Plan to expand Ruaha national park has been beset by allegations of abuse, leading bank to withhold final $50m of $150m budget
The World Bank has suspended financing intended to develop tourism in southern Tanzania after allegations of killings, rape and forced evictions.
The bank began investigating last year after being accused of enabling abuses around Ruaha national park, which was due to double in size as part of a World Bank-supported programme.
Continue reading...While conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine have captured global attention, the civil war in Sudan has been largely ignored. That can’t be allowed to continue, says the Guardian’s Nesrine Malik
With so much of the world’s attention on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, one of the worst humanitarian crises of recent times is playing out almost unnoticed. Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023 and has led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths and a mass displacement of up to half of the country’s population.
As Nesrine Malik tells Helen Pidd, the battle between the Sudanese Army and rebel militia the Rapid Support Forces is finely balanced, with the effect that neither side has enough strength to win the conflict decisively and so no end is in sight.
Continue reading...Hundreds of members of teaching staff demonstrate in solidarity with arrested students as protest tents put back up on campus
Hundreds of faculty members at Columbia University in New York held a mass walkout on Monday to protest against the president’s decision to have police arrest students at a pro-Palestinian encampment protest last week.
The solidarity protest came as students put protest tents back up on campus. They had been torn down last week when the New York police department arrested more than 100 students, who were also suspended by the university.
Continue reading...Celebrity fashion designer, who recruited couriers to transport bags from her native Colombia to US on commercial flights, receives 18-month sentence
A leading fashion designer whose accessories were used by celebrities from Britney Spears to the cast of the Sex and the City TV series has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in Miami federal court on charges of smuggling crocodile handbags from her native Colombia.
Nancy Gonzalez was arrested in 2022 in Cali, Colombia, and later extradited to the US for running a sprawling multiyear conspiracy that involved recruiting couriers to transport her handbags on commercial flights to high-end showrooms and New York fashion events – all in violation of US wildlife laws.
Continue reading...George Kelly, 75, charged with second-degree murder over death of Mexican Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, 48, on his property last year
An Arizona judge declared a mistrial on Monday in the case of a rancher accused of fatally shooting a Mexican man on his property near the US-Mexico border.
George Kelly, 75, was charged with second-degree murder in the 30 January 2023 shooting of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, 48, who lived just south of the border in Nogales.
Continue reading...As one of the largest ‘training’ datasets has been found to contain child sexual abuse material, can bans on creating such imagery be feasible?
Child abusers are creating AI-generated “deepfakes” of their targets in order to blackmail them into filming their own abuse, beginning a cycle of sextortion that can last for years.
Creating simulated child abuse imagery is illegal in the UK, and Labour and the Conservatives have aligned on the desire to ban all explicit AI-generated images of real people.
Continue reading...PM pledges equipment including 400 vehicles, 1,600 weapons and 4m rounds of ammunition, plus £500m in funding
Rishi Sunak has promised the UK’s largest ever military support package for Ukraine as he warned that Vladimir Putin would “not stop at the Polish border” if Russia won the war.
The prime minister will visit Poland on Tuesday to discuss European security and the threat from Russia with the Polish leader, Donald Tusk, and the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, before travelling to Germany to meet the chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Continue reading...Bathroom in Noe Valley neighborhood, which became focus of ire for reported $1.7m cost, actually came in at about $200,000
San Francisco made international headlines in 2022 when news broke that a project to build a public restroom in a town square would cost $1.7m. This weekend the toilet affair finally came to an end as the city celebrated its newest lavatory.
Residents gathered for a toilet-themed party in the Noe Valley town square on Sunday that was designed to poke fun at the whole saga and celebrate the long-awaited bathroom, which ended up costing far less than the initial price tag.
Continue reading...The former British PM went all Trumpy at the Heritage, with an audience hanging on her every word as she promoted her book
Was that Donald Truss? Or Liz Trump? A former British prime minister turned up in Washington on Monday channeling the Maga menace who once lorded it in the Oval Office and now spends his days in a dingy courtroom.
Liz Truss was at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank in Washington, within sight of the US Capitol dome, to promote her grandly titled book Ten Years to Save the West. Why does she keep coming back to America? It was not hard to figure out.
Continue reading...The university is to hold virtual classes after protests on campus culminated in the arrest of more than 100 students
Over 100 students at Columbia were arrested last week after refusing to leave a pro-Palestine protest encampment set up on the university’s main campus. The arrests have since set off a chain of events, including the re-establishing of the encampment and solidarity protests on other US college campuses.
On Monday, Columbia announced it will hold classes virtually to try to “reset” the situation on campus. Here’s what we know so far about what’s happening at Columbia.
