Lawyer tells court while Xing Shen and her partner lied to hospital staff that didn’t prevent the boy receiving treatmentA woman told a three-year-old she was babysitting in Melbourne “I will bash you” before inflicting injuries that left the child with permanent disabilities.It is unclear exactly what Xing Shen did to the boy she was babysitting with her partner, Xi Zhang, at the couple’s Docklands apartment in May 2019. Continue reading...
by Tess McClure in Christchurch, New Zealand on (#5HDF7)
Parliament will not debate motion and will instead discuss rights abuses in more general termsNew Zealand’s parliament will not debate a motion that would label the abuses of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang as acts of genocide.Parliament opted instead on Tuesday to water down the language, and discuss concerns about human rights abuses in the region in more general terms. Continue reading...
The chef and author was inspired by acts of care for immigrants to raise awareness and make a connection through foodTwo stories in Yasmin Khan’s cookbook Ripe Figs tell the story of the power of food.In the first, Khan recounts how Greek volunteers started bringing containers of food for migrants who were sleeping in a park – but insisted on the food being homemade. “We wanted to convey the message that somebody cares about you. Cares enough to spend their afternoon baking a cake that smells or feels like home,” explained Nadina Christopoulou, one of the founders of the initiative. Continue reading...
by Daniel Hurst Foreign affairs and defence correspon on (#5HDDG)
Fresh doubts have been raised over an alleged criminal case in Saudi Arabia against Osama al-HasaniSaudi Arabian authorities must urgently reveal the location of the Australian citizen who was extradited to the country, human rights advocates say, amid fresh doubts over the alleged criminal case against him.Osama al-Hasani, 42, was transferred from Morocco to Saudi Arabia at 2.45am on 13 March, just hours after United Nations officials sent an urgent letter asking authorities not to deport him over fears he would face torture there, according to Human Rights Watch. Continue reading...
An elevated section of the Mexico City metro collapsed and sent a subway car plunging toward a busy boulevard on Monday night, killing at least 20 people and injuring about 70, city officials said
by Elias Visontay (now), Mostafa Rachwani and Matilda on (#5HD1J)
Significant number of Australian cricketers and commentators in India are living in competition’s bubble; Scott Morrison all but rules out lifting the ban. Follow live9.22am BSTAnd here’s our report on the Indian Premier League news.The IPL Twenty20 cricket tournament has been indefinitely suspended due to the COVID-19 crisis in the country, IPL chairman btold Reuters on Tuesday.Related: IPL cricket tournament suspended amid worsening Covid crisis in India 9.18am BSTFurther to that news that the Indian Premier League has been suspended:Australian Cricketers Association is right now in discussions with .@CricketAus and the federal Govt about how they can bring back Aussie players as COVID crisis worsens Continue reading...
A rescue operation was under way after a Mexico City metro overpass partially collapsed on Monday night. More than a dozen people died in the incident and about 70 were injured, civil protection authorities in Mexico said.Videos on Mexican television and social media showed train cars hanging in mid-air as sirens blared nearby after the overpass fell on to cars on a road below. Emergency medical crews and firefighters were at the scene of the accident combing through wreckage looking for survivors
Ontario is now the centre of the outbreak in Canada, led by more virulent variants. The latest surge in the number of cases was so big that authorities this week despatched the military and the Red Cross to help care for critical patients Continue reading...
Technology could ensure critical medicines reach Lake Victoria communities with country’s highest prevalence of HIV/AidsAs the bottles of medication are carefully loaded into the body of the drone, a small crowd gathers to watch on the other side of the yellow tape marking out the grassy landing strip.With a gentle buzz the drone rises, a little uncertainly, into the sky, on its 1.5-metre wings. The precious cargo leaving Bufumira health centre III, in Uganda’s Kalangala district, is critical drugs for people living in some of the most far-flung communities in the region. Kalangala is made up of 84 islands in Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake, which Uganda shares with Tanzania and Kenya. Continue reading...
