A year before kick off, workers claim companies are refusing to enforce sweeping new labour laws created to stamp out human rights abusesWhen Qatar won the bid to host the World Cup in 2010, the triumphant Gulf state unveiled plans to host the most spectacular of all World Cups and began an ambitious building plan of state of the art stadiums, luxury hotels and a sparkling new metro.Yet over the next decade, the brutal conditions facing hundreds of thousands of migrant workers toiling in the searing heat to build Qatar’s World Cup vision has been exposed, with investigations into the forced labour , debt bondage and worker death toll causing international outrage. Continue reading...
by Aamna Mohdin Community affairs correspondent on (#5S6N3)
As a young black writer, I feared being pigeonholed as a ‘race reporter’. Now I see my role as vital to the national narrativeWhen I started my training to be a journalist eight years ago, I didn’t want to be a black reporter who only reported on race. I was interested in the topic, but when people spoke of ambitious beats, they pointed to politics, finance, and culture. I wanted to be on the biggest stories of the day and was scared of being pigeonholed.I started as a science journalist before switching to general news and loved the breadth of stories I worked on, both in the UK and internationally. But whenever I was asked what I wanted to specialise in, I didn’t have a clear answer. That changed once coronavirus spread across the UK and the biggest story of the year was right at my doorstep. Continue reading...
Ad campaign featuring Unko-sensei – aka Professor Poo – aims to help students appreciate the importance of the nation’s treasuryJapan’s government is hoping that children’s fascination with bodily functions will help them appreciate the importance of paying taxes when they reach adulthood.Years after he fuelled huge sales of school textbooks, Unko-sensei [Professor Poo] has been enlisted by the finance ministry’s tax agency to appear in a brochure as part of a campaign to engender an appreciation of the role of the treasury among the nation’s youngest citizens. Continue reading...
by Josh Taylor (now) Amy Remeikis (earlier) on (#5S688)
Simon Birmingham may be trying to walk back the “both sides” of the so-called freedom protests, which included threats of violence and death against sitting state MPs, but Barnaby Joyce is holding the line. There is a lot of work being done by a small group of people to make sure those protesting aren’t all labelled as “mad”. This is despite that same group of people usually condemning peaceful protests from the left.Here is Joyce on the Seven network this morning:
Patients travelling long distances to find surgery cancelled as lack of anaesthetics shuts operating theatres in half of hospitalsAlmost half of Malawi’s district hospitals have closed their operating theatres due to a dire shortage of anaesthetics.Maternity care has been affected by a lack of drugs, said doctors. Surgery, including caesareans, has been cancelled and patients needing emergency care have been moved hundreds of miles around the country. Continue reading...
The hardline Islamist Taliban movement, which stormed to power earlier this year after ousting the Western-backed government, has allowed all boys and younger girls back to class, but has not let girls attend secondary school Continue reading...
The newest section of the all-encompassing England Coast Path, from Whitehaven to Silecroft, takes in beaches, blustery dune lands and bird-filled clifftopsThe winding coastal pathway promised to be sublime: a gorse-lined trail atop a sweep of airy crags that fell away to reveal a nesting ground for kittiwakes, razorbills and rare black guillemots. The weather, a mix of smoking fog, brutal winds and lashing rain, was another matter. Talk about blowing the cobwebs off.“Take a bracing walk along the clifftops,” read the info board near the trailhead at Whitehaven harbour, where I began. “The outlook is great for sea watching.” On the morning I set off, storm watching Shackleton-style was more apt. Continue reading...
by Helen Davidson in Taipei and agencies on (#5S62B)
Governing body says Peng spoke to its president for 30 minutes after growing demands for assurances of her safetyThe Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai said she was safe and well in a video call on Sunday, the International Olympic Committee has said, amid growing international demands for assurances that she is free and not under threat.In a statement, the IOC said Peng had spoken to its president, Thomas Bach, for 30 minutes. “She explained that she is safe and well, living at her home in Beijing, but would like to have her privacy respected at this time,” it said in a statement. Continue reading...
The alliance between Britain, the US and Australia has divided the region and angered ChinaThe UK has invited south-east Asian nations to attend a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Liverpool next month, in a move that risks highlighting concerns that the new alliance between Britain, the US and Australia will fuel a regional nuclear arms race.States from the Association of South-East Asian Nations are divided on the new Aukus partnership but some, notably Indonesia and Malaysia, have sharply criticised it, and many in the 10-member bloc are reluctant to take sides in the unfolding superpower rivalry between the US and China. Continue reading...
