UN evaluates risk of further landslides or flooding amid ongoing search for 600 people who remain missing after fatal disaster that has so far claimed 400 lