The move follows a number of clashes with Russian forces now stationed along the Turkish borderThe US military has stepped up its deployment of troops and equipment in north-eastern Syria after a rise in tensions with Russia in the region.US central command “has deployed Sentinel radar, increased the frequency of US fighter patrols over US forces, and deployed bradley fighting vehicles to augment US forces” in the area, which is controlled by the US and its Kurdish allies, spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement. Continue reading...
Man was fatally attacked on South Yarra street corner with another stabbing in Frankston earlierA manhunt is underway in Melbourne after a man was stabbed to death on a street corner.Homicide detectives believe two men were fighting on the corner of Essex and Malvern roads at South Yarra about 11pm on Friday, when one was stabbed repeatedly in the upper body. Continue reading...
The supreme court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old.Ginsburg was the second woman appointed to the court in history and became a liberal icon for her sharp questioning of witnesses and intellectually rigorous defenses of civil liberties, reproductive rights, first amendment rights and equal protections under the law
by Maheen Sadiq, Nikhita Chulani and Katie Lamborn on (#58AJC)
The supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguably the single most important female lawyer in the history of the American republic, has died from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old.Appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg was a stalwart of the court’s liberal bloc, which Donald Trump appears now to have the opportunity to confine to a minority for a generation.Later nicknamed RBG, Ginsburg was an icon, especially for women, and provided an essential vote in watershed rulings that combatted gender discrimination and protected abortion rights, equal pay, civil liberties and privacy rights. Continue reading...
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has held media briefings for 77 days in a row after the state was hit by a second outbreak of coronavirus. Andrews appeared before the media on 3 July as case numbers rose and parts of the state were placed under restrictions. The Labor leader has been an ever present fixture in front of cameras during the lockdown, updating the media and taking questions every day since Continue reading...
Firefighters in Southern California continue to tackle one of 27 huge wildfires blazing across the state which has already burned more than 21,600 acres (8,741 hectares) of forest.
Young people are the least vulnerable to coronavirus but they have suffered the most from its economic fallout. Seven young Australians tell their story Continue reading...
Mayor says that action is needed before a second Covid-19 wave hits LondonIt is “increasingly likely” that lockdown restrictions will soon be needed to slow the spread of coronavirus in London, the capital’s mayor has warned.London mayor Sadiq Khan said he was of the “firm view” that action should be taken before the virus spirals out of control, and leaders were considering measures already imposed in other parts of the UK. Continue reading...
Dozens of people made a perilous jump from the Proactiva Open Arms in an attempt to reach Sicily, in the largest known incident of its kind this year.The Spanish NGO said 124 of the 273 people on the boat jumped into the water between Thursday and Friday in an attempt to swim to Palermo's port.They were rescued by the Italian coastguard and brought to safety after Proactiva's crew waited 10 days for authorisation to disembark their passengers
Met police ordered to launch inquiry into claims that officers refused to arrest Akram UddinThe Metropolitan police force has been ordered to launch an inquiry after a court heard that an escaped prisoner, who had been jailed for firearms offences, spent a month trying to hand himself in to officers but was repeatedly turned away.Akram Uddin admitted to absconding from an open prison to see his mother on 17 June. His lawyers told his sentencing hearing on Friday that seven times he asked police to arrest him for it and seven times they refused. Continue reading...
Lawyer raises concern over removal of previous judge who has refused to keep other defendants in custodyA senior judge has refused to step down from a case involving custody time limits after she replaced another judge who criticised the government over delays in delivering justice.Mrs Justice Whipple, a high court judge, was asked to step in to decide whether or not a defendant should continue to be held in custody for more than a year awaiting a trial date that has repeatedly been delayed during the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading...
Clueless about the US, uninterested in Ireland, Boris Johnson and his team are crashing on to rocks they can’t even seeThere is so much this government doesn’t know. But two particular areas of ignorance exploded into view this week, allowing us to take a long, hard look at the cost they are inflicting on the country. Both are central to the Brexit project that remains this government’s defining mission – but only one of them is surprising.Start with the unexpected ignorance, which is of the US and US politics. It’s a surprise, because if there’s one thing that unites the British political class it’s an interest in – even an obsessive fixation on – the politics of the United States. (And yes, I plead guilty.) If you were to hold a nerds’ convention on The West Wing or House of Cards, you’d host it in SW1. The Westminster villager who struggles to identify a single German politician besides Angela Merkel will speak with ease about the latest polling from Maine’s second congressional district or the precise composition of the Wisconsin supreme court. Continue reading...
