At least 119 inmates died in a Guayaquil jail after local gangs’ links with Mexican cartels brought a new level of horror
It was in mid-morning when María Elena Villacís got a WhatsApp message from her brother Darwín, who was jailed in the Litoral penitentiary, a notorious prison in the coastal Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil.
“They’re starting a war in [Wing] 5,” it read. “Call the law, tell them to get into [Wing] 5.”
Continue reading...A project in western Canada lets former military service members put their skills to use tracking bears with wildlife experts and helps both groups overcome mental and physical wounds
On a recent crisp sunny morning, a small group of wildlife guides and British and Canadian military veterans, reached a ridge in the mountains of British Columbia and found themselves within 15 metres of a grizzly bear.
“He knew we were there. He could smell us but he was just doing his thing,” said Joe Humphrey, a former Royal Marine. The bear walked past them and ambled further up the valley.
Continue reading...To make sense of coronavirus data, the Observer asked David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters of the Royal Statistical Society Covid taskforce to write a column. That column has now inspired a book. Here are some of its insights
Genomic sequencing has identified more than 1,000 different seeds of Sars-CoV-2 introduced in early 2020. Instead of one central outbreak, reverberating outwards like an explosion, we now know there were many erupting simultaneously across the country. There were far more imports of Sars-CoV-2 from France, Italy and Spain than from China – viruses can take indirect flights. The peak was early March, after the school half-term, but a popular holiday time for adults. At the Champions League football match at Anfield between Liverpool and Atlético Madrid on 10 March, 49,000 local supporters mixed with 3,000 fans of the opposing team, while schools in Madrid were shut and supporters could not attend matches. To add insult to injury, Liverpool lost 3–2, and 4–2 on aggregate.
Continue reading...Andrej Babiš’s populist ANO party narrowly behind Together three-party grouping in parliamentary poll
Prime minister Andrej Babiš’s centrist party on Saturday narrowly lost the Czech Republic’s parliamentary election, a surprise development that could mean the end of the populist billionaire’s reign in power.
The two-day election to fill 200 seats in the lower house of the parliament took place shortly after details emerged of Babiš’s overseas financial dealings in the Pandora Papers. Babiš, 67, has denied wrongdoing.
Continue reading...EU leaders urged to push back against No 10’s brinkmanship over role of European Court of Justice
Fears that the UK is heading for a trade war with the EU have been fuelled by strong indications from the government that proposals to be unveiled in Brussels on Wednesday over Brexit arrangements do not go far enough.
The Brexit minister, Lord Frost, will use a speech in Portugal on Tuesday to say that scrapping its prohibition on British sausages to resolve the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol do not meet the UK and unionists demands.
Continue reading...Mali president’s office pays tribute to the courage of Gloria Cecilia Narváez as it confirms her release
A Franciscan nun from Colombia kidnapped by jihadists in Mali in 2017 has been freed, Mali’s presidential office said.
The statement on the presidential Twitter account paid tribute to the courage of Gloria Cecilia Narváez, who was held for four years and eight months.
Continue reading...Donald Trump returned to Iowa on Saturday for a campaign-style rally, on the heels of a poll showing strong support in the state which traditionally kicks off presidential elections.
Trump has not announced a second run for the White House.
Continue reading...Man, 37, said to be killed by falling decor in set change during Rimsky-Korsakov opera
A performer at Moscow’s renowned Bolshoi theatre was killed on Saturday in an accident on stage during an opera, the theatre said.
The Bolshoi, one of Russia’s most prestigious theatres, said the incident occurred during a set change in Sadko, an opera by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Continue reading...Coalition partner, the Green party, demanded Kurz go after prosecutors announced investigation
The Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said on Saturday that he plans to step down in an effort to defuse a government crisis triggered by prosecutors’ announcement that he is a target of a corruption investigation.
Kurz, 35, said he has proposed that the foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, be his replacement. Kurz himself plans to become the head of his Austrian People’s party’s parliamentary group.
Continue reading...The prime minister has enjoyed huge support during the pandemic – but the country’s new course may force unpopular trade-offs
This week, New Zealand’s locked-down cities woke to a brave new world of lifted restrictions: state-sanctioned picnics in parks, the prospect of reopening schools, a chance to reunite with friends and family. Infusing the visions of grass-stained blankets and beachside beers, however, is a strong dose of Covid anxiety. Cases continue to circulate in the community, and the country’s long-held commitment to elimination is being been cast off.
As New Zealand steps into the unknown with its Covid approach, so does its prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Having brought the country through the pandemic largely unscathed so far, she was richly rewarded with political popularity and trust. Now the prime minister faces the difficult task of guiding it through a new era of Covid suppression – and it could be the most significant political challenge she has faced yet.
Continue reading...In 1940, thousands of the dictator’s opponents were summarily shot and thrown into mass graves. Now these are being opened
Trowel-heap by trowel-heap, brushstroke by brushstroke, a skull rises from a pillow of ochre earth. Its empty eye sockets stare up at the October sky and its jaw gapes, as if still screaming, gasping for air or remembering what happened on the other side of this bullet-bitten cemetery wall a year after the Spanish civil war had ended.
