Friends of Doski Azad said the 23-year-old makeup artist had received repeated death threats from male family members
The Kurdish transgender woman Doski Azad shot dead by her brother last month, had been living in hiding from her family after repeated death threats, friends have said.
According to friends, Azad had had to move home regularly after several death threats by male members of her family.
Continue reading...Some accounts claiming to support the Canada trucker protests are run by con artists abroad
When Facebook removed dozens of groups dedicated to Canada’s anti-government “Freedom Convoy” protests earlier this month, it didn’t do so because of extremism or conspiracies rife within the protests. It was because the groups were being run by scam artists.
Networks of spammers and profiteers, some based as far afield as Vietnam or Romania, had set up the groups using fake or hacked Facebook accounts in an attempt to make money off of the political turmoil.
Continue reading...Prime minister says now is not the time to ‘remove our armour just as the battle begins’ despite pressure from protesters
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said Covid-19 restrictions, including mandates and vaccine passes, will begin to lift once the country gets “well beyond” the Omicron outbreak’s peak.
At a post-cabinet press conference on Monday, Ardern said case numbers were likely to peak in mid-to-late March, or three to six weeks away. Case numbers were expected to double every three to four days.
Continue reading...Ottawa police have abandoned their policy of de-escalation against anti-Covid mandate demonstrators
Today’s action to cordon off the occupation of parliament’s grounds and prevent it growing might go some way to restoring public confidence in the police, which has appeared to be eroding since the protests began a fortnight ago.
So far, police have pursued a de-escalation strategy, but there have been calls for firmer action. The whole event has raised important questions about the relationship between the police and government, and about police independence and accountability.
The police are an instrument of the crown […] but in the two principal roles of detecting and preventing crime and keeping the Queen’s peace they act independently of the crown and serve only the law.
Continue reading...Flurry of phone calls by French president leads to ‘in principle agreement’, as US warns war is imminent
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has invited Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden to attend a summit aimed at de-escalating the Ukraine crisis, and the leaders have agreed in principle, Macron’s office has announced, amid further US warnings that war is imminent.
The Élysée Palace put out a statement on Sunday evening following last-minute diplomatic efforts by the French president to try to dissuade Russia from invading Ukraine.
Continue reading...Life can be tough for everyone and we never know what another person may be experiencing – take a breath to consider before you speak
We like predictability. We function best when we know what is going to happen. The irony here is that after all this uncertainty, predictability in this phase of the pandemic in New Zealand is increasing. As the Omicron wave gathers strength, we can most likely expect a version of what happened in other countries: a steep increase in case numbers, exerting pressure on the health and social care system.
New Zealand’s successful management of the primary health impacts of the pandemic may have contributed to a sense of “kiwi exceptionalism”. This may be responsible for the jolt we may feel when we realise that what has happened elsewhere might actually happen in New Zealand, when, for most of this pandemic, our experience has been very different.
Continue reading...Palm Beach county sheriff says Sondra Wiener, 87, and 90-year-old husband Marvin Wiener found dead on Thursday
The sister of the Wall Street fraudster Bernie Madoff and her husband were found dead in Florida in what investigators said was an apparent murder-suicide.
The Palm Beach county sheriff’s office on Sunday identified the couple as 87-year-old Sondra Wiener of Boynton Beach and her 90-year-old husband, Marvin Wiener.
Continue reading...Three-week occupation over Covid precautions and Trudeau government ends with 76 vehicles towed and 191 arrests
Canadian police on Sunday secured the downtown core of Ottawa with fencing, as city workers cleaned up trash and snow plows cleared streets after two days of tense standoffs and 191 arrests ended a three-week occupation.
Demonstrators used hundreds of trucks and vehicles to block the city center since 28 January, prompting the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to invoke rarely used emergency powers.
Continue reading...South Carolinian tells Fox News ‘Everybody wants to be on President Trump’s bandwagon, without any question’
The only Black Republican in the Senate, Tim Scott of South Carolina, has indicated a willingness to be Donald Trump’s running mate should the former president mount another White House campaign.
Asked by Fox News if he would consider joining a Trump ticket in 2024, Scott said: “Everybody wants to be on President Trump’s bandwagon, without any question.”
Continue reading...Monarch, 95, experiencing ‘mild cold-like symptoms’ but expects to continue carrying out light duties
The Queen has tested positive for Covid-19, ahead of the expected ending of all coronavirus restrictions in England in the coming days.
Buckingham Palace said the monarch, 95, was experiencing “mild cold-like symptoms” but expected to continue carrying out light duties this week.
Continue reading...Francesca Tardioli, 56, was found dead outside her house in Foligno, Umbria
The Italian ambassador to Australia has died after falling from a balcony in her home town in Foligno in the Umbria region.
