Torrential rains hit parts of England, Italy, France and Belgium, while in China flooding leaves 18 dead
Prolonged heat across parts of northern and western Europe ended with torrential showers and thunderstorms this week.
On Wednesday, parts of southern England received 50-65mm of rainfall within a few hours, causing London’s Gatwick airport to delay and cancel dozens of flights.
Continue reading...MPs from Les Républicains party had submitted bill to ‘combat fraud’ on back-to-school grants to low-income households
Rightwing opposition MPs in France have been accused of stigmatising poorer people by suggesting low-income families are fraudulently using an allowance for school supplies.
The government spokesperson Olivier Véran said claims some families spent the money on televisions and alcohol were “discrimination” and “an old chestnut”. He rejected suggestions parents should be given basic supplies or vouchers for specific shops to reduce the possibility of fraud.
Continue reading...Bunge and Cargill, behind more than 30% of soy exports to EU and UK, accused of exposing suppliers to link with indigenous rights violations
Two of the world’s biggest grain traders are sourcing soy from a Brazilian farm linked to abuses of indigenous rights and land, a report from the environmental group Earthsight claims
Earthsight named the companies as Bunge and Cargill and said they sourced soy produced on a farm located on ancestral land of the Kaiowá indigenous group.
Continue reading...Fears the unit will enforce public order laws limiting women’s rights and freedoms amid crackdown since military coup
Human rights campaigners in Sudan fear the launch of a new police squad will herald the return of “morality policing” in the country.
The government has announced the creation of the community police unit to “reaffirm the relationships between people and the police” and ensure security.
Continue reading...Early release of ex-member of terror group linked to al-Qaida will cause distress for bereaved, says Australian PM
Umar Patek, the bomb maker who helped assemble the devices used in the 2002 bombing in Bali, could walk free early from prison this year.
The Indonesian ministry of law and human rights regional office in East Java has proposed the early release after the ex-member of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian terror group linked to al-Qaida, completed two-thirds of his sentence, plus remissions.
Continue reading...Munitions depot in Belgorod province and airbase near Sevastopol hit in latest apparent sabotage missions
Fires and explosions have been reported at military targets inside Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, in the latest of a string of apparent sabotage missions deep inside Russian-held territory as western officials suggested the conflict had reached deadlock.
Two Russian villages were evacuated after a blaze at a munitions depot near the Ukrainian border in Belgorod province. “An ammunition depot caught fire near the village of Timonovo”, less than 30 miles (50km) from the border, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a statement, adding that no casualties had been reported.
Continue reading...UN secretary general calls for urgent withdrawal of Russian forces and equipment from Zaporizhzhia
Ukraine’s military intelligence has warned that Russian forces may be preparing to stage a “provocation” at a nuclear power plant they control, as the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for an urgent withdrawal of military forces and equipment from the site.
Guterres, on his second visit to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, joined the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for meetings and then a press conference in the western city of Lviv.
Continue reading...Archaeologists says prehistoric site in Huelva province could be one of largest of its kind in Europe
A huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones has been discovered in southern Spain that could be one of the largest in Europe, archaeologists have said.
The stones were discovered on a plot of land in Huelva, a province flanking the southernmost part of Spain’s border with Portugal, near the Guadiana River.
Continue reading...Salma Al-Shehab alleged she had been ‘repeatedly accosted’ by at least five men for belonging to the kingdom’s Shia Muslim minority
Salma al-Shehab, the Saudi PhD student who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for using Twitter, told a Saudi court that she had faced abuse and harassment during her detention, including being subjected to interrogations after being given medications that exhausted her.
The 34-year-old, who was completing her PhD at Leeds University before her January 2021 arrest during a holiday at home, also alleged that she had been “repeatedly accosted” by at least five men for being a member of the kingdom’s Shia Muslim minority. Without providing more details, Shehab said the actions had led to an “outright insult and abuse of human dignity”.
Continue reading...Girl, 13, among dead as violent storms strike after three days of intense rain in region
Violent thunderstorms with winds of up to 139mph (224km/h) have struck the Mediterranean island of Corsica and parts of Italy, killing seven people and leaving at least a dozen more injured.
On Corsica, a 13-year-old girl died after a tree fell on a campsite where she was staying and a 72-year-old woman was killed when the roof of a beach hut was blown off and struck her car. A 46-year-old man also died on the island in a campsite in the town of Calvi.
Continue reading...Local council decides proposed bunker-like home would negatively impact surrounding landscape
The billionaire Peter Thiel’s plans for an elaborate bunker-like lodge in a remote part of New Zealand’s South Island have been thwarted, after the local council decided the home would have too great a negative impact on the surrounding landscape.
