Lawsuits brought by some of those injured, including 23-year-old Texas resident Kristian Paredes
The rappers Travis Scott and Drake have been sued for having “incited mayhem” after eight people were killed and dozens injured in a crush during a Texas concert, a law firm has confirmed.
Thomas J Henry Law tweeted a story published by the Daily Mail on the lawsuit, confirming on Sunday that it had filed “one of the first lawsuits in Travis Scott Astroworld festival tragedy”.
Continue reading...Lack of doses and a reluctant public make government programme unfeasible, say health experts, with malaria and conflict posing greater risk to life
It will be “impossible” for Nigeria to meet its target of vaccinating 40% of its population by the end of the year because Covid is not being taken seriously, health experts have warned.
Fewer than 1.5% of the country’s 206 million population has been fully vaccinated. But with more people killed in conflict last year and substantially more recorded deaths from malaria than Covid in Nigeria, experts believe it is further down the list of concerns for many in the country.
Continue reading...Perth police have called off search for Paul Millachip, 57, saying it is apparent that attack was fatal
The wife of a man who is believed to have been killed by sharks off Australia’s west coast has paid tribute to a “wonderful father” .
Paul Millachip, 57, who is understood to have been from the UK, was last seen in the water on Saturday by two teenagers who witnessed what they believed was a shark attack off Port Beach in North Fremantle, Perth.
Continue reading...Sergei Savelyev, now seeking asylum in France, spent years secretly storing videos of rape and torture
The videos from the Russian prison hospital are almost too horrific to describe. In the worst, the victims are tied down while other inmates rape or penetrate them with metal objects, the screams and abuse recorded in bodycam footage that was later used as blackmail.
Sergey Savelyev says he spent two of his years as an inmate secretly copying hundreds of videos of rape and other abuse, taking them from an internal network in a prison hospital that activists call one of the country’s most notorious torture chambers.
Continue reading...Seen by their guardians as sacred, Ethiopia’s church forests are protected and cared for by their priests and their communities. Photographer Kieran Dodds has brought together his images of these oases and the story of the country’s spiritually driven conservation movement in a new book, The Church Forests of Ethiopia
South of the Sahara, and just north of the Great Rift Valley in landlocked Ethiopia, the Blue Nile flows from Lake Tana, the largest lake in the country. Radiating out from the sacred source is a scattering of forest islands, strewn across the dry highlands like a handful of emeralds. At the heart of each circle of forest, hunkered down under the ancient canopy and wrapped in lush vegetation, are saucer-shaped churches – otherworldly structures that almost seem to emit a life force. And in a sense they do.
Ethiopia is one of the fastest expanding economies in the world today and the second most populous country in Africa. The vast majority of people live in rural areas, where the expansion of settlements and agriculture is slowly thinning the forest edge by cattle and plough.
Continue reading...Constant change in the climate policies of Australia and New Zealand has been a huge disappointment to Pacific island nations
When I came into office as president of Kiribati in 2003, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its third assessment report and, like my predecessors, I believed the report’s projected rise in sea levels posed a real threat to the survival for those of us on the frontline. Accordingly, in my first address at the UN General Assembly in 2004 I drew attention to the dangers posed by climate change, especially to small island nations like Kiribati and other Pacific island countries.
The fact that no other leader made any reference to it in their statement worried me and I wondered whether I might be making a fool of myself, especially when the focus of international attention at the time was on more real and present threats like terrorism. Thankfully by the next assembly, in 2005, other Pacific island leaders had joined the call for action. This has gathered great momentum in the years since.
Continue reading...Officials see strike on premier’s home as assassination attempt by Iran-backed groups trying to overturn election result
Senior figures in Iraq believe a brazen drone attack on the home of Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, marks an unprecedented escalation between the country’s leaders and Iran-backed militant groups attempting to overturn last month’s election.
The overnight attack is seen by Iraqi officials as an assassination attempt, and the first of its kind against a prime minister since the US-led invasion to remove Saddam Hussein nearly 19 years ago.
Continue reading...A year after fighting began, the war is intensifying. How many more civilians will pay?
That wars are easy to begin and hard to end is a commonplace, but one which ambitious leaders still forget. Within weeks of launching his assault on the region of Tigray last November – saying its authorities had attacked a military camp – the Ethiopian prime minister announced that the operation had been completed. In fact, one year on, the conflict continues to escalate. Thousands of Ethiopians have died and millions have been forced from their homes. Atrocities have been committed by all parties, including massacres of civilians, extensive sexual violence and the use of food as a weapon. Last week, the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, declared a state of emergency as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) suggested its soldiers might advance towards the capital. The Nobel peace prize laureate urged ordinary citizens to take up weapons and told them that “dying for Ethiopia is a duty [for] all of us”. A country already in dire straits is on the brink of catastrophe, Amnesty International warned on Friday.
Bolstered by Eritrean troops, federal forces briefly captured Tigray’s capital, but were forced out this summer. Though Mr Abiy has sought to buy more weapons and enlist more recruits, Tigrayan forces have broken through the blockade of their region and seized towns to the south, towards Addis Ababa. They could also seek to take the Djibouti corridor, the main trade artery, allowing them to reroute aid to Tigray, where desperate food shortages persist – and potentially to hit supplies to the capital. On Friday, eight anti-government factions vowed to ally with the TPLF – though the most significant element, the Oromo Liberation Army, already fights alongside it.
