The rider of a motorbike has died following a crash with a competitor in an Ironman European championship race on Sunday, police in the host city of Hamburg said.
Police said there was a head-on crash when a race support motorbike carrying a rider and a passenger collided with a triathlete who was cycling in the opposite direction.
Continue reading...Pontiff appears to reference a woman who drew pilgrims to a statue near Rome she claimed shed tears of blood
Apparitions of the Virgin Mary are “not always real”, Pope Francis has said, in what appears to be an indirect reference to a woman who drew thousands of pilgrims to a town near Rome to pray before a statue that she claimed shed tears of blood.
“Don’t look there,” the pontiff said during an interview with Rai 1 on Sunday when asked about apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
Continue reading...Death toll one of heaviest since pro-government forces launched offensive against jihadists last August
Fifty-four Ugandan peacekeepers died when militants besieged an African Union base in Somalia last week, Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has said, in one of the worst recent attacks by al-Shabaab jihadists in the war-torn country.
“We discovered the lifeless bodies of 54 fallen soldiers, including a commander,” Museveni said in a Twitter post late on Saturday.
Continue reading...Train was diverted on to wrong tracks, says railways minister as efforts to clear wreckage continue
India’s railways minister has said the country’s deadliest train crash in more than two decades was caused by an error in electronic signals that sent a train on to the wrong tracks.
Ashwini Vaishnaw said the full investigation into Friday’s crash in the eastern state of Odisha, which killed at least 275 people and injured more than 1,000, was still under way but “the root cause has been identified”.
Continue reading...At least 20 people detained, including activist Alexandra Wong and leader of opposition party, as hundreds of police conduct stop and search operations
Hong Kong police have detained more than 20 people, including prominent pro-democracy figures, on the 34th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in China, while Chinese authorities tightened access to Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.
Police in Hong Kong said late on Sunday they had detained 23 people between the ages of 20 to 74 who were suspected of “breaching the peace”. One woman, 53, was arrested for obstructing police officers.
Continue reading...Ten Americans will pay €1 a month to live in Ollolai, birthplace of former Mr Universe Franco Columbu
Ten American professionals are moving to a small town in the middle of Sardinia known for being the birthplace of a former Mr Universe who was a close friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger, paying a token rent of €1 (86p) a month.
The project, called Work from Ollolai and launched by the local council in collaboration with the Sa Mata association, is aimed at boosting the population in the town, located in the mountainous Barbagia region of the Italian island.
Continue reading...Classic, smoke-stained Dutch drinking spots should be given protected status, say campaigners
On the bar is a dispenser for Dutch jenever – the liquor that inspired British gin – silver taps of lager and 10 hard-boiled eggs at €1 a pop.
Café de Druif is one of Amsterdam’s oldest “brown bars”, or bruine kroegen, and part of a movement to preserve these cosy drinking rooms.
Continue reading...Netanyahu calls deaths of three members of Israel Defence Forces on Sinai border a terrorist attack
A man who shot and killed three Israeli soldiers in a rare incident on the Sinai border with Egypt has been identified by the Israeli military as a member of the Egyptian border police.
Two Israel Defence Forces (IDF) combat soldiers were killed early on Saturday morning at a military post near Mount Harif, in the Negev desert, the army said. The discovery of their bodies a few hours later triggered a manhunt in which a third soldier was killed, as well as the assailant. A fourth Israeli soldier sustained minor injuries in the shootout.
Continue reading...Twenty-two people injured including five children, while row continues over closed air raid shelters
A two-year-old girl was found dead under the rubble of a house near the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro overnight as recriminations continued about the availability of air raid shelters in the capital.
Serhiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipro region, said another 22 people were injured, including five children, in an attack that destroyed or damaged several buildings.
Continue reading...British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert were killed a year ago on Monday in remote Amazon region they tried to defend
Friends and admirers of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira are preparing to gather in towns and cities across Brazil as well as London to remember the men and the causes they cherished.
The British journalist and the Brazilian Indigenous expert were shot dead during a reporting trip in the Amazon’s remote Javari valley region one year ago, on 5 June 2022.
If you want to help finish Dom Phillips’s book on the Amazon you can contribute here.
Continue reading...Since the coup in 2021 the carnage has been unceasing, meanwhile Russia and China continue to send weapons
The problem is not that governments around the world are unaware of what is happening in Myanmar. It’s that they are not doing nearly enough to stop it.
Since the military seized power in a coup in early 2021, it has terrorised the country, killed, tortured and imprisoned thousands of citizens, broken countless laws, and made a mockery of the UN.
