Minors were at house party in a villa in Marconia di Pisticci in southern Basilicata region
Italian police have arrested four people in connection with the alleged gang-rape of two British girls in the south of the country.
The rape reportedly took place on Monday night at a house party in Marconia di Pisticci, a town of about 8,000 people in the Basilicata province of Matera.
Continue reading...Family incomes plummet at cooperative that helped empower women as lucrative trade with China is suspended
Female crab farmers in Bangladesh are struggling to feed their families after exports to China collapsed due to Covid-19, a charity has warned.
Despite the crab harvesting season being in full swing in Mongla, southern Bangladesh, continued lockdown across the nation and the closure of lucrative external markets have impacted not only farmers’ livelihoods but also the country’s GDP, which relies heavily on the $43m (£33m) crab export industry, according to the charity Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO).
Continue reading...In a statement to Australian Stock Exchange the company confirms move that follows the blowing up of 46,000-year-old caves in Western Australia
The Rio Tinto chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, and two other senior executives are leaving the global miner after its board bowed to intense investor pressure for strong action over its decision to blow up 46,000-year-old rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Rio Tinto said Jacques was leaving “by mutual agreement” with the board.
Continue reading...Residents of Moria camp struggle to salvage what they can as protesters try to block efforts to rebuild
Plumes of smoke rise above the ashes and twisted metal. In many parts this is all that remains of Europe’s largest refugee camp.
Just a few days ago, the Moria camp in Lesbos was home to thousands of children and their families. Now all that is left are the smoldering ruins and jagged outlines of scorched tents.
Continue reading...This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Sam Levine about why election night might turn into election week … or month
This week the question might seem a simple one, but it isn’t. Jonathan asks Sam Levine in New York about how the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the US election on 3 November, and the conversation leads to Jonathan reminiscing about the infamous 2000 presidential election, when George W Bush narrowly (and potentially wrongly) pipped Al Gore to the Oval Office. So, when will we know who’s won this year?
Continue reading...Deepening dispute between Nato allies has dragged in neighbours and is in danger of spiralling out of control
An increasingly fractious standoff over access to gas reserves has transformed a dispute between Turkey and Greece that was once primarily over Cyprus into one that now ensnares Libya, Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and feeds into other political issues in the Mediterranean and has raised fears of a naval conflict between the two Nato allies in the Aegean Sea.
The crisis has been deepening in recent months with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, leading those inside the EU opposing Turkey’s increasingly military foreign policy and saying Turkey can no longer be seen as partner in the Mediterranean. He has offered French military support to the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, including the possible sale of 18 Rafale jets.
Continue reading...On the golf course, Lindsey Graham urged restraint on Iran, while James Mattis slept in his clothes in case of emergency, book says
Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.
Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.
Continue reading...French cases near 10,000 in a day; single biggest rise in Greece; Portugal limits gatherings to 10 people; Mexico signs agreement for Sputnik V vaccine
Here’s a quick summary of the biggest developments before we head over to a new blog. Thanks for following along.
Brazil recorded 40,557 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 983 deaths from the disease, the health ministry said on Thursday.
The country has registered more than 4.2 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 129,522, according to ministry data.
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A panel of three federal judges blocked the Trump administration on Thursday from excluding undocumented immigrants from the census totals used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets.
Trump acted unlawfully in July when he ordered the Commerce Department to produce data that would allow him to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count, the panel said. Federal law is clear that only a single data source - the census count of total population - can be used to apportion the 435 seats in the US House among states, the judges wrote. The decennial census does not ask about citizenship status and by requesting a second set of data outside of the decennial census, Trump ran afoul of the law.
Unprecedented wildfires and rushed evacuations in Oregon have wreaked havoc on the state’s incarcerated population, with thousands now packed into a single overcrowded prison that was already a major Covid-19 hotspot.
A destructive and rapidly spreading fire in Marion county prompted the state to evacuate three prisons on Tuesday, transferring 1,450 people to the Oregon state penitentiary (OSP) in Salem. Evacuees are sleeping on the floor and on emergency beds throughout OSP, including in indoor recreational areas, program rooms and other facilities not typically used for housing.