Republican party’s José Antonio Kast leading ex-protest leader Gabriel Boric with more than half of votes countedThe far-right populist José Antonio Kast is on course for a convincing victory over former protest leader Gabriel Boric in the first round of Chile’s presidential election.With more than 50% of the votes counted, Kast led Boric by four percentage points. If the trend is maintained, the two will meet in a runoff next month. Chileans also voted for a new congress in the general election. Continue reading...
Boris Johnson to announce plans at CBI conference, telling business leaders the UK is at a pivotal momentBoris Johnson will seek to boost the UK’s clean energy credentials after a tricky UN climate crisis conference by announcing that all new buildings in England will be required to install electric vehicle charge points from next year.In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in the north-east of England on Monday, the prime minister will reveal plans, briefed as “world-leading”, to toughen up regulations for new homes and buildings. Continue reading...
Ohio-based church organisation says ‘hearts are with the 15 people still being held’ by 400 Mawozo gangTwo of 17 abducted members of a missionary group have been freed in Haiti and are safe, “in good spirits and being cared for”, their Ohio-based church organisation has announced.Christian Aid Ministries issued a statement on Sunday saying it could not give the names of those released, why they were freed or other information. Continue reading...
Bethany Haines recounts watching video of beheading and looking at alleged IS killer in the eye in court in ITV programmeThe daughter of a British aid worker who was murdered by members of an Islamic State terrorist cell has described watching the video of his beheading and looking an alleged IS killer in the eye in court.David Haines was captured just days after arriving in Syria in 2013 and the following year was beheaded. The killing, which was recorded and posted online, was one of several of western and Japanese captives by the gang of four IS militants nicknamed “the Beatles” by their hostages because of their British accents. Continue reading...
Labour says home secretary’s ‘incompetence on this issue is dangerous’ after record number of arrivalsLabour has accused Priti Patel of “comprehensively failing” to curb the growing numbers of people crossing the Channel in small boats after a record number of people arrived on British shores in small boats last week.The shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, told Sky News on Sunday that his counterpart’s “incompetence on this issue is dangerous”. Continue reading...
David Perry and wife Rachel issue statement expressing relief ‘no one was else was injured’The taxi driver who survived the Liverpool terror attack said it is a “miracle that I’m alive” and expressed his relief “no one else was injured in such an evil act”.David Perry was injured when he drove a passenger to Liverpool Women’s hospital on 14 November and a bomb was detonated shortly before 11am, engulfing the car in flames. Continue reading...
Monday: Winemakers lobby for protection from coal operations. Plus: federal government accused of delaying legislationGood morning. Winemakers in NSW are fighting to keep mines out of their vines. The federal government has been accused of twiddling its thumbs by not acting on key election promises until the eleventh hour. And the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has told the IOC she is '“safe and well”.Hunter Valley winemakers are fighting to protect the region from industrial development after the Chinese-owned coal producer Yancoal lodged an assessment lease for sites in the heart of wine country. They are lobbying the NSW government to pass legislation to form a protective ring around the area – as has been done for the wine-producing Barossa Valley in South Australia and Margaret River in Western Australia. “We don’t want to come up against this in 10 years’ time when there’s another exploration licence around … we want to stop its renewal so we don’t go through this process again and again,” says one winemaker, Sally Scarborough. Continue reading...
When people are born into money it’s like they’ve stepped on an up escalator, borne effortlessly upwards while the poor go downIn the last few decades, an apparently ordinary financial institution has assumed an importance that could hardly have been foreseen. It is not a finance company, a payday lender or even a crypto-currency. It is, rather, the Bank of Mum and Dad. Barely a day goes by without a media story about the struggles of young people to afford a first home, and their experience is rarely free from some kind of parental influence. Even the young grafters who have supposedly pulled themselves up by the bootstraps into homeownership often turn out to have lived rent-free with their parents or received some other kind of family support. Even more often, of course, they have simply relied on a large deposit from mum and dad.This is, in one sense, innocuous: parents want to assist their offspring financially, and have surely been doing so for as long as money has existed. But it is also insidious, because it allows some young people a significant – and completely unfair – advantage over others. And because those who can help their children into homeownership are themselves more likely to be homeowners, it ensures that advantage and disadvantage are passed down the generations. The economist Shamubeel Eaqub, with his eye for a well-turned phrase, calls this “the return of the landed gentry”. Continue reading...
