Ideas for emoji include vine of leaves on heart and people clasping hands
To err is human, it is said, to forgive divine. And soon that noblest of human qualities will be available in emoji form, following a global effort to find the most appropriate icon.
A coalition of charitable and peace-building organisations in Finland are leading the quest to crowdsource an emoji to be added to the thousands available to smartphone users.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including events from the Labour conference in Brighton
In her speech to the conference Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said Tory policies were to blame for rising crime. She said:
There is no question that the cuts in police numbers have contributed to the rise in crime. But other contributors are the cuts to education, the increase in school exclusions, all the zero-hours contracts, all the homelessness and inequality. All the cuts in mental health services have also played their part.
And these are all Tory policies. When they say they will lead the fight against crime – do not believe a word of it. They are the ones who have created the conditions for rising serious and violent crime. Senior police officers are increasingly going on record and saying that cuts to public services have created an environment where crime flourishes. Cuts have consequences. You cannot keep people safe on the cheap.
We will welcome refugees, including child refugees.
We will proudly uphold the torture ban and treat the victims of torture with humanity, not detentions and deportations.
Speaking at a fringe meeting about how Labour can win back support in its heartlands, Jon Trickett – shadow Cabinet Office minister and MP for Hemsworth – said he was fed up with the argument that the people who voted for Brexit were from “backwards” communities in the north of England. He said:
Here’s the point I want to make. Those held-back communities – the heartland communities – can be found in Hastings, they can be found in Hackney and they can be found in Hartlepool.
A very senior member of the Labour party, she said to me: ‘Well, no wonder they’re all coming down south, the young people, because you can’t be gay up north.’ That was said by somebody whose name you will have mentioned several times in the past few weeks.
Those people who are suggesting that the people who voted for Brexit did not know what they were voting for infantilises 17 million people.
Continue reading...Biden calls for congressional inquiry into call in which Trump reportedly pressed Ukraine leader for damaging information
Donald Trump lashed back at his critics on Saturday, as questions swirled in the latest scandal to hit his White House and his target, Joe Biden, called for a congressional investigation of “an overwhelming abuse of power”.
Related: Ukraine imbroglio confirms Giuliani's as Trump's most off-kilter advocate
Continue reading...The neo-Nazi party’s Athens offices have downsized and it has closed offices across the country. Greeks embrace the end of an era of rage
For years the five-storey building at 131 Mesogeion Avenue embodied the success of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party that took Greece, and Europe, by storm. Today, its tattered flag, broken signage and shuttered doors have come to tell another story: of Golden Dawn’s rise and fall on the back of rage and economic crisis, hate-mongering, murder and criminal charges. “The people put them in, the people threw them out,” quips Giorgos Mavroeidis, the manager of a health-appliance shop two stores down. “We got used to the rallies in the end but they were extremists to be sure,” he says of the black-clad staff and supporters who would frequent the building, the party’s national headquarters. “It’s strange to think of us being so close to them now.”
Related: 'Their ideas had no place here': how Crete kicked out Golden Dawn
Continue reading...Over 120 arrested as Black Bloc guerrillas infiltrate climate protest and gilets jaunes stage revival
So-called Black Bloc anarchists infiltrated a peaceful climate change march in Paris on Saturday, smashing shop and business windows and torching mopeds and dustbins en route.
Police made more than 120 arrests as the French capital saw a series of demonstrations.
Continue reading...Martin Shields and Nick Diable are accused of tax fraud in ‘cum-ex’ scandal that exposes City’s pursuit of profit
They have been called “the men who plundered Europe”: a group of cowboy traders, seasoned tax lawyers and mathematical whizz kids who are alleged to have conspired in the heart of the City of London to siphon at least €60bn in taxpayers’ money from the state coffers of several EU countries.
In Britain, the so-called “cum-ex” scandal, named after the complex derivatives juggling act employed, gained little attention amid the frenzied debate around the UK’s departure from the European Union when the fraud scheme was discovered in 2017.
Continue reading...Daphne Caruana Galizia, who wrote a popular anti-corruption blog, was killed by a car bomb outside her home
Following international pressure, the government of Malta has said it will launch an independent public inquiry into the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Caruana Galizia, who wrote a popular anti-corruption blog, was killed by a car bomb outside her home on the island on 16 October 2017.
Continue reading...Downing Street tells Brussels negotiators documents must not be shared with 27 states
Downing Street’s secrecy over its “underwhelming” Brexit proposals has caused a fresh rupture in the negotiations in Brussels.
The row centres on a demand that the EU’s negotiating team treat a long-awaited cache of documents outlining the UK’s latest ideas as “Her Majesty’s government property”.
Continue reading...‘Feminist emergency’ demonstrations follow series of high-profile rape cases
Protesters will take to the streets of more than 250 towns and cities across Spain on Friday to declare a “feminist emergency” after a series of high-profile rape cases and a summer in which 19 women were murdered by current or former partners.
Organisers are aiming to “turn the night purple” – the colour of the feminist movement – to raise the alarm and protest against apathy, indifference and a lack of attention from politicians and the media.
Continue reading...Hundreds of researchers will spend year on ship improving understanding of sea ice
Researchers from more than a dozen countries are preparing to launch the biggest and most complex expedition ever attempted in the central Arctic – a year-long journey through the ice they hope will improve the scientific models that underpin our understanding of climate change.
