Search and rescue teams deployed after F-15 crashes off English coast near Middlesbrough
A US Air Force F-15 aircraft based in the UK crashed into the North Sea off the coast near Middlesbrough on Monday morning while it was on a training mission.
The status of the pilot onboard is unknown following the crash, which happened on a routine training mission at around 9.40am. UK search and rescue teams were being deployed to try to locate the pilot.
Continue reading...Lockdown exposed the scale of the commercial baby business in Ukraine, and now women hired for their wombs are speaking out
Some are crying in their cots; others are being cradled or bottle-fed by nannies. These newborns are not in the nursery of a maternity hospital, they are lined up side by side in two large reception rooms of the improbably named Hotel Venice on the outskirts of Kyiv, protected by outer walls and barbed wire.
They are the children of foreign couples born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers at the Kyiv-based BioTexCom Centre for Human Reproduction, the largest surrogacy clinic in the world. They’re stranded in the hotel because their biological parents have not been able to travel in or out of Ukraine since borders closed in March because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...Paul Whelan has insisted on his innocence, saying he was set up
A Russian court has convicted a former US marine of espionage charges and sentenced him to 16 years in a high-security prison.
The harsh sentence handed down by a court in Moscow to Paul Whelan is likely to raise tensions between Russia and the US. It followed a secret trial that was criticised by the country’s ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, as a “mockery of justice”.
Continue reading...Spain to reopen borders on 21 June but other countries are adopting more targeted approach
France and Germany became the latest European countries to reopen their borders as the continent emerges from its three-month Covid-19 lockdown.
Speaking on Sunday evening, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said the country’s Schengen borders would be open from Monday and its non-EU borders from 1 July.
Continue reading...Across the US, artists have responded to the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests with impactful and urgent work. In New York, artworks have appeared supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and remembering the deaths of, among others, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and Eric Garner
Continue reading...The media - in the Philippines and elsewhere - forces those in power to answer for the consequences of their policies. We can’t stand by while it is assaulted
By almost any measure, the conviction of Maria Ressa and her former colleague, researcher-writer Reynaldo Santos Jr, will have serious implications for democracy in the Philippines.
On Monday morning, a court in Manila found the pair guilty of ‘cyber libel’, for a story published in 2012 on the news website Rappler.com that Ressa founded and now leads. The judge released them on bail pending an appeal, but if they lose, they could spend up to seven years in prison.
Continue reading...Racism is embedded in structures and power dynamics, so we should logically conclude that we are not immune
As events unfold in the US and across the world, colleagues in the aid sector are closely watching, and sharing their solidarity. After all they are allies and educators of human rights.
Yet as various institutions grapple with their failure to address discrimination, there has been a disappointing lack of self-reflection in our sector. If we understand that racism is embedded in structures, that it is part of engrained power dynamics, we should logically conclude that we are not immune.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Brussels officials feared disclosing Zagreb’s lack of commitment to monitoring would cause ‘scandal’
EU officials have been accused of an “outrageous cover-up” after withholding evidence of a failure by Croatia’s government to supervise police repeatedly accused of robbing, abusing and humiliating migrants at its borders.
Internal European commission emails seen by the Guardian reveal officials in Brussels had been fearful of a backlash when deciding against full disclosure of Croatia’s lack of commitment to a monitoring mechanism that ministers had previously agreed to fund with EU money.
Continue reading...Survey reveals deep global dissatisfaction with US leadership under Donald Trump
China has beaten the US in the battle for world opinion over the handling of coronavirus, according to new polling, with only three countries out of 53 believing the US has dealt with the pandemic better than its superpower rival.
The survey comes ahead of a major conference on the future of democracy this week, due to be addressed by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state John Kerry and the Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong. The conference is likely to be a rallying point for pro-democracy activists as China and the US enter an ever more explicit ideological contest.
Continue reading...Tributes for the ‘bright young actor’ flow from colleagues, cricketers and India’s prime minister
Popular Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his Mumbai residence on Sunday, police and Indian media reports have said.
Initial reports, citing police sources, said the 34-year-old’s body was found in his apartment in suburban Bandra.
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Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been defaced yet again during Sunday afternoon’s Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, although these days it might qualify as bigger news if the former reality TV host’s terrazzo-and-brass totem went longer than a week unmolested.
