Sara Trost, from Southend, Essex, fatally wounded as she waited to show property in Coral Springs
A British woman who worked as an estate agent in Florida has been shot dead while preparing to show a property, allegedly by an evicted tenant.
Sara Trost, 40, from Southend, Essex, was shot on Thursday while sitting in her Jeep outside a house in Coral Springs, 40 miles north of Miami, at about 12.33pm.
Continue reading...Human rights group says burnt bodies of dozens killed by the military found near Hpruso town
More than 30 people, including children, have been killed and their bodies burned in Myanmar’s conflict-torn Kayah state, according to a local resident, media reports and a local human rights group.
The Karen Human Rights Group said it found the bodies of internally displaced people killed by the military that rules Myanmar near the village of Moso, Hpruso town, on Saturday.
Continue reading...In Peru’s remote villages, farmers have used diverse crops to survive unpredictable weather for millennia. Now they are using this knowledge to adapt to the climate crisis
In a pastoral scene that has changed little in centuries, farmers wearing red woollen ponchos gather on a December morning in a semicircle to drink chicha, made from fermented maize, and mutter an invocation to Pachamama – Mother Earth – before sprinkling the dregs on the Andean soil.
Singing in Quechua, the language spread along the vast length of the Andes by the Incas, they hill the soil around plants in the numerous small plots terraced into a patchwork up and down the Peruvian mountainside.
Continue reading...Three-week operation by troops from Niger and Nigeria targeted area that has become a bolthole for Boko Haram and Isis-linked militants
Six soldiers and at least 22 jihadists have died in fighting in the Lake Chad region of central AfricA, a joint force deployed to the area said on Friday.
The force described the operation, conducted by troops from Niger and Nigeria backed by fighter planes, as a “success” and said it had benefited from “decisive support by American partners”.
Continue reading...Moon Jae-in, her successor, has freed Park from 22-year sentence three months ahead of presidential election
South Korea’s disgraced former president Park Geun-hye has been pardoned by her successor, Moon Jae-in, in a special amnesty that could influence voters in a presidential election that is just three months away.
Park has been serving a 22-year sentence following her impeachment in 2017 and conviction for corruption and abuse of power, after a scandal that exposed webs of double-dealing between political leaders and conglomerates.
Continue reading...People still missing despite major rescue effort as smugglers switch to more perilous route from Turkey
At least 16 people have died after a migrant boat capsized in the Aegean Sea late Friday, bringing to at least 30 the combined death toll from three accidents in as many days involving migrant boats in Greek waters.
The sinkings came as smugglers increasingly favour a perilous route from Turkey to Italy, which avoids Greece’s heavily patrolled eastern Aegean islands that for years were at the forefront of the country’s migration crisis.
Continue reading...Passengers returning home for festive season face disruption as Omicron leaves airlines short-staffed
Passengers travelling home for Christmas have been hit with disruption worldwide after airline companies cancelled more than 3,000 flights on Friday, according to a flight tracking website.
The surge of Christmas Eve cancellations came as the rapidly spreading Omicron coronavirus variant meant carriers were unable to staff their flights.
Continue reading...Four wolves were shot dead by park workers and five anaesthetised by officials at scene
Authorities in the south of France have temporarily shut down a zoo after a pack of nine wolves escaped from an enclosure during visiting hours, officials have said.
No humans were injured in the incident last weekend at the Trois Vallées zoo in Montredon-Labessonnié in the south-west Tarn region but four of the wolves were shot dead by park workers and five were anaesthetised by local officials on the scene, Fabien Chollet, a local official, told AFP on Friday.
Continue reading...Jarosław Kaczyński’s remarks in far-right newspaper are latest episode in Poland’s lengthy standoff with EU
The head of Poland’s ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński, has said Germany is trying to turn the EU into a federal “German fourth reich”.
Speaking to the far-right Polish newspaper GPC, the head of the Law and Justice party (PiS) said some countries “are not enthusiastic at the prospect of a German fourth reich being built on the basis of the EU”.
Continue reading...From a Somali love story to a deep dive into Congolese rumba, Guardian writers pick their favourite recent world cinema releases
The Great Indian Kitchen
Continue reading...At least 39 people have been killed and 70 injured after a fire ripped through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh.
