Afkari had been convicted of killing security guard during anti-government protests in 2018Iran has executed a champion wrestler convicted of murdering a security guard during anti-regime protests in 2018, state media said on Saturday, despite an international campaign to spare his life.Navid Afkari, 27, was executed “this morning after legal procedures were carried out at the insistence of the parents and the family of the victim”, the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the head of the justice department in the southern Fars province as saying. Continue reading...
Movement returned to capital after being dampened by coronavirus outbreakFrench authorities deployed a heavy police presence in Paris and used teargas as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement returned to the capital after being dampened by the coronavirus crisis.Several hundred demonstrators gathered at two squares in Paris for authorised marches. One cortege set off without incidents but the other march was delayed after police used teargas to disperse protesters who left the designated route and some of whom set fire to waste bins and a car. Continue reading...
Group of 11 men who were ‘left in the street’ in Madrid after being deported are now waiting to cross Channel againEleven Syrian asylum seekers who were removed from the UK on a charter flight to Spain nine days ago and who were abandoned in the streets of Madrid have all returned to Calais, hoping to reach the UK once again, the Guardian has learned.One of the men who returned to Calais on Friday evening, said: “We were left in the street after the Home Office deported us last Thursday. It was impossible to survive like this.” Continue reading...
He’s my all-time favourite comic character. But do the real heroes still wear spandex?A decade ago I got married in a wedding outfit that, because of the shambles of assembling it, I can remember thread for thread. I had a new suit (dark grey, secret pockets) that I was shyly proud of; but with a couple of hours to go, I hung it in the wrong place in a public bathroom and the jacket was sprayed at close range by an auto-dispersing air freshener, the rich and tangy scent of which I could never scrub clear. My smart shoes, fine in the shop, turned out to be so unrealistically sleek-soled that I couldn’t stay upright on the walk to the venue and had to arrive in trainers. Way too late in the day, I noticed that my fancy dress-shirt needed cufflinks and all I had in my drawer was a pair of bug-eyed scarlet superhero heads, given to me once as a joke. I wound up at the altar, making my solemn vows, wearing a little Spider-Man on either wrist.The older I get, the more that Spider-Man cameo, at such a big juncture in my life, comes to feel right. Where some people look to religious texts for spiritual comfort and a sense of continuity, others to Shakespeare or spirit animals, or the Harry Potter series, I’ve always been a sucker for the relentless reliable churn of superhero stories. I’ll watch or read just about any of them in a pinch. But Spider-Man has always been the one. Continue reading...
The Women’s prize for fiction winner discusses plague and avenging Anne HathawayIn the run-up to publication of her novel Hamnet at the end of March, Maggie O’Farrell bought herself a vintage dress. “There was going to be a party and a book tour and I thought I’d wear it to the launch,” she says. “I remember waking up that morning and seeing that Covid had reached Italy. I took it to the dry-cleaners and, five days later when I went to collect it, everything had been cancelled. It was a very weird and rapid turnaround.”There were no party frocks this week either, when O’Farrell overtook five other writers – including Booker laureates Hilary Mantel and Bernardine Evaristo – to become the 25th winner of the Women’s prize for fiction. “I was totally gobsmacked. There wasn’t an atom of me that wasn’t surprised,” says the 48-year-old author from her home in Edinburgh, where she has spent much of the year locked down with her novelist husband William Sutcliffe and their three children. Continue reading...
Cabinet Office minister says new legislation ‘entirely consistent with the rule of law’Michael Gove has defended the government’s plan to override parts of its own Brexit deal with the EU, claiming the internal market bill was necessary to protect the territorial integrity of the UK.He also insisted that the government was acting “within the rule of law” and was behaving in a “constructive and pragmatic” way, despite the Northern Ireland secretary admitting the new legislation would breach international law. Continue reading...
Frontman of Toots and the Maytals helped make reggae globally famousToots Hibbert, whose glorious songcraft as frontman of Toots and the Maytals helped make reggae globally famous, has died aged 77.A statement from his family on Saturday read: “It is with the heaviest of hearts to announce that Frederick Nathaniel “Toots” Hibbert passed away peacefully tonight, surrounded by his family at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. Continue reading...
Foreign ministry says new rules will apply throughout country without giving any detailsChina has announced new restrictions on the activities of US diplomats working on the mainland China and Hong Kong, in what it called a justified response to similar measures imposed on Chinese diplomats in the US last year.In a statement posted online late Friday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said the rules would apply to senior diplomats and all other personnel at the American embassy in Beijing and consulates throughout China. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen South Asia correspondent on (#581R9)
Bollywood star’s tragic story has spiralled into a national obsession, with his girlfriend at its centreFor 90 days, the death of a young Bollywood star has transfixed India.The story that began in June, when the actor Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai apartment, was initially one of grief and tragedy. Police ruled that he had killed himself. Continue reading...
