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Rights groups condemn arrests in Ho city as illegal and say those held have been denied access to lawyers

Police operations in London, Coventry, Birmingham and Colchester took place during week of actionEight men have been arrested in early morning raids as part of an investigation into scam texts claiming to be from Royal Mail.The men were arrested on suspicion of fraud involving “smishing” texts claiming to be from delivery firms. Continue reading...

Peter Hain says government must demand proper proof of life of Emirati royal after third image appears on Instagram within daysThe UK government has been urged to intervene to find out whether the Emirati royal Princess Latifa has been genuinely freed from house arrest by her father, after a third Instagram photo appeared in as many days showing her in a Dubai shopping mall.The latest photo showed Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, a daughter of the ruler of Dubai, looking at the camera blankly next to a clairvoyant at a coffee table. Continue reading...

Analysis: ‘Air piracy’ is just latest act of Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal campaign against his opponentsBelarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has unleashed a brutal campaign against his opponents. More than 35,000 people have been arrested, thousands have been tortured or abused, and 400 political prisoners are currently behind bars. Earlier this week a 50-year-old opposition activist, Vitold Ashurok, died in a penal colony. The official cause of death was “heart attack”. His widow believes he was murdered.It is against this dark and repressive backdrop that the extraordinary events of Sunday took place. According to state media, Lukashenko personally authorised the forced downing of a Ryanair plane as it flew over Belarusian airspace between Greece and Lithuania – a real-time hijacking. He even dispatched a MIG-29 fighter jet to ensure the pilot complied after being informed of a fake bomb threat. Continue reading...

Spokesperson dismisses Wall Street Journal claims based on ‘previously undisclosed’ intelligence

Corporation appoints team to look at effectiveness of policies and practice, particularly around whistleblowersThe BBC’s governing body has launched an investigation into the culture of its news operation, as ministers said the circumstances of Martin Bashir’s interview with Diana, Princess of Wales could be used to justify reform of the national broadcaster.The BBC’s board said it was confident the corporation’s internal processes had improved in the period since Bashir used fake invoices to gain the trust of Diana’s brother in an attempt to secure a Panorama interview with the royal. Continue reading...

Analysis: jihadists regroup after Boko Haram ‘defeat’ in the north-east while secessionist forces grow in south-east“Can our president keep us safe when we travel to any part of this country?” said Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, months before the former military dictator won the Nigerian presidency on a wave of mass anger at jihadist violence and corruption. “Is your life better today than it was six years ago?”Halfway through his second term, the same questions are being levelled at him. As an insurgency in the north-east has persisted – and grown in recent years – security crises have proliferated around the country. Criticism has mounted against his administration, including from within his own party. Continue reading...

Agreement between Tehran and IAEA means wider talks on US lifting sanctions can recommenceIran and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have overcome their differences to seal a one-month “stop-gap” extension of limited UN inspections of Iran’s nuclear activities.The agreement, lasting until 24 June, comes despite the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, claiming on Sunday that the previous three-month agreement had expired and implying it might not be replaced. Continue reading...

Analysis by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Syrian partner SIRAJ and Finance Uncovered looks at how ‘reconstruction tax’ has been spentUm Ahmed left everything when she and her four children fled their home south of Damascus at the beginning of a decade-long civil war – toys scattered around all corners of the house, the certificates she earned when she qualified as a pharmacist.After moving repeatedly, they now live in the Rukn al-Din neighbourhood of the capital in a gloomy rental flat. It is a far cry from their previous home, which was filled with light from dawn until dusk. Continue reading...

Michael O’Leary made comments as EU, US and UK consider action against act of ‘air piracy’Ryanair’s chief executive has said he believes that agents of the Belarusian KGB were travelling on the plane that was diverted to Minsk on Sunday, as EU leaders prepared to meet to discuss what action to take against Belarus.Belarusian police arrested opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, after forcing their Ryanair flight to land in the Belarusian capital, sparking outrage from European leaders, who have called the plane’s grounding a hijacking and act of “air piracy”. Continue reading...

Enrico Giovannini announces commission to investigate ‘technical and organisational causes’ of crash

A community project on the Lamu archipelago trains women in preserving this vital ecosystem and provides business loansKenya’s mangroves have been harvested for centuries, the timber used in shipbuilding and for ornate doors and furniture as well as shipped across the Indian Ocean and around the world.The Lamu archipelago accounts for more than half of Kenya’s mangrove forests. But across the country an estimated 40% of this precious commodity has been degraded, as more mangroves have been cut to provide construction materials and charcoal for cooking, and oil leakages from cruise liners and ships that pass along the coast kill off young saplings. The area has become one of the most degraded marine ecosystems in east Africa. Continue reading...

