Justin Welby to join peers condemning measures that seek to criminalise people seeking refuge in UK
The archbishop of Canterbury will make a rare intervention in the House of Lords to join dozens of peers condemning the government’s flagship asylum bill.
Justin Welby will argue against measures championed by Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman that seek to criminalise people seeking refuge in the UK if they arrive on small boats.
Continue reading...About 1,700 houses in Manipur have been destroyed in clashes between Meiteis, who are mostly Hindus, and mainly Christian Kuki tribe
The road to Heirokland is smooth and freshly laid, with a sign proclaiming it part of an Indian government development initiative. But ethnic violence has reduced the village itself to little more than smouldering ashes.
Sanatomba picked through the ruins of his sister’s home in the north-eastern state of Manipur, trying to salvage anything of value, but could only recover a traditional stool.
Continue reading...AFP video coordinator Arman Soldin, 32, who was ‘totally dedicated to his craft’, died in attack near Bakhmut
A French journalist working for Agence France-Presse news agency has been killed in Ukraine in a Russian rocket strike near the battle-torn eastern city of Bakhmut.
Arman Soldin, a 32-year-old video coordinator, died on Monday when a Grad missile landed close to where he was lying. Soldin was with Ukrainian soldiers in the town of Chasiv Yar, six miles (10km) from Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.
Continue reading...Tributes pour in for founder of Os Mutantes, who sardonically named her tumour after far-right president Jair Bolsonaro
Rita Lee, the legendary Brazilian musician, composer and founder of the trailblazing band Os Mutantes, has died at 75, prompting emotional tributes to Brazil’s undisputed “Queen of Rock”.
Rita Lee was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021, memorably nicknaming her tumour “Jair” – a sardonic reference to Brazil’s widely loathed then president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...UK opens tender for rockets akin to those denied by US, which could enable strikes deep into Crimea
Britain and a group of European allies are hoping to supply long-distance cruise missiles to Ukraine, similar in range to those the US has so far refused to supply Kyiv, which could allow its army to strike deep into Russian-occupied Crimea.
A tender document quietly released by the UK calls for western arms makers to offer “missiles or rockets with a range 100-300km” (62 to 186 miles) to the International Fund for Ukraine, run jointly with Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Continue reading...New genetics study finds some of the first arrivals came during the last ice age, and shortly after, in two distinct migrations
Some of the first humans to arrive in the Americas included people from what is now China, who arrived in two distinct migrations during and after the last ice age, a new genetics study has found.
“Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, the northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool,” said Yu-Chun Li, one of the report authors.
Continue reading...Critics say collection derives from fortune made by buying businesses from Jews who were forced to sell in Nazi Germany
Christie’s, the famed British auction house, has said it will go ahead with an auction of £120m of jewels on Wednesday despite calls from Jewish groups to stop the sale over concerns the collection belonged to a German billionaire who made a fortune buying businesses from Jews who were forced to sell in Nazi Germany.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group, have demanded that Christie’s halt the auction of the jewellery collection of the Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten.
Continue reading...Xu Zaozao’s case is widely followed in a country where women’s rights have become increasingly prominent
A single Chinese woman has begun an appeal in her legal battle for the right to freeze her eggs, a procedure only available in China to married couples.
Xu Zaozao took legal action in 2019 after a Beijing hospital refused to freeze her eggs but a Beijing court dismissed her case in July 2022.
Continue reading...About 5,500 people still missing after intense floods and landslides with thousands also left homeless
At least 411 people are now known to have died in intense flooding and landslides that hit the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s South Kivu province last week.
Efforts to rescue inhabitants and recover bodies in Kalehe, where the flooding happened, are continuing. Some houses, schools and hospitals have collapsed or become dilapidated or unsafe. Others were entirely swept away.
Continue reading...Lula celebrates ‘extraordinary trajectory’ of favela-born politician and Guardian columnist who played key role in Snowden leaks
Brazilian politicians, celebrities and social activists have paid tribute to the vivacious, loving and combative former congressman and campaigner David Miranda who has died in Rio de Janeiro aged 37.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva celebrated the “extraordinary trajectory” of the favela-born politician who served in the country’s congress between 2019 and 2022 and was a powerful voice of resistance during the far-right administration of Jair Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...Khan, ousted from power last year, was appearing in court to face corruption charges
Internet services have been suspended across Pakistan after violence erupted when the former prime minister, Imran Khan, was arrested at a court appearance in Islamabad and dragged into an armoured vehicle by scores of security forces in riot gear.