South African immigrant Eliyahu Kay, 26, killed in attack before militant shot dead by Israeli policeA Hamas militant opened fire in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday, killing one and wounding four others before Israeli police fatally shot him.It was not immediately clear whether Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel’s destruction, had ordered the attack or whether one of its members had acted alone. Continue reading...
by A Guardian reporter and Peter Beaumont on (#5S5T7)
Hopes for end to crisis undermined as protests continue despite deal between military and civilian political partiesSudan’s military coup leader has announced the release of the detained civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and other political prisoners, as the country’s pro-democracy movement vowed to continue with protests.After weeks of lethal turmoil following the country’s October coup, the agreement to release Hamdok and set up a new largely technocratic cabinet was mediated by US and UN officials. Continue reading...
Post-lockdown parental anxieties have led some to predict a boom in private tutoring, but experts say that risks stressing kids and widening the gap between rich and poor
Deal satisfies some international demands but route to democratic transition after fall of Omar al-Bashir in 2019 remains unclearThe deal to secure the release of the detained Sudanese prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, signed by Hamdok and Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who seized power in a military coup on 25 October, leaves Sudan in a continuing crisis.While the agreement satisfies some of the immediate demands of the international community and mediators from the US and UN – not least securing the release of Hamdok and other political detainees – it leaves many of the country’s most serious issues in its political transition unresolved. Continue reading...
Charities shocked by treatment of people traumatised by dangerous boat journeysAsylum seekers who have spent 10 hours or more crossing the Channel in flimsy dinghies while terrified of drowning are being bussed almost 500 miles to Scotland to be processed immediately after reaching UK shores, the Guardian has learned.The asylum seekers typically arrive on the beaches of the UK’s south coast soaked, shivering and traumatised. Until recently they have been processed in Home Office short-term holding facilities (STHF) in immigration detention centres an hour or two away from where they entered the UK. Continue reading...
My father, Jim Boardman, who has died aged 97, was a career soldier who joined the army at the age of 15 and saw action from Normandy to Hamburg in the second world war. He and his regiment arrived on Juno beach in July 1944 and fought through to Germany and the war’s end the following year.One of five children, Jim was born in Withyham, East Sussex, where his parents, Gladys (nee Shed) and Harry, ran a pub. Jim attended school in Groombridge and left at 14. He joined the army on his 15th birthday in March 1939 as European peace disintegrated. Once the war began, he moved through training areas up and down the UK until the Normandy landings began in June 1944. Continue reading...
Singer highlights importance of track listing and says albums should be listened to as artists intendedSpotify has removed the shuffle button from album pages after Adele commented that the order tracks were placed in was supposed to “tell a story”.The singer thanked the streaming service after it made it less straightforward for users to listen to the songs of her new album, 30, in a random order. Continue reading...
Mayor of island that gave volcanoes their name also bans tourists after rise in sulphurous gasesThe mayor of the island of Vulcano, in Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, has ordered the evacuation of about 150 people and banned tourists due to increased volcanic activity and gases in the area.Last October, Italy’s civil protection agency issued an amber alert for the tiny island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, about 15 miles (25km) north of Sicily, after a series of significant changes in volcanic parameters. Continue reading...
Only the second woman to win the prestigious Palme d’Or, the French director behind Raw and new film Titane discusses the boom in female-led horror and how she’s terrified of being booed“When I see a stereotype,” says French director Julia Ducournau, “I try to kill it.” She certainly did that in July by winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival. The most revered and exalted award in cinema, a world away from the erratic glossiness of the Oscars, the Palme d’Or tends to honour films that both further the language of cinema and shed light on the loftier questions of earthly existence. You expect humanism, seriousness, perhaps a dash of difficulty. What you don’t expect is in-your-face sexuality, serial slaughter, a ferocious, electrically coloured techno-metal aesthetic – and radical DIY nasal surgery.But that’s what you get in Ducournau’s Titane – only the second Palme d’Or winner by a female director, the first being Jane Campion’s shared win with The Piano in 1993. Her win, says Ducournau in transatlantically inflected English, “was incredibly powerful to me. Through this prize, a lot was happening. It took 28 years [since Campion’s win] and I believe it’s not going to take 28 years again.” She points to 2021’s award successes for women – Chloé Zhao at the Oscars with Nomadland, Venice winner Audrey Diwan (Happening), Romania’s Alina Grigore in San Sebastián (Blue Moon). “That can’t be looked past. Women kicked serious ass this year.” Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5S5W1)
‘We cannot undo Brexit,’ says Maroš Šefčovič after David Frost says ‘more urgency’ required in negotiationsThe EU has urged David Frost to end his “political posturing” over negotiations on the Northern Ireland protocol and accept that he cannot undo Brexit.The European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič was commenting after Lord Frost, the UK’s Brexit minister, called for an injection of “more urgency” into the talks aimed at solving the dispute over checks and controls on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Continue reading...