Between 16 March and 3 May 1940, 26 Republican soldiers, workers, communists and trade unionists were summarily tried and shot dead in the central Spanish city of Guadalajara.
Continue reading...Brazil’s death toll passes 600,000; study finds cases of anxiety and depression increased dramatically in 2020
Russia reported 968 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday, its highest single-day death toll since the start of the pandemic.
There were 29,362 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours, the government coronavirus task force said.
Singapore’s transport minister has said the country will allow quarantine-free entry to vaccinated travellers from Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Canada and the US.
Continue reading...Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, sought to fight his way out of a corner on Friday by releasing an angry letter in which he blamed Democrats for the impasse over the debt ceiling he broke by ending a refusal to co-operate he had said was absolute.
In the letter to Joe Biden, McConnell complained about a speech in which the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, attacked Republicans for their behaviour.
Continue reading...First president after 1979 Islamic revolution clashed with clerics and fled to exile in France a year later
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who became Iran’s first president after the 1979 Islamic revolution before fleeing into exile in France, died on Saturday aged 88.
He died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris following a long illness, his wife and children said on Bani-Sadr’s official website.
Continue reading...When the state fell, Ypi went from party Pioneer to traitor - in this extract from her acclaimed memoir she reveals the trauma of discovering the truth about her family and her country
• Read an interview with Lea Ypi
Every year on 1 May, portraits of Stalin were carried by the workers through the streets of Tirana to celebrate socialism and the advance towards communism. On Workers’ Day, TV programmes started earlier: you could follow the parade, then watch a puppet show, then a children’s film, then head out for a walk wearing new clothes, buy ice-cream and, finally, have a picture taken by the only photographer in town, who usually stood by the fountain near the Palace of Culture.
The first of May 1990, the last May Day we ever celebrated, was the happiest. Or perhaps it just seems that way. Objectively, it could not have been the happiest. The queues for basic necessities were getting longer and the shelves in the shops looked increasingly empty. But I did not mind. Now that I was growing up I was no longer fussy about eating cheap feta cheese or old jam rather than honey. “First comes morality, then comes food,” my grandmother cheerfully said, and I had learned to agree.
Continue reading...A sandstorm made by powerful winds whipping up dust from the ground has engulfed Barretos and surrounding towns north of the city of São Paulo. The storms were triggered by the worst drought to hit Brazil in nine decades, which depleted hydroelectric reservoirs, forcing the grid operator to fire up more expensive thermoelectric plants and the government to implement a 'water scarcity' power rate.
Continue reading...The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, said on Saturday that reunification with Taiwan must happen and that it would happen peacefully, despite a week of tensions. Xi spoke at an official celebration in Beijing's Great Hall of the People that focused largely on the ruling Communist party continuing to lead China as the country rises in power and influence
Continue reading...Press groups and rights activists hail peace prize won by vocal critic of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte
Veteran Philippine journalist Maria Ressa has said her Nobel peace prize was for “all journalists around the world” as she vowed to continue her battle for press freedom.
Ressa, co-founder of news website Rappler, and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov were awarded the prize on Friday for their efforts to “safeguard freedom of expression”.
Continue reading...Thin characterisation and a superficial critique of wealth inequality post-apartheid keep Uga Carlini’s fiction in first gear
The colourful opening of Uga Carlini’s Angeliena suggests a giddy ride awaits: the camera follows a suitcase plastered with travel stickers moving along a conveyor belt at an airport. But such vibrant detail only points up the film’s lack of emotional substance. A parking attendant for a posh hospital in South Africa, Angeliena (Euodia Samson) dreams of travelling the world, she adorns her little shack with tourist posters from faraway lands. At work, Angeliena brings a glow to the austere parking lot, pinning red roses that she grows herself to the windscreen wipers of fancy SUVs.
Such sweet-natured actions are presumably intended to endear Angeliena to us, yet reduce her to a unidimensional worker with a heart of gold. The thinness of the characterisation is made more pronounced by the cartoonishly evil Dr Mitchell (Colin Moss), the hospital owner and Angeliena’s antagonist, a spewer of Trumpian one-liners. Ludicrously, the film takes a tone-deaf turn when Angeliena is revealed to be suffering from an unnamed muscular atrophy that motivates her to finally embark on her world trip. Out of the blue, she develops facial tics. The only affecting sequences are the few-and-far-between gatherings between Angeliena and her eccentric female friends.
Continue reading...Focus of talks in Qatar will be allowing foreigners and at-risk Afghans to leave Afghanistan, says US official
US officials will meet senior Taliban figures this weekend for talks aimed at easing the evacuation of foreign citizens and at-risk Afghans from Afghanistan, a US official has said.
The focus of talks on Saturday and Sunday in Doha, Qatar, would be holding Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders to commitments that they would allow Americans and other foreign nationals to leave, along with Afghans who once worked for the US military or government and other Afghan allies, the official said.
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