kidnapping by the Russian mafiaPatryk Vega is the Polish writer-director whose hardboiled thrillers have found commercial favour both at home and with diaspora audiences: 2018’s The Plagues of Breslau was the kind of full-throttle, unapologetically 18-rated entertainment western producers have largely backed away from. Regrettably, his latest is both globetrotting and dashed-off, and so remorseless that it becomes actively punishing. Violence is hardwired into Vega’s film-making: his unhinged protagonists can’t walk into a room without it seeming like a declaration of war. You gulp, then, when an ominous (and suspiciously unattributed) epigram – “What sort of species are we, if we cannot protect our children?” – makes clear this director has turned his brawn to addressing trafficking. What follows has two modes: lurid and sentimental. Either way, it’s a big wince.Our hero Robert Goc (Piotr Adamczyk) is a cop of a familiarly grizzled stripe, first introduced as he chaperones a desperate mother to the border after the latter’s daughter is snatched by the Russian mob. The case gets forcibly reopened several years later after a gas explosion in the Russian suburbs exposes a paedophilic treasure trove in the bathroom of weak-willed foster parent Oleg (Andris Keiss). Given that Oleg’s brother is played by an especially phlegmy Aleksey Serebryakov (from Leviathan and the recent Nobody), we sense things can only get grimmer. Sure enough: half an hour in, a pregnant 11-year-old is throwing herself in front of a train at Rotherham station. Worse ensues in Bangkok, where Goc starts to wonder whether he himself might have certain … tendencies. Continue reading...
Central Sulawesi province’s military chief says Ali Kalora of East Indonesia Mujahideen shot during gun battle with security forcesIndonesia’s most wanted militant with ties to the Islamic State (IS) group has been killed in a gun battle with security forces, the military said, in a victory for the counter-terrorism campaign against extremists in the jungles of Sulawesi island.Ali Kalora was one of two militants killed in the shootout, according to Central Sulawesi province’s military chief, Brig Gen Farid Makruf. He identified the other suspected extremist as Jaka Ramadan. Continue reading...
Man, 49, held on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving after incident in Keighley on FridayA man has been arrested after a nine-year-old boy died when he was hit by a van which is said to have made off from the scene.West Yorkshire police are appealing for witnesses to the incident in Keighley on Friday. Continue reading...
Adavosertib found to delay tumour growth in some patients in clinical trial, with few side effectsResearchers have identified a potential new targeted treatment for incurable bowel cancer.The medication has shown promise in a clinical trial in slowing the regrowth of tumours among some patients with the condition. Continue reading...
Restoration to start at the cathedral in the centre of Paris two years after a fire destroyed the attic and spireWork to shore up Notre Dame in Paris has been finished, allowing restoration to start at the cathedral two years after a fire destroyed the attic and sent its spire crashing through the vaults below.Soon after the April 2019 blaze, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the cathedral – which dates back to the 12th century – would be rebuilt. He later promised to reopen it to worshippers by 2024, when France hosts the Olympic Games. Continue reading...
by Joe Parkin Daniels and Tom Phillips on (#5PPE5)
Gang violence, bloody protests, food and fuel shortages plus natural disasters have spurred many to leave the west’s poorest nationEvery night Guy would fall asleep to the sound of gunfire: warring gangs in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, were fighting pitched battles in the city centre.By day, the country was roiled by bloody protests against food and fuel shortages. Roadblocks with burning tyres were commonplace, and the police responded with tear gas and billy clubs. Continue reading...
The country’s greatest living writer feels ‘surprised, bewildered and assaulted’ after the president issued a warrant for his arrest and seized copies of his new novel about the 2018 uprisingSergio Ramírez, Nicaragua’s best-known living writer, hero of the Sandinista revolution, and former vice-president of the volcanic Central American nation, has lived through both tougher times and duller publicity tours.Even so, the past few days have been – as he puts it, with a degree of understatement – “an odd experience”. Continue reading...
Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from USThe new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum. Continue reading...
Simba Mujakachi says government’s ‘hostile environment’ policies deterred him from taking medicationSimba Mujakachi, a personal trainer, was just 29 years old in June 2019 when he suffered a catastrophic stroke that left him comatose. When he awoke, he was paralysed on his left side and unable to talk or eat.His stroke could have been prevented by relatively inexpensive medication for a blood clotting condition that, as an asylum seeker, he was not entitled to on the NHS. Continue reading...