In the €140m (£123m) Mosaic expedition, 600 scientists from 19 countries including Germany, the US, Britain, France, Russia and China will work together in one of the most inhospitable regions of the planet.
Continue reading...Supreme court witnesses clash of two Tory PMs amid threats prorogation could be repeated despite verdict
Downing Street put out “misleading” statements about the prorogation of parliament and published excuses for Boris Johnson’s five-week suspension of the Commons that are “not the true reasons”, the supreme court has been told by a lawyer for the former prime minister John Major.
The extraordinary clash of evidence between a former Conservative prime minister and the current one surfaced on the third day of an emergency supreme court hearing before 11 justices about whether Johnson’s five-week prorogation of parliament was lawful.
Continue reading...Lawyers in gangland cases given emergency protection after unprecedented killing
Lawyers and prosecutors in major gangland drugs cases in the Netherlands have been given emergency protection after the unprecedented murder of a top defence lawyer prompted police and the media to claim that government naivety was turning the country into a narco-state.
Derk Wiersum was gunned down in the street as he left his home in the Amsterdam suburb of Buitenveldert on Wednesday morning. Police are searching for a 16- to 20-year old man in a black hooded top who fled the scene on foot.
Continue reading...F-16 pilot’s parachute got caught in electricity line after he ejected from jet in Brittany
A Belgian F-16 fighter pilot has been rescued from a high-voltage electricity line after his jet crashed in Brittany, France.
The plane came down over the town of Pluvigner at about 10.30am local time on Thursday, narrowly missing a house. The two pilots were able to eject, with one safely picked up on the ground.
Continue reading...Police seek six suspects who ransacked Vaux-le-Vicomte near Paris, which often stands in for Versailles in films
The owners of a 17th-century French castle were tied up as their opulent home was ransacked by robbers who fled with a haul worth €2m (£1.8m), authorities have said.
The Vaux-le-Vicomte palace, set amid sumptuous gardens about 30 miles south-east of Paris, has been owned by the same family since 1875. Patrice and Cristina de Vogüé opened the estate to the public in 1968, and run it with their three sons.
Continue reading...A metal storage tank exploded during a huge fire at a chemical factory in Istanbul on Wednesday. Video obtained by the broadcaster Haber Global showed people running away in panic as debris fell from the sky. Two firefighters were injured after the blast and several people were poisoned by fumes from the blaze, according to Istanbul's governor
Continue reading...Derk Wiersum, 44, was gunned down in an Amsterdam street in broad daylight
The murder of a lawyer for a key witness in a major Dutch organised crime trial has sparked outrage and calls for a tougher crackdown on violent underworld gangs.
Derk Wiersum, a 44-year-old father of two, was gunned down in the street shortly after leaving his house in Amsterdam. Police are hunting a hoodie-wearing assailant who fled on foot.
Continue reading...Ultimatum comes as sources say PM was ‘surprised’ by levels of checks on the border
Boris Johnson has been set a two-week deadline to table a plan for replacing the Irish backstop as further embarrassing details emerged of the prime minister’s chaotic visit to Luxembourg.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and Finland’s prime minister, Antti Rinne, told reporters in Paris that they were both “concerned about what is happening in Britain”.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including day two of the supreme court hearing to decide if Boris Johnson’s five-week suspension of parliament was lawful
Eadie says even Lord Pannick, who represents Gina Miller, accepts that it can be legitimate for the executive to obtain political advantage from prorogation.
If this is the case, how can a court decide what level of political advantage is acceptable, and what level is not.
Prorogation has been used by the government to gain a legislative and so political advantage. One of the most notable examples of that was its use to facilitate the speedy passage of what became the Parliament Act 1949. Under section 2 of the Parliament Act 1911 a non-money bill could only be enacted without the consent of the House of Lords if it was passed in three successive sessions by the House of Commons. In order to procure the speedy enactment of the 1949 Act the government arranged for a session of minimal length in 1948. Parliament was prorogued on 13 September 1948 to the following day. Following the passage of the parliament bill by the House of Commons, it was then prorogued again on 25 October 1948. Accordingly, even if the prorogation under consideration in the present case was, as the claimant and the interveners contend, designed to advance the government’s political agenda regarding withdrawal from the European Union rather than preparations for the Queen’s speech, that is not territory in which a court can enter with judicial review.
This is from the FT’s legal commentator, David Allen Green.
Interesting that there is now not even any lip-service at the Supreme Court that the prorogation was for a new Queen's Speech
Government submissions seem to be that the prorogation power stands, whatever its purpose and effect
The Zwarte Piets, or Black Petes, who accompany Santa have been the subject of protests
After years of debate and at times violent protest, this year’s Christmas-season Saint Nicholas parade in the Netherlands will not feature white people in blackface makeup, the public broadcaster that organises the event has said.
The Zwarte Piets, or Black Petes, who accompany Sinterklaas in the annual televised parade, which this year takes place in Apeldoorn on 16 November, will instead have sooty faces, the broadcaster said, in what it called “a logical next step”.
Continue reading...When the city’s first floating sauna was banned by port authorities, its owners took it on the run, sparking a public craze
It all began in September 2011, when Martin Lundberg sailed his boat into the marina in the fashionable Aker Brygge district in central Oslo, Norway.
A native of Malmö, Sweden, Lundberg had spent the summer on his boat moored off one of Oslo’s islands. He didn’t have a job, or a home other than the boat.
Continue reading...