Continue reading...Inquiry has not backed up allegations of ties to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which led to loss of $450m as people died in droves
Unsupported Israeli allegations about Unrwa links to terrorism led major donors to cut $450m in funding to the main humanitarian agency working in Gaza at a time when people there were dying in droves.
Three months later, the situation has only worsened with the onset of a human-made famine on top of the bombing, the collapse of healthcare, the lack of water and a rise in epidemics. And despite a rigorous inquiry by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, supported by three well-respected research institutes, there is still no evidence for the claim that significant numbers of Unrwa employees have Hamas or Islamic Jihad ties.
Continue reading...App feature could be suspended unless child safety concerns addressed, in first use of sweeping new digital powers
The EU has said it will ban a new service launched by TikTok in Europe that it believes could be “as addictive as cigarettes” unless the company offers “compelling” fresh evidence that children are safeguarded.
If the ban goes ahead, it would be the first time the EU has used sweeping new powers to impose sanctions on social media companies since its landmark Digital Service Act (DSA) came into force last August.
Continue reading...Nikol Pashinyan urges calm after making concessions in attempt to avoid war with his country’s heavily armed neighbour
Nikol Pashinyan, the Armenian prime minister facing four days of protests against his decision to hand four villages to Azerbaijan, has urged Armenians to recognise that the way the issue is handled will determine the viability of the future peace process with its neighbour.
In an interview with British journalists in his office, Pashinyan, the leader of Armenia’s velvet revolution in 2018, said the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan “need to convert the theoretical peace agenda into an actual peaceful reality”.
Continue reading...Opposition says prime minister targeting Muslim minority with ‘hate speech’ and violating election rules
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been accused of hate speech during a campaign rally where he called Muslims “infiltrators” who had “many children” and claimed they would take people’s hard-earned money.
The opposition accused Modi of “blatantly targeting” India’s 200 million Muslim minority with comments made while addressing voters at a speech in Rajasthan on Sunday.
Continue reading...Bruges court heard how defendant had condition called auto-brewery syndrome sometimes brought on by intestinal problems
A Belgian man has been acquitted of drunk-driving because he has auto-brewery syndrome (ABS), an extremely rare condition whereby the body produces alcohol, his lawyer has said.
Anse Ghesquiere said on Monday that in “another unfortunate coincidence” her client worked at a brewery, but three doctors who independently examined him had confirmed he had ABS.
Continue reading...Prosecutors say trio are accused of passing on technical military knowledge and export of a laser without permissions
Three German citizens, a married couple from Düsseldorf and a man from Bad Homburg, have been arrested on suspicion of spying on behalf of China, prosecutors have said, in the second high-profile alleged espionage case reported in the country in days.
The three are accused of passing on technical military knowhow to Chinese authorities in return for money. The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said it could be “just the tip of the iceberg” of spy rings operating in Germany.
Continue reading...Member states warned at meeting not to be complacent but ministers stop short of pledging Patriot missiles
EU ministers have been warned against “relaxing” support for Ukraine but stopped short of new pledges to supply air defence systems that Kyiv is urgently seeking to defend itself against relentless Russian bombardment.
The Ukrainian government has said it is running out of US-made Patriot air defence missiles as Russia intensifies attacks on infrastructure and cities.
Continue reading...Historic hearing will receive submissions from people whose human rights have been affected by climate change
Julian Medina comes from a long line of fishers in the north of Colombia’s Gulf of Morrosquillo who use small-scale and often traditional methods to catch species such as mackerel, tuna and cojinúa.
Medina went into business as a young man but was drawn back to his roots, and ended up leading a fishing organisation. For years he has campaigned against the encroachment of fossil fuel companies, pollution and overfishing, which are destroying the gulf’s delicate ecosystem and people’s livelihoods.
Continue reading...Former president accused of falsifying business records to cover up an attempt to influence 2016 election
Well, after all the appeals and bombast and tears, it’s finally here: opening statements in the first criminal trial of a US president.
Jury selection in the case of the People of the State of New York versus Donald Trump wrapped up last week, though not without some difficulty. Hundreds of prospective jurors were dismissed, several cried, and a couple of them quit after they were chosen.
Continue reading...Police in Upper Austria province said the four were laying white roses at Nazi dictator’s birthplace
Four Germans were caught laying white roses in memory of Adolf Hitler at the house where the Nazi dictator was born in western Austria on the anniversary of his birth, and one gave a Hitler salute as they posed for photos, police have said.
Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn. After lengthy wrangling over the future of the house where he was born, work started last year on turning it into a police station — a project meant to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify Hitler.
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