Tang Lu was found guilty of killing social media star Lhamo by setting fire to her online in September 2020
A Chinese man has been executed after a court found him guilty of setting his former wife on fire while she was livestreaming on social media.
The Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture intermediate people’s court said in a short online statement on Saturday morning that it had carried out the execution of Tang Lu.
Continue reading...Company said Blake Lemoine violated Google policies and that his claims were ‘wholly unfounded’
Google has dismissed a senior software engineer who claimed the company’s artificial intelligence chatbot LaMDA was a self-aware person.
Google, which placed software engineer Blake Lemoine on leave last month, said he had violated company policies and that it found his claims on LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) to be “wholly unfounded”.
Continue reading...Residents of the New Zealand city have the world’s most extreme vocal changes when speaking to babies, a study has found
From small tribes in the remote Pacific islands to the teeming cities of China, humans share the common language of baby talk – but new research has discovered that Wellington, New Zealand, is the global capital of cooing.
An international study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, collected 1615 recordings of 410 people from 21 societies speaking and singing to an adult and then a baby in more than a dozen languages.
Continue reading...A couple are under house arrest after a 30-year-old man died during a private party at a house in Karmi Yosef
Police in Israel have placed a couple under house arrest, a day after a man attending a party at their villa died after being sucked into a sinkhole that formed at the bottom of their swimming pool.
The man and woman, both in their sixties, are suspected of causing death by negligence, police said. They were arrested on Thursday night and a court decided to release them Friday under “restrictive conditions of house arrest” for five days.
Continue reading...Four found guilty by a Nairobi court six years after murders of Willie Kimani, Josephat Mwenda and Joseph Muiruri prompted protests in Kenya
Three police officers in Kenya have been found guilty of murdering three men, including human rights lawyer Willie Kimani, six years after their bodies were found in a river.
Justice Jessie Lessit found police officers Fredrick Leliman, Stephen Cheburet and Sylvia Wanjiku as well as police informer Peter Ngugi guilty of murdering Kimani, his client Josephat Mwenda and taxi driver Joseph Muiruri on 23 June 2016.
Continue reading...Shipping of millions of tonnes from blockaded Black Sea ports could avert global food crisis
Ukraine and Russia have signed a UN-backed deal to allow the export of millions of tonnes of grain from blockaded Black Sea ports, potentially averting the threat of a catastrophic global food crisis.
A signing ceremony at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul was attended by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, who had played a key role during months of tense negotiations.
A coalition of Turkish, Ukrainian and UN staff will monitor the loading of grain on to vessels in Ukrainian ports before navigating a pre-planned route through the Black Sea, which remains heavily mined by Ukrainian and Russian forces.
Ukrainian pilot vessels will guide commercial vessels transporting the grain in order to navigate the mined areas around the coastline using a map of safe channels provided by the Ukrainian side.
The vessels will then cross the Black Sea towards Turkey’s Bosphorus strait while being closely monitored by a joint coordination centre in Istanbul, containing representatives from the UN, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey.
Ships entering Ukraine will be inspected under the supervision of the same joint coordination centre to ensure they are not carrying weapons or items that could be used to attack the Ukrainian side.
The Russian and Ukrainian sides have agreed to withhold attacks on any of the commercial vessels or ports engaged in the initiative to transport vital grain, while UN and Turkish monitors will be present in Ukrainian ports in order to demarcate areas protected by the accord.
Continue reading...Prosecutors say two men confessed to killing British journalist and Indigenous expert while third participated
Public prosecutors have charged three individuals with the murder in June of the British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the remote western reaches of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
Phillips – a regular contributor to the Guardian – and Pereira had met Indigenous people near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia, and were travelling along the Itaquai River back to the city of Atalaia do Norte when they were attacked.
Continue reading...UN’s international court of justice rejects arguments advanced by military junta over crackdowns against Muslim minority group
The United Nations’ highest court has rejected Myanmar’s attempts to halt a case accusing it of genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority, paving the way for evidence of atrocities to be heard.
The international court of justice rejected all preliminary objections raised by Myanmar, which is now ruled by a military junta, at a hearing on Friday.
Continue reading...Blaze, estimated to have damaged 14,000 hectares, started after spark escaped from soil excavator
An international reforestation company has said it is “devastated” after one of its contractors accidentally caused a massive fire in Spain, where dozens of calamitous wildfires have raged this week.
Land Life, a Netherlands-based company with offices in Spain and the US, said the fire broke out on Monday at one of its reforestation projects in Ateca in the north-eastern region of Aragón.
Continue reading...Four siblings under 10 among those to die in assault on Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib, with others still trapped under rubble
Seven people, among them four children, have been killed in a Russian airstrike in north-western Syria, one of five carried out by Vladimir Putin’s air force during the deadliest day in the country in months.
The deaths occurred on Friday near the opposition-held town of Jisr al-Shughur, in the rebel enclave of Idlib, where jihadist units and anti-Assad groups uneasily coexist among more than 4 million people, many of them Syrians from elsewhere in the country.