The man told police he arrived in a 2.6m rubber dinghy he bought onlineA Chinese man seeking “freedom and equality” has said he travelled undetected to Taiwan in a dinghy through the heavily patrolled Taiwan strait, according to authorities.Taichung Port police officers detained the man, surnamed Zhou, after they received reports of a man behaving suspiciously near the docks. A police spokesperson said Zhou told officers he had travelled from Quanzhou in Fujian province, in a 2.6m long rubber dinghy he’d bought online, powered by an outboard motor. Continue reading...
My Irish father felt a kind of kinship with the black British boxers of the 1980s and 90s. Boxing, like the world of work my father was in, was overseen by self-serving men getting rich off the work of first- and second-generation immigrants
Torri Newman dreamt up her terror-in-the-skies novel Falling while guarding the cockpit as the pilots took a toilet break. She reveals how she kept going through furlough and 41 rejectionsFlight attendant Torri Newman was working on the red-eye flight from Los Angeles to New York when the idea for her debut novel came to her. To be precise, she was blocking access to the cockpit, a security procedure required when pilots take a toilet break. “I was standing at the front of the airplane,” she says, “looking out at the passengers. It was dark and they were all asleep. And I had this thought, ‘All of their lives, our lives, are in the hands of the pilots.’ That’s not exactly new – but the flipside of that also came to mind. With that much power and responsibility, how vulnerable does that make a commercial pilot?”Newman, speaking via Zoom from her home in Phoenix, Arizona, was rattled. “I just couldn’t shake the thought. A few days later, I was working a different trip with a different set of pilots, and I said to the captain, ‘Hey, what would you do if your family was taken, and you were told that if you didn’t crash the plane, they would be killed?” What was his reaction? “He had no clue what he would do – the thought terrified him.” Continue reading...
Revolutionary HeartFlow technology turns CT scan into 3D image, allowing treatment five times fasterPatients with life-threatening coronary heart disease will be treated five times faster thanks to 3D scans being introduced on the NHS that allow for a diagnosis in just 20 minutes.The revolutionary technology can turn a regular CT scan of the heart into a 3D image, allowing doctors to diagnose them rapidly, NHS England said. Continue reading...
Tuesday: Opposition growing over decision to ban Australians from returning from the Covid-ravaged country. Plus: what happened when editors got drunk on the power of retouchingGood morning. The government’s India travel ban is facing a significant backlash, including within the Coalition’s ranks, as India’s coronavirus outbreak continues to see record numbers of infections, and health services remain unable to cope with shortages of vaccines and oxygen.Several Coalition MPs spoke to Guardian Australia on and off the record with their concerns over the “extreme” and “heavy-handed” decision to criminalise returning to Australia from Covid-ravaged India. The Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said: “I am concerned about this decision and most especially regarding the precedent it sets for making it illegal for Australians to return home to Australia.” Continue reading...
At least 16 demonstrators and one officer dead after police fired at protesters and rammed crowds with motorcyclesColombia is bracing for further unrest after a weekend in which largely peaceful nationwide demonstrations were met with a violent police reaction which left at least 16 demonstrators and one police officer dead and hundreds injured.Videos shared on social media over the weekend showed police firing at protesters sometimes from close range, ramming crowds with motorcycles, and bashing demonstrators with their shields. Continue reading...
Our country has already set examples on issues like women’s suffrage and anti-nuclear policy. It can do the same againAotearoa New Zealand is a pretty good place to live – if you’re human, that is. If you happen to be a non-human animal, chances are you’re not doing very well.Inhumane treatment of animals is widespread. It is routinely used in farming (the dairy industry is among the worst perpetrators, as forced pregnancies, separation of calves from their mothers, and slaughter are routine practices); conservation (poison and traps are commonly used to control “pests”); scientific research (430,000 animals were used or bred for experiments last year); and entertainment (such as horse racing and rodeo). Continue reading...
Mayor will say city could look at bidding for 2036 or 2040 Games as post-Covid morale boost for nationSadiq Khan is pledging to look at bringing the Olympics back to London within 20 years if he is re-elected as mayor on Thursday.In a speech at an amateur boxing club in Earlsfield, south-west London, on Tuesday, Khan will set out the prospect of another London Olympics as a post-Covid morale boost that he argues would extend beyond the capital. Continue reading...
