Building an arts centre in Uganda, in a pandemic, was never going to be easy but it’s crucial to our post-Covid future
I’ve been raising funds for a building project: not a hospital, not a school, but an arts centre.
It’s not an easy sell at the best of times but add in a pandemic and the fact that I’m in Africa and, according to the current rules of financial engagement, art is the verylowest of priorities.
Continue reading...The city state was recently crowned the best place to be in the pandemic, and reported an average of seven daily cases last week. But its latest public health video - an infectious pop song starring comedian Gurmit Singh as his much-loved character Phua Chu Kang, an eccentric contractor - warns the public not to be complacent.
Continue reading...Police have charged a man for the killing of Polikalepo Kefu, a lifelong advocate for the queer community across the Pacific
Police in Tonga are investigating the death of one of the country’s leading LGBTQI+ activists after his body was found on a beach near his home in Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island.
A 27-year-old man has been charged with the murder of Polikalepo Kefu, 41. Kefu, who was affectionately known as “Poli”, was the president of Tonga Leitis Association, an organisation dedicated to the country’s LGBTQ+ communities, providing support services, advocacy, and education on HIV-Aids.
Continue reading...René-Claude and Cyril, the two postmen serving Mafate, French Réunion, walk 90 miles of paths to deliver mail to residents on routes that can last days
The Cirque de Mafate, one of three calderas on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, along with Cilaos and Salazie, is a valley more than 1,000 metres deep surrounded by huge cliffs and steep peaks which, for nearly two centuries, have been home to the descendants of the “maroons”, slaves who fled sugar cane plantations.
The community of 700 Mafatais lives here, almost self-sufficiently, amid palm, banana and filao trees. But there are only two ways to get to the cirque: by foot or by helicopter.
Continue reading...Our South Asia correspondent reflects on a catastrophe that is now affecting the lives of almost everyone in the country
You recently lost a close colleague, Kakoli Bhattacharya, to Covid-19. Can you tell us about her and the important work that she did?
Kakoli was the Guardian’s news assistant over here and had worked for us since 2009. She could find any number or contact I needed and smoothed over any and all of the bureaucratic challenges that working in India can present. She made reporting here a huge joy, when it could be a huge challenge, and she was hugely well thought of by journalists for other organisations too. More than that, though, she was the person who welcomed me to Delhi. She knew the region inside out. She was incredibly warm and was someone I could always call on. The Guardian’s India coverage won’t be the same without her.
Related: ‘Warm, kind, wise and brilliant’: Guardian writers remember Kakoli Bhattacharya
Continue reading...A series of federal cases over the pharmaceutical industry’s push to sell narcotic painkillers which created the worst drug epidemic in US history
The trial of the three biggest US drug distributors for illegally flooding West Virginia with hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills, and driving the highest overdose rate in the country, is due to open on Monday.
Related: Empire of Pain review: the Sacklers, opioids and the sickening of America
Continue reading...From Key West’s high-summer Hemingway Days, in which bearded hopefuls vie for the title of best Papa lookalike, to the annual hunt for the elusive (and imaginary) skunk ape, Florida is renowned for its calendar of curiosities.
Related: Toilet-invading iguanas among invasive species now banned in Florida
Continue reading...Her words might have sounded tough to a domestic audience but in fact they’ll go down fine in China
Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government is achieving something no other western country has done – staying on side with China. Her latest speech on relations with China once again shows the west how deft diplomacy is done – with a carefully choreographed message that reiterates New Zealand is not joining the western aggression against the country’s biggest trading partner, while at the same time voicing some necessary hard words about human rights abuses.
The prime minister gave a highly anticipated keynote speech at the China Business Summit in Auckland on Monday, which clarified her government’s orientation to China following a controversial speech two weeks ago by the foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta. Mahuta had said that New Zealand won’t simply follow the Five Eyes security alliance’s condemnation of China. Today, Ardern essentially endorsed Mahuta’s distancing from western allies, arguing her government would make its own decisions on how to communicate its concerns about human rights abuses. Then speaking in a Q and A session she used a sporting analogy, saying “I’m often asked which lane are we swimming in. We swim in New Zealand’s lane.” This is a very clear rebuff to the increasing pressure from western allies for her government to take a harder line.
Continue reading...Muhoozi Kainerugaba leads Special Forces Command, an elite military unit blamed for widespread abuses
Lawyers acting for the victims of a wave of abductions and torture by security forces in Uganda have named senior military commanders, including the president’s son, in a complaint to the international criminal court.
Prosecutors at the ICC are already reviewing an earlier submission from the opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, the former reggae singer known as Bobi Wine, describing widespread human rights abuses before presidential polls held in January.
Continue reading...PM Jacinda Ardern had previously said workers who declined to be vaccinated would be moved to other roles
New Zealand’s customs agency has fired nine border workers who refused to get the Covid-19 vaccine. The country has required all frontline border workers to be vaccinated by the end of April.
In February, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the government would not be making the vaccine compulsory for frontline staff, and that those who declined the vaccine would be moved into backroom roles.
Continue reading...Far-right group was deemed a terrorist entity in Canada in February with authorities describing group as ‘serious and growing’ threat
Proud Boys Canada, a far-right group that Ottawa named as a terrorist entity earlier this year, has dissolved itself, saying it has done nothing wrong, according to a statement by the organisation.
