Archaelogists say Sumerian plaque dating from around 2400BC may have been looted
An ancient sculpture is to be returned to Iraq after it was secretly smuggled out of the country and offered for sale in the UK – only to be seized by the Metropolitan police.
The previously unknown Sumerian temple plaque, dating from about 2400BC, is being repatriated with the help of the British Museum, which first tipped off the police after spotting its planned sale in 2019.
Continue reading...Le Monde reports 32% of outbreaks in France found in schools or universities; Victoria ends curfew
Families are counting down the days to moving into new homes in a Hong Kong estate that had been used as a Covid-19 quarantine centre in what had become a lightning rod for discontent, the South China Morning Post reports.
They included L.N. Siu, her husband and daughter, who were overjoyed when they were finally allocated a public housing flat at the Chun Yeung Estate in Hong Kong last December. They had been waiting eight years.
Romanians go to the polls on Sunday to choose mayors and local councillors, but a Covid-19 surge is threatening to hit the first electoral test after years of political turbulence with a high abstention rate.
Nationwide, the east European country of almost 19 million people has 43,000 seats to fill in the single-round election seen as a test ahead of national polls in December.
Continue reading...Israel has banned us from helping Palestinians in need. Next month, we will defend our work in the country’s supreme court
• Naser Haghamed is chief executive of Islamic Relief Worldwide
As chief executive of Islamic Relief, it is my privilege to preside over one of the UK’s leading international aid charities, widely respected for operating effectively in some of the world’s most difficult and dangerous places. For the Ministry of Defense in Israel, however, Islamic Relief is a supporter of terrorism – a charge that we categorically refute and will be appealing against in Israel’s supreme court next month.
The Israeli authorities designated us as a terrorist organisation as long ago as 2014, claiming that we were a front for Hamas. It has taken six long years for us to pursue a legal challenge to this designation. Our case will finally be heard on 12 October.
Continue reading...Mobilisation follows alleged Azerbaijani attack on disputed region Nagorno-Karabakh
Armenia has declared martial law and ordered the total mobilisation of its military after claiming to have destroyed several Azerbaijani aircraft and tanks in clashes over a disputed region on Sunday.
Armenia said Azerbaijan had carried out an air and artillery attack on the disputed region, Nagorno-Karabakh, but Azerbaijan said it had responded to Armenian shelling.
Continue reading...More than 40% of Germans are cutting down on meat, and vegan burgers are a shopping mall staple
Inside a shopping mall in south Berlin, two colleagues are chomping on hamburgers and fries, cheese sauce running down their fingers as they try to beat the lunchtime clock.
Feelings of guilt are in short supply this Friday afternoon: the burger joint where the two women have grabbed a bite is called Vincent Vegan, and the patty inside the brioche bun is made of wheat, barley and soya.
Continue reading...As the presidential campaign heats up, the Guardian is tracking the latest polling in eight states that could decide the election
Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump in the national polls for the presidential election.
Continue reading...As Covid cases rise, an increasingly heated debate has emerged over whether to readopt stringent measures or return to ‘the business of living’
Britain has reached a Covid crossroads – and its leaders are being pressed to pick one of two stark options. Are they going to return to the lockdown days that brought life to a standstill six months ago, but succeeded in halting the rapid spread of the disease? Or are they going to turn their backs on “an authoritarian nightmare” that is preventing the nation from getting on with “the business of living”?
This is the basic division that has emerged over the summer in an increasingly heated debate between two unlikely groupings of scientists, columnists, campaigners and politicians.
Continue reading...Human rights groups condemn practice as evidence reviewed by the Guardian reveals systemic denial of entry to asylum seekers
At about 1am on 24 August, Ahmed (not his real name) climbed into a rubber dinghy with 29 others and left Turkey’s north-western Çanakkale province. After 30 minutes, he said, they reached Greek waters near Lesbos and a panther boat from the Hellenic coastguard approached.
Eight officers in blue shorts and shirts, some wearing black masks and armed with rifles, forced the group – more than half women and including several minors and six small children – to come aboard at gunpoint. They punctured the dinghy with knives and it sank. “They said they would take us to a camp,” said Ahmed. “The children were happy and started laughing, but I knew they were lying.”
Continue reading...The president’s baiting of China and Iran and shabby deals in the Gulf show he will risk almost anything to win re-election
It’s clear Donald Trump will do almost anything to cling to office. Lie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish? Go for it. Label Joe Biden a radical socialist? Silly, but worth a punt. Start a war with China or Iran? Pause right there. This is not beyond the realms of possibility, given his pathological need to win.
As November’s poll nears, Trump is weaponising foreign policy – not to defend US security and national interests, but to help him grab a second term. It’s not about putting “America First”. It’s all about putting “Trump First” – by any dangerous means, and at any cost.
Continue reading...Colombia tops 800,000 cases, Argentina passes 700,000; France reports 14,000 new cases; Australian state of Victoria lifts curfew
Coronavirus cases in Colombia, which is nearly a month into a national reopening after a long quarantine, have passed 800,000, while in Argentina infections passed 700,000, as the pandemic continues to grip the Americas.
Colombia has 806,038 confirmed cases of the virus, the health ministry said on Saturday, with 25,296 reported deaths. Active cases numbered 78,956.
