Brooklyn building collapse kills at least one, traps others in wreckage

Three-story building was at the edge of a construction site where another edifice had been demolished

Firefighters dug through the rubble of a three-story building in Brooklyn on Wednesday after it collapsed at the edge of a construction site, killing at least one person and trapping others beneath the wreckage.

Firefighters were called to the scene in the borough’s Flatbush section at about 4pm. News helicopter footage showed dozens of firefighters scouring the debris, with a group homing in on one area and appearing to use a saw to cut through the wreckage.

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Human torso found in sofa in Sydney bushland prompts homicide investigation

Police called to Lane Cove North on Wednesday after sofa found containing human torso believed to be that of adult man

New South Wales police have launched a homicide investigation after a human torso was found in bushland on Sydney’s lower north shore.

Police were called to Lane Cove North about 2.30pm on Wednesday after reports of human remains.

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Facial recognition errors put ethnic minorities at risk of wrongful arrest, police watchdog warns

Inspectors find some officers acted on potential matches from retrospective searches without making enough checks

Police officers risk arresting innocent people, especially from ethnic minorities, if they treat inaccurate facial recognition data as evidence, an official report has found.

Although the technology can help fight crime, the report found it is beset by errors and biases, and operators do not always realise they must make further inquiries to verify the data.

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Bronze leg found in Scottish bog sheds new light on Roman occupation

Once thought to have been looted by Scottish tribes, the gilded limb is the centrepiece of a new exhibition on Roman Scotland in Edinburgh

A large bronze leg found in a bog in rural Scotland more than 200 years ago and then hidden away in a duke’s storeroom is helping to rewrite the history of the Roman empire.

Antiquarians argued that the so-called Mislington leg had been looted, perhaps from York, hacked off by marauding Scottish tribes and carried north over Hadrian’s Wall. “We cannot visualise the conditions which would have led to its erection anywhere north of the Great Wall,” said one scholar, James Curle, in 1932.

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Hacker claims to have sold VCE exam papers to hundreds of students after government website hack

With year 12 exams under way, VCAA says there is no evidence any have leaked and hacker is attempting to exploit ‘anxious students’

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s website has been hacked during the state’s exam period, with the culprit launching a tirade of expletives and claiming without evidence to have accessed student papers.

On Wednesday evening, a message attributed to someone using the alias “DaggerElite” appeared on the VCAA’s homepage banner, claiming to have sold exam papers to “hundreds of students” across the state.

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Two skulls likely belonging to enslaved people returned to Brazil after Harvard used them in eugenics studies

Remains believed to have belonged to Africans or Afro-Brazilians repatriated after being flown back by diplomats

Two skulls, including that of a man believed to have taken part in Brazil’s greatest slave revolt but whose remains were taken to the United States and used in racist eugenics studies at Harvard University, were repatriated on Wednesday.

The remains had been outside Brazil since the 19th century. One was taken about 190 years ago from Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia; the other, about 160 years ago, from Rio de Janeiro – and were welcomed back in moving, subdued ceremonies in both cities.

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Poundland owner extracted millions when chain was on ‘knife-edge’, MPs say

Retailer’s management to seek two-week extension of legal protection from creditors in high court

MPs have accused the owner of Poundland of extracting millions of pounds from the budget retailer when it was on a “knife-edge” as it seeks extra time to secure a rescue deal.

The management of Poundland, which employs 12,000 people and operates 600 stores in the UK and Ireland, will seek a two-week extension of legal protection from creditors from the high court on Thursday morning.

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Trump planning new military assault or tighter sanctions, say Iranian officials

Regime adviser says Tehran could be forced into pre-emptive strikes if stalemate continues

Senior Iranian officials believe the US is planning either further military strikes or an ever-tightening economic stranglehold that will push Tehran into retaliatory action.

The assessment comes from Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with the US, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

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Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi bring progress on prisoners but not on peace

US envoys to visit Moscow and Dublin on Thursday for talks with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy respectively

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to the “largest prisoner exchange” of the war at their first US-brokered talks since February but made little progress towards a broader peace agreement.

Both sides sent senior delegations to the two-day talks, led by Donald Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, in an effort to find a solution to end the nearly-five-year war.

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Argentinian lawyer mocks UK’s sovereignty claim in Falklands oil case

Lawyer says Britain wrong to believe in historic doctrine that crown has sovereignty over parts of oceans

Britain should not be permitted to act as a 17th-century colonial power treating the waters around the Falkland Islands as a Dominium maris Britannici, Argentina has told an international tribunal.

Marcelo Kohen, representing Argentina at a hearing in Hamburg, mocked Britain for apparently believing in the historic doctrine that the British crown has sovereignty over expansive parts of the oceans.