Designer Lulu Guinness moved to a gothic folly in the sticks in lockdown to restart her life. Now she talks about her brother’s tragic death, and how she has learned to live with her own depressionI’ve had 30 years of trying to do lots of things at once. Now I want to stand and stare a bit more,” says Lulu Guinness from the splendid isolation of her gothic folly in deepest Gloucestershire. “Lockdown also taught me how much you can get done from your phone.” It was during the pandemic that Guinness, 61, with two grown-up daughters, swapped her London terrace for life in the countryside. She recently put the house she bought with her ex-husband Valentine Guinness, from the Irish brewing dynasty, on the market. “At first I saw this place as a getaway. But I’ve moved on.”Guinness, best known for her glossy lip-shaped clutch and vintage-infused handbags, has found the move transformative. Lulu’s Folly, a hexagonal, three-up-three-down perched on the rim of a sheep-dotted valley, is where she now lives and works. Continue reading...
Shocking papers in Foreign Office archives strengthen case for giving looted bronzes back to NigeriaBritain has long faced calls to return the Benin bronzes, looted by its soldiers in 1897 from the kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria, a former British colony. Now that pressure is set to intensify following the discovery of damning evidence that the then prime minister covered up a rape and other atrocities committed by one of his own officials in the region.Previously unpublished Foreign Office documents reveal that Lord Salisbury failed to take any action against Consul George Annesley after reading internal reports of his abuse and violence – from having a local woman, called Ekang, brought to his quarters and assaulted by his soldiers while he held her down to ordering raids in which women and children were shot. Continue reading...
The novelist and critic travels through genres and across the globe in these thoughtful, powerful essays about the lives of migrants and man’s inhumanity“I never stay long in one place,” writes Teju Cole in Black Paper. “I have known half a dozen cities as home.” Cole’s writing, too, often deals with ideas of transience, restlessness and not belonging. Open City, his debut novel from 2011, tracks the meandering thoughts of a young Nigerian immigrant, Julius, who walks the streets of Manhattan as if in a waking dream. It was followed by Every Day Is for the Thief, in which a young man returns to his native Nigeria and finds himself adrift in a country that is all too familiar, but whose shortcomings have been amplified by his absence. In each story, constant movement, whether aimless or purposeful, generates a spiral of associative thoughts that evoke the restlessness and the constant self-reflection synonymous with exile.Black Paper, Cole’s second book of essays, finds him travelling freely across a range of locations, subjects and styles – art criticism, aphorisms, homage and reportage – all of which, to different degrees, carry a political undertow in keeping with the book’s subtitle: Writing in a Dark Time. It opens deceptively with Cole following the footsteps of Caravaggio across Italy and on to the island of Sicily. What appears to focus on “the quintessential uncontrollable artist” soon becomes something else entirely: a series of fleeting personal encounters that evoke the fugitive lives of the migrants who have survived the perilous journey by boat from Africa and beyond. “The places of Caravaggio’s exile had all become significant flashpoints in the immigration crisis,” elaborates Cole, before visiting the port cities in which the artist sought refuge but also found a kind of safety among the transient and the exiled. Continue reading...
by Ruth Michaelson in Cairo and Fiona Harvey on (#5S5Q1)
Green experts and human rights activists are concerned the hardline Cairo regime will suppress any civil society actionConcern is growing over plans to host a UN climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh next year, in what will be a crucial summit if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C.Several green experts and human rights activists have told the Observer they fear the ability of civil society groups to protest at the summit will be curtailed by Egypt’s authoritarian regime, reducing the pressure that can be brought to bear on leaders and ministers from the nearly 200 countries expected to take part. Continue reading...