Continue reading...Country’s foreign minister attacks western ‘interference’, as Emmanuel Macron says president Lukashenko must go
Belarus’s foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, has accused western countries of attempting to sow “chaos and anarchy” in the former Soviet republic, which has been rocked by street protests since a contested election last month that was claimed by President Alexander Lukashenko.
“We are seeing attempts to destabilise the situation in the country,” Makei told the UN general assembly in a video statement on Saturday. “Interference in our internal affairs, sanctions and other restrictions on Belarus will have the opposite effect, and are harmful for absolutely everyone.”
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s pick for America’s highest court, Amy Coney Barrett, is an “ideological fanatic” who threatens abortion rights, healthcare and the environment, activists warned on Saturday, before Trump unveiled his third supreme court nominee in the White House Rose Garden.
Related: 'Not special any more': how the Senate has failed the American people
Continue reading...
A quick glance at the guest list for Amy Comey Barrett’s nomination ceremony today makes troubling reading. Among the guests were representatives from Judicial Watch, which has described climate science as a “fraud”; the Heritage Foundation (which has also pushed back against climate science); and the Family Research Council (which has opposed abortion, divorce and LGBT rights).
Attendees at Trump's SCOTUS nomination of Amy Coney Barrett:
•Judicial Crisis Network's Carrie Severino
Heritage Foundation's Kay Cole James
•Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton
•Family Research Council's Tony Perkins
•Cleta Mitchell—a lawyer tied to many GOP 'dark money' nonprofits https://t.co/q5BzTkPBs9
Now that Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated for the supreme court, the senate hearings are likely to last from 12-15 October. And, as is more than likely, she will be confirmed by the Republican-held Senate by 29 October, well before the 3 November elections.
Donald Trump’s rival for the presidency, Joe Biden, has issued a statement saying the process should be delayed until after the election.
Election Day is just weeks away, and millions of Americans are already voting because the stakes in this election could not be higher. They feel the urgency of this choice – an urgency made all the more acute by what’s at stake at the U.S. Supreme Court.
They are voting because their health care hangs in the balance. They are voting because they worry about losing their right to vote or being expelled from the only country they have ever known. They are voting right now because they fear losing their collective bargaining rights. They are voting to demand that equal justice be guaranteed for all. They are voting because they don’t want Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for nearly half a century, to be overturned.
Continue reading...President urges greater checks for sabotage before displaced people are returned
Suspected Islamist militants have killed at least 11 people in north-eastern Nigeria in an attack on a security convoy that was taking people displaced by an insurgency back to their homes, police and security sources said on Saturday.
Islamic State, to whom a breakaway faction of Nigerian militant group Boko Haram pledged allegiance in 2016, said on its Amaq news agency that 30 police officers and soldiers were killed in the attack on Friday on a road leading to the strategic fishing town of Baga in Borno state.
Continue reading...The acting prime minister failed to form a government from among the feuding political blocs that have led the country to ruin
Lebanon’s prime minister designate, Mustapha Adib, has stood down after failing to form a government in a month of negotiations, in a further blow to a country reeling under the weight of multiple crises.
The talks were brought down by the issue of who would nominate key cabinet ministers, particularly the finance minister. The government is made up of feuding political blocs, and the powerful Shia groups Hezbollah and Amal insisted on controlling the finance ministry, despite demands for a technocratic government that could
Continue reading...William Perry Pendley not confirmed by Senate to role as acting Bureau of Land Management director, as required by constitution
A federal judge has ruled that a controversial Trump official who has overseen a vast weakening of public lands protections cannot continue in his position since he has not been approved by the Senate.
Related: Donald Trump set to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to supreme court – live
Continue reading...The right fails to recognise that the Swedes’ real virtue in this pandemic is their social cohesion
Sweden is to the 21st-century right what the Soviet Union was to the 20th-century left. Conservatives have transformed it into a Tory Disneyland where every dream comes true. On the shores of the Baltic lies a country that has no need to curtail civil liberties and wreck the economy to curb Covid-19. “I have a dream, a fantasy,” sang Abba. “To help me through reality.” For much of the right, that fantasy is called Sweden.
Let the leader of the Conservative backbenchers stand for the Tory press and innumerable ideologues inside and outside Westminster. Sir Graham Brady ruined a perfectly good argument that parliament must have the power to scrutinise Johnson’s emergency decrees by announcing that there was no emergency. We could look to a country that merely had a ban on gatherings of more than 50, restrictions on visiting care homes, a shift to table-only service in bars and see that “Sweden today is in a better place than the United Kingdom”. Or as the Sun explained on Thursday as Boris Johnson met Anders Tegnell, the Swedish public health “mastermind”, a do-little strategy has spared Sweden a second wave of Covid-19 infections.
Continue reading...Interview part of investigation into film industry following death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput
Deepika Padukone has been questioned by India’s narcotics agency as part of an investigation into the film industry following the death of the actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
The Bollywood star was among three actors summoned by the Narcotics Control Board (NCB) for questioning on Saturday.
Continue reading...Detained man, believed to be 18 and from Pakistan, arrived in France as unaccompanied minor three years ago
The man arrested after a knife attack on two people outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo told detectives he had been angered by its publication of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad, French media reported yesterday.
The suspect, believed to be an 18-year-old born in Pakistan, is thought to have arrived in France three years ago as an unaccompanied minor.
Continue reading...Protests over a decision not to indict any of the three police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor continued more peacefully on Friday in Louisville, Kentucky