US marine who had served in Iraq was caught with specialised weapons and a large amount of cash, says presidentVenezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has claimed that a “US spy” was captured while spying on the largest refining complex in the country, which is going through a severe fuel shortage crisis.In a live broadcast on state television on Friday, Maduro said the man was arrested on Thursday in the north-west state of Falcon where he was spying on the Amuay and Cardon oil refineries. Continue reading...
Liberal premier played key role in bid for Sydney Olympics and also helped thwart attack on Prince CharlesJohn Fahey, the former premier of New South Wales and federal finance minister, has died aged 75.In a statement on Saturday morning, the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, paid tribute to Fahey and offered his family the option of a state funeral for the former premier. Continue reading...
Cave-in occurred at artisanal mine, in an industry where fatalities are commonAt least 50 people are thought to have died when an artisanal gold mine collapsed near Kamituga in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a local mining NGO said.The cave-in occurred on the Detroit mine site at around 3pm local time (13:00 GMT) on Friday following heavy rains, said Emiliane Itongwa, president of the Initiative of Support and Social Supervision of Women. Continue reading...
Arab country is latest to make agreement as part of US president’s diplomatic pushBahrain has agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and will join the United Arab Emirates in signing an agreement at the White House on Tuesday.“Even great warriors get tired of fighting, and they’re tired of fighting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, portraying the deals as peace agreements, although neither Gulf monarchy has ever been at war with Israel, and both had already established extensive informal ties. Bahrain has long advocated Israel’s integration in the region. Continue reading...
Thousands of refugees on Lesbos protested in the street on Friday outside what was the largest migrant camp in Europe, which burned to the ground on Tuesday night.Greek officials have pledged new temporary tents for the close to 13,000 refugees who were staying in Moria, as 11 European countries agreed to take 400 unaccompanied minors from among those left homeless by the fire
In Britain, the ‘Hotel Rwanda dissident’ would almost certainly be charged under our anti-terrorism laws, says the MP Andrew MitchellI am surprised that the Guardian should take such a partisan attitude to the case of Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan who has been arrested and is in custody in Kigali (UN urged to intervene in case of detained Hotel Rwanda dissident, 8 September). Mr Rusesabagina, whose role during the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis was fictionalised in the well-known movie Hotel Rwanda, has been the subject of controversy ever since.Mr Rusesabagina was arrested because he is believed to be the leader, founder and sponsor of a violent extremist group operating in Rwanda and more widely, known as MRCD/FLN. The international arrest warrant under which he has been detained included accusations that in June and July 2018 in Nyungwe, and in December 2018 in Nyamagabe, attacks by the MRCD/FLN were carried out against innocent Rwandan civilians which left nine people dead and several seriously injured. Continue reading...
Parliament must not renege on its duty to safeguard the UK’s animal welfare standards post-Brexit, argues Chris SherwoodAs Lords meet next week to discuss the agriculture bill, parliament is faced with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect the UK’s farm animal welfare standards. Failure to act now could result in a catastrophic weakening of the hard-won protections for millions of animals in this country.With three months until Brexit and the increasing risk of no deal with our European neighbours, and as a net importer of nearly 40% of our food, the vast majority coming from the EU, the government has to feed the nation. Manifesto promises and parliamentary pronouncements guaranteeing to protect our higher welfare standards as we seek new trade deals around the globe have not been backed up by the legal protections essential to ensure the government does not roll back on its commitment to protect British farmers and their animals. Continue reading...
With a stalemate in Minsk, the next chapter of Belarusian history may be written in the KremlinCriminal charges, kidnappings, bags over the head and death threats: the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has deployed all the resources of his repressive apparatus this week in an attempt to suffocate the growing protest movement against his continued rule as he prepares for a crucial meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.Lukashenko has made it crystal clear he has no intention of stepping down, repeating an earlier promise that he would rather die than relinquish power after 26 years in charge. “Power is not given to be taken, thrown and given away,” he said this week. Continue reading...
Inocente Orlando Montano, 77, convicted in Madrid for carrying out civil war atrocityA former Salvadoran army colonel who served as a government security minister has been sentenced to 133 years in prison after being found guilty of the murder of five Spanish Jesuits who died in one of the infamous atrocities of the El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.Judges at Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, on Friday convicted Inocente Orlando Montano, 77, of the “terrorist murders” of the five Spaniards, who were killed along with a Salvadoran Jesuit and two Salvadoran women 31 years ago. Continue reading...