Concerns raised over confusion between Home Office and councils over who will house arrivalsAfghans evacuated to Britain are facing homelessness and destitution amid confusion over plans to house them, MPs say. And essential supplies meant for newborns and mothers, largely provided by volunteers, are not always reaching them, leading to concerns over their ongoing care.Most families have been moved out of quarantine into “bridging” hotels. But some, including traumatised British citizens, are scrambling to find accommodation. Others are being sent far from their support networks. One man who has lived in north London for 23 years, told the Guardian he was suffering from depression after being sent to a hotel hundreds of miles from relatives. Another was told to board a bus with his sick baby daughter to Liverpool, despite having an emergency housing claim in London. Continue reading...
Lauren Anne Dickason is charged with killing two-year-old twins and their six-year-old sister soon after arriving from South AfricaA woman has appeared in court charged with murdering her three young daughters just weeks after the family arrived in New Zealand from South Africa.Lauren Anne Dickason appeared in court on Saturday morning in the port city of Timaru, and a judge remanded her to a hospital for a mental health evaluation, a court spokesperson said. Continue reading...
by Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent on (#5PP7S)
Campaigners call for parades to be re-routed as up to 13,000 people expected to converge in city centreCampaigners against anti-Catholic bigotry and anti-Irish discrimination will gather in protest around vulnerable churches on Saturday, as Glasgow braces itself for the largest gathering of Orange marchers since the pandemic.More than 30 of the controversial Protestant parades will converge in the city centre to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first Battle of the Boyne parade, with potential turnout estimated from 5,000 to 13,000. Hundreds of police officers are expected to be deployed on the day, with 32 streets closed until mid-afternoon to facilitate the marchers. Continue reading...
Bouteflika, an independence war veteran, was ousted during pro-democracy protests in 2019Algeria’s longest-serving president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was ousted in 2019 amid pro-democracy protests after two decades in power, has died aged 84.The state television announcement on Friday, citing a statement from the office of the current president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, did not provide the cause of death. Continue reading...
Animal and Plant Health Agency says infected animal was dead and has been removed from the farmA single case of BSE – an infection commonly known as “mad cow disease” – has been confirmed on a farm in Somerset.The Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) said the infected animal was dead and had been removed from the farm. Continue reading...
President Xi Jinping faces serious test of his financial reforms as struggles of property giant send ripples through real-estate sectorThe crisis engulfing Evergrande, China’s second-biggest property company, is the greatest test yet of President Xi Jinping’s effort to reform the debt-ridden behemoths of the Chinese economy. It could also be the most significant test that China’s financial system has faced in many years.As angry protesters occupied the headquarters of the troubled property developer in recent weeks, some analysts have described the Evergrande crisis as “China’s Lehman Brothers moment”. Only this time it’s a credit-fuelled housebuilder that suddenly can’t pay its $300bn debts, rather than a blue-chip investment bank that many assumed was too big to fail but was instead thrown to the wolves 13 years ago. Continue reading...
One woman’s modest mission to restore law and order to the streets has divided a cityAll Anne Moran wants is a civilised city where people politely stick to the left on the footpath.The Adelaide councillor is tired of cyclists, scooters, smartphone zombies and meanderers ricocheting off each other, creating mayhem on the (ahem) thriving streets of her city. Continue reading...
Just two weeks before the bombshell, senior ministers from both countries met and declared they were ‘committed to cooperation’. How did it all go so wrong?
Canada already shares intelligence with Australia, the UK, the US and New Zealand but was not included in Aukus pactJustin Trudeau is facing harsh criticism from political rivals after Canada was excluded from a new international defence pact, days before the country votes in a federal election.Australia, the United Kingdom and the United State on Wednesday announced a new intelligence sharing agreement meant to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Continue reading...
Inquest into Frankie MacRitchie’s death recommends more ‘robust system’ to ensure police deal with dangerous dogsA coroner is to write to a police force over the tragedy of a nine-year-old boy mauled to death by a dog during a Cornish holiday, after his inquest heard the animal had been involved in previous attacks.Frankie MacRitchie was killed after being left alone in a caravan with the 45kg dog, an American bulldog crossed with a staffordshire bull terrier called Winston. Continue reading...
Ank Bijleveld joins Sigrid Kaag in resigning, after both were formally censured as interpreters strandedThe Dutch defence minister has became the second cabinet member to resign over the Afghan evacuation debacle.Ank Bijleveld resigned on Friday, following the foreign minister, Sigrid Kaag, out of the door after parliament formally censured them over a crisis that has left dozens of interpreters stranded in Afghanistan. Continue reading...