Second Star, a New Zealand company owned by the PayPal co-founder, had applied to build the sprawling lakeside complex in Wanaka, an alpine South Island region known for its natural beauty and isolation. The plans were fiercely opposed by conservationists, who claimed in submissions that the lodge would “destroy our beautiful lake environment”.
Continue reading...Timati and co-owner Anton Pinskiy have rebranded it as Stars Coffee after buying the rights to the chain
A pro-Putin rapper has reopened the chain of coffee shops formerly owned by Starbucks under a new name, Stars Coffee, the latest high-profile rebranding of a major western chain after an unprecedented corporate exodus from Russia.
On Thursday, the rapper Timati and restaurateur Anton Pinskiy, the duo that acquired the rights to the chain in Russia, attended the opening of the first of the 130 cafes previously owned by Starbucks. During the opening in central Moscow, the pair also revealed the chain’s new logo, which replaces Starbucks’s iconic siren with a woman wearing the traditional Russian kokoshnik headdress, but is otherwise fairly similar.
Continue reading...Former student leader among 29 pro-democracy activists entering same plea on subversion charges after more than a year in jail
Joshua Wong and a group of 28 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists charged under a controversial national security law have entered guilty pleas, in the largest joint prosecution in the territory in recent years.
A total of 47 defendants, aged 23 to 64, were charged with conspiracy to commit subversion under the sweeping national security law. They were detained in 2021 over their involvement in an unofficial primary election in 2020 that authorities said was a plot to paralyse Hong Kong’s government. At the time, the primary showed strong support for candidates willing to challenge the Beijing-backed local government.
Continue reading...Three men arrested after bodies including those of children discovered during raid of building in Benin City
Police in Nigeria have discovered 20 mummified bodies including those of children in a building in Benin City, in a case that has shocked the country.
Three suspects were arrested during the raid in southern Nigeria, Jennifer Iwegbu, a police spokesperson said in a statement late Wednesday. Armed police officers raided the building in Benin City, the capital of Edo state, acting on intelligence that it was a “suspected ritual shrine”, she said.
Continue reading...Brazil’s federal police ask supreme court to charge president over bogus claims in October 2021 social media broadcast
Brazilian federal police have called for President Jair Bolsonaro to be charged with spreading fake information about a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 680,000 of his citizens, including bogus claims of a link between Aids and Covid vaccines.
Bolsonaro’s anti-scientific response to a disease he called “a bit of a cold” has been internationally condemned and the subject of a congressional inquiry in which the far-right populist was accused of deliberately delaying vaccine purchases and promoting quack “cures” such as hydroxychloroquine.
Continue reading...Six arrested but ringleader still at large after fraudsters in Bihar charged money to locals and paid others to work there
An Indian gang operated a fake police station from a hotel for eight months where they dressed up as officers and are believed to have extorted money from hundreds of people, an official has said.
Incidents of fraudsters pretending to be police or soldiers are common in India, where there is widespread fear of and respect for those in uniform, but setting up a bogus police station takes the scams up a level.
Continue reading...Hundreds forced to flee homes and at least 200 injured as firefighters battle string of blazes in El Tarf province
Algerian firefighters were on Thursday battling a string of blazes, fanned by drought and a blistering heatwave, that have killed at least 38 people and left destruction in their wake.
Deadly forest fires have become an annual scourge in the north African country, where the climate crisis is turning large areas into a tinderbox.
Continue reading...Property confiscated in move decried as ‘appalling attack’ on Palestinian civil society in occupied West Bank
Israeli forces have raided the offices of six Palestinian human rights groups in the occupied West Bank that it previously accused of being terrorist organisations, a move decried as an “appalling attack” on Palestinian civil society.
Property belonging to the prominent advocacy groups was confiscated and entrance doors sealed by soldiers in the early hours of Thursday.
Continue reading...UN expresses concern over rising number of civilian casualties from explosions
A blast that tore through a Kabul mosque during evening prayers on Wednesday killed 21 people, police said, as the United Nations expressed concern over a growing number of civilian casualties from explosions.
The police spokesperson Khalid Zadran said another 33 people had been injured in the blast, which witnesses said shattered the windows of buildings near the mosque in a northern Kabul neighbourhood.
Continue reading...Daksh Giri was wedged on father’s scooter when stray razor-sharp kite string wrapped around his neck
A six-year-old boy has died after his throat was cut by a stray glass-coated kite string as he rode on a scooter with his father in Ludhiana, north India.
Daksh Giri was standing on the scooter on Tuesday, wedged between the steering unit and his father, when they drove into a plastic kite string coated with powdered glass. The string became wrapped around his neck, cutting his throat. Daksh died later in hospital.
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