Myanmar massacre: two Save the Children staff among dead

Charity says the two men, both new fathers, were killed in massacre of more than 30 people blamed on junta troops

Save the Children has confirmed that two of its staff were killed in a Christmas Eve massacre blamed on junta troops that left the charred remains of dozens of people on a highway in eastern Myanmar.

Anti-junta fighters said they found more than 30 bodies, including women and children, on a highway in Kayah state where pro-democracy rebels have been fighting the military.

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‘Families want a son at any cost’: the women forced to abort female foetuses in India

Laali and Meenakshi’s unborn daughters are among the country’s 46 million ‘missing’ women and girls over the past 50 years

Laali was alone at home when she realised her legs were drenched in blood. The bleeding did not stop for eight hours. As she fell unconscious, the 25-year-old thought she would die alongside the foetus she was losing.

She had been three months pregnant when she was taken for prenatal sex determination. “When I learned it was a girl, I started feeling as though I was suffocating,” she says.

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Save the Children workers missing after 30 villagers reportedly massacred by Myanmar troops

Two members of international humanitarian group unaccounted for after killings in Kayah state

Two people working for Save the Children have gone missing after a massacre in eastern Myanmar that left more than 30 people dead, the international aid group has said.

Photos of the aftermath of the Christmas Eve killings in Mo So village, just outside Hpruso township in Kayah state, spread on social media in the country, fuelling outrage against the military that took power in February after ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

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Myanmar: more than 30 people killed in Kayah state

Human rights group says burnt bodies of dozens killed by the military found near Hpruso town

More than 30 people, including children, have been killed and their bodies burned in Myanmar’s conflict-torn Kayah state, according to a local resident, media reports and a local human rights group.

The Karen Human Rights Group said it found the bodies of internally displaced people killed by the military that rules Myanmar near the village of Moso, Hpruso town, on Saturday.

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The world on screen: the best movies from Africa, Asia and Latin America

From a Somali love story to a deep dive into Congolese rumba, Guardian writers pick their favourite recent world cinema releases

The Great Indian Kitchen

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Bangladesh: dozens dead after fire sweeps through ferry – video

At least 39 people have been killed and 70 injured after a fire ripped through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh.

The blaze began in the engine room of the ferry in the early hours of Friday morning, officials said, but the cause was not immediately clear. It took 15 fire engines two hours to get it under control.

People were forced to jump from the vessel, which was carrying about 800 passengers, into the freezing river water to escape

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Briton missing in Afghanistan after reports of Taliban arrest

Grant Bailey was working as security consultant in Kabul where he liaised with US state department

A British man is missing in Afghanistan after a report he has been detained by the Taliban. Grant Bailey was arrested in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he has been working as a security consultant.

The arrest came during a Taliban security clampdown, according to the Daily Mirror.

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River ferry fire kills dozens in Bangladesh

Passengers jumped off vessel carrying 800 passengers and tried to swim ashore, officials say

A massive fire has swept through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh, leaving at least 39 people dead and 70 injured, officials have said.

Many passengers leaped from the vessel into cold waters to escape the fire. It took 15 fire engines two hours to control the blaze and another eight to cool down the vessel, according to Kamal Uddin Bhuiyan, the fire officer who led the rescue operation.

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‘It’s so liberating’: India’s first salon run by transgender men

Founder Aryan Pasha wants La Beauté & Style to be an inclusive and comfortable space, as well as tackle prejudice and provide employment

The beauty treatments listed at the new La Beauté & Style salon are much the same as those offered by the dozen or so other parlours that dot the traffic-heavy Dilshad Extension area of Ghaziabad, 17 miles (28km) east of Delhi. But that is where the similarity ends.

The wall behind the reception desk is painted in rainbow colours; a mural of a trans man with flowing multicoloured locks decorates another wall; a woman wearing a sari is having her eyebrows plucked next to a trans man who is telling a stylist how he would like his hair cut.

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‘A breakthrough, not a breakdown’: one woman’s quest to transform mental health care in India

Psychologist Ratnaboli Ray’s recovery from a mental health crisis inspired her to fight for women suffering in ‘abysmal’ conditions in West Bengal’s state institutions

  • Photography by Ranita Roy for the Guardian

Ratnaboli Ray regards one of the lowest points of her life as a breakthrough. After years in an arranged marriage in which she felt stifled and trapped, her mental health took a catastrophic turn in 1997, when she was in her mid-30s.

“I was feeling very caged, I was not able to express myself,” she says, from her home in West Bengal, India. She describes the psychological symptoms as like a pressure cooker bursting. “I used to get angry, have weeping spells. I was neglectful of my young son.”

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‘The need is still there’: last young refugees arrive in UK as family reunion route closes

Activists lament that a safe, legal way into Britain has closed with Brexit, when stranded children need it as much as ever

‘When I was a child in Afghanistan I loved to watch my uncle play chess. Now I have joined the local club here.” Samir is grinning as he talks about settling into life on England’s south coast. “I’m very happy here, just being with my family, going for walks to look at the Christmas lights. It’s really beautiful.”

