Witnesses say police failed to disperse mob of fellow students in Sokoto who set victim on fire following WhatsApp comments
A female student in Nigeria was beaten to death and set on fire by fellow students who accused her of posting “blasphemous” statements in a WhatsApp group, two witnesses have said.
The school, located in Nigeria’s north-western state of Sokoto, was immediately closed down following the attack.
Continue reading...Chair Bennie Thompson says panel has been ‘forced to take this step’ as Kevin McCarthy complains investigation ‘not legitimate’
The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has issued unprecedented subpoenas to five Republican members of Congress, seeking to compel their cooperation with the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The select committee empowered the chairman, Bennie Thompson, to move ahead with subpoenas to the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama.
Continue reading...Francisca Sandoval, 29, is the first journalist to be killed in the line of duty in Chile since the Pinochet dictatorship
A Chilean journalist who was shot in the head by a street trader while covering Workers’ Day marches on 1 May has died of her injuries.
Francisca Sandoval, 29, was reporting in Barrio Meiggs, a ramshackle market district in the centre of the capital, Santiago, when a group of men opened fire after a standoff with the marchers.
Continue reading...Judges praise Deana Lawson’s portraits, which depict familiar domestic scenes containing an unsettling element
An artist whose staged portraits reflect the language of the family photo album has won one of the most prestigious prizes in photography, with judges saying her work “reframes and reclaims the black experience”.
Deana Lawson from Rochester, New York, was awarded the £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize 2022 at the Photographers’ Gallery in London for her solo exhibition Centropy, held at Kunsthalle Basel two years ago.
Continue reading...Breakaway ice waters caused floodwaters to surge near Hay River, with 4,000 residents at risk
All 4,000 inhabitants of a small town in Canada’s Northwest Territories have been ordered to evacuate as parts of the country struggle with some of the worst flooding in decades.
Chief April Martel of the Kátł’odeeche First Nation ordered her entire community to leave Hay River after breakaway ice sent floodwaters surging into the centre of the town on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Troops are saying no to officers, knowing that punishment is light while Russia is not technically at war
When the soldiers of an elite Russian army brigade were told in early April to prepare for a second deployment to Ukraine, fear broke out among the ranks.
The unit, stationed in Russia’s far east during peacetime, first entered Ukraine from Belarus when the war started at the end of February and saw bitter combat with Ukrainian forces.
Continue reading...President Rodrigo Chaves establishes emergency commission as one of his first acts amid attacks by Russian-speaking gang
After a month of crippling ransomware attacks, Costa Rica has declared a state of emergency invoking a measure usually reserved to deal with natural disasters or the Covid-19 pandemic to allow the government to react more nimbly to the crisis.
President Rodrigo Chaves, who was sworn in on Sunday, made the emergency declaration one of his first acts. It was published on Wednesday, but Chaves has not named the members of the National Emergency Commission.
Continue reading...Winning bid for Rawlings ball more than three times its estimate, with portion of proceeds going to Ukrainians displaced by war
A baseball signed by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has sold at auction for more than $50,000, with a portion of the proceeds going to Ukrainians displaced by the Russian invasion.
A Boston auctioneer, RR Auction, said the winning bid for the Rawlings Major League baseball was more than three times its estimate. The company will donate its $15,000 cut from the sale. The seller, Randy Kaplan, will donate an undisclosed portion of his proceeds to the global non-profit Americares.
Continue reading...Cécile Kohler and her husband held after holiday, while threat to kill scientist seen as reprisal for Swedish war crimes trial
Iranian authorities have arrested a French teaching union official and her husband and threatened to execute a Swedish-Iranian man who has been held in jail for six years by 21 May, in fresh moves against foreign and dual nationals.
The threat to execute Ahmadreza Djalali, a scientist, is widely seen as a reprisal for Sweden starting the trial in Stockholm of Hamid Nouri, who is accused of war crimes and murder committed during and after the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Continue reading...Lawyers reject Liz Truss’s claim that UK is able to dump parts of treaty with EU without its agreement
Claims that the UK government has discovered a legal justification for tearing up large parts of Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland have been greeted with scorn by expert lawyers.
The attorney general, Suella Braverman, has reportedly approved overriding the Northern Ireland protocol on the grounds that it is being unfairly enforced by the EU. Her submission, understood to be based on external advice, claims the EU’s “disproportionate and unreasonable” implementation is undermining the Good Friday agreement (GFA), according to the Times.