Show that gave us Kim, Kylie and Kendall is ending after 14 years, leaving behind a Kardashianised worldThe first time the Kardashian family’s private life became part of the public conversation was not in their reality TV show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians (known as KUWTK), which turned them into global phenomena and will, it was announced this week, end after 14 years and 20 seasons. Nor was it with Kim Kardashian Superstar, the notorious sex tape of probably the best known member of the family, which was released a few months before the launch of KUWTK, leading many to suspect that the family used the tape to promote their reality show (the family has always denied this.)Instead, it was back in 1994, when Kim’s godfather, OJ Simpson, sat in her childhood bedroom and contemplated suicide after the murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, for which he was widely suspected to have been responsible. Simpson’s best friend was Kim’s father, Robert Kardashian, and Robert later gave an interview to the US journalist, Barbara Walters, in that same bedroom. “OJ was sitting right where you are, Barbara, and as I walked in I saw wrapped in a towel, a gun. I said, ‘OJ, my daughter could never sleep in this bed, she’d know what happened here,’” said the concerned father, giving global interviews in his teenage daughter’s private space. The Kardashian sisters have been accused of being artificial, but they acquired their talent for turning their lives into entertainment naturally. Continue reading...
Delphine Boël, whose mother had affair with ex-king Albert II, also wants to take her father’s surnameA woman who successfully fought a seven-year legal battle to prove she was the daughter of the former king of Belgium, Albert II, will learn next month whether, against the wishes of her father, she will be able to use the titles Her Royal Highness and the Princess of Belgium.Delphine Boël, 52, an artist and sculptor, whose mother had an extra-marital affair with Albert in the 1960s and 70s, argued in the Brussels court of appeal that she should also be able to use her biological father’s surname of Saxe-Coburg. The court will give its judgment on 29 October. Continue reading...
French film Mignonnes sparks 200,000 tweets calling for boycott of streaming service over claims the film sexualises its young starsA call to boycott Netflix on Thursday over the French film Mignonnes – AKA Cuties – has been launched on social media, over claims that its young stars were portrayed in a sexualised way.The film is directed by French-Senegalese director Maïmouna Doucouré, and started streaming on 9 September. More than 200,000 tweets with the hashtag #CancelNetflix became the top trending topic one day later. Continue reading...
Agreement in principle comes as Britain races to secure deals before Brexit transition endsJapan and the UK have agreed a “historic” free trade deal, as Britain races to secure easy access to overseas markets as it prepares to leave the European Union.“This is a historic moment for the UK and Japan as our first major post-Brexit trade deal,” Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, said after a video call on Friday with the Japanese foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi. Continue reading...
Britain’s beleaguered picture palaces desperately need bums back on seats. But some filmgoers have to consider the risks more than othersLockdown in the UK cost its cinemas an estimated £111m in lost revenue, and their annual income could be down 60% on last year’s. Abandoned filming means there are few enticing titles in the pipeline, and production safety guidelines are hampering new production. If cinemas are to survive while socialdistancing slashes their capacity, they’ll have to fill as many as they can of their remaining available seats.Filmgoers will need to show up in force, whatever their age, gender or physical condition. I’m an ardent film fan; unfortunately, I’m also male and medically vulnerable, which makes me low-hanging fruit for Covid’s scythe. An over-75-year-old is 623 times more likely to die from the disease than an under-45-year-old. Men are over twice as much at risk as women, and a dodgy cardiovascular system doesn’t improve your chances. Continue reading...
by Angela Giuffrida Rome correspondent on (#57ZYR)
Minors were at house party in a villa in Marconia di Pisticci in southern Basilicata regionItalian police have arrested four people in connection with the alleged gang-rape of two British girls in a small town in the south of the country.The rape reportedly took place on Monday night at a house party in Marconia di Pisticci, a town of about 8,000 people in the Basilicata province of Matera. Continue reading...
China says allowing ABC’s Bill Birtles and AFR’s Michael Smith to stay in Australian diplomatic compounds went ‘beyond the scope of consular protection’The Chinese foreign ministry has accused Australian consular officials of having “wantonly obstructed and disrupted the normal law enforcement activities” of Chinese authorities when they sheltered journalists Bill Birtles and Mike Smith last week.Birtles and Smith, China correspondents for the ABC and the Australian Financial Review respectively, were flown out of China this week after a tense five-day diplomatic standoff. Chinese state security services sought to interview the two men in relation to the case of Cheng Lei, another Australian journalist who was detained in August and is believed to be in one of China’s secretive black jails. Continue reading...
Family incomes plummet at cooperative that helped empower women as lucrative trade with China is suspendedFemale crab farmers in Bangladesh are struggling to feed their families after exports to China collapsed due to Covid-19, a charity has warned.Despite the crab harvesting season being in full swing in Mongla, southern Bangladesh, continued lockdown across the nation and the closure of lucrative external markets have impacted not only farmers’ livelihoods but also the country’s GDP, which relies heavily on the $43m (£33m) crab export industry, according to the charity Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). Continue reading...