The vast majority of pork in Italy is produced intensively indoors, with smaller, outdoor pig units close to extinction

The actor, who has been the subject of multiple sexual misconduct allegations, is to play a detective in Franco Nero’s film about a man wrongly suspected of child abuseKevin Spacey, the actor who has faced numerous allegations of sexual misconduct over the past four years, is set to return to film acting with a small role as a detective in an Italian crime drama.Spacey, 61, will play a police officer investigating the case of a man – played by the director, Franco Nero – who can draw people by listening to their voices, despite not being able to see and is wrongly accused of sexually abusing children. Continue reading...

Anne-Marie Trevelyan urges people not to travel to country on coronavirus amber list ‘unless you have to’

People’s Defence Force says at least 20 officers died and police station seized in fighting on SundayDozens of Myanmar security force members have been killed in fighting, rebel fighters have claimed, as Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in person at a court hearing for the first time since her government was overthrown by the military in February’s coup.In one battle on Sunday, the People’s Defence Force (PDF) – a civilian anti-junta movement that fights back against security forces with homemade weapons – said at least 20 police had died and a police station had been seized in the town of Moebyel in Shan state in the country’s eastern fringe. Continue reading...

Party sources say reports Jodi McKay will be asked to stand down come from opponents ‘trying to engineer a leadership change’A shellshocked New South Wales Labor party is struggling to absorb the implications of the Upper Hunter byelection amid new rumblings over Jodi McKay’s leadership and speculation she will soon face a challenge.However, a transition in the leadership is no longer simple in NSW Labor, once known for its particular brand of hard-arse politics. Continue reading...

Review into Leppinton Triangle purchase finds it ‘unusual compared to Australian public service norms’An independent review of the $30m Leppinton Triangle purchase has concluded the federal infrastructure department failed to take “all reasonable steps” to achieve value for money for taxpayers.The review, conducted by Sententia Consulting and tabled at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, found it was “curious” the department didn’t seek external expertise on property acquisition and “unusual” that it asked valuers to consider the land’s industrial purposes. Continue reading...

The third photo essay in our series of work in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation focuses on the Batwa people in Uganda. The photojournalist Esther Mbabazi travelled to Bwindi national park and spent time photographing several families of the nomadic hunter-gatherers

The fight for justice has been left to individuals to champion – but we’re growing in numberThere was a time when support for the Palestinian cause was fed to Arabs with their mothers’ milk. I am of a generation that grew up in the shadow of the Camp David agreement and the assassination of the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, for what was seen as a betrayal of the Palestinians. Until Camp David in 1978, Egypt had been Palestine’s main ally and the strongest military power in the region after Israel. The peace treaty returned Sinai to Egypt in exchange for recognition of Israel. With that normalisation, Egypt closed the door to any sort of Arab military assistance to the Palestinians for ever.We inherited that era’s bitter disappointment. Palestine had been such an integral part of Arab identity for so long that it came to be known as “the case” or “the file” – an urgent unresolved issue at the heart of our world. After the Camp David agreement, “the case” went from being a rousing call for solidarity to something more melancholy and scattered. Continue reading...

In April 2020, Walker’s home was subjected to repeated attacks that left her in fear for her life. And yet the police brought only two charges of criminal damage. She talks about her ordeal – and why the law must changeIt was a warm, sunny Saturday in May 2020 but Sophie Walker was locked inside her house in north London, in the dark, with her 10-year-old daughter. She had drawn all the curtains and was sitting well away from the windows, doing jigsaws, listening to the country singer Kacey Musgraves and counting down the hours until her husband came home from work.Walker, who was the founding leader of the Women’s Equality party (WEP), had good reason to be fearful. The next morning her neighbour, whom she had asked to keep an eye on the house, would call to tell her his CCTV had captured a man hanging around outside her house at 4am. Later that day, she discovered the embers of a fire smouldering in her back garden. “Near the fire was a vodka bottle with petrol in it and a big pile of wood. The word ‘cunt’ was scrawled on the path in graffiti.” Continue reading...

Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore race to contain clusters as experts warn jabs must be distributed more evenly

In latest twist in extraordinary election saga, clerk of the house has locked the doors, preventing parliament from conveningIn dramatic scenes in the Pacific country of Samoa, the government has refused to convene parliament and allow a transition of power, locking the prime minister-elect and her supporters out of the parliament building.Samoa’s parliament was due to convene on Monday to swear in a new government, more than a month after a knife-edge election, which has been followed by legal challenges, the calling of a second vote, and intense constitutional manoeuvring. Continue reading...