Continue reading...Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed to lead ‘unity government’ after days of deadly violence
Sri Lanka’s beleaguered president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has sworn in a new prime minister to replace his brother as the country reels from days of violence.
The new PM, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has held the post five times before, will head up a “unity government” tasked with finding a way out of Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since independence, with severe shortages of food, fuel and medicines and long power cuts.
Continue reading...Palestinians line streets in Ramallah as journalist’s coffin travels through, after shooting in Jenin on Wednesday
Shireen Abu Aqleh, the Palestinian American journalist shot dead during an Israeli army operation, has been honoured with a full state memorial in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
At least 5,000 people lined the streets on Thursday as her coffin, draped in the Palestinian flag, was driven through the city and the Qalandia checkpoint en route to St Joseph hospital nearer her home in occupied East Jerusalem. Her funeral will be held in the holy city on Friday.
Continue reading...Soaring commodity prices swell oil giant’s profits as tech stock slide pegs back iPhone maker
Apple has lost its crown as the world’s most valuable company to the oil giant Saudi Aramco, as soaring commodity prices swell profits at energy companies and technology stocks continue to slide.
In a sign that the old economy is reasserting itself over the new this year, Aramco eclipsed Apple on Wednesday night amid the ongoing rout on Wall Street.
Continue reading...Slew of approvals for construction in occupied areas comes weeks before planned visit by US president
Israel has approved 2,700 housing units in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, and advanced plans for another 1,600, a military body has said, a move likely to displease Washington before an expected visit to the region next month by the US president, Joe Biden.
An Israeli Civil Administration subcommittee meeting on Thursday approved the building plans and retroactively “legalised” two outposts in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control. The news came a day after the Israeli military demolished Palestinian homes in an area where about 1,000 people face the threat of eviction to make way for a military training zone.
Continue reading...Peruvian writer criticises incumbent’s ‘clowning around’ but says he is still preferable to former president
The Nobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, Latin America’s most eminent living chronicler of power and corruption, has declared a preference for Jair Bolsonaro over Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as Brazil prepares to head to the polls later this year.
The 86-year-old Peruvian writer, who also holds Spanish citizenship, revealed his thoughts on October’s election during a talk in Uruguay on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Exclusive: inside the manhunt for Protais Mpiranya, accused of Rwandan mass killings and the world’s most wanted war crimes fugitive
The 20-year manhunt for one of the world’s most brutal killers has come to a decisive end in an overgrown cemetery outside Harare.
The body of Protais Mpiranya, the former commander of the Rwandan presidential guard indicted for genocide, lay buried under a stone slab bearing a false name, which UN investigators tracked down and identified with the help of a critical lead found on a confiscated computer: the hand-drawn design for Mpiranya’s tombstone.
Continue reading...Thousands of locals in Miramichi, New Brunswick, have been swept up in the hunt – and Friday’s clue promises $1,300
It started in early May with a post on a Facebook page for second-hand goods in the Canadian town of Miramichi, New Brunswick. A hundred Canadian dollars had been hidden somewhere near the town’s harbour, it said.
The following days brought more clues for other locations. Some made sense. Most were maddeningly vague.
Continue reading...UN verifies nearly 100 child killings but says figure likely higher; Ukraine’s EU application to be assessed in June, says France
The UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reiterated his government’s position that there can be no renormalisation of relationships with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reuters reports that asked on LBC radio whether Putin could be welcomed back on the global stage if he were to repent, Johnson said: “The short answer is no. No renormalisation and the UK is very clear about that.”
Overnight the Ukrainian defence ministry published photos of what it said were destroyed Russian tanks and other equipment in the village of Bilohorivka, that had been struck when the Russians were attempting to construct a pontoon-bridge over the Siverskyi Donets river. The general staff of the Ukraine armed forces published the pictures again this morning on Facebook.
Continue reading...Australian golf champion makes remarks about journalist’s murder at Saudi-backed league event
The golf champion Greg Norman has attempted to dismiss questions over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate as a “mistake,” adding the Saudi government “wants to move forward”.
Norman was speaking at a promotional event in the UK for a Saudi-backed golf tournament, the LIV Golf Invitational Series. The 67-year-old is chief executive of LIV Golf Investments, funded primarily by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
Continue reading...Foreign minister will meet Maroš Šefčovič as attorney general said to approve overriding Brexit deal
The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, is to hold talks with the vice-president of the European Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, in the first meeting since the UK threatened to remove parts of the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol.
The attorney general for England and Wales, Suella Braverman, is said to have approved the scrapping of large parts of the Northern Ireland Brexit deal, according to reports.
Continue reading...