Farmers on Italian island say they are disillusioned after previous damage and want compensation
Huge swarms of locusts are wreaking havoc on the Italian island of Sardinia, arriving a month earlier than in previous years.
The worst-affected area is the province of Nuoro, where the winged insects have decimated crops across 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) of land, following swarms in 2019 said to be the worst in decades and further infestations in 2020 and 2021.
Continue reading...Police are imposing nationwide curfew following violence at protest site in Colombo
Sri Lanka’s prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has resigned after months of protests over the country’s deepening economic crisis, as once-peaceful protests turned violent and at least five people were killed in clashes.
Turmoil began to engulf the country on Monday following violence at a major protest site in Colombo, where pro-government supporters attacked demonstrators and police responded with teargas and water cannon.
Continue reading...Surprise trip on Mother’s Day as Biden meets with Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenskiy
US first lady Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to western Ukraine on Sunday, holding a surprise Mother’s Day meeting with the nation’s first lady, Olena Zelenskiy, as Russia presses its punishing war in the eastern regions.
US president Joe Biden has not visited the country, though he expressed a desire to when he was in Poland this spring, following Russia’s invasion in February, but at that time Russian tanks were advancing on the capital, Kyiv, and he hinted that his security advisers held him back.
Continue reading...Statement to mark 77th anniversary of end of second world war condemns ‘an attack on feeding the world’
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has brought shame on Russia and the sacrifices its people made to defeat Nazi Germany in the second world war, leaders of the G7 group of leading western economies have said in a statement marking the 77th anniversary of the end of the global conflict.
The statement, made on Sunday after a video conference between the G7 leaders and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was intended as a rallying call by liberal democracies in advance of Russia’s 9 May Victory Day parade in Moscow.
Continue reading...Group of 200 Totnes residents trespass and eat sandwiches and Victoria sponge to highlight lack of right to roam
On a beautiful Sunday in May a spot under the trees in an ancient woodland would seem like an idyllic location for a picnic for residents of the Devon town of Totnes.
But when a group of 200 people settled down on the grass to enjoy sandwiches and slices of Victoria sponge next to the publicly funded woodland, they were actually breaking the law.
Continue reading...German chancellor will draw parallel with second world war defeat of Nazi dictatorship in TV address
Ukraine will prevail over Russia as freedom prevailed over the Nazi dictatorship in 1945, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will say in a TV address to mark the 77th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, in which he will accuse Vladimir Putin of falsifying history.
In the speech, which will be aired on German TV at 8.20pm CET (7.20pm BST) on Sunday, Scholz says the “legacy of 8 May” for his country must be to help to ensure that there will never again be genocide or tyranny in Europe.
Continue reading...Jagtar Singh Johal has been detained since 2017 and allegedly tortured, accused of helping to fund assassination plot
The UK is under pressure to insist India release Jagtar Singh Johal, a British citizen, after a UN working group ruled he had been arbitrarily detained by India and his detention lacked any legal basis.
Boris Johnson apparently raised the case when he met the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, last month and provided a written note of consular cases, but Foreign Office ministers have not confirmed whether they regard his detention as arbitrary.
Continue reading...Two thousand Ukrainian troops thought to be trapped inside steelworks after civilian evacuation
Members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion trapped inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant have said they fear they will be killed if captured by Russian forces, as they pleaded with Ukrainian authorities to help arrange their extraction.
Speaking to the media from inside the besieged steelworks, an Azov commander and lieutenant, looking gaunt and pale, said they had defended the city for the people of Ukraine and the rest of the world and needed a third party to negotiate their exit whether by land or sea.
Continue reading...Rescue attempts impossible due to constant shelling in Bilohorivka, says Luhansk governor
Sixty people are feared to have been killed after a village school in eastern Ukraine took a direct hit in a Russian air raid, with rescue attempts said by the regional governor to be impossible due to constant shelling.
Russian attacks in the east and south intensified at the weekend ahead of Monday’s symbolic Victory Day celebrations, with the Black Sea city of Odesa coming under repeated missile strikes and the remaining Ukrainian fighters in the Azovstal steelworks in the besieged port city of Mariupol staging a press conference on Sunday saying they had been “abandoned” by the government as Russian attacks continued
Continue reading...Ferdinand Marcos Jr leads polls but analysts point to huge rallies of his opponent and the vice-president, Leni Robredo
Voters in the Philippines will go to the polls for a presidential election that pits frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, against a human rights lawyer who has promised a transparent government.
Marcos Jr, known as “Bongbong”, whose authoritarian father plundered billions of dollars from the state and presided over rife human rights abuses, has maintained a strong lead in opinion polls in the run-up to Monday’s vote. If elected president, it would mark an extraordinary rehabilitation of one of the country’s most controversial political families.
Continue reading...Personal belongings left behind, including files and passports that could prove crucial in processing claims
In Yuma, south-west Arizona, just a short distance from a gap in the 30-foot-high border barrier between the US and Mexico, Fernando “Fernie” Quiroz collects piles of shoes, shoelaces and clothing from the dirt road and carries them to a large red dumpster already overflowing with personal belongings.