It is not clear who carried out last week’s attack on Waikato hospital, which downed computers and phone linesA major New Zealand hospital faces a second week of disruption as it struggles to fix its computer system following a massive cyber attack.The attack on Waikato district health board (DHB), which began on Tuesday, has been described by its chief executive, Kevin Snee, as “probably the biggest cyber-attack in New Zealand’s history”. Continue reading...

Fourteen people, including a child, have died when a cable car linking Italy’s Lake Maggiore with a nearby mountain in the Alps plunged to the ground. The cable car fell from the Stresa-Alpine-Mottarone line near Lake Maggiore in Stresa, smashing into the wooded area which does not have road access as it approached the station nearly a mile above the lake

Rio Tinto’s reputation is in pieces, but the laws, policies and power imbalances that allowed the blast to happen remain largely unchangedThe Western Australian government has refused to commit to a moratorium on approving the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites, despite the recommendation of a federal inquiry which found that the laws are “unfit for purpose”.The recommendation was made by an inquiry into Rio Tinto’s destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites at Juukan Gorge on 24 May 2020. Continue reading...

Monday: Carbon emissions not linked to Australian land and agriculture increased by 7% in 15 years. Plus, the rural communities besieged by miceGood morning. New analysis of Australia’s contribution to the climate crisis, the one-year anniversary of the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters, and tensions are still high in Gaza. Plus, residents report from the heart of the mouse plague. This is Imogen Dewey with the main stories on Monday 24 May.Scott Morrison’s claim Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling does “not stack up”, with recent analysis finding fossil fuel and other emissions not linked to the land and agriculture increased by 7% over the past 15 years. The government is also under scrutiny for its “women’s budget”, delivered earlier this month. New analysis of the Coalition’s eighth budget reveals it spent 30 times more on tax cuts than it did on women’s economic security. Continue reading...

More than 500 homes have been destroyed by the lava that has poured into villages, officials and survivors sayAt least 15 people died when torrents of lava poured into villages after dark in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, destroying more than 500 homes, officials and survivors said on Sunday.The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo on Saturday night sent about 5,000 people fleeing from the city of Goma across the nearby border into Rwanda, while another 25,000 others sought refuge to the north-west in Sake, the UN children’s agency said on Sunday. Continue reading...

Iran has provided no information about cause of explosion in Isfahan that injured at least nine workersA complex that houses a factory that makes Iranian drones has suffered a major explosion days after Israel had claimed that Iran was providing drones to Hamas in Gaza.The blast at the weekend injured at least nine workers at the petrochemical factory in Isfahan. The Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (Hesa), which produces a variety of aircraft and drones for Iranian and pro-Iranian forces, is located in the complex owned by Sepahan Nargostar Chemical Industries. Continue reading...

Casualties reported after cable car with 15 passengers collapsed near Lake Maggiore in northern ItalyItaly was in shock on Sunday after a cable car crashed to the ground in a northern Italian beauty spot, killing 14 people including a nine-year-old child.The cable car is believed to have been carrying 15 people on the 20-minute ride between the resort town of Stresa and the Mottarone mountain in the Piedmont region when it plummeted into the woods near Lake Maggiore shortly after midday. Continue reading...

The budget does nothing to specifically support single mothers on low incomes or older women facing homelessness, report findsIt was billed as the “women’s budget” before its delivery earlier this month but new analysis of the Coalition’s eighth budget has found it spent 30 times more on tax cuts than it did on women’s economic security.The Australian Council of Social Service analysis found the 2021-22 budget provided a boost to services for women’s safety, but fell short in the necessary investment for women to achieve economic security, particularly those on low incomes, while doing nothing to enact structural change. Continue reading...

Black Lives Matter movement has been a ‘pinch point’ for racial intolerance, Inclusive Australia board member Ian Hamm saysMajor discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – like being unfairly denied a job or unfairly discouraged from continuing education – remains at elevated levels and is far higher than for the rest of the population, according to new data.Researchers at Monash University, on behalf of Inclusive Australia, surveyed people over several years on a number of measures, including their experiences of discrimination, feelings of belonging and wellbeing, and prejudices towards minority groups. Continue reading...