Trump’s star was defaced during today’s Hollywood protest march. #blm #hollywoodprotest #JusticeForGeorgeFlyod #hollywoodboulevard #hollywoodblvd #protests pic.twitter.com/UI3SOIZSiV
Hundreds of demonstrators have gathered at the Montana State Capitol building in Helena in protest of the killing of George Floyd and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Helena Independent Record reports Sunday’s protest is the largest of a number of demonstrations that have been held in Montana’s capital city in recent weeks amid the nationwide backlash to police-related violence against black and brown people.
The protest for George Floyd in Helena, MT is... huge. pic.twitter.com/LLwdiHMwxZ
Continue reading...NGO demands more details on Boris Johnson’s ‘vague and imprecise’ commitment
Hong Kong democracy campaigners are pressing the Foreign Office to spell out how Boris Johnson’s “vague and imprecise commitment” will give a path to British citizenship to millions of residents.
It came as Johnson wrote to seven former UK foreign secretaries saying he is trying to build a global groundswell of opposition to Chinese plans to impose a new security law in Hong Kong.
Continue reading...‘Shameful’ Collateral Murder footage shows Apache helicopter mowing down 11 civilians – including two Reuters journalists – in Baghdad
US prosecutors have failed to include one of WikiLeaks’ most shocking video revelations in the indictment against Julian Assange, a move that has brought accusations the US doesn’t want its “war crimes” exposed in public.
Assange, an Australian citizen, is remanded and in ill health in London’s Belmarsh prison while the US tries to extradite him to face 18 charges – 17 under its Espionage Act – for conspiracy to receive, obtain and disclose classified information.
Continue reading...Partial quarantine remains in Beijing; European countries continue to open borders to neighbours
China detected its highest number of daily coronavirus cases in months on Sunday, locking down parts of Beijing in a warning of the difficulties of avoiding a resurgence of the pandemic as Europe prepared to open more borders and loosen restrictions this week.
A wholesale food market in the Chinese capital, where traces of the virus were detected, was closed at the weekend. Nearby housing estates were also placed under quarantine after authorities detected 36 new coronavirus cases in the city and another 19 across the country.
Continue reading...Four antiquities pulled from auction after claims they came from illicit excavations
Christie’s has quietly withdrawn four Greek and Roman antiquities from auction this month amid allegations that they had been looted from illicit excavations.
The items were in the original brochure catalogue but later removed from the online site with no explanation.
Continue reading...BLM protesters targeted monument to Indro Montanelli, who admitted buying 12-year-old Eritrean girl
Milan’s mayor has rejected calls to remove a statue from a public park of an Italian journalist who acknowledged having bought a 12-year-old Eritrean girl to be his wife during Italy’s colonial occupation in the 1930s.
Giuseppe Sala said in a Facebook video that he was perplexed by “the lightness” with which Indro Montanelli had confessed to buying the child from her father, in a widely circulated video of a 1969 talkshow appearance, but said “lives should be judged in their totality” and he believed the statue should stay.
Continue reading...Mistakes mean findings should not be used as evidence for relaxing rule, say professors
Senior scientists have reported flaws in an influential World Health Organization-commissioned study into the risks of coronavirus infection and say it should not be used as evidence for relaxing the UK’s 2-metre physical distancing rule.
Critics of the distancing advice, which states that people should keep at least 2 metres apart, believe it is too cautious. They seized on the research commissioned by the WHO, which suggested a reduction from 2 metres to 1 would raise infection risk only marginally, from 1.3% to 2.6%.
Continue reading...Editor of news website Rappler could face prison if convicted under ‘cyber libel’ law
A verdict will be issued on Monday following the controversial trial of one of the Philippines’ most prominent journalists, in a case widely condemned as an attack on press freedom under Rodrigo Duterte.
A court in Manila will issue a verdict on Rappler, one of the country’s most influential news websites, its editor, Maria Ressa, and former researcher and writer Reynaldo Santos Jr on Monday. Ressa, who was arrested last year on charges of “cyber libel” for a story published by Rappler in 2012, has described the allegations as baseless.
Continue reading...A Virginia Republican congressman who angered social conservatives in his district when he officiated a gay wedding has lost his party’s nomination.
Related: The Skywalker window: what Democrats must do to destroy Trump's Death Star
Continue reading...A century after the 1918 pandemic, South America’s largest country has passed Britain to claim the world’s second-highest death toll
As a child growing up in 1940s São Paulo, Drauzio Varella remembers his grandmother’s tales of how the Spanish flu ravaged the blue-collar immigrant community they called home.
“So many people died that families would leave people outside on the pavements, and early each morning the carts would come by to collect them and take them off to burial in mass graves,” remembered Varella, who would go on to become Brazil’s best-known doctor.
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