Tory ex-attorney general is an odd bedfellow for communist playwright Robert Bolt. Yet both believe in the value of the lawIt is fascinating to find Sir Geoffrey Cox, the former attorney general, posting on Twitter a scene from Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons to affirm his belief in the sanctity of the law. Since Bolt was a one-time communist, an active supporter of CND and a dramatist who wrote a hagiographic portrait of Lenin in State of Revolution, he and Cox make strange bedfellows. Yet, although Bolt was ready to defy the law in pursuit of a cause like nuclear disarmament, he still saw it, in his own words, as “the essence of organised society”.pic.twitter.com/wwNjpFFvC1 Continue reading...
Police say men would have to pay fine and explain actions to a Bristol history commissionFive men allegedly involved in the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol have been offered cautions by the police on the condition they explain the reasons for their actions to a history commission.The men would also have to pay a fine that would go to a charity supporting people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities in Bristol. Continue reading...
Former Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker on public ownership of the crown estate and the result of a ‘stupid’ change to the royal finance arrangements by former chancellor George OsborneIt is misleading to suggest that “the Queen’s land and property” has dropped in value by £500m (Queen’s property drops in value by £500m after rental receipts decline, 18 September). The crown estate is public property, handed to the government in 1760 in a deal that in return absolved the monarch of the need to pay for the army, the civil service and so on.In recent decades Buckingham Palace, and especially Prince Charles, has eyed the estate’s profits greedily and been keen to return it to royal hands – but not, of course, to start paying again for those costs removed from the monarch in 1760. Continue reading...
Italian coastguard rescues 124 people who had been waiting 10 days to disembarkDozens of people have jumped from an NGO migrant rescue ship in an attempt to reach Sicily, after the crew waited 10 days for authorisation to disembark their passengers.The Spanish NGO Open Arms said 124 of the 273 refugees and migrants on its Proactiva Open Arms boat, leaped into the water during the largest-known incident of its kind. Continue reading...
Tribute that adds abandoned shopping trollies to the impressionist image of water lilies to be sold at Sotheby’s auctionStreet artist Banksy’s version of Claude Monet’s impressionist masterpiece will go on sale at Sotheby’s London gallery for an estimated £3-5m.The painting, called Show me the Monet, was created in 2005. It is framed around Monet’s famous water lilies picture but is filled with jarring images of upside-down shopping trolleys and a traffic cone bobbing in the water. Continue reading...
by Owen Bowcott Legal affairs correspondent on (#589YF)
Exclusive: prominent human rights lawyer writes to foreign secretary with stinging denunciationAmal Clooney, the high-profile human rights lawyer, has resigned from her position as the UK’s special envoy on media freedom in protest at the government’s intention to breach international law through the internal market bill.In a stinging denunciation of Boris Johnson’s threat to override Britain’s international treaty obligations in the EU withdrawal agreement, the barrister described the government’s actions as “lamentable”. Continue reading...
Message from the US embassy comes during long-postponed direct talks between the government and the TalibanThe United States has warned women in Afghanistan that they are at increased risk of attack by extremist groups.The US embassy in Kabul warned on Thursday that “extremist organisations continue to plan attacks against a variety of targets […], including a heightened risk of attacks targeting female government and civilian workers, including teachers, human rights activists, office workers, and government employees.” Continue reading...
Caribbean island intends to remove Queen as head of state, 54 years after gaining independenceAn old saying Peter Small learned from his father growing up on Barbados sprang to his mind this week as the Caribbean island declared its intention to remove the Queen as head of state: “Don’t give me a fish. Teach me how to fish.”Fifity-four years after independence, Barbados stands ready to cast off the final vestige of its colonial past having learned much from its British overlords, Small believes. “The time is right. And the people are ready,” added the grandfather, 75, who lives at the heart of a close community of Barbadians in Reading, home to one of the largest diasporas outside of Barbados. Continue reading...
Jeanine Añez says she wants to avoid splitting the vote for others running against socialist Luís Arce of Evo Morales’s MAS partyBolivia’s conservative interim president, Jeanine Añez, has pulled out of next month’s general election, saying she wanted to avoid splitting the vote for other candidates running against the frontrunning socialist party of ex-leader Evo Morales.In a video message late on Thursday, she sought to unify those opposing the candidate for the party of Morales, who resigned last year after an election sparked widespread protests. Añez, a former senator, took office in the power vacuum that followed Morales’ departure. Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#589V9)
Deal is the first concrete implementation of the special arrangements for Northern IrelandA £200m contract to implement Brexit checks on goods in the Irish Sea has been won by a consortium of companies led by Japanese company Fujistu.HMRC announced on Friday that a two-year contract for the new trader support service (TSS) has been awarded to a consortium led by the tech company and its partners, the Customs Clearance Consortium, an organisation run by customs expert Robert Hardy and the Institute of Export and International Trade. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#589V3)
Good Law Project says plans ignore scientific evidence and break value-for-money rulesThe UK government is facing legal action over Boris Johnson’s “moonshot” project, which could involve up to £100bn being spent on an attempt to increase Covid-19 testing capacity to 10m per day.The health secretary, Matt Hancock, and the minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, are named in a case that alleges the project, as described in leaked papers, is unlawful because it ignores scientific evidence, involves potentially huge private contracts that may not have been tendered and breaks the government’s own value-for-money rules. Continue reading...