Continue reading...We will be pausing our live coverage of the war in Ukraine and returning in a few hours to bring you all the latest developments. You can find a summary of where things stand here
The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has issued casualty figures for the past 24 hours, claiming that one person was killed and seven injured in the territory it occupies. It claims this was the result of Ukrainian shelling. The claims have not been independently verified. The Donetsk People’s Republic is only recognised as a legitimate authority by three UN member states.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, has said that five civilians were killed in the region on 21 July, and that a further 10 people were injured. Posting to Telegram, he said three of the deaths occurred in Siversk.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 637 civilians have been killed and another 1,641 injured as a result of shelling and bombing in Donetsk region. The number of Russian victims in Mariupol and Volnovakha is currently unknown.
Continue reading...Strikes indicate ‘huge battle’ may be on way that will be a key test of Kyiv troops’ ability to push Russia back
The war in Ukraine may be heading for its bloodiest phase yet, according to senior Ukrainian officials and western analysts, who say a long-threatened southern counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces will result in a “huge battle” and will need to overcome increasingly well dug-in Russian troops.
People interviewed by the Guardian, including those who have recently escaped Kherson, describe Russian forces in the south building hardened tank shelters, digging trenches and bringing in prefabricated concrete pillboxes by lorry.
Continue reading...Solution to overcrowded asylum centres angers NGOs, though three ships have already been commissioned
Plans to house refugees arriving in the Netherlands on cruise ships have been described as “absurd” and illegal, as the Dutch government laid out its solution to overcrowded asylum centres.
Three large ships have already been commissioned and one is due to be anchored in Velsen, near IJmuiden in North Holland, although ministers are struggling to find further willing ports.
Continue reading...Justices decline to freeze lower court order that blocked officials from changing deportation guidance from Trump era
The supreme court will not allow the Biden administration to implement an immigration policy that prioritizes deportation of people arriving in the US illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk.
The court’s order late on Thursday leaves the policy frozen nationwide for now. The vote was 5-4, with conservative Amy Coney Barrett joining liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and newcomer to the bench Ketanji Brown Jackson in saying they would have allowed the Biden administration to put in place the guidance.
Continue reading...Oil from the versatile plant makes cannabis medicine CBD and its fibre has a range of uses but the Taliban need convincing
The smell seemed unmistakable, the dried buds looked familiar and the Taliban checkpoint guards, who had never heard of CBD, a non-psychoactive cannabis compound, were disgusted by the pungent cargo of Amin Karim’s truck.
“They said to me: ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Haji?’” using an honorific for an older man, as they poked through the piles of hemp headed for Kabul last October.
Continue reading...The festival defends decision not to cancel Teodor Currentzis’s appearance despite links to ‘Putin’s private bank’
The official opening of one of the world’s leading classical music festivals is being overshadowed by the appearance of a conductor whose orchestra and choir are funded by a bank controlled by the Russian government.
Cultural commentators have described Austria’s Salzburg festival, which is also receiving sponsorship money from a foundation with close ties to the Kremlin, of being in the grip of Vladimir Putin’s influence. Along with other classical music events in the region, they argue it has turned itself into a paradise for dubious and often intransparent cultural-corporate partnerships, referred to as “toxic sponsorship”.
Continue reading...Leader of self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic claims search engine is promoting ‘terrorism and violence against all Russians’
Google’s search engine is to be banned in the occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk after pro-Russian authorities there accused the US tech giant of promoting “terrorism and violence against all Russians”.
In a statement posted to the social messaging service Telegram, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said: “The inhuman propaganda of Ukraine and the west has long crossed all boundaries. There is a real persecution of Russians, the imposition of lies and disinformation.”
Continue reading...Gil Tamary of Israel’s Channel 13 sparked online fury after he filmed himself in Islam’s holiest city despite a ban on non-Muslims
A Saudi citizen who allegedly helped a non-Muslim enter the holy city of Mecca has been arrested, police in the kingdom said, after an online backlash against a journalist working for Israeli television.
The journalist, Gil Tamary of Israel’s Channel 13, posted on Twitter a video of himself sneaking into Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, in defiance of a ban on non-Muslims.
Continue reading...Cabinet has approved event for 27 September but critics question cost and possible political exploitation
Opposition is mounting to plans to hold a state funeral for the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot dead earlier this month.
The cabinet on Friday approved arrangements for the funeral – only the second of its kind for a former Japanese leader in the postwar period – on 27 September.
Continue reading...UK temperatures exceed 40C while France and Portugal hit new highs, with some extreme consequences
Record-breaking heat continued to affect parts of western Europe during the past week, with UK temperatures exceeding 40C (104F) for the first time since records began.
On Tuesday, several weather stations across London, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire broke the 40C barrier, with a top temperature of 40.3C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire. A further 39 stations across central and southern England also broke the previous highest temperature of 38.7C, which was set in July 2019.
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