PM will hope signing of this week’s Aukus deal will help the allies move on from the chaos of KabulBoris Johnson will fly to New York this weekend for his first foreign trip since the Covid pandemic, hoping to cement his relationship with the US president, Joe Biden, after a rocky summer marred by the chaotic Kabul airlift.Two years ago, when Johnson made his first foreign trip as prime minister to the Biarritz G7 summit, the hope was that Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for the man he called “Britain Trump” would help smooth the way for a rapid post-Brexit trade deal with the US. Continue reading...
After five years at the agency tackling organised crime, she is leaving to focus on treatment for breast cancerThe head of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), sometimes dubbed Britain’s FBI, is stepping down to focus on her fight against cancer.Dame Lynne Owens announced her intention to retire as NCA director general on Friday, after 32 years of service to law enforcement. Continue reading...
Brazil’s president claims he has not received a Covid-19 vaccine – but his immunization records have been locked away for 100 yearsThe Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has signaled that he will snub New York City vaccination rules when he travels to next week’s UN general assembly claiming not to have received a Covid jab.Bolsonaro is the only G20 leader who publicly claims not to have been vaccinated against a disease that has killed nearly 600,000 Brazilians, although the decision to place a 100-year secrecy order on his immunization records means many citizens doubt that claim. Continue reading...
Gearoid Cavanagh and Jordan Devine appear via videolink at Derry magistrates in Northern IrelandTwo men have appeared in court in Northern Ireland charged with the murder of the writer Lyra McKee.Gearoid Cavanagh, 33, and Jordan Devine, 21, both from Derry, appeared via videolink at Derry magistrates’ court on Friday Continue reading...
Poorer diet may explain why the lofty lowlanders are at least 1cm shorter than the previous generationIt is, perhaps, with just a hint of satisfaction that the Dutch office for national statistics has confirmed that the men and women of the Netherlands remain the tallest people on the planet. But the government’s statisticians have had cause to report a further potentially humbling twist: the Dutch are shrinking.For the last six decades, the people of the lowlands have stood imperiously at the top of the world height league table, with the latest data suggesting the average 19-year-old man stood at just over 6ft tall (182.9cm) in 2020, while women born in the same year measured in at 5ft 5in (169.3cm). Continue reading...
Royal’s legal team believed to be contesting service of notice of Virginia Giuffre’s civil sexual assault actionThe Duke of York’s lawyers have one week to challenge a decision that he can be formally notified by the UK courts of the US civil sex assault case against him, the high court in London has said.The high court on Wednesday accepted a request by lawyers for Virginia Roberts Giuffre to formally contact him if necessary about her legal proceedings launched in New York. Continue reading...
The source of the rocker’s enviable eternal youth? In the words of the man himself, it’s avidly rooting out new artists into his 70s (and beyond)I keep reading that we decline in our 70s so I try to keep using my brain. Discovering new music opens my mind and the element of surprise keeps me connected. I feel like I’m mining for diamonds – and when you find the diamond, you know. When I heard Chaise Longue by Wet Leg I got really excited: it’s cheeky, with a wicked groove, but it’s the vocals – they’re almost metronomic. You could ask 100 people to sing it and it wouldn’t sound the same.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...
With rural areas of the country left to suffer, aid workers fear funds are drying up as global compassion fatigue sets inDavid Nazaire, a 45-year-old coffee farmer from Beaumont, a small village in rural southern Haiti, was getting ready to harvest when an earthquake struck his home and livelihood. Much of the farming infrastructure – as well as nearby homes, schools and churches – was damaged or completely destroyed. A month later, he and thousands of rural Haitians – those most severely affected by the tremor – are still waiting for relief, and are not expecting it to arrive soon.“The earthquake didn’t destroy our crops, but it did take everything else,” Nazaire says, outside a neighbour’s house, now a pile of rubble beneath plastic roof tiles supported by the remnants of concrete walls. “We were just getting ready to harvest, but that’s lost now.” Continue reading...
Service starting in December will be a charter train only available to those booking holidays through one French operatorWith more Eurostar trains now running again on routes from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, travellers have been awaiting news of ski trains to the French Alps and the reinstatement of other services.But recent news from Eurostar news hasn’t been good. This week the train operator announced that services to Marne-la-Vallée (for Disneyland Paris) wouldn’t run until late March 2022. Then it said no Eurostar services would stop at Ebbsfleet or Ashford in Kent until 2023. Continue reading...
by Helen Davidson in Taipei and Vincent Ni on (#5PMVJ)
Australia and US pledge stronger ties, EU calls for trade deal and Johnson refuses to rule out getting involved in a conflict involving the islandChina’s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to resist “interference from external forces” as Taiwan welcomed support from major allies after a US-Australia ministerial forum pledged stronger ties with the island and the European parliament called for a bilateral trade deal.Speaking at a meeting of the heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tajikistan via video link, Xi urged members of the grouping to “absolutely resist external forces to interfere [in] countries in our region at any excuse, and hold the future of our countries’ development and progress firmly in our own hands”. Continue reading...