Alexander Hardcastle, who helped resurrect Agrigento, was as famous as Howard Carter, but died in penury. Now he’s back in the spotlightIn the 1920s, the discovery of ancient ruins in Sicily, now the largest archaeological site in the world, was celebrated with excitement in British newspapers. It was hailed with much the same level of enthusiasm as was given to Howard Carter and Arthur Evans’s excavations of the treasures of Tutankhamun and the palace of Knossos. Not a natural “showman” however, the name of the man who excavated the site, Alexander Hardcastle, then slowly faded.Now, as an contemporary sculpture exhibition on the site he made his life’s work, Sicily’s Valley of the Temples, marks the centenary of his efforts, there is a fresh push to ensure Hardcastle’s achievements are remembered. This is supported by the British author of a recent biography of the amateur archaeologist. Continue reading...
Soledad O’Brien and the directors of an eye-opening new docuseries, Black and Missing, talk about how media and police bias still affects how missing people are covered and looked forGabby Petito’s disappearance late last summer captured national media headlines and kicked off a well-oiled and coordinated manhunt, with tips pouring in through social media, that nevertheless ended in tragedy. After her remains were found, Petito’s parents thanked law enforcement and the public for their assistance at a press conference. Joseph Petito also made a pointed statement. “This same type of heightened awareness should be continued for everyone,” he told the gathered media. “It’s on all of you, everyone that’s in this room, to do that. If you don’t do that for other people that are missing, that’s a shame, because it’s not just Gabby that deserves that.”“That’s coming from a grieving father,” says Soledad O’Brien to the Guardian. The former CNN anchor and executive producer of the four-part HBO documentary series Black and Missing is vividly recalling the press conference on the phone. “Imagine your own little girl goes missing and you have to chide the media to also look for people of color.” Continue reading...
These philosophical, sometimes grumpy journals, unearthed after the doyenne of suspense fiction’s death, shine a light on her dual identities, the contempt she felt for other people and her erotic misadventuresWhen Patricia Highsmith looked in the mirror, she saw both a lover and a killer. Early on, the reflected face had a fetching feline allure, but out of sight another facet of Highsmith seemed to belong, she said in 1942, in “a terrible other world of hell and the unknown”. As she aged, what she saw through the “evil distorting lens of my eye” changed: now a gravel-voiced, fire-breathing ogre stared back. Highsmith knew that there are always “two people in each person”, and in 1953 a nightmare confirmed this duality. She dreamed that she was incinerating a naked girl who shivered in a wooden bathtub; the funeral pyre was set with papers, presumably Highsmith’s manuscripts. Waking up, she admitted: “I had two identities: the victim and the murderer.”The characters in Highsmith’s novels accordingly come in pairs, doubles who are casualties of a fracture in what she called “the universal law of oneness”. Upright Guy and devious Bruno in Strangers on a Train begin as opposites but end as psychic twins after they exchange homicides. Tom in The Talented Mr Ripley kills the alluring Dickie, then assumes his identity. In the lesbian romance The Price of Salt, matronly Carol and girlish Therese merge, then are sundered by social disapproval: murders, which for Highsmith were “a kind of making love”, are here replaced by orgasms. Continue reading...
Linda Greenhouse does a fine job of raising the alarm about the conservative conquest and what it means for the rest of us – it’s a pity she does not also recommend ways to fight backLinda Greenhouse’s byline became synonymous with the supreme court during the 30 years she covered it for the New York Times. She excelled at unraveling complex legal riddles for the average reader. She also had tremendous common sense – an essential and depressingly rare quality among journalists.Both of these virtues are on display in her new book, which chronicles “12 months that transformed the supreme court” after the death of the liberal lion Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the obscenely rapid confirmation of her conservative successor, Amy Coney Barrett. Continue reading...