Force shifts its public response to problem, acknowledging officers should be held to higher standard than general communityA senior Queensland police officer says there has been a “concerning increase” in the number of police accused of domestic violence – something the organisation’s leadership was “grappling” with how to respond to.Assistant commissioner Brian Codd told Guardian Australia last week that he could not offer “a 100% guarantee” that women seeking help would not encounter abusers in uniform or officers with problematic attitudes. Continue reading...
As local papers close their doors, a morning newsletter defied the odds. Now its founder aims to push the model nationwideLocal journalism has shed jobs faster than the coal industry, leaving swaths of North America as news deserts with little or no regular coverage.But the grim prospects for an industry in decline didn’t deter the Canadian tech entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson, who in 2019 hired a reporter and launched a daily newsletter in his home town, Victoria. Continue reading...
Outside the Lowry Hotel, people are unsure if demonstrations will work but united about their necessityThere’s a new bit of graffiti on the Trinity Bridge dividing Manchester and Salford: “Fuck United” reads the scrawl on one of the suspension pillars.It faces the Lowry Hotel, where the Manchester United team were surrounded by angry fans on Sunday, before others broke into Old Trafford, causing the game against Liverpool to be postponed. Continue reading...
Readers respond to an article on the battle to burn England’s moorlandsWhy is an otherwise balanced article on the importance of peat bogs (‘It has become them and us’: the battle to burn England’s moorlands, 1 May) framed by the grouse moor landowners’ point of view, beginning with the title and ending with a gamekeeper’s claim that without grouse moors the Yorkshire Dales “wouldn’t be beautiful”?Burning what is recognised as the UK’s equivalent of the Amazon rainforest – upland peat bog – in order to provide a tiny elite with as many grouse as possible to kill strikes the majority as an absurdity. To claim the dales would be aesthetically barren without driven grouse shooting adds insult to injury.
Morad Tahbaz and Siamak Namazi moved to cells where previously prisoners were held before releaseTwo high profile American-Iranian dual nationals detained in Tehran have been moved to a new location inside Evin prison in a procedure that has previously led to the release of detainees, according to sources inside the jail.The moves could add credence to Iranian media reports at the weekend that a prisoner swap involving four unidentified detainees might be, or had been, imminent. Continue reading...
An idling student enlists the help of a wideboy friend in pursuit of a hot date in a comedy that veers between likable and laddishHere is a vibrant, idiosyncratic portrait of Ghanaian youth, bursting with wisecracks and a boyish restlessness. There is an amateurish shakiness to the visuals, but the film overcomes this with a lot of charm and an innate understanding of its young subjects.Related: 20 best African films – ranked! Continue reading...
Talks between US secretary of state and Dominic Raab come as Britain cuts foreign aid to the sectorThe US secretary of state is to hold talks with his British counterpart, Dominic Raab, while the UK is on the back foot over plans to set new global targets to help girls’ education at a time when London is drastically cutting aid to the sector.Antony Blinken’s trip to London for the G7 meeting will include discussions with other foreign and development ministers on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is the first face-to-face meeting at G7 level for two years and foreign ministers from South Korea, Australia, India and South Africa will also be attending some of the talks. Continue reading...
Boystown platform had membership of more than 400,000 international subscribersAn online platform said to be one of the largest websites hosting child sexual abuse images in the world has been closed down by German police after a lengthy investigation.The Boystown platform, which had a membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers and was active for almost two years, was accessible only via the darknet, a component of the wider internet for which special software is needed. It was used for the swapping and sharing of images and films, mainly of boys, according to investigators from Germany’s federal investigative police force (BKA). Continue reading...
Serbian commander in the Bosnian army during the war of 1992-95 who rejected sectarian nationalismThough an ethnic Serb, the military commander Jovan Divjak, who has died aged 84, was a popular figure in his homeland of Bosnia-Herzegovina – particularly among the Bosniak (Muslim) half of the population. When war came in 1992, he opted to fight for a civic, multi-ethnic Bosnia. Consequently for many Bosnians he personified the patriotic rejection of sectarian nationalism, a rejection on which they prided themselves.When Bosnia’s independence was internationally recognised in April 1992, the country was being engulfed by war, and its leadership needed to establish an army. The leadership of this fledging force reflected the country’s ethnic composition: its commander was a Muslim, its chief of staff a Croat and its deputy commander a Serb – Divjak. Continue reading...