Jails should not serve as ‘dating centres or media platforms to brag about crimes’, says ministerPrisoners serving life sentences in Denmark are to be prevented from starting new romantic relationships after it emerged a 17-year-old fell in love with Peter Madsen, the murderer of the journalist Kim Wall, while he was in jail.For the first 10 years of their imprisonment, long-term inmates’ contacts, by letter, phone or online, will be limited to people they already knew before they entered prison, under legislation tabled by the social democrat-led government. Continue reading...
My head was edging closer to the gap where it would be crushed. Knowing there was nothing I could do, I felt strangely at ease with my fateI had worked on and off at Argos when they needed seasonal staff since I was 17. By Christmas 2007 I was 21, and I’d picked up regular shifts again. It was December in East Kilbride, and that means it was cold. On this particular morning I was unpacking a delivery in the stockroom, where the heating wasn’t working. I’d come wrapped up for warmth, a long woolly H&M scarf in a looped knot around my neck.The stockroom was across two floors, with an industrial conveyor belt connecting the upper and lower levels. I was on delivery duty upstairs alone, with my colleagues downstairs. The only reason anyone would come up would be to use the staff bathroom. Continue reading...
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle hopes meeting at his constituency will raise Lancashire town’s profileWhen Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, suggested to Lindsay Hoyle, her UK counterpart, that they hold the G7 speakers’ conference in “his district”, she might not have realised how enthusiastically the Lancastrian would embrace the idea.Hoyle said that Pelosi had asked, “We always go to London, can we get out of London?”, and so this weekend politicians from the world’s richest nations will be descending on the Lancashire market town of Chorley. Continue reading...
by Angela Giuffrida Rome correspondent on (#5PMZK)
Six-year-old is now in Israel after alleged abduction by grandfather, four months after tragic accidentThat a single person survived when a cable car crashed in northern Italy was nothing short of a miracle.Eitan Biran, aged five at the time of the accident, is believed to have been saved by the protective embrace of his father, Amit, as the cable car plummeted to the ground. Continue reading...
She explored her gender and sexuality in the 20s, defied segregation in the 40s and inspired Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, a film is bringing her trailblazing achievements to lightIt seems inconceivable that someone like Pauli Murray could have slipped through the cracks of US history. A lawyer, activist, scholar, poet and priest, Murray led a trailblazing life that altered the course of history. She was at the forefront of the battles for racial and gender equality, but often so far out in front that her contributions went unrecognised.In 1940, 15 years before Rosa Parks, Murray was jailed for refusing to move to the back of a bus in the Jim Crow south. In 1943, she campaigned successfully to desegregate her local diner, 17 years before the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. Her work paved the way for the landmark supreme court ruling Brown v Board of Education in 1954 – which de-segregated US schools – to the extent that Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP civil rights group, called Murray’s book States’ Laws on Race and Color “the bible for civil rights lawyers”. Continue reading...
Evacuation of employees, not contractors, ‘splitting hairs’, says HRW, warning of days left to save livesAfghan employees who worked as contractors on UK aid projects fear for their lives after not being granted resettlement in Britain.The Guardian has been in contact with four families who said they had been targeted by the Taliban because they worked for the UK government, and have now been forced into hiding. Continue reading...
As they prepare what could be their final tour after 54 years, the British rock greats reflect on who they lost along the way, how they survived punk – and why Phil is skiving off his vocal practice‘Genesis have always been slightly below the radar,” says keyboardist Tony Banks. “We’ve never been part of a current trend; we don’t tend to get awards; we’re just sort of … there. People that like us really like us, though, and that’s all we care about.”“Below the radar” may be a strange way of describing a band who have sold more than 150m albums. But, then, Genesis have always been peculiarly self-effacing. From their early-70s, Peter Gabriel-fronted iteration, where they quickly ascended to the upper echelons of progressive rock with a combination of theatrical whimsy and fiendish technical complexity, to their slicker, poppier, staggeringly successful 80s years, they remain a wildly popular – yet pleasingly eccentric – proposition. Continue reading...