Surgery in isolated market town has had no applicants, leaving one doctor serving a population of 2,000Nestled among towering Cumbrian hills and accessible by just a handful of roads, Alston Moor is said to be the highest market town in England. There are few amenities on the doorstep – getting a takeaway delivery is out of the question – so it may not immediately seem like the most desirable place for a doctor to settle down, especially if they are used to the hustle and bustle of a city.But what may have been a bit of a challenge in the past has now become a major headache for the town, one of the most remote places in England, which is in desperate need of a GP. A nine-month-long search has so far yielded not a single application. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen South Asia correspondent on (#5S5NN)
As a boy, the Tamil director saw movies made in the market where he worked. Now he’s India’s choice for awards gloryAs a child labourer working in the flower markets of Madurai, there was nothing more exciting for PS Vinothraj than when the film crews would descend. He would put down his sacks of petals and look up in awe at the camera operators who sat atop cranes to get dramatic sweeping shots. It was, to his nine-year-old mind, intoxicating. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. “My passion for cinema was born in that flower market.”The odds were stacked heavily against him. Vinothraj was born into a poverty-stricken family of daily wage labourers in Tamil Nadu. He left school, aged nine, to support his family after his father died and by 14 was working in the sweatshops of Tiruppur. Continue reading...
by Michael McGowan (now) and Justine Landis-Hanley (e on (#5S5EA)
Almost 90% of Victoria has had first dose of Covid vaccine as state records 1,275 new cases and four deaths; NSW records 176 cases and two deaths as state nears 95% first vaccination dose milestone; two more NT communities in lockdown after nine new cases on Saturday; 16 Covid cases in ACT; thunderstorm warning for south-west WA and severe weather warnings in place across NSW. This blog is now closed
Eric Zemmour and others who stir up hatred are likely to fail electorally but have huge unchallenged cultural powerEric Zemmour is unlikely to be the next president of France. In the first place, he is not yet officially a candidate. Second, his repellent brand of racist, far-right codswallop already has a well-established mouthpiece: Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally (formerly the National Front).That said, Zemmour is doing well in opinion polls and is significantly influencing the election agenda. Known as a TV pundit and polemicist, his latest bestseller, France Has Not Had Its Final Word, is a pseudo-intellectual requiem for “the death of France as we know it”, by which he means white, Catholic France. In short, Zemmour claims Muslims are out to capture the state. Continue reading...
There’s no reason to carry the weight of your mother’s decisions. You need to take control of her secrets by writing them down in orderThe dilemma I have kept secrets for my mother for many years. She has had several extramarital affairs and I am the only one who knows about these. She has never held back in telling me about her feelings for the people she has been involved with. She despises my father and tells me whenever we meet of his failings and of her disappointments in life. She discusses – and has discussed since I was 10 – leaving him, but she has never gone through with this.I am now in my 50s. To her friends and the rest of the family, she is considered kind and compassionate. She is, though, a troubled woman. However, my daughter considers her to be the perfect grandmother and has invited her to her graduation ceremony. There are not enough tickets so I will not be able to attend. I am crushed by this. I wonder if I have reached the point where I should cut her out of my life. Continue reading...
by Emma Graham-Harrison in Gereshk, Helmand on (#5S5KT)
The staff are unpaid, the drugs are running out. Gereshk hospital can only watch as tiny infants succumb to treatable diseasesShirin has paid heavily for both Afghanistan’s conflict, and its abrupt end in Taliban victory. Three years ago her husband lost his leg when a roadside bomb hit his bus. Then in the summer the militants’ victory brought peace to her corner of Helmand, but a halt to the foreign aid funds that paid her salary as a hospital cleaner and kept the family afloat.They fell behind on rent, were evicted from their home and began running out of food. Three weeks ago, worn down by cold, hunger and disruption, Mohammad Omar died from wounds that had never fully healed, leaving her a single mother to their four children. Continue reading...
China’s move was in protest at Baltic country allowing the opening of a diplomatic office using the name TaiwanChina has officially downgraded its diplomatic ties with Lithuania to the “charge d’affaires” level in protest at Taiwan establishing a de facto embassy in Vilnius.Lithuania allowing Taipei to formally open an office using the name Taiwan was a significant diplomatic departure that defied a pressure campaign by Beijing, which tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the global stage. Continue reading...
Further footage of missing tennis star from Chinese state media rejected by WTA amid widespread scepticism that she is free and wellFresh videos of missing tennis star Peng Shuai were posted by Chinese state media on Sunday morning, amid growing global pressure for Beijing to provide verifiable evidence of her whereabouts and safety.The latest footage, released by Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of state newspaper the Global Times, appears to show the player being introduced at a youth tennis match in Beijing. Hu said on Twitter – a platform that is officially banned in China – that the footage was taken on Sunday but this claim could not be verified. Continue reading...
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