Continue reading...Simon Coveney accuses British government of ‘deliberately forcing breakdown’ in negotiations over Northern Ireland
The prospect of a trade war between the UK and the EU has edged closer, with Ireland giving the clearest hint yet that Brussels plans to suspend the entire trade deal struck last December if the British government suspends the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol.
The Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, accused the UK of “deliberately forcing a breakdown” in negotiations over Northern Ireland, adding that there was still time to step back from the brink.
Continue reading...Exclusive: poll of 10 countries including US, UK, France and Germany finds people prioritising measures that are already habits
Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle changes, an international survey has found.
“The widespread awareness of the importance of the climate crisis illustrated in this study has yet to be coupled with a proportionate willingness to act,” the survey of 10 countries including the US, UK, France and Germany, observed.
Continue reading...Former Sandinista rebel leader, who has governed since 2007, seeks unprecedented fourth term
Nicaragua’s authoritarian leaders, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, are poised to extend their rule over the crisis-hit Central America country with an election that opponents and much of the international community have denounced as a charade.
Ortega, the Sandinista rebel who led Nicaragua during the 1980s and has governed continuously since 2007, will seek an unprecedented fourth consecutive term in Sunday’s contest, which follows a ruthless six-month political crackdown on rivals.
Continue reading...Ahead of a UK exhibition of her photo series Journey in the Death Boat, Güliz Vural describes travelling with Syrians being smuggled to Greece from Turkey
Standing on a Turkish beach ready to join a group of Syrian refugees on an inflatable boat bound for Greece, the photojournalist Güliz Vural’s biggest fear was that the people traffickers organising the illegal crossing would not let her onboard.
If she had known that within a few hours of leaving Turkey she would be under arrest, accused of people trafficking herself, she would have thought twice about the journey.
The migrants carry the inflatable boat they will travel in down to the beach. They had to leave all their possessions as they crammed themselves in. Nearly 50 Syrians made the crossing in a boat designed to carry 12 people, adding to the anxiety felt by the children in particular.
Continue reading...Row deepens as Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh dismisses president’s decision to suspend Najla El-Mangoush
Libya’s chronic political instability has been exposed, with the country’s foreign minister, Najla El-Mangoush, suspended from office and banned from leaving the country by the president, only for the disciplinary action to be rejected by the prime minister.
The power struggle comes days before a major conference in Paris at which world powers hope to speed up the departure of foreign mercenaries and troops from Libya ahead of planned December presidential and parliamentary elections, which are hanging in the balance.
Continue reading...Sage advisor says ‘Plan B’ Covid measures still under consideration in UK; Germany reports 23,543 new cases reported in past 24 hours
Here an update on the global pandemic situation from AFP:
On Saturday, 6,306 new deaths and 411,296 new cases were recorded worldwide.
Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Russia with 1,179 new deaths, followed by India with 506 and Ukraine with 449.
Last week, Britain became the first country in the world to approve the potentially game-changing Covid-19 antiviral pill, jointly developed by US-based Merck & Co Inc and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.
The government said in October it had secured 480,000 courses of the Merck drug, as well as 250,000 courses of an antiviral pill developed by Pfizer Inc.
After Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, the architect of the proposed billionaires tax that prompted the move dismissed the tweet as a stunt.
“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” said Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and chair of the Senate finance committee. “It’s time for the billionaires income tax.”
Continue reading...Campaign of civil disobedience hampered by interruptions to internet and phone services
Sudanese pro-democracy groups have launched two days of civil disobedience and strikes in protest at last month’s military coup, though participation appeared to be limited by continuing interruptions to internet and phone connections.
Local “resistance committees” and the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which led demonstrations in the uprising that toppled the then president, Omar al-Bashir, in April 2019, are organising a campaign of protests to try to reverse the military takeover.
Continue reading...Two investigations launched after eight people killed at event in Houston on Friday night
Organisers of what turned out to be one of the deadliest live music events in US history are facing mounting questions about why the rapper Travis Scott continued performing when first responders were already dealing with a mass casualty event.
Eight people ranging in age from 14 to 27 were killed and dozens were injured at the Astroworld festival in Houston on Friday night, when fans were crushed against the stage.
Continue reading...On 1 November, news organisations reported the global Covid-19 death toll had exceeded 5 million. But, as these articles highlight, this figure is likely to be a massive underestimate.
Johns Hopkins University collates official daily statistics on Covid deaths, but there is no unified global definition: Belgium’s high reported death rate partly reflects its including all probable Covid deaths in all settings, while Hungary only publishes hospital deaths with a positive test. Turkmenistan and North Korea have, apparently, not experienced a single Covid death.
Continue reading...Promised an income, those affected by $20bn oil project are losing their land and resources instead
A bumpy, mud-spattered road leads deep into Kakumiro district in western Uganda, where the longest heated oil pipeline in the world will pass through its homes, farms and wetlands.
The villagers in the Kijungu settlements welcomed the project when the route was announced in 2017, hoping that the government and companies involved would buy their land and change their lives for good. Their optimism has since given way to frustration.
Continue reading...Misleading images shared on social media after mosques vandalised and homes ransacked in Tripura state
Police in India are seeking the owners of about 100 social media accounts accused of sharing “fake news” after mob attacks on mosques in the north-east of the country.
Last month’s violence in Tripura state erupted on the sidelines of a rally for hundreds of followers of a rightwing Hindu nationalist group. The incident appeared to be a revenge attack prompted by the killing of several Hindu worshippers across the border in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
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