UN investigator warns of ‘catastrophic’ stiuation with more than 10,000 protesters ‘abusively arrested’A United Nations investigator has warned of the danger of “another iron curtain” falling across Europe during an ill-tempered debate in Geneva on alleged human rights violations in Belarus.“Let’s not allow another iron curtain to descend on the European continent,” Anaïs Marin, the UN’s special rapporteur on Belarus, said, in an urgent session of the body’s 47-member human rights council that was repeatedly interrupted by procedural objections from Belarus, Russia, China and Venezuela. Continue reading...
In awe of everything from his raunchiness to his skill with sheer volume, members of Pixies, Yes, Parliament-Funkadelic, Thin Lizzy and more celebrate the guitar god, who died 50 years ago todayI first met Jimi – he was called Jimmy James then – at the California Club in Los Angeles. He was down on his luck at the time. His wardrobe was shabby and he reeked of Right Guard deodorant, which he used in copious amounts because he couldn’t afford to have his clothing properly dry cleaned. The heels on his shoes were so worn down he appeared to walk bowlegged. When Jimi sat in with us, he was a mediocre guitar player, at best, who was constantly out of tune. Continue reading...
The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has confirmed that the annual firework display on New Year’s Eve will not go ahead because of concerns about large numbers of people gathering in the capital’s centre. ‘We simply can’t afford to have [those] numbers of people congregating,’ Khan told LBC’s James O’Brien. 100,000 people usually attend the display
UK billionaire praises Emirates for flight as thousands remain stranded by policy to ease pressure on hotel quarantineA Lord Sugar tweet about his recent flight into Sydney has angered scores of Australians stranded around the world who themselves are unable to enter the country.Australia’s federal opposition seized on the tweet on Friday amid accusations a controversial policy to ease pressure on Australia’s mandatory hotel quarantine system was unfairly penalising economy travellers stuck overseas. Continue reading...
Recovery, including Newton and Galileo first editions, follows three-year search after Mission Impossible-style raidRare books worth more than £2.5m that were stolen from a warehouse in west London in a daring Mission Impossible-style heist have been found buried under the floor of a house in rural Romania.The recovery of the 200 books, which include first editions of significant works by Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, is the culmination of a three-year police operation that involved raids on 45 addresses across three countries and led to charges against 13 people. Continue reading...
Deputy premier’s break from parliament comes after he threatened to blow up the Coalition government over koala protectionsThe NSW Nationals party leader, John Barilaro, is taking mental health leave from parliament following a tumultuous 10 days during which he threatened to blow up the Coalition government over koala protections before backing down.Barilaro, the deputy premier, told his party room colleagues by text message on Friday afternoon that he would take up to four weeks’ leave to work on his mental health. Continue reading...
Marking the 15-year anniversary of the New London Architecture galleries, the Changing Face of London revisits its 2005 exhibition to capture the transformation of the city’s famous landmarks. Aerial photographer Jason Hawkes talks us through his imagesI have been photographing aerial views over London from helicopters for more than 25 years. I first flew in the capital when I was 22, and looking at images from then it is incredible how much some areas have changed.
Innovative community alarm system provides solution in places where violent crime and theft have become endemicNtsako Mgiba was sleeping at his aunt’s place in eMalahleni (previously known as Witbank) in Mpumalanga province when thieves broke in and stole hundreds of pounds worth of laptops, smartphones and other tech. The next morning Mgiba followed the burglars’ footprints – theirs was not the only home to be targeted. The police filed a report that afternoon, but any hope of tracking them down had gone.Crime is a fact of life across South Africa. But while richer residents have access to one of the world’s largest private security industries – there are 2.57 security personnel for every police officer – poorer communities like that in eMalahleni, a town that leads the country in house break-ins, are left to fend for themselves. “In the townships you have burglar bars, dogs and lapsed alarm contracts,” says Mgiba, explaining that a couple of big security firms have tried and failed to enter the market. Continue reading...