After arriving in Greece alone two years ago, when he was just 16, and spending many months homeless and terrified in the port city of Patras, Samir recently made a journey that most refugees can only dream about. He said goodbye to the friends he had made in a camp for unaccompanied minors – other teenagers from Somalia, Iraq and Palestine – and travelled safely and legally to join his father and sister in the UK.

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Hundreds queue for passports in bid to leave Afghanistan

Crowds brave sub-zero temperatues after Taliban announces it will resume issuing travel documents

Hundreds of people have braved sub-zero temperatures in Afghanistan’s capital to queue outside the passport office, a day after the Taliban government announced it would resume issuing travel documents.

Many began their wait the previous night and most stood patiently in single file – some desperate to leave the country for medical treatment, others to escape the Islamists’ renewed rule. Tense Taliban personnel periodically charged crowds that formed at the front of the queue and at a nearby roadblock.

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Images of India: from courtesans and colonial rule to a child’s-eye view – in pictures

Since its invention in the 1840s, photography has played an integral part in Indian art history. Although it is often said that India is the most photographed country in the world, the history of its representation is more complicated, and more political, than initially meets the eye. Visions of India: From the Colonial to the Contemporary is the first major survey of Indian photography in Australia and will be on show at the Monash Gallery of Art in Melbourne until 20 March 2022

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‘Worst fashion wage theft’: workers go hungry as Indian suppliers to top UK brands refuse to pay minimum wage

Shortfall of 16p a day leaves children living on just rice as suppliers to Nike, Zara and H&M in Karnataka underpay by estimated £41m

Garment workers making clothes for international brands in Karnataka, a major clothing production hub in India, say their children are going hungry as factories refuse to pay the legal minimum wage in what is claimed to be the biggest wage theft to ever hit the fashion industry.

More than 400,000 garment workers in Karnataka have not been paid the state’s legal minimum wage since April 2020, according to an international labour rights organisation that monitors working conditions in factories.

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UK charities launch appeal to help eight million Afghans at risk of starvation

There is a ‘very small window of opportunity’ to intervene, say aid workers, as poverty, conflict, drought and a freeze in humanitarian funding bring Afghanistan to the brink

Leading UK charities have launched a joint winter appeal to save the lives of 8 million people at risk of starvation in Afghanistan, as aid workers in the country warn of a “small window of opportunity” to intervene.

A combination of conflict, economic collapse, drought and the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the country to a tipping point, according to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), the umbrella group of 15 aid agencies behind the appeal.

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Books that explain the world: Guardian writers share their best nonfiction reads of the year

From a Jacobean traveller’s travails in Sindh to the tangled roots of Nigeria, our pick of new nonfiction books that shine a light on Asia, Africa and South America

• Share your top recommendations for books on the developing world in the comments below

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Works 2011-2021
By
Alaa Abd El-Fattah

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‘The Taliban say they’ll kill me if they find me’: a female reporter still on the run speaks out

We return to the story of a journalist forced to flee as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Unable to return home without putting at risk everyone she loves and hounded by threatening calls, she remains in hiding in the country four months on

I am an Afghan female journalist and I have been on the run for more than four months. I have lived in numerous safe houses and the homes of people who’ve offered me refuge. I am constantly moving to avoid being caught, from province to province, city to city.

The Taliban insurgents have been threatening to kill me and my colleagues for two years, for our reports exposing their crimes in our province. But when they seized control of our provincial capital, they started to hunt for those who had spoken out against them. I decided to escape, for my own and my family’s safety.

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Photojournalist in Myanmar dies in military custody a week after arrest

Soe Naing was arrested in Yangon while taking photos of a ‘silent strike’ protest against military rule

A freelance photojournalist in Myanmar has died in military custody after being arrested last week while covering protests.

Soe Naing is the first journalist known to have died in custody since the army seized power in February, ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. More than 100 journalists have been detained since then, though about half have been released.

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‘Colossal waste’: Nobel laureates call for 2% cut to military spending worldwide

Governments urged to use ‘peace dividend’ to help UN tackle pandemics, climate crisis and extreme poverty

More than 50 Nobel laureates have signed an open letter calling for all countries to cut their military spending by 2% a year for the next five years, and put half the saved money in a UN fund to combat pandemics, the climate crisis, and extreme poverty.

Coordinated by the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, the letter is supported by a large group of scientists and mathematicians including Sir Roger Penrose, and is published at a time when rising global tensions have led to a steady increase in arms budgets.

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Outcry over ‘blatant misogyny’ in Indian English exam

Nationwide test for teenagers included passage indicating female independence was undermining discipline in the home

An Indian exam board has withdrawn a passage from a nationwide English exam that appeared to promote the subservience of wives, after an outcry over “blatant misogyny”.

All students have been awarded full marks for the comprehension section of the exam covering the passage, which appeared to explicitly state that women’s independence was undermining discipline and parenting in the home. The passage appeared in an English language and literature exam taken by 14 and 15-year-olds on Saturday.

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