The arrest of Khan – who was ousted from power last year and has evaded arrest several times since – came hours after he released a video message reiterating his allegations that Pakistan’s powerful military establishment had tried to assassinate him twice.
Continue reading...President uses speech to again draw false parallels between invasion and defeat of Nazi Germany
A tumultuous year of fighting has passed since Vladimir Putin last addressed Russian soldiers on Red Square in Moscow to mark the country’s victory over the Nazis.
But the Russian leader’s Victory Day message to the nation on Tuesday was nearly identical to that of last year as he cast the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against an aggressive, Russophobic and woke west.
Continue reading...Harare high court quashes suspended sentence and fine handed down to Booker-longlisted writer last year
Zimbabwean author and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga has had her conviction for inciting violence by staging a peaceful protest overturned.
The critically acclaimed writer was given a six-month suspended sentence and fined 70,000 Zimbabwean dollars (£170) in September 2022 for staging a protest calling for political reform. During the 2020 protest, alongside fellow activist Julie Barnes, Dangarembga held a placard inscribed: “We want better. Reform our institutions.”
Continue reading...Discovery raises suspicions of forced harvesting by suspects linked to group led by Paul Nthenge Mackenzie
Autopsies on corpses found in mass graves linked to a religious cult in Kenya have revealed missing organs and raised suspicions of forced harvesting, investigators said, with a fresh round of exhumations to resume on Tuesday.
The discovery of mass graves last month near the Indian Ocean coastal town of Malindi has stunned the deeply religious Christian-majority country in what has been called the “Shakahola forest massacre”.
Continue reading...World’s largest energy company’s first-quarter profits fall by 19% to $32bn after dip in oil prices
The Saudi government looks likely to reap greater revenues from the state-backed oil group Saudi Aramco despite the company posting a near-20% fall in quarterly profits.
The world’s largest oil and gas company said on Tuesday its profits had fallen by 19% in its first quarter compared with a year earlier, to nearly $32bn (£25bn), caused by a drop in oil prices.
Continue reading...Hundreds, mostly Venezuelans, hope to cross into Peru to flee harsh immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile
The wind sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean buffets makeshift tents made of blankets and scraps of fabric, as sheltering migrants peer out, squinting against the whipped-up sand and fierce sun overhead.
This desolate stretch of the Atacama desert has been home for days – and in some cases weeks – to hundreds of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, fleeing harsher immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile and hoping to cross its northern border into Peru.
Continue reading...Ex-PM, who is trying to revive career, says she will ‘show solidarity’ with Taiwan after Nancy Pelosi visit sparked furore
Liz Truss is to visit Taiwan next week, where she will deliver a speech likely to anger Beijing and potentially upset the UK government’s careful approach to China relations.
The former prime minister said on Tuesday: “Taiwan is a beacon of freedom and democracy. I’m looking forward to showing solidarity with the Taiwanese people in person in the face of increasingly aggressive behaviour and rhetoric from the regime in Beijing.”
Continue reading...Therapists are helping veterans, as well as families and children, who are psychologically affected by the war
Volodomyr Kucherenko’s problems with post-traumatic stress began not with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, but eight years ago when the war began in the Donbas. In the midst of what was supposed to be a truce, he was resting with his unit, which included his brother-in-law, when they were mortared in the yard of a village house.
Injured in the leg during the first strike, his brother-in-law threw himself over Kucherenko to protect him from shrapnel as more rounds came in. The wounds he sustained protecting his comrade would prove fatal.
Continue reading...China’s foreign ministry said it would expel Canadian envoy for Ottawa’s ‘unreasonable action’ of ejecting Chinese diplomat
Canada will not be intimidated by China’s tit-for-tat expulsion of a Canadian consul in retaliation for Ottawa’s ejection of a Chinese official, Justin Trudeau has said.
Canada expelled the Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei on Tuesday over allegations he tried to intimidate a Canadian lawmaker critical of China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority. Hours later, China’s ministry of foreign affairs said it would expel a Canadian diplomat from Shanghai in retaliation for what it called Ottawa’s “unreasonable actions”.
Continue reading...UK foreign secretary and US secretary of state have urged Russia not to use global hunger as a tool of war. This live blog is closed
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, said Russia “will prevail” in its fight against what he described as “imperialists”, the state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday, in remarks seen to be aimed at Ukraine and its western supporters such as the US.
North Korea has forged closer ties with the Kremlin and backed Moscow after it invaded Ukraine last year, including its proclamation later of having annexed parts of Ukraine, which most UN members condemned as illegal.
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