Thousands of residents abandoned their homes as the city of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was thrown into panic when a nearby volcano erupted. Lava from Mount Nyiragongo destroyed homes on the edge of Goma, which has a population of about 1 million people, but appeared to be slowing by midday on Sunday, giving hope that further damage could be avoided

Roman Protasevich wanted for organising last year’s protests against Alexander LukashenkoBelarusian authorities appear to have forced a Ryanair jet to perform an emergency landing in Minsk in order to arrest an opposition blogger wanted for organising last summer’s protests against leader Alexander Lukashenko.Roman Protasevich, a former editor of the influential Telegram channels Nexta and Nexta Live, was detained by police after his flight was diverted to Minsk national airport due to a bomb threat. Minsk confirmed it had scrambled a Mig-29 fighter to escort the plane. Continue reading...

Exclusive: ‘Rapid transition to regenerative farming’ needed, says prince, as data reveals 100,000 UK farms lost since 1990

The row over a new biography of Philip Roth has exposed the way agents and estates restrict access and manage archives to maintain a writer’s posthumous good nameWriters and critics are raising questions over the role that agents and estates play in managing archives and limiting access to biographical material.Fresh worries have been fuelled by the continuing fiasco over the publication of Philip Roth: The Biography, with accusations that access to the famed US author’s archival material is being unfairly constrained. Continue reading...

Glam rockers Måneskin, representing Italy, won the 65th Eurovision song contest on Saturday night. The competition returned in Rotterdam after the 2020 edition was cancelled because of the pandemic. The UK’s entry, Embers, sung by James Newman, finished last, failing to win a single point. It was the only Eurovision act to receive zero points after all 39 countries allocated their jury and public votes.

Joe Biden’s administration increases pressure on government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed to end human rights abusesSenior Ethiopian officials may face restrictions on their travel to the US, as Washington increases pressure on the government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed amid growing global concern about atrocities and famine caused by conflict in the northern region of Tigray.Though visa restrictions are likely to target only a small number of individuals, the move signals President Joe Biden’s administration is shifting to a more direct strategy to force Ahmed to end continuing human rights abuses in Tigray and allow free flow of much-needed humanitarian aid. Continue reading...

Hibbing, the birthplace of the musician, is paying tribute with a year of special eventsBob Dylan’s debut 1962 single began: “I got mixed-up confusion; man, it’s a-killin’ me”. It hasn’t yet – he turns 80 on Monday, and the pre-eminent custodian of American roots music, with its storytelling and protest traditions, is set to be celebrated by a public avalanche of events, programmes and tributes.The occasion will be marked in his birthplace of Hibbing, Minnesota – where, inspired by the sounds of country and blues music drifting up from the south on AM radio, he wrote in his high-school yearbook that his ambition was to join Little Richard. St Louis county, in which Hibbing sits, has issued a proclamation declaring a “Year of Dylan Celebration”. Continue reading...

A deal allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect images of nuclear facilities won’t be renewedIran’s parliament speaker has said that a three-month monitoring deal between Tehran and the UN nuclear watchdog has expired, escalating tensions amid diplomatic efforts in Vienna to save Tehran’s atomic accord with world powers.Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf’s comments, aired by state TV, further underscored the narrowing window for the US and others to reach terms with Iran. Continue reading...

Undercover agent who identified 1999 attacker says police are failing to keep pace with online spread of extreme ideologyAn undercover informant who identified the man behind Britain’s deadliest far-right attack has warned that a similar atrocity is inevitable due to the spread of extreme ideology online.The mole, codenamed “Arthur”, told his handler, who then informed the police, that David Copeland was behind a series of attacks that killed three and injured more than 100 over a bombing campaign lasting less than two weeks in 1999. Continue reading...

The comparison rankles supporters of Israel but the growing Palestinian Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement draws on the struggle to isolate racist South AfricaAsk an older generation of white South Africans when they first felt the bite of anti-apartheid sanctions, and some point to the moment in 1968 when their prime minister, BJ Vorster, banned a tour by the England cricket team because it included a mixed-race player, Basil D’Oliveira.After that, South Africa was excluded from international cricket until Nelson Mandela walked free from prison 22 years later. The D’Oliveira affair, as it became known, proved a watershed in drumming up popular support for the sporting boycott that eventually saw the country excluded from most international competition including rugby, the great passion of the white Afrikaners who were the base of the ruling Nationalist party and who bitterly resented being cast out. Continue reading...

Cases on voting rights, abortion and gun control will be a test of the ex-president’s laser-like focus on reshaping the judiciaryDonald Trump’s presidency was capricious and chaotic, but there was one issue on which he focused with laser-like discipline: tilting the judiciary to the right.Now America is about to reap that harvest. In the next year the supreme court is set to consider healthcare, voting, LGBTQ rights, guns and, most explosively, abortion. The cases provide a vivid demonstration of how, after being rejected at the ballot box, conservative partisans could push their agenda through the courts instead. Continue reading...