Continue reading...After refusing to meet with his US counterpart, general says ‘some countries’ interfering in others’ business but Beijing does not seek confrontation
China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, has said a cold war mentality is resurgent in the Asia-Pacific region, but Beijing seeks dialogue over confrontation. The remarks came after Li refused to formally meet the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
Speaking at the dialogue, Asia’s top security summit, on Sunday, Li took thinly veiled digs at the US, repeating familiar grievances and accusing “some countries” of intensifying an arms race and interfering in the internal affairs of others.
Continue reading...Carla White’s battle has shone a light on city’s lack of affordable new housing for those on low incomes
A single tenant in a Montreal apartment block has halted a multimillion-dollar development project in a standoff that has focused fresh attention on the lack of affordable housing in major Canadian cities.
Property developer Mondev has been trying for years to persuade Carla White to move from her small C$400-a-month (£238) apartment so it can demolish a row of mostly abandoned buildings and build 176 luxury apartments.
Continue reading...Police say four arrested for ‘seditious’ acts while a further four taken away on suspicion of breaching the peace
Hong Kong police detained eight people, including activists and artists, on the eve of the 34th anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, a move that signals the city’s shrinking freedom of expression.
Police said in a statement late on Saturday that four people had been arrested for allegedly disrupting order in public spaces or carrying out acts with seditious intent. Four others were taken away for investigation on suspicion of breaching public peace. Authorities did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment late on Saturday.
Continue reading...Major demonstration is the fifth recent anti-government protest and was sparked by anger over two mass shootings
Tens of thousands gathered on Saturday for the fifth anti-government protest in recent weeks in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, after two back-to-back shootings that killed 18 people, half of them children.
The “Serbia against violence” protests have evolved into some of the largest rallies since widespread demonstrations triggered the fall of strongman Slobodan Milošević more than two decades ago.
Continue reading...Director and producer of Toy Story spinoff lose roles after $200m production brought in just $226.7m in global ticket sales
Walt Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios has eliminated 75 positions including those of two executives behind the box office disappointment Lightyear, sources said on Saturday, the first significant job cuts at the studio in a decade.
The cuts included Lightyear director Angus MacLane, a 26-year Pixar veteran who was part of the senior creative team on such acclaimed films as Toy Story 4 and Coco. Galyn Susman, producer of Lightyear, also departed. Susman had been at Pixar since the release of the original Toy Story movie in 1995.
Continue reading...Communist party has campaigned for decades to eradicate remembrance events for the 4 June clashes in Beijing
When Zhou Fengsuo was looking for a space in New York to display his art collection, he couldn’t believe his luck when he stumbled across 894 6th Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The numbers of the address – 8946 – were the same as the date he wanted to commemorate: 4 June 1989. It was “unbelievable”, the former student leader marvelled.
That Zhou’s collection, which opened to the public on Friday as part of the June 4th Memorial Museum, ended up in such an uncanny location is the result of a concerted, decades-long campaign by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to eradicate any remembrance of the 1989 massacre around Tiananmen Square anywhere in the world.
Continue reading...Though the number of railway accidents has come down in the past few years, derailment remains the main cause
There is no railway system quite like the Indian railways. Trains remain an essential lifeline in India, the world’s most populous country of 1.4 billion people, carrying about 13 million passengers a day for work, family and leisure on trains that weave across 40,000 miles of track, more than enough to wrap around the Earth.
Friday night’s collision involving two passenger trains and a freight train in the eastern state of Odisha was one of the worst accidents since 1999, when a collision between two trains in West Bengal killed 285 people. More recently, 160 people died in 2016 when the Indore-Patna Express derailed and as recently as February, two goods trains collided in Uttar Pradesh.
Continue reading...Davis school district says it will assess text after complaint for ‘pornographic or indecent materials’ under law passed last year
A school district in Utah that last week banned the Bible from school libraries is now being asked to consider a further title for removal: the Book of Mormon.
The Davis school district, which serves Davis county, north of Salt Lake City, said it was considering a new complaint demanding the removal of the foundational text of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Continue reading...Deteriorating conditions and other whales in area south of Sydney hampered attempts, say rescuers
A humpback whale trapped in waters south of Sydney has finally been freed after a gruelling eight-hour rescue mission.
Rescue efforts began on Saturday morning after reports of a whale in distress off Five Islands near Port Kembla. Volunteer crews from Marine Rescue NSW and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service were called to assist at about 8.30am.
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