The story of a young Jewish boy’s odyssey through occupied Poland during the second world war is filled with almost unimaginable horrorCzech film-maker Václav Marhoul has created a monochrome epic of anguish set in wartime Poland: a gruelling odyssey of almost unimaginable horror, featuring – but not limited to – violence, disfigurement, bestiality and rape. This had audiences groping blindly for the exits at last year’s Venice film festival, and there can’t be many movies whose closing credits want to reassure you not only that no animals were harmed, but that adult body doubles were used for sex scenes involving children. It is surely intended to echo Elim Klimov’s harrowing war movie Come and See from 1985, whose star Alexei Kravechenko is given a cameo here as a fiercely partisan Red Army commander.It is based on the 1965 novel and succès de scandale by the Polish-American author Jerzy Kosiński, whose later political satire Being There was famously filmed by Hal Ashby, with Peter Sellers as the gardener whose bland platitudes are mistaken for visionary insights. The Painted Bird is the story of a young Jewish boy in occupied Poland who becomes a survivor-refugee when his parents are taken away to the concentration camps, but who is to find paranoid resentment and antisemitism wherever he goes and is the intimate witness to violence and the degradation of the nation’s soul. Continue reading...
Royal College of Anaesthetists criticise West Suffolk hospital chief executive after staff complaintsA hospital boss championed by Matt Hancock has been told to end “a toxic management culture” after doctors were asked to provide fingerprint samples to identify a whistleblower.The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) has urged the chief executive of West Suffolk hospital, Steve Dunn, who Hancock described as an “outstanding leader”, to take urgent action to improve the wellbeing of senior clinicians and “thereby the safety of patients”. Continue reading...
by Ben Butler, Lorena Allam and Calla Wahlquist on (#5809N)
In a statement to Australian Stock Exchange the company confirms move that follows the blowing up of 46,000-year-old caves in Western AustraliaThe Rio Tinto chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, and two other senior executives are leaving the global miner after its board bowed to intense investor pressure for strong action over its decision to blow up 46,000-year-old rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.Rio Tinto said Jacques was leaving “by mutual agreement” with the board. Continue reading...
Academics, historians, researchers and scholars feel a literary crime is taking place during the distraction of the global pandemicSheltered in the bunkers beneath the National Library in New Zealand’s capital rests a treasure trove of books, including nearly 2,200 first editions that have been carefully looked after for decades. But not for much longer.The “overseas collection” – which includes a first edition of Richard Neville’s Play Power, a 1912 edition of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and multiple first editions of Graham Greene novels – is now headed out the door. Continue reading...
Residents of Moria camp struggle to salvage what they can as protesters try to block efforts to rebuildPlumes of smoke rise above the ashes and twisted metal. In many parts this is all that remains of Europe’s largest refugee camp.Just a few days ago, the Moria camp in Lesbos was home to thousands of children and their families. Now all that is left are the smoldering ruins and jagged outlines of scorched tents. Continue reading...
Foreign ministers issue joint statement after meeting in Moscow, promising to ‘avoid actions that may escalate the situation’India and China have agreed to “disengage as soon as possible” after troops were involved in a series of clashes at their disputed Himalayan border, according to a joint statement from the two countries.The nuclear-armed neighbours accused each other this week of firing shots across the contested border in Ladakh, known as the line of actual control (LAC), intensifying a months-long standoff that has already claimed at least 20 lives. Continue reading...
Deepening dispute between Nato allies has dragged in neighbours and is in danger of spiralling out of controlAn increasingly fractious standoff over access to gas reserves has transformed a dispute between Turkey and Greece that was once primarily over Cyprus into one that now ensnares Libya, Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and feeds into other political issues in the Mediterranean and has raised fears of a naval conflict between the two Nato allies in the Aegean Sea.The crisis has been deepening in recent months with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, leading those inside the EU opposing Turkey’s increasingly military foreign policy and saying Turkey can longer be seen as partner in the Mediterranean. He has offered French military support to the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, including the possible sale of 18 Rafale jets. Continue reading...
Even Labour’s tax policy cant’t spark fury. The only numbers people are concerned about are coronavirus-relatedParents will be only too familiar with this scenario. It’s family holiday time. The car is packed with everything but the kitchen sink. Each child is strapped in with their own screen and headphones. You slip the car into gear and drive off. Finally you can let out a sigh of relief; the holiday has begun! Then a small voice from the back says: “I need to go the toilet.” You divert to the nearest petrol station, and sit back and wait for the journey to restart.That, folks, is the New Zealand general election campaign of 2020. Continue reading...