Boystown platform had membership of more than 400,000 subscribersAn online platform said to be one of the largest child pornography websites in the world has been closed down by German police after a lengthy investigation.The Boystown platform, which had a membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers and was active for almost two years, was accessible only via the darknet, a component of the wider internet for which special software is needed. It was used for the swapping and sharing of pornographic images and films, mainly of boys, according to investigators from Germany’s federal investigative police force (BKA). Continue reading...
‘It felt like skinny-dipping,’ says singer Susanna Hoffs. ‘I ended up doing it for most of the album’In 1988, it felt like the Bangles had been touring endlessly. Our second album, Different Light, with the singles Manic Monday and Walk Like an Egyptian, had been released two years earlier. Now, finally, we could take a break from living on buses together. Continue reading...
The first ‘near-normal’ concert since Covid began took place in Liverpool on Sunday, with 5,000 giddy music lovers crowding into a festival tent with no masks and no social distancing
Country Milk’s trade with the EU has nosedived with the dairy industry particularly badly affected by new customs rulesA small error in the paperwork – a box ticked by mistake – and the tanker of butter oil was held at French customs for five days, with veterinary authorities at the border threatening to destroy it. The debacle nearly cost the tanker’s exporter, dairy company County Milk, a six-figure sum. After fraught negotiations, the cargo was eventually repatriated.“You don’t need too many of those to be destroyed and you are in dire straits,” says Phil Langslow, trading director at County Milk, the UK’s largest privately owned dairy ingredients business. Continue reading...
Speedboat carrying dozens of passengers crashed into vessel transporting sand in Padma River, say policeAt least 26 people were killed when a speedboat packed with passengers collided with a vessel transporting sand in the latest maritime disaster to hit Bangladesh.Police said the speedboat carrying about three dozen passengers from the town of Mawa rammed into the other vessel in the Padma River as it neared the main river station in the central rural town of Shibchar. Continue reading...
Monarch says ‘continued peace’ is ‘credit to its people’ and speaks of ‘treasured memories’ of visits with PhilipThe Queen has said that “continued peace” in Northern Ireland is a “credit to its people”, in a message to the country to mark its centenary.She also spoke of the “treasured” memories she shared of Northern Ireland with the Duke of Edinburgh, who died, aged 99, last month. Continue reading...
by Daniel Hurst Foreign affairs and defence correspon on (#5HC38)
Landbridge says it is willing to participate in review of $500m lease but insists 2015 deal with Northern Territory was ‘in good faith’The Chinese company that operates the Port of Darwin has vowed to cooperate with the Morrison government’s review into any security risks from its long-term lease – but insists it struck the deal “in good faith”.The defence minister, Peter Dutton, confirmed on Monday that his department was reviewing the 2015 agreement between the Northern Territory’s then-Country Liberal party (CLP) government and the Landbridge Group. Continue reading...
by Flávia Milhorance in Rio de Janeiro on (#5HC39)
Following 803 pregnant and postpartum deaths, authorities have warned women to delay pregnancy as alarm risesThis month should have been one of the happiest in Letícia Aparecida Gomes’s life. The pregnant 23-year-old Brazilian had been due to marry before delivering her baby, Elloah, in August.Instead, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept Gomes’s country claiming thousands of lives each day, she was taken to hospital having been infected herself. Continue reading...
Minister tells senators pause of rollout is ‘to get the construction right’ and future shape of assessments is ‘the subject of consultation’Linda Reynolds has confirmed the government will proceed with “some form” of independent assessments for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, after announcing a “pause” that raised advocates’ hopes the policy could be scrapped.Fronting a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, Reynolds, the new NDIS minister, and the NDIS agency’s chief executive, Martin Hoffman, were also grilled about a so-called “razor gang” aimed at slowing spending on packages and participant numbers. Continue reading...
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