In February, Canada said the group posed an active security threat and played a “pivotal role” in the deadly attack on the US Capitol in January by pro-Trump rioters. US authorities have charged several members of the Proud Boys in connection with the 6 January assault.
Continue reading...Prime minister has been coming under pressure from allies to take a tougher approach towards country’s largest trading partner
New Zealand’s differences with China are becoming “harder to reconcile,” the prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said, as she called on China “to act in the world in ways that are consistent with its responsibilities as a growing power”.
Ardern’s comments were made as New Zealand’s government comes under increasing pressure, both internally and from international allies, to take a firmer stance on concerns over human rights abuses of Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang province. Last week, the Act party presented a motion for New Zealand’s parliament to debate whether the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang constitutes genocide – a motion that Labour will discuss this week.
Continue reading...US singer, 19, made claim in Vogue interview when discussing new single about abusive relationship
Billie Eilish has spoken about the prevalence of sexual exploitation of minors in an interview, saying “it’s everywhere”.
Speaking about her new single, Your Power, which addresses an abusive relationship between a minor and an older person, the 19-year-old singer told Vogue that all her peers had experienced some sort of sexual impropriety.
Continue reading...Bergman, 24, had been in Israel to train as a rabbi before dying at Mount Meron
A British man who died in a crowd crush at a Jewish festival in Israel has been named as Moshe Bergman.
The 24-year-old from Salford, Manchester, had been in the country to train to be a rabbi in Jerusalem. He had been living in the city for two years and had married 18 months ago.
Continue reading...Latest updates: foreign secretary urges patience amid calls for faster loosening of restrictions; deaths in India jump by 3,689 on Sunday
Stable Covid-19 infection numbers in Germany are fueling hopes that intensive care units will not be overwhelmed, the head of the German hospital federation (DKG) told the tabloid newspaper Bild.
DKG President Gerald Gass was quoted as saying:
“The majority of hospitals in Germany are feeling a first, slight easing.
We are looking at about two weeks of relatively constant numbers in terms of new infections, which gives us confidence that we don’t have to be concerned about an exponential rise in patients in need of intensive care.”
The UK records 14 deaths and 1,671 new cases of Covid-19. The case numbers are down by -10.2% and deaths down by -31.2% since the previous 7 days, Public Health England reports.
So far, 34.51m people have received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary says it is ‘difficult to argue against’ suggestion the dual national is being held state hostage
Iran’s treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe amounts to torture, the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said, as the Foreign Office downplayed an Iranian state TV report saying Britain would pay a £400m debt to secure her release.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said the family had “heard nothing” about a deal to secure her release, as hopes were raised by the suggestion that the long-running dispute had been resolved.
Continue reading...Only Republican to twice vote to impeach Trump gets hostile reception as censure motion narrowly fails
Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday – and called a “traitor” and a “communist” as he tried to speak.
Related: Bush: ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ideals show pro-Trump Republicans ‘want to be extinct’
Continue reading...After more than two decades of distinguished work in the US theatre as an actor, director and teacher, and appearances in a dozen or so films, Olympia Dukakis, who has died aged 89, became hugely famous overnight by winning the best supporting actress Oscar in 1988 for her performance as Cher’s mother in the romantic film Moonstruck (1987).
The course of her career suggests that her ambitions never lay in the direction of Hollywood. Her theatrical credits read like the canon of classic and modern plays: she had roles in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Lorca, Pirandello, Brecht, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, on and off Broadway, as well as in various regional theatres across the country. In films, she took on several character roles, making an impression in scores of pictures for more than half a century.
Continue reading...In her early days with the girl band, Pinnock felt invisible and couldn’t understand why. Then the role of race became clear
Leigh-Anne Pinnock has been living the pop star dream ever since she was 19 and stepped on to a stage to audition for The X Factor, singing Rihanna’s Only Girl (In the World). She has now spent almost a decade in one of the UK’s biggest girl groups. But she had a difficult start with Little Mix, and not because she didn’t get on with her bandmates. She felt “invisible”, and would regularly cry in front of her manager. “I just couldn’t seem to find my place, and didn’t know why,” she said in a magazine interview in 2018. “I didn’t feel like I had as many fans as the other girls. It was a strange feeling.” She had, at that point, finally realised what the trouble was. “I know there are girls of colour out there who have felt the same as me,” she said. “We have a massive problem with racism, which is built into our society.”
If she expected the interview to change anything, she was disappointed. “I really did feel as if it fell on closed ears,” she says today, speaking from the Surrey mansion she shares with her footballer fiance, Andre Gray. “It was almost like people just weren’t ready to talk about race then.”
Continue reading...Prime minister defeated in West Bengal as voters send message over handling of coronavirus crisis
India’s prime minister has suffered a rare political defeat in a key state election, amid signs of a voter backlash over his handling of the coronavirus disaster as the country reported a record number of deaths.
Narendra Modi had been expected to make significant gains on Sunday in West Bengal, one of few states where his rightwing Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) does not have a parliamentary majority. Instead, Mamata Banerjee, a powerful regional politician and prominent Modi critic, won a third term as chief minister.
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