Forget bowling nights and bar-hopping – the thud of metal in wood is the new way of letting off steamOn a blustery Thursday evening, the sound of deep thuds and high shrieks can be heard along the canal in east London’s Hackney Wick. They emanate from axe-throwing venue Skeeters, named after the famous native American axe and knife thrower. It might sound unnerving, but head inside and the fairy lights – plus colleagues enjoying a work social – soon put you at ease.“It’s been a stressful year at work so it seemed like a good work social,” says Gemma Sutton, a 27-year-old product designer who tonight tried axe throwing for the first time. “It was fun. Most things you do as work socials involve going to a bar – it was nice to do something a bit different.” Continue reading...

Your friend’s death has hit you hard, says Mariella Frostrup. Don’t leap to conclusions – or insist anyone else doesThe dilemma I’ve spent the pandemic quarantining in my university house with my closest friends, one of whom passed away last year. He was in the middle of an “off” part of an on-again-off-again abusive relationship with someone who was my best friend at the time. Since then, me and his girlfriend have fallen out badly, and most of my friends and I feel very angry with her at the way she treated the friend who has passed away – and how much she’s hurt me. However, one of my other closest friends is still friends with her.I can’t understand how he would be able to have a friendship with her despite the terrible things she has done, and it makes it hard for me to talk to him without thinking of her. He, however, will not talk about their friendship as he doesn’t want to be put in the middle, or convinced to dislike her in any way, so it is just left as this elephant in the room. How do I come to terms with sharing a friend with someone who has caused a lot of pain? Especially when most of that pain was aimed towards someone dear who we have lost? Continue reading...

Yes, the club is owned by the morally dubious regime of Abu Dhabi, but look at all the other organisations that depend on Gulf cashAs a lifelong Manchester City supporter and season ticket holder (even in the days when we were penniless in the third tier), I read with interest Nick Cohen’s article on the use of our club as a vehicle for Abu Dhabi soft power and the moral issues it throws up (“Man City play beautiful football but it masks the ugliness of their owners”, Comment). The assumption is that Manchester City fans have become like “gangsters’ molls” and willing accomplices, ignoring the human rights abuses in their thirst for glory.Without wishing to characterise Cohen as a “puritanical nag” (to use his phrase), his observations highlight just how dangerous a place the moral high ground is and that moral relativism is not the sole preserve of some City supporters. Do we equally condemn the UK government and workers when Gulf states buy arms to oppress their own and neighbouring people or a UK racing industry heavily dependent on Gulf cash? We will soon be watching the 2022 World Cup in stadiums built on the exploitation of migrant workers, while wearing replica outfits produced in sweatshops in China and Bangladesh. Continue reading...

Austrian expedition leader Lukas Furtenbach says the real number could be 200, despite official Nepali denialsSee all our coronavirus coverageA coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff, a mountaineering guide said, giving the first comprehensive estimate amid official Nepalese denials that the disease has spread to the world’s highest peak.Lukas Furtenbach of Austria, who last week halted his Everest expedition due to virus fears, said on Saturday one of his foreign guides and six Nepali Sherpa guides had tested positive. Continue reading...

More Labor voters prefer the premier than Jodi McKay, while One Nation’s spirited campaign in the NSW seat doomed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers to electoral failureNew South Wales Nationals leader John Barilaro has proclaimed “the Nationals are back” and all but declared victory for Dave Layzell in the coalmining and rural seat of Upper Hunter – but he should probably be thanking One Nation.For Labor too there will be some soul-searching and pressure on opposition leader, Jodi McKay, to consider her future. Speaking on Sunday afternoon, McKay said she was “devastated” that people did not vote for Labor and that the party was shocked that it had “failed to connect” with the voters of the Upper Hunter. Continue reading...

Union says more than one in four of the country’s teachers have been suspended days before start of new school yearMore than 125,000 school teachers in Myanmar have been suspended for joining a civil disobedience movement to oppose the military coup that overthrew the country’s elected government in February, an official of the Myanmar Teachers’ Federation said.The suspensions have come days before the start of a new school year, which some teachers and parents are boycotting as part of a campaign that has paralysed the country since the military seized power and cut short a decade of democratic reforms. Continue reading...

Widespread compliance with rules contradicts notion that we are anti-authoritarian, expert on national identity says