Friend of 15-month-old’s family reveals details of Channel smuggling trade that led to their deaths
The authorities in Norway did not have much to go on when they found the body on the shore on New Year’s Day. But the baby boy was wearing a jacket – navy blue with white stitching.
And that helped them solve the mystery of what had happened to 15-month-old Artin Iran Nezhad, who had last been seen weeks before and hundreds of miles away.
Continue reading...ProPublica investigation shows how little US super-rich, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, reportedly paid between 2014 and 2018
The 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk, paid a “true tax rate” of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018, according to an investigation by ProPublica, despite their collective net worth rising by more than $400bn in the same period.
Related: Global economy set for fastest recovery for more than 80 years
Continue reading...Analysis: upholding of genocide conviction for 1995 atrocities is a victorious end to a process few thought would succeed
When Ratko Mladić’s life sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity was confirmed, marking the end of the road for the Bosnian Serb general 10 years after his capture, Munira Subašić was in The Hague courtroom to watch.
In July 1995, Subašić was outside a UN compound, a disused battery factory near Srebrenica, appealing for protection from Dutch peacekeepers along with thousands of other terrified Bosnian Muslims.
Continue reading...Up to 4,500 children under 12 to be enrolled in US, Finland, Poland and Spain; health certificate being rolled out to unlock travel within the bloc
Conservative backbencher Steve Baker has urged the UK government to press ahead with lifting England’s remaining Covid restrictions on 21 June despite a sharp rise in cases.
He claimed that by that date, all over-50s and vulnerable younger adults should have been given the opportunity to receive two doses of Covid vaccine.
These groups represent about 99% of Covid deaths and about 80% of hospitalisations. As of today, according to announcements made by the government, these groups should all have been offered a chance to have had a second dose. It would be helpful for the government to clarify that this has been achieved.
If this brilliant milestone isn’t enough to convince ministers that we need to lift all remaining restrictions – especially social distancing requirements – on 21 June, nothing will ever get us out of this.
Related: Do not delay England’s Covid unlocking, says leading Tory lockdown sceptic
The Dutch government has promised an independent investigation into a supposedly not-for-profit €100m deal to buy facemasks from China last year that ended up making three young entrepreneurs about €20m richer.
The investigative website Follow the Money revealed that Sywert van Lienden, 30, a former civil servant turned TV pundit and activist, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Christian Democrat (CDA) party (part of the ruling coalition), netted €9.2m.
Related: Dutch to investigate business trio’s €100m facemask deal
Continue reading...Slow Covid-19 vaccine progress in low-income countries will widen divisions between rich and poor nations
The global economy is set for the fastest recovery from recession for more than 80 years, but poor nations are at risk of falling further behind wealthy countries amid slow progress with the Covid-19 vaccine, the World Bank has said.
In its half-yearly outlook report, the Washington-based institution said the world economy was forecast to grow at 5.6% this year, in a sharp upgrade from previous estimates it made in January for growth of 4.1%.
Continue reading...The US risks being superseded by China as the prime global power within decades. For Washington, the idea is appalling
Joe Biden crosses the Atlantic this week on a tide of goodwill. After four years of Donald Trump, European leaders are grateful for the mere fact of a US president who believes in democracy and understands diplomacy.
Trump had no concept of historical alliance, strategic partnership or mutual interest. He saw multilateral institutions as conspiracies against US power, which he could not distinguish from his own ego. He heard European talk of a rules-based international order as the contemptible bleating of weakling nations.
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Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has been taking some criticism for her blunt speech in Guatemala to Central American migrants to “do not come” to US, is now getting some backlash from Republicans for an NBC interview she did on this same trip.
Reminder: Joe Biden tasked Harris in March with efforts to stem migration at the US-Mexican border. On her first foreign trip, NBC’s Lester Holt asked if she had any plans to visit the border.
“We have to deal with what's happening at the border.”@VP Kamala Harris spoke exclusively with @LesterHoltNBC on her first trip overseas, how the administration is addressing the immigration crisis, and if she plans to visit the southern border herself. pic.twitter.com/sA4We7peeR
LESTER HOLT: You haven't been to the border.
KAMALA HARRIS: And I haven't been to Europe. pic.twitter.com/Vj6M261Nx3
Vice-President Kamala Harris is in Mexico now, meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
President Lopez Obrador shows Vice President Harris a Diego Rivera mural at the national palace. Asked if he will do more about border enforcement, Lopez Obrador said “We will touch on that subject but always addressing the fundamental root causes” pic.twitter.com/URiJdWaUM9
Continue reading...Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls comments ‘disappointing’ after vice-president says migrants will not find solace at US border
The progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticized Vice-President Kamala Harris for saying undocumented migrants from Guatemala should not come to the US.
On her first foreign trip as vice-president, Harris visited Guatemala on Monday. At a press conference with Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, the former California senator spoke about investigating corruption and human trafficking in Central America and described a future where Guatemalans could find “hope at home”.