According to reports, Ambassador Francesca Tardioli, 56, was found dead outside her house after apparently falling from the third floor. The incident is being investigated by the police in Italy.
Continue reading...Border regions appear unprepared for hundreds of people arriving from separatist-controlled areas in Ukraine
The first stop for Ella Fyodorova after she fled her home in eastern Ukraine was a windblown tent camp just across the Russian border, part of a mass evacuation effort that observers fear may become the pretext for Russia to launch a formal intervention in Ukraine.
“I wanted to stay, but my husband came home, and said: ‘Get your things together, we’re going,’” she said as she wrestled her two-year-old son into a blue snowsuit to walk to the public toilets nearby.
Continue reading...‘Has the world forgotten its mistakes of the 20th century?’ asks Volodymyr Zelenskiy as invasion looms
Just 20 minutes walk from the ornate Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where world leaders gathered this weekend for the Munich security conference, lies No 12 Arcisstrasse, the shuttered brown ornamental building known as the Führerbau.
On a cold grey Sunday morning, the building, now temporarily closed and in disrepair, has a forbidding air. Near the steps at the front is a small plaque with the bare inscription in German, Czech and Slovak: “In this building, on 29 September, 1938, the Munich agreement was signed, which led to the smashing of the Czechoslovak republic.”
Continue reading...Police pushed back protesters in Canada’s besieged capital on Saturday, arresting 170 people and towing away dozens of vehicles. Many more trucks were driven out of the city, raising authorities’ hopes for an end to the three-week protest against the country’s Covid restrictions. Police in tactical gear quickly gained ground on the second full day of one of the biggest police enforcement actions in Canada’s history, for which officers were drawn in from around the country
Continue reading...Large parts of area in capital cleared after more than 191 are arrested and 57 vehicles are towed
When thousands of protesters against Covid restrictions arrived in Ottawa last month, it would have seemed unimaginable that they would take over parts of the Canadian capital with little resistance.
To their own disbelief, the rightwing protesters soon controlled the streets outside parliament, brazenly flouting the law in the belief nothing could or would stop them.
Continue reading...‘We are not punishing the Taliban, we are making it worse for the people,’ says former UK foreign secretary
The west has inflicted catastrophic damage on Afghanistan and its own reputation by imposing a policy of starvation on the country, according to David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.
“If we wanted to create a failed state we could not have a more effective policy mix than the one we have at the moment,” he told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Video footage shows Ukrainian officials, soldiers and foreign journalists running away from what appeared to be shelling as they visited the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. David Arakhamia, the faction leader of the ruling Servant of the People party, said the group drove to an 'observational outpost' in the Donetsk region and took shelter when it came under fire by '120mm calibre ammunition'. The group had to be evacuated to a shelter, the spokeswoman for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's party said on Saturday
Continue reading...The global pandemic sparked a huge superhuman effort to control coronavirus. But the billions spent have also had an unexpected impact on medicine and science
When Tom Pooley, 21, became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against plague as part of a medical trial last summer after tests on mice, he was inspired by the thought that his involvement could help to rid the world of one of the most brutal killers in human history.
“They made it quite clear I was the first human to receive it,” says Pooley, a radiotherapy engineering student. “They didn’t dress it up, but they made it clear it was as safe as possible. There are risks, but they are talented people: it’s a big honour to be the first.” The single-shot, based on the Chadox technology developed by the Oxford Vaccine Group and AstraZeneca, took less than five seconds to painlessly administer, he says. That night, he felt a little unwell, but he was fine within three hours; and the small trial continued apace to combat the centuries-old bacteria threat, which killed 171 in Madagascar as recently as 2017. It uses a weakened, genetically altered version of a common-cold virus from chimpanzees.
Continue reading...EU capitals concerned UK is not ensuring identity of real estate owners known in event of sanctions
Britain has frustrated its EU allies and weakened the west’s financial threat to the Kremlin by failing to close a loophole that will ensure London real estate remains a safe haven for Russian money, according to diplomatic sources in Brussels.
New legislation, described as the “toughest ever” by the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, gives the UK government powers to freeze the assets of individuals linked to the Russian state in the event of an invasion of Ukraine but fails to “capture” property owned via anonymous offshore structures.
Continue reading...World sympathy and legal balance shifting to Mauritian claim to islands
Standing in the hospital room where she gave birth to her first child, Rosemonde Bertin looked around in despair. The roof had collapsed, trees grew through the floor and a rusting, enamelled bedpan lay half concealed by ferns.
“I had my baby here,” Bertin said. “He was born in 1972.” That was shortly before everyone on Salomon atoll was forcibly deported by the British to Mauritius and Seychelles.
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