Beijing white paper says an average of 1.29 million workers a year have gone through ‘vocational training’ between 2014 and 2019The Chinese Communist party government has defended its system of internment camps for Uighur and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, in a white paper that also revealed some details of the breadth of its labour program.In the document published on Thursday, Beijing called them “vocational training centres” , saying: “Through its proactive labor and employment policies, Xinjiang has continuously improved the people’s material and cultural lives, and guaranteed and developed their human rights in every field.” Continue reading...
With the release of a new album, the singer picks favourite tracks from her back catalogue and talks about the magic of working with Kanye West, surviving the tough streets of New York and her struggles with self-worthMusicians can be prone to false modesty or putting their achievements down to whatever spiritual energy is currently in fashion. There is none of that with Alicia Keys. “If you put me in a room, I will close the deal,” she says, filling her hotel room with infectious CEO energy, all emphatic statements and eye contact. “But at the time I was bringing my music into the world, it was not on trend, at all. All the radio stations thought I was a 40-year-old jazz crooner. Meanwhile I was 19 with cornrows from Harlem.”Nevertheless, in 2001 Keys closed the deal in living rooms across America with a career-making performance of her song Fallin on Oprah, a song that “was nothing like anything ever, not yesterday, today or tomorrow”, says Keys. She has since won 15 Grammys across six albums, with a seventh, Alicia, out this week, having been postponed (like the publication of this interview) from a spring release by coronavirus. Almost 20 years ago, she risked upsetting purists by bringing modern drum programming into classic soul and jazz; by embracing a relatively demure image, she risked seeming old-fashioned. “None of my songs should have ever worked, to be honest,” she says. These are some of her favourites that did anyway. Continue reading...
Italian PM’s popularity has dipped as national coalition faces its first test since the coronavirus outbreakItalians will vote in seven regional elections on Sunday and Monday – the first major electoral test for the fragile national coalition since the coronavirus outbreak – with the far right poised to make significant gains.While voters have mostly approved of prime minister Giuseppe Conte’s handling of the pandemic, his popularity has waned in recent weeks as the government grappled with the reopening of schools and economic challenges. At the same time, the government’s allies, the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Democratic party (PD), are weak at regional level compared with the tight-knit coalition led by the far-right former interior minister Matteo Salvini. Continue reading...
In an election that sorely needs alternative voices, small parties face an impossibly steep climb to be seen or heardIf you are a follower of New Zealand politics, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the 2020 general election is fundamentally a contest between New Zealand’s two major parties, Labour and National. This is the 28th election they have been in the main ring together, and every government formed since 1935 has been led by one of them.Outside these two, there are 16 other political parties registered with the New Zealand Electoral Commission. Most, though not all, will be standing candidates and/or a list in this year’s MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) election. The three “minor” parties will also context the vote – the Greens, New Zealand First and ACT – and those which have been in parliament before, like the Māori Party. But even in New Zealand, most voters would be hard pressed to name many, if any, of those remaining. Continue reading...
California governor warns about climate crisis as new wildfire evacuations ordered north-east of Los AngelesAs wildfires continued to burn across the US west coast, with smoke reaching as far as Europe, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, issued a stark warning on climate, saying: “The facts are the facts.”Forecast rain for the Pacific north-west prompted hopes on Thursday of improved fire-fighting conditions in Washington state and Oregon, parts of which have been decimated and swathed in the world’s worst air quality. Continue reading...
Friday: US president faces new allegation of sexual assault as FBI warns of election interference. Plus: flight cap fight looms at Australia’s national cabinetGood morning, this is Lauren Waldhuter bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 18 September. Continue reading...
Premier Doug Ford to limit size of indoor gatherings to 10, down from 50, saying ‘crisis is far from over’Canada’s most populous province has announced new restrictions and steep fines amid a surge of Covid-19 infections that has prompted concerns the country is losing control of the virus.Ontario premier Doug Ford on Thursday announced plans to limit the size of gatherings, reversing course on previous steps to reopen the province’s economy. The new rules reduce the size of indoor gatherings to 10, down from 50, and outdoor gatherings to 25, down from 100. Continue reading...
State department’s Nathan Sales says group ‘represents clear and present danger to the US’ and urges Europe to take tougher lineThe US has accused Hezbollah of storing caches of weapons and ammonium nitrate for use in explosives across Europe in recent years, with the alleged aim of preparing for future attacks ordered by Iran.The allegation was made by the state department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Nathan Sales, who called on European countries to take a tougher line on the Tehran-backed Lebanese Shia political movement and militia. Continue reading...
The World Health Organization has warned of ‘alarming’ transmission rates of Covid-19 in Europe, an increase on June, when the curve had been flattened.More than half of European countries reported increases of 10% or more during the past two weeks, while infections more than doubled over the same 14-day period in seven countries