Woman believed to be in her 20s fatally injured while swimming off Waihi BeachA woman has died after a suspected shark attack in New Zealand’s north island.She was pulled from the waters at Waihi Beach, a two-hour drive south-east of Auckland, late on Thursday afternoon with leg wounds, local media reported. Emergency services were called but the woman died at the scene, police officials said. Continue reading...
Joe Biden condemned the 'unprecedented assault' on American democracy yesterday, as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol saying it was perpetrated by 'domestic terrorists' who should not be called protesters.Biden also argued the event was very predictable, given Donald Trump’s attacks on the hallmarks of democracy, and he and Kamala Harris highlighted the racist implications of the police reaction
Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, known as Bobi Wine, is the Ugandan presidential hopeful trying to unseat the long-serving president, Yoweri Museveni.The candidate was dragged from his car as he announced a petition to the international criminal court to investigate rights abuses in the country
by Rupert Neate Wealth correspondent and Joanna Partr on (#5CHEA)
Tesla co-founder overtakes Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as car firm’s shares soar after ‘blue Senate’ victoryElon Musk, the maverick boss of Tesla, has overtaken Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person, after shares in the electric car company he co-founded soared on hopes that a Democrat-controlled US Senate would usher in a new green agenda.A 4.8% rise in Tesla’s share price was enough to push Musk into the top spot according to the Bloomberg billionaires index, which tracks the daily changes in the fortunes of the world’s 500 wealthiest people. Continue reading...
by Josh Halliday North of England correspondent and a on (#5CHBS)
Engineering student Matthew Mason bludgeoned 15-year-old Alex Rodda to death with a wrench in Cheshire woodsA 19-year-old man has been found guilty of murdering a schoolboy after paying more than £2,000 to try to stop him revealing their sexual relationship.Matthew Mason admitted bludgeoning 15-year-old Alex Rodda to death with a wrench in woods in Cheshire on 12 December 2019. Continue reading...
Latest updates: hospitals in England treating 50% more Covid patients now than in April; vaccine may be needed every six months; UK reports 52,618 new cases
by Emmanuel Akinwotu in Lagos and agencies on (#5CH58)
Presidential candidate dragged from car during online press briefing calling for investigation into rights abusesPolice in Uganda have confronted the presidential candidate Bobi Wine during an online press conference where he announced a petition to the international criminal court to investigate rights abuses in the country.Related: Bobi Wine likens Uganda election to 'a war and a battlefield' Continue reading...
Links to early eugenicists such as Francis Galton a source of ‘deep regret’ to institutionUniversity College London has expressed “deep regret” for its role in the propagation of eugenics, alongside a promise to improve conditions for disabled staff and students and a pledge to give “greater prominence” to teaching the malign legacy of the discredited movement.The formal apology for legitimising eugenics – the advocacy of selective breeding of the population often to further racist or discriminatory aims – is UCL’s latest effort to address its links to early eugenicists such as Francis Galton, who funded a professorship in eugenics at the university. Continue reading...
Eurosceptic campaign group founded by Arron Banks is now registered in IrelandLeave.EU has left the UK, as Brexit forced the Eurosceptic campaign group to choose between its name and its country.According to domain name registration records, the organisation, founded by businessman and activist Arron Banks, picked the former. The website is now registered in the name of Sean Power, the chief executive of the Ireland-based professional services company BSG. Continue reading...
The 80-year-old actor and activist recalls being raised among film royalty, avoiding the draft for Vietnam, and his losing streak at tennis tournamentsI was born in 1940 and went to an American prep school, The Hill School, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the 50s. It was all white boys: no people of colour, no Hispanics, no Chinese, and it was all very organised and bound in tradition. Other kids brought records to school by people such as Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. To me, they seemed like stylised crooners singing about some fake emotion and I found them quite boring. I later grew very fond of Tony Bennett, but at that time he didn’t seem to project that wonderful persona through his music. Continue reading...
by Presented by Laura Murphy-Oates and reported by Ca on (#5CH5B)
Medical textbooks are full of anatomical pictures of the penis, but the clitoris barely rates a mention, with many medical professionals uncomfortable even talking about it. Reporter Calla Wahlquist and associate news editor Gabrielle Jackson explain the history and science of the clitoris, and speak to the scientists and artists dedicated to demystifying itThis week, we are replaying some of our favourite episodes. This episode first aired on 9 November 2020You can read Calla Wahlquist’s piece here on why the clitoris is ignored by medical science. You can also read an edited extract from Gabrielle Jackson’s book Pain and Prejudice. Continue reading...
A journalist captured the moment a lone Black police officer was confronted by pro-Trump supporters who had stormed into the US Capitol in what some lawmakers condemned as an attempted insurrection aimed at overturning the results of the presidential election.