Every day, hundreds of people arrive at gaps in this stretch of border wall to request political asylum from uniformed federal border agents who stand waiting under a rudimentary metal shade structure in the Sonoran desert heat.
Continue reading...Women say they fear going out in public despite Taliban vow to respect hard-won rights after 2021 takeover
Despite everything that has happened to her country since the Taliban seized power last August, 29-year old Nafisa still never believed there would come a day when she would be unable to feel the sun on her face as she walked the streets of Kabul.
Yet on Saturday, the Taliban’s sinisterly named ministry for the propagation of virtue ordered that Nafisa, along with millions of women across Afghanistan, should ideally not leave the house at all. If they do, they must be fully veiled and never show their faces in public.
Continue reading...Pair suspected of killing three Israelis caught outside town of Elad after massive manhunt
Two Palestinians believed to have killed three people in a terrorist attack on Israel’s independence day – the latest incident in the worst wave of attacks in Israel in years – have been apprehended by police after a three-day manhunt.
The suspects, identified as As’ad Yousef As’ad al-Rifa’i, 19, Subhi Emad Subhi Abu Shqeir, 20, both from the occupied West Bank village of Rumana, were caught near a quarry outside the town of Elad in central Israel on Sunday, according to a statement by Israel’s police, military and internal security agency.
Continue reading...Otoniel’s Gulf Clan militiamen shut down northern regions, blocking roads and holding residents hostage in their houses
Jorge, a community activist from Colombia’s conflict-ridden Chocó province, was already traveling to the city of Medellín when he heard news that made him turn back towards home.
Paramilitary militiamen in balaclavas and military fatigues had thrown up a string of roadblocks and declared an “armed strike”, torching vehicles, forcing businesses to close, and stopping all traffic.
Continue reading...Painting by Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis traded for a meal at Irene and Tony Demas’s restaurant could fetch C$35,000
Working out of the kitchen of their small restaurant in Ontario in the 1970s, Irene Demas and her husband Tony soon learned the value of trading their dishes for the talents of local bakers, craftspeople and artisans.
“Everyone supported everyone back then,” said Irene, at the time a bright-eyed chef in her 20s. In exchange for daily fresh flowers, for example, the couple would take soup and a sandwich to the florist next door.
Continue reading...Veteran activists say the overthrow of Roe v Wade would equate to murder, and should send warning signals around the world
It was over the Thanksgiving holiday, catching up with old high school friends, that Frances Beal heard that Cordelia had died. Like the now 82-year-old Black feminist and activist, her friend had left home to go to college, but she didn’t make it through her first year because, like anybody who wanted to terminate a pregnancy in America in 1958, she had been forced to undergo a backstreet abortion.
“She was dead because she’d had an illegal abortion. And it had gone bad. And if you take a look at the statistics, the number of woman that died from illegal abortions was tremendous,” Beal, who later joined the movement to legalise abortion, told the Observer.
Continue reading...Decrepit tanker used for storage at risk of creating a disaster worse than Exxon Valdez in 1989
The UN is to stage a rare donor conference on Wednesday in a bid to raise the $80m (£65m) necessary to prevent an ageing oil tanker off the west coast of Yemen exploding and causing an environmental disaster potentially four times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill near Alaska in 1989.
The money is needed to offload more than 1.14m barrels of oil that have been sitting in the decrepit cargo ship, Safer, for more than six years because of an impasse between Houthi groups and the Saudi-backed government over ownership and responsibility.
Continue reading...Drone attack at Snake Island results in apparent destruction of landing craft as counter-offensive in north gathers pace
The Ukrainian port city of Odesa was hit by renewed Russian missile strikes on Saturday, as military authorities in Kyiv claimed one of their drones had sunk a second Russian ship in the Black Sea.
A counter-offensive against Russia also appeared to be gathering pace in the north, where analysts said that Ukraine’s military may be able to push Russian forces out of artillery range of the country’s second city of Kharkiv in the coming days.
Continue reading...Amid reports of grim conditions inside the Azovstal steelworks, wives try to rally support for an evacuation of remaining Ukrainian troops
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest developments
“Holding up”, wrote Denys Prokopenko, commander of Ukraine’s Azov regiment, in his latest WhatsApp message to his wife Kateryna from the besieged Azovstal steelworks in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
Speaking via Zoom from Krakow, in eastern Poland, alongside three fellow wives and partners of soldiers living under the remorseless Russian shelling and infiltrating raids, Kateryna, 27, says she is doing everything she can think of to ensure the message at 10pm on Friday evening is not one of her husband’s last.
Continue reading...Leftwinger tells rally that public must unite against far-right incumbent’s ‘incompetence and authoritarianism’
Brazil’s former leader Luiz Inació Lula da Silva has kickstarted what he hopes will be a sensational finale to one of Latin America’s most extraordinary political careers, publicly declaring his intention to challenge Jair Bolsonaro for the presidency and urging citizens to unite against the far-right populist’s “incompetence and authoritarianism”.
Speaking at a rally in São Paulo, where the one-time lathe operator began his spectacular rise to power as a union leader more than four decades ago, Lula publicly spelled out his ambition to reclaim the presidency for the first time.
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