Police tactics used against protesters following murder of George Floyd widely condemned
A Texas grand jury has indicted 19 Austin police officers on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, for actions during 2020 protests over racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd.
The president of the Austin Police Association, Ken Casaday, confirmed 19 officers faced charges.
Continue reading...Lindsey Pearlman, an actor known for television series including General Hospital and Chicago Justice, was found dead in Hollywood several days after going missing, authorities and her husband said. She was 43.
“Today around 8.30am, Hollywood area officers responded to a radio call for a death investigation at Franklin Avenue and North Sierra Bonita Avenue,” Los Angeles police said on Friday.
Continue reading...Former model agency boss accused of rape and suspected of trafficking minors has died in prison
The former boss of a French model agency accused of rape and under investigation on suspicion of supplying underage girls to the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in prison.
The body of Jean-Luc Brunel, 75, was reportedly found hanging in his cell in the early hours of Saturday. The French prosecutors’ office confirmed the report and said an inquiry had been opened into the exact cause of death, but early indications pointed to suicide.
Continue reading...Efforts to bring the blaze on the Italian Euroferry Olympia under control hampered by gale-force winds
Greek rescue forces were desperately trying to extinguish fires raging for a second day on an Italian cruise liner off the coast of Corfu, as the search for 12 people believed to be missing intensified.
Firefighters battled flames leaping from the ferry’s interior as state TV showed images of the Italian-flagged Euroferry Olympia engulfed in thick, acrid smoke. Efforts to bring the blaze under control were hampered by gale-force winds on Saturday, while intense heat from the ship made it impossible for rescuers to land on it, the broadcaster reported.
Continue reading...‘You’re a creep, bro,’ says New York congresswoman after Carlson attacked Ocasio-Cortez in Fox News segment
The Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday night, claiming the US congresswoman was not a woman of colour.
“She’s a rich entitled white lady,” he said.
Continue reading...The author’s hand-picked panel share their ideas on music, mushrooms, zombies and more
What do you get when you bring together some of the most revered thinkers, most progressive-minded activists and one of the most celebrated novelists writing today to discuss the immense challenges we face? A debate about the Spice Girls, of course! For the Guardian’s Saturday magazine, Margaret Atwood wanted to gather some of her favourite experts from around the globe, to ask how they see the world we live in – and what they believe is key to creating the future they want to see.
The lineup included bestselling author Raj Patel, dubbed the “rock star of social justice writing”; Senator Yvonne Boyer, the first Indigenous person appointed to the Canadian senate from Ontario; Akala, a writer, musician and poet; the excellently named Merlin Sheldrake, an expert on fungi; Kate Fletcher, whose speciality is sustainable fashion; Jessie Housty, a young Indigenous activist with a focus on decolonisation and community; and Yasmeen Hassan of Equality Now, which works to combat gender discrimination. The panel, hand-picked by Atwood, reflects the many disparate subjects the author is passionate about, and she was as keen to hear from them as they were to understand her vision and ideas.
Continue reading...With reproductive rights being increasingly restricted in Europe, people are relying on a network of volunteers to help them
When The Handmaid’s Tale first came out in 1985, the initial response was broadly that people thought such threats to women’s bodies and reproductive rights “couldn’t happen here”. By the time it aired as a TV series in 2017, just after Donald Trump was inaugurated in the US, people were no longer so sure. With every headline about gains in reproductive rights – Ireland repealing the eighth amendment in 2018, which had effectively banned abortions – there are others that underscore how fragile these rights are, wherever you live.
Recent changes to abortion law in Texas, which have prohibited abortions after six weeks – one of the most restrictive rules in the nation – and Poland’s near total ban on the procedure last year make it clear just how slippery the slope still is. We have to ask: what kind of country do we want to live in? A democratic one in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning their health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the state corrals the bodies of the other half?
Continue reading...At 82, the Canadian author has seen it all - and her novels predicted most of it. Just don’t presume you know what she thinks, she tells Hadley Freeman
‘How are you? You’re named after Ernest Hemingway’s first wife,” Margaret Atwood announces by way of a greeting when we meet on a hotel’s heated patio near her home in Toronto. Atwood, 82, has often been described as a prophet, thanks to her uncanny ability to foresee the future in her books. When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in January 2021, it looked, terrifyingly, like a scene out of The Handmaid’s Tale, when the government is overthrown and the dystopian land of Gilead is founded. She seemingly predicted the 2008 financial crash in her nonfiction book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, published that year. Atwood has always scoffed at any suggestion of telepathy, pointing out that every atrocity in The Handmaid’s Tale had been carried out by totalitarian regimes in real life, and she “predicted” the crash by noticing the number of adverts offering to help people with their personal debt. But as she stands in front of me, snowflakes glittering around her like stars, the flames of the hotel’s gas heaters leaping on either side of her, dressed all in black save for her little red hat, correctly guessing who I’m named after, she certainly seems to have a touch of magic about her. How did she know about the Hemingway connection?
“Because I’m deep into Martha Gellhorn,” she says, launching into a long discussion about the celebrated war correspondent and Hemingway’s third wife. Atwood isn’t writing a book about Gellhorn (yet), but she found a letter from her to the father of her late partner, Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019, and is now a Gellhornologist. After six or so minutes, I wonder if we’ll ever talk about anything else, but Atwood has a regal quality that makes interruption unthinkable. It does not, as I later learn, render argument impossible.