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Killing of journalist underscores deteriorating conditions in Ecuador

Tomás Beltrán was shot dead amid gang warfare that has turned Latin American country into one of its most violent

Tomás Beltrán was manoeuvring his car into his garage on Sunday night when the Ecuadorian journalist was shot dead.

Beltrán ran a Facebook page with news about Calceta, a small city in the province of Manabí, whose Pacific coastline has made it a key flashpoint in the gang warfare over drug trafficking routes that has transformed one of Latin America’s safest countries into one of its most violent.

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‘We were quite surprised’: Finland’s embassy in Australia goes viral with staff training day post on Instagram

After a promotion for a ‘Finnish Dinner Date’ went ‘a bit viral’, the Canberra envoy’s next post became an unlikely social media hit

The embassy of Finland in Canberra was temporarily closed on Tuesday.

Millions of people across the world were, it turns out, quite upset by this.

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At least 300 Italian schools evacuated after email bomb alerts – Reuters

  1. At least 300 Italian schools evacuated after email bomb alerts  Reuters
  2. Hundreds of schools evacuated in Italy following bomb threats via email  CNN
  3. Hundreds of schools across Italy, Scotland and Ireland receive bomb threats  Financial Times
  4. At least 300 Italian schools evacuated over nationwide bomb threats  NBC News
  5. Italy to Hold Emergency Meeting After Schools Bomb Threat  Bloomberg.com
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Burnham hails approval for two huge windfarm projects as ‘power under British control’ – UK politics live

Announcement comes ahead of visit to Cop31 climate conference with PM also set to face MPs at PMQs

Here are some more comments on the report for the Casey commission released today looking at how social care is run in England. (See 9.56am.)

This is from Natasha Curry, deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust and one of the report’s authors.

Compared to the other countries we looked at, the governance of England’s social care system is confused and complex. Overlapping and unclear roles leave dangerous uncertainty around who is responsible for important decisions, contributing to the inertia around reform England has struggled with for decades. The serious consequences of this were laid bare during the Covid pandemic.

The system for governing adult social care in England has evolved haphazardly and with little clear planning. That has been exacerbated by successive governments ducking politically unpalatable decisions for decades. That has scattered responsibility for the sector across and outside government in a way that few would design from scratch.

This report makes for sober reading of how adult social care and those who rely on it have been systematically failed. The fragmentation we see today is what happens when there is a total absence of political leadership to ensure the sector is well-funded and provides equitable access to care.

[Burnham] struggled to dampen splits among cabinet ministers, which were first revealed by The i Paper, who used the meeting to express differing views on the future relationship with Brussels.

One source with knowledge of the cabinet discussion said there was a “clear divide between those who want to go further and those who don’t want to push the issue too far”.

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Spain’s first general strike in 14 years brings clashing social and political desires to the fore – AP News

  1. Spain’s first general strike in 14 years brings clashing social and political desires to the fore  AP News
  2. Workers across Spain stage first general strike in 14 years as anger rages over housing  Reuters
  3. Spain Hit by General Strike as Cost of Living Takes Center Stage Ahead of Elections  WSJ
  4. Workers launch general strike across Spain over severe housing crisis  NBC News
  5. Which European country loses the most money when workers strike?  Euronews.com
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One Nation Victoria candidate apologises for slew of offensive comments about lesbians, Indians and Julia Gillard

Exclusive: Chris Moore, running for the party in Greenvale, made derogatory social media comments between 2010 and 2012

A One Nation candidate in Victoria has apologised for a series of offensive comments including repeated references to Australian-Indians as “curry munchers”, comparing a woman in burqa to a bag of rubbish, and sharing an image calling Julia Gillard a slut.

The party’s candidate for Greenvale on Melbourne’s north-western fringe, Chris Moore, also made derogatory comments about lesbians and refugees and once posted that he “doesn’t like the way the new homo cleaner at work looks at me”.

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Pope Returns to Peru, Where Evangelicals Challenge Catholic Dominance – The New York Times

  1. Pope Returns to Peru, Where Evangelicals Challenge Catholic Dominance  The New York Times
  2. From the Vatican to Chiclayo, Peru: the pope of the trenches returns to his adopted homeland  CNN
  3. Peru puts Pope closer to heaven for monumental welcome home  The Times
  4. Larger-than-life Leo statue awaits the pope on Peru’s Pacific coast  Reuters
  5. Pope Leo XIV goes back to Peru, where he spent decades of his life  NPR
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NAZA documentary on Gaza killings becomes one of year’s most watched

The film, which details Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian civilians, has been seen by more than 1.5m people in less than two months

NAZA, the award-winning documentary that details Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, has been seen by more than 1.5 million people since being released in cinemas across the world last month.

The film, which is directed by the Oscar-winning Israeli film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, has reached a worldwide audience of 1,547,033 as of Friday 6 November, making it one of the most-watched documentary films with a theatrical release in 2026.

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