With all electoral college votes counted, the US Congress has certified Joe Biden's win in the election. Biden and Kamala Harris will take over as president and vice-president on 20 January. The confirmation of the vote was delayed when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building in the afternoon of 6 January
In the 60s, long before Trevor McDonald and Moira Stuart became household names, a 26-year-old from Jamaica was a regular on the news. Then the racist letters and calls startedIn 2008, Barbara Blake-Hannah sat down to write a letter of admonishment to the Guardian. “I must put history right,” she wrote, explaining that a poster issued by the paper was incorrect. It contained, she noted, the common misconception that Trevor McDonald was the first Black person to report the news on British TV after he joined ITN in 1973 and that Moira Stuart, on BBC News from 1981, was the first Black woman. In fact, said Blake-Hannah – an author, film-maker and former Jamaican senator – in 1968 she was one of three Thames Television on-camera reporters for the current affairs programme Today, presented by Eamonn Andrews. (The BBC had hired a Black trainee reporter, Eric Anthony Abrahams, a few years earlier.)At the time her appointment made every daily newspaper, bar the Daily Express. Blake-Hannah claims the Express held out only because “they had a rule: no Black people on the front page”. “Shirley Bassey sang regularly and there were comedians, but we were allowed in an entertainment capacity, not as serious news people, delivering serious stories.” Continue reading...
by Presented by Anushka Asthana with Denis Campbell a on (#5CGEW)
Boris Johnson has announced a new national lockdown amid fears the NHS could be overwhelmed within weeks with Covid patients. Denis Campbell and Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden describe a service already at breaking pointFears that the NHS could be overwhelmed within weeks have prompted new national lockdowns across the UK. There are now more than 30,000 people in NHS hospitals with coronavirus as staff levels have been hit too by the disease.The Guardian’s health policy editor, Denis Campbell, tells Anushka Asthana that the rapidly rising number of Covid patients is forcing hospitals to cancel non-urgent operations and ration care. Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, who works in intensive care units, says staff are feeling exhausted as their workloads continue to expand. She welcomes the new lockdown but fears the toll on the NHS and staff is becoming unbearable. Continue reading...
The president spent 2020 enabling and encouraging mass displays of armed protest on the streets of American citiesThe storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Wednesday was the culmination of a year of white nationalist and anti-democratic violence that steadily intensified and featured the direct incitement of the US president. Continue reading...
Some members of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Captiol in Washington were filmed wandering around the Senate floor after evacuation. People, who were asked to wear gas masks, were also evacuated from the House of Representatives after guards secured the area Continue reading...
A lava dome fountain formed inside a lava lake inlet after Hawaii's famous Kilauea volcano erupted in December 2020. Footage from inside the Halema’uma’u crater was filmed by the US Geological Survey
International criticism mounts after arrests of 53 people, as EU urged to drop economic deal with ChinaThe British foreign secretary has accused China of deliberately misleading the world when it passed its new security law in Hong Kong last year in the wake of the latest crackdown on the opposition in the territory.Dominic Raab reiterated the UK’s offer to holders of British National Overseas passports in the city to come and live in Britain, and said: “The mass arrest of politicians and activists in Hong Kong is a grievous attack on Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms as protected under the Joint Declaration,” which set out the terms of the return of the territory from the UK to China in 1997. Continue reading...
Judge says WikiLeaks co-founder ‘still has an incentive to abscond from these, as yet unresolved, proceedings’Julian Assange has been refused bail by a judge who this week rejected a US request to have him extradited to face espionage and hacking charges.The co-founder of WikiLeaks has been held at Belmarsh prison in south-east London for the past 18 months after he was evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he sought asylum for seven years. Continue reading...
Mary Twala gives an intimate yet epic performance as an 80-year-old widow fighting plans for dam that will obliterate her village in LesothoThis is an extraordinary and otherworldly feature film from the tiny landlocked kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. It is the tale of a rebel spirit: an elderly woman who opposes government plans to flood her village, making way for a dam. It’s a film about resistance and resilience, but director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is coolly unsentimental and realistic about the inevitable march of capitalism and construction. Weaving in ideas around displacement, collective identity and history, this film takes on almost mythic qualities.Related: From Beyoncé to the Oscars: Mary Twala, Africa's queen of cinema Continue reading...
Sharp has been unpaid adviser to Rishi Sunak on coronavirus economic responseAn adviser to Rishi Sunak and former Goldman Sachs banker is set to be installed as the new chairman of the BBC, stepping into a key role at the top of the corporation as it faces a series of critical debates on its future.Richard Sharp, who has also held a series of roles within the arts establishment and was an adviser to Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London, had been considered the frontrunner for the £180,000 a year post. His appointment is expected to be announced on Thursday. Continue reading...