I don’t like to favouritise my books. The others would be out to get you: ‘How could you? I spent all this time with you!’
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico
Continue reading...Gallery at site of uprising against colonial rule accuses US museum of stonewalling request for artefact
A statue depicting the angry spirit of a Belgian officer beheaded during an uprising in Congo in 1931 is at the centre of a tug of war between a US museum and a Congolese gallery at the site of the rebellion.
The statue of Maximilien Balot, a colonial administrator, has travelled to Europe but the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is accused of stonewalling requests for a loan to the White Cube gallery in Lusanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Continue reading...Exclusive: Investigation uncovers evidence of contaminated air and water from one of Indonesia’s largest nickel mines
A Guardian investigation into nickel mining and the electric vehicle industry has found evidence that a source of drinking water close to one of Indonesia’s largest nickel mines is contaminated with unsafe levels of hexavalent chromium (Cr6), the cancer-causing chemical more widely known for its role in the Erin Brockovich story and film.
The investigation also found evidence suggesting elevated levels of lung infections among people living close to the mine.
Continue reading...As the new plan is set to be announced, here’s what might change, from testing to shielding
As Britain emerges from the Omicron wave, ministers are thrashing out a “living safely with Covid” plan for England expected to be announced next week. The strategy should see freedoms expanded back towards pre-pandemic norms in an attempt to readjust people’s attitudes towards coronavirus.
The decisions taken this weekend in Whitehall will have major repercussions for public health across the country. While vaccines have drastically blunted Covid hospitalisations and deaths, and restrictions came with significant downsides, lifting further measures is unlikely to come without a cost – particularly for those in vulnerable groups.
Continue reading...At least 21 vehicles towed as police start breaking up protest camp that has paralysed Canada’s capital for several weeks
Police in Ottawa have begun arresting protesters and towing away vehicles in an effort to break up the so-called “freedom convoy” that has paralysed Canada’s capital for weeks and prompted the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to declare a national emergency
By Friday evening, at least 100 people had been arrested, mostly on mischief charges, and at least 21 vehicles had been towed, including all of those blocking one of the city’s major streets, as police exercised emergency powers that Trudeau invoked earlier this week.
Continue reading...Analysis: warnings of Russian invasion issued in bid to shape the narrative and win information war with Kremlin
British intelligence, so used to operating in the shadows, has been thrust into the spotlight during the Ukraine crisis, cited by Boris Johnson on Wednesday to warn that Russian troop numbers were still increasing or by the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, last month to warn of a possible coup in Kyiv.
As the crisis has intensified, the warnings have, if anything, become even less subtle. An extraordinary video released on Thursday by the Ministry of Defence, billed in capital letters as an “intelligence update”, included a Dad’s Army-style map showing a possible Russian invasion plan and other assessments aimed at the general public.
Continue reading...Analysis: Just as Russian armour and helicopters are edging up the border, Russian messaging is also advancing to the brink
The omens of impending war we were warned about now seem to be lining up like the horsemen of the apocalypse.
The field hospitals have been set near the border, blood banks have reportedly been brought in. On the information war front, a dossier of alleged Ukraine war crimes circulated at the UN security council, and a video popped up purporting to show an attempted Ukrainian attack on chlorine tanks in the Donbas.
Continue reading...The ex-president has been ordered to testify in a New York fraud case. Will he invoke his constitutional right to remain silent?
Donald Trump and his two eldest children have been ordered by a New York judge to appear for a deposition within 21 days, as part of an investigation into the Trump family finances. The development presents the former US president with a dilemma: should he invoke his right to silence by pleading the fifth?
Continue reading...Pitt says Jolie broke their agreement not to sell their interests in Château Miraval without the other’s consent
Brad Pitt has sued his ex-wife Angelina Jolie for selling her stake in a French winery they had bought together – and where they got married – to a Russian businessman.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Thursday, Pitt said Jolie had broken their agreement not to sell their interests in Château Miraval without the other’s consent by selling her stake to a unit of Stoli Group, a spirits maker controlled by oligarch Yuri Shefler.
Continue reading...Growing evidence shows Gulf state’s friends and enemies are being targeted by NSO Group software
Mohammed al-Tajer was caught off guard when his iPhone pinged last November with a warning that said his phone had been targeted by a nation state.
The 55-year-old lawyer from Bahrain had been known among dissidents for his “fearless” defence of opposition leaders and protesters after the 2011 pro-democracy uprising in the tiny Gulf state, when a series of demonstrations and protests were violently suppressed by authorities with the help of Saudi forces.
Continue reading...Legal hearing challenges Home Office decision to prevent duke from paying for police protection when visiting
Prince Harry “does not feel safe” when he is visiting the UK, a place that “is, and always will be, his home”, his legal team have told the high court.
His desire to return to see family and friends was emphasised on the first day of a legal hearing related to his claim over the Home Office’s decision not to allow him to pay for police protection for himself and his family while in the UK.
Continue reading...Flor Bressers, on Belgian and Europol most-wanted lists, has been on the run since 2020
One of Europe’s most-wanted drug lords, a Belgian with a master’s degree in criminology, has been arrested in Switzerland after two years on the run.
Flor Bressers, 35, nicknamed “the finger cutter”, has been sought since 2020 when he was given a four-year jail sentence for kidnapping, slashing with a razor and beating a Dutch florist who failed to smuggle drugs past UK customs.
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