Related: Oregon fires: evacuated prisoners sleep on floor in packed Covid-19 hotspot
Continue reading...Negotiations to end the long civil war were agreed as part of a withdrawal deal signed by the US
The Afghan government and the Taliban will open peace talks on Saturday, trying to reach a power-sharing deal as American troops leave the country after nearly two decades.
The negotiations to try to end the long civil war were agreed as part of a withdrawal deal that the US signed with the Taliban in February, but have stalled for months over details of a promised prisoner exchange.
Continue reading...Joe Biden has branded Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “almost criminal” after book revelations that the US president admitted in early February the disease was “deadly stuff” but deliberately played it down.
As the death toll from Covid-19 nears 200,000 in America, the world’s highest, Biden excoriated his opponent in November’s election over the way he did not address the defining crisis of his presidency early and comprehensively.
Continue reading...More than 500,000 people in Oregon have been forced to evacuate as unprecedented wildfires rage across the state, amounting to more than 10% of the population, authorities said Thursday.
Wildfires searing through the American west have killed at least 15 people, leveled entire neighborhoods and forced stretched firefighting crews to make tough decisions about where to deploy.
Continue reading...Annual deaths have dropped to 1990 levels after 2013 peak thanks to concerted action in key cities
It is a long time since images of a smoggy Beijing were in the news. India now leads the World Health Organization’s (WHO) league table of polluted cities.
A new study shows that annual deaths from air pollution in China peaked in 2013 and are now below 1990 levels. Concerted action reduced particle pollution in 74 key Chinese cities by an average of 33% between 2013 and 2017.
Continue reading...Ylva Johansson says EU working to reduce number of refugees and migrants on Greek islands
A senior EU official has said Europe’s failure to agree a common migration and asylum policy was partly responsible for the “unacceptable” conditions at the Moria camp on Lesbos that burned to the ground this week, leaving more than 12,000 people without shelter.
Ylva Johansson, the European commissioner for home affairs, said that when she took office in December 2019, the situation for 40,000 refugees and migrants living on Greek islands was “unsustainable and unacceptable”.
Continue reading...More than 85 significant wildfires are burning across the west, where a record 2.5m acres have been destroyed in the latest batch of blazes. At least seven people have died and the dense plumes of smoke have turned skies red and amber
Continue reading...More than 85 significant wildfires are burning across the west, where a record 2.5m acres have been destroyed in the latest batch of blazes. At least seven people have died and the dense plumes of smoke have turned skies red and amber
Continue reading...Rieli Franciscato struck in chest as he approached indigenous group he was seeking to shield
A Brazilian government official and expert on isolated Amazon tribes was killed by an arrow as he approached an indigenous group he was seeking to shield.
Rieli Franciscato, 56, spent his career in the government’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai, working to set up reservations to protect uncontacted tribes.
Continue reading...Belgian policeman had admitted taking tooth from Patrice Lumumba’s body in 1961
A Belgian judge has said that a tooth taken from the remains of the Congo’s first elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, should be returned to his family almost 60 years after his assassination by rebels overseen by Belgian officers.
The tooth had been seized from a Belgian policeman who admitted taking it while helping to dispose of Lumumba’s body after the politician was murdered in 1961. The Belgian government of the time, the CIA and MI6 have also been implicated.
Continue reading...Musée d’Orsay, home to some of world’s most famous nudes, apologises for barring visitor
One of Paris’s biggest museums, whose galleries feature some of the world’s most famous nudes, has been accused of discrimination and sexism after refusing entry to a woman in a low-cut dress.
In a case of life not imitating art, a zealous official told a literature student whose name was given only as Jeanne that “rules are rules” and ordered her to cover her cleavage if she wanted to be allowed into the Musée d’Orsay, a popular tourist attraction and bastion of the beaux arts.
Continue reading...Billions in dividends from ventures with conglomerate MEHL funnelled to army units implicated in Rohingya crackdown
One of the world’s largest brewers, Kirin – whose subsidiaries include San Miguel and craft beers brewed in the US and UK – has been linked to crimes committed by the Myanmar military following an Amnesty International investigation.
Kirin is partnered with a Myanmar-based conglomerate with interests in mining, beer, tobacco, garment manufacturing and banking, whose shareholders include military units directly implicated in serious human rights crimes against Rohingya people, analysis by the human rights group found.
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