Two other children hurt and a 34-year-old woman was critically injured after car hit them at high speedA father has said he is living “a nightmare” after two of his young sons were killed when an unlicensed driver hit a group of five pedestrians in central west New South Wales.Police say the 25-year-old driver – who allegedly never held a driver’s licence and was later caught with a prohibited drug – fled the scene of the crash on foot. Continue reading...
by Helen Davidson in Taipei, and Guardian staff on (#5CF3M)
Authorities have detained 53 people, ranging from young people to political veterans, over an unofficial election primaryHong Kong authorities arrested 53 people on Wednesday in an unprecedented crackdown over an unofficial election primary organised by pro-democracy parties last year. It was the largest mass arrest since the introduction of the national security law in June. The group, accused of subversion and facing penalties up to life in prison, included legislators and candidates, campaigners, pollsters, students and lawyers, ranging from young people to political veterans. The following are some of those reported to be arrested.Benny Tai is a well-known activist and legal scholar, and co-organiser of the poll that drew 600,000 people out to vote. Tai had warned of a backlash at the time of the polls, saying “everyone must be mentally prepared.” Continue reading...
MCG and Chadstone Shopping Centre investigated as acquisition sites for coronavirus as NSW reports four locally acquired cases and pushes ahead with Sydney Test
Audiences can explore 17 different worlds, meet Daleks and drink cocktails in an ambitious theatre show this spring‘This entire year for live arts has been a real one step forward, two steps back process,” says Daniel Dingsdale. He’s been one of the lucky ones, working on a huge production that has survived the coronavirus upheaval and is set to open in spring.Dingsdale is the writer of Doctor Who: Time Fracture, an ambitious immersive theatre show officially licensed by the BBC and developed by Immersive Everywhere. It promises to take audiences across time and space on a mission to save the universe – all within the confines of Covid safety restrictions. Continue reading...
Despite accusations of war crimes in the central African country, the international community seems unmovedOn New Year’s Eve, a gang of militia left its jungle base and swept across Beni, a forested north-eastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, looking for Nande people to kill.Locals alerted the Congolese army but they were ignored. In small farms in Tingwe, a few kilometres from a DRC army base, the gang found 25 people – men, women and children – out harvesting food. One by one they hacked them to death with machetes and axes. Continue reading...
In 1974, the German photographer set out to convey the truth about how people really lived in the communist GDR – depicting her fellow citizens with a ‘timeless coolness’ Continue reading...
Judge said the ‘humiliating’ practice was used to cast suspicion on the victim, and deflected focus from the act of sexual violenceA Pakistani court has outlawed the practice of subjecting female rape survivors to a virginity test in an unprecedented ruling.Lahore’s high court ruled on Monday that the virginity test has no legal basis and “offends the personal dignity of the female victim”. Continue reading...
The billionaire rapper thanks friends and fans for their well wishes and says he will be ‘back home soon’Billionaire rapper and producer Dr Dre says he will be “back home soon” after receiving medical treatment at a Los Angeles hospital for a reported brain aneurysm.The six-time Grammy award winner said in a social media post on Tuesday night that he was thankful for well wishes from friends, family and fans. TMZ reported that he had a brain aneurysm on Monday and was recovering at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. Dre did not give a reason for his hospitalisation. Continue reading...
Exclusive: commissioner for England says children are at risk of ‘abuse or exploitation’ due to council failingsThousands of the most vulnerable children have been sent to unregulated care homes during the pandemic at a cost of millions to the taxpayer, a Guardian investigation has found.Council bosses say they have nowhere else to put those most at risk as there are not enough places for the number of children in need, which has soared during the Covid crisis. The result is young people are placed in supported living facilities not monitored by Ofsted and therefore deemed a safety risk. One council chief described these homes as the “wild west”. Continue reading...
The journalists were convicted at one-day trial and sentenced to between 11 and 15 years in jailA court in Vietnam has sentenced three freelance journalists known for their criticism of government to between 11 and 15 years in prison, after finding them guilty of spreading anti-state propaganda.Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy and Le Huu Minh Tuan were convicted of “making, storing, spreading information, materials, items for the purpose of opposing the state” at a one-day trial in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday, the Ministry of Public Security said. Continue reading...
by Justin McCurry and agencies in Seoul on (#5CEWB)
Ruler begins second Workers’ party congress by admitting strategy fell short in ‘almost all areas’North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un, has admitted that his economic policies have largely failed, and vowed to avoid a repeat of the “painful lessons” of the past at a rare meeting of the country’s ruling party.Kim told the congress of the Workers’ party that his five-year economic plan had failed to achieve its goals “in almost all areas to a great extent”, North Korean state media said on Wednesday. Continue reading...
The biggest night in US music is being pushed back as a result of virus spread in CaliforniaThe 2021 Grammy awards will be postponed after a steady increase in Covid-19 cases in California.The ceremony was scheduled to take place on 31 January hosted by Trevor Noah and while a new date has yet to be confirmed, sources suggest that it could be pushed back until March. A limited show had already been planned without an audience and only performers and presenters allowed on stage with nominees accepting awards remotely. Continue reading...
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