The blaze began in the engine room of the ferry in the early hours of Friday morning, officials said, but the cause was not immediately clear. It took 15 fire engines two hours to get it under control.
People were forced to jump from the vessel, which was carrying about 800 passengers, into the freezing river water to escape
Continue reading...ONS figures are highest on record so far; Christmas for many in disarray as US and Australian airlines say flight crews hit by Covid
Here’s a story that echoes the cancellation of flights happening over the US.
Thousands of Australians have had their domestic flights cancelled in the hours leading up to Christmas, as frontline staff were ordered to test and isolate amid a rise in Covid cases.
Continue reading...Grant Bailey was working as security consultant in Kabul where he liaised with US state department
A British man is missing in Afghanistan after a report he has been detained by the Taliban. Grant Bailey was arrested in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where he has been working as a security consultant.
The arrest came during a Taliban security clampdown, according to the Daily Mirror.
Continue reading...Disciplinary body says people to be held accountable for failing in efforts to prevent and control outbreak
Officials in the north-western Chinese city of Xian are facing punishment for “not doing a good job” after a Covid-19 outbreak led to the lockdown of its 13 million residents.
All domestic flights out of Xian and most trains from the city scheduled for Friday were cancelled. Officials say the outbreak has been traced to the arrival of a plane from Pakistan.
Continue reading...Moscow ruling is first revenue-based fine of its kind in Russia and comes amid fears of internet crackdown
A Moscow court has said it is fining Alphabet’s Google 7.2bn roubles (£73m) for what it says is a repeated failure to delete content Russia deems illegal, the first revenue-based fine of its kind in Russia.
Moscow has increased pressure on big tech this year in a campaign that critics characterise as an attempt by Russian authorities to exert tighter control over the internet, something they say threatens individual and corporate freedom.
Continue reading...Passengers jumped off vessel carrying 800 passengers and tried to swim ashore, officials say
A massive fire has swept through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh, leaving at least 39 people dead and 70 injured, officials have said.
Many passengers leaped from the vessel into cold waters to escape the fire. It took 15 fire engines two hours to control the blaze and another eight to cool down the vessel, according to Kamal Uddin Bhuiyan, the fire officer who led the rescue operation.
Continue reading...Experts call for public health measures beyond vaccines as health workers describe a ‘war zone’
As the highly transmissible Omicron variant began to surge across Colorado this month, Governor Jared Polis adopted a laissez-faire tone. Asked in a radio interview about the possibility of reinstating a statewide mask mandate, he replied that, with Covid vaccines now widely available, getting sick was the “own darn fault” of the unvaccinated.
But health workers at hospitals in parts of Colorado that have been overwhelmed by coronavirus patients in recent weeks say they’re bracing for even worse.
Continue reading...Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala calls for changes to ensure developing nations are resilient to affects of extreme weather
Removing trade barriers around the world would help to tackle the climate crisis, enable a “just transition” away from fossil fuels and make developing countries more resilient to the impacts of global heating, the head of the World Trade Organization has said.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who took over as director general of the global watchdog last March, said: “Trade is part of the solution, not part of the problem … We need a global effort to climate-proof the supply chains and infrastructure of the most vulnerable economies or risk undoing hard-won economic progress and development.”
Continue reading...Founder Aryan Pasha wants La Beauté & Style to be an inclusive and comfortable space, as well as tackle prejudice and provide employment
The beauty treatments listed at the new La Beauté & Style salon are much the same as those offered by the dozen or so other parlours that dot the traffic-heavy Dilshad Extension area of Ghaziabad, 17 miles (28km) east of Delhi. But that is where the similarity ends.
The wall behind the reception desk is painted in rainbow colours; a mural of a trans man with flowing multicoloured locks decorates another wall; a woman wearing a sari is having her eyebrows plucked next to a trans man who is telling a stylist how he would like his hair cut.
Continue reading...Band’s management says singer self-isolating at home and is not showing any symptoms
Suga, songwriter and rapper for the K-pop sensation BTS, has tested positive for the coronavirus after returning from concerts in the US, the group’s management has said.
The 24-year-old, whose real name is Min Yoon-gi, was confirmed to have contracted the virus on Friday during his self quarantine after returning home to South Korea on Thursday, according to Big Hit Music.
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