Continue reading...Privacy protection is latest effort by the company to cut down tracking of users by advertisers and other third parties
Apple’s new privacy feature designed to obscure a user’s web browsing from internet service providers and advertisers will not be available in China, Saudi Arabia or Belarus, the company has said.
It was one of a number of privacy protections Apple announced at its annual software developer conference on Monday, the latest in a years-long effort by the company to cut down on the tracking of its users by advertisers and other third parties.
Continue reading...Judgment means 78-year-old former Bosnian Serb military chief will spend the rest of his life in prison
Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb commander nicknamed the “butcher of Bosnia”, will spend the rest of his life in prison after a UN court dismissed his final appeal against convictions for genocide and crimes against humanity, in a judgment hailed as “historic” by the White House.
Unlike previous appearances at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the 78-year-old showed little emotion as an hour-long reading of the judgment finally put an end to attempts to quash the charges against him.
Continue reading...Relatives of the four Canadian Muslims killed in what police describe as “a hate attack” have described them as a “model family” and called on the country to stand against hate and Islamophobia.
The victims – three generations of the same family who migrated from Pakistan 14 years ago – died on Sunday after a 20-year-old man drove his pickup truck at them in what the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, described as a “terrorist attack, motivated by hatred”.
Continue reading...Despite ample evidence of plots there was an intelligence breakdown and lack of preparation but report skirts causes of riot
The deadly insurrection at the US Capitol was “planned in plain sight” but intelligence failures left police officers exposed to a violent mob of Trump supporters, a Senate investigation has found.
Related: Trump feared Democrats would replace Biden with Michelle Obama, book claims
Continue reading...A member of the public slaps the French president during a visit in southern France. Footage shows Macron walking up to a group of people in Tain-l'Hermitage, outside the city of Valence. As he begins to interact with the crowd, a man slaps him, reportedly shouting, 'Down with Macronia,' before security staff intervene
Continue reading...Two arrested after man shouted ‘down with Macronism’ before assaulting French president
Emmanuel Macron was slapped in the face by a man during a walkabout in southern France.
The president’s security detail immediately pulled the man to the ground and moved Macron away from the crowd, though the president appeared unhurt and determined to continue meeting the public.
Continue reading...Analysis: Armin Laschet’s campaign to succeed Angela Merkel is copying her strategy of skirting around hard political choices
Angela Merkel’s method of winning elections has earned its own phrase among German political scientists: “asymmetric demobilisation”, the art of running a campaign that skirts around hot-button issues in order to present voters with a choice between personalities rather than policies.
Three and a half months before Germany goes to the polls, Merkel’s aspiring successor Armin Laschet seems to have taken her strategy to heart. With a campaign that has so far failed to tackle the country’s hard choices on carbon emissions, digitisation, eurozone integration and military spending, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its candidate for chancellor may get away with it too.
Continue reading...As the ex-president hints at running once again, his future could lie in the courtroom, not the Oval Office
He’s Teflon Don no more, at least when it comes to court.
Donald Trump, no longer insulated by claims of presidential protections, faces a host of increasingly serious legal problems in some of the US’s most high-profile courts, including both criminal investigation and civil litigation.
Continue reading...Sister punched crocodile in head after it attacked in a lagoon where they had been swimming
A British woman is in a medically induced coma in Mexico after she was attacked by a crocodile in a lagoon where she and her twin sister had been taken by a tour guide.
Melissa and Georgia Laurie, 28, from Berkshire, had been swimming in the lagoon, about 10 miles from Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, on the south-east coast of the country, when Melissa was attacked.
Continue reading...Critics say US president’s realpolitik ignores Sisi regime’s ‘hostage-taking tactics’ against dissidents
“It’s a hostage negotiation and it has been all along,” said Sherif Mansour, describing the arrest of his cousin Reda Abdel-Rahman by Egyptian security forces last August as an attempt to intimidate Mansour into silence.
Abdel-Rahman has been imprisoned without trial for nine months. Mansour, an outspoken human rights advocate in Washington with the Committee to Protect Journalists, has since learned that he and his father are listed on the same charge sheet, all accused of joining a terrorist group and spreading “false news”.
Continue reading...UK considering unilaterally extending grace periods under Northern Ireland protocol
The row between the UK and the EU over checks on sausages and other chilled foods sent from Britain to Northern Ireland has deepened, with the Brexit minister telling Brussels that trade war threats will not wash with voters.
As a major meeting on Wednesday approached, Lord Frost said: “Further threats of legal action and trade retaliation from the EU won’t make life any easier for the shopper in Strabane who can’t buy their favourite product. Nor will it benefit the small business in Ballymena struggling to source produce from their supplier in Birmingham.”
Continue reading...European and Australian police join forces with FBI to seize weapons, drugs and $148m in cash
A global sting in which organised crime gangs were sold encrypted phones that law enforcement officials could monitor has led to more than 800 arrests in 18 countries.
The operation by the FBI and Australian and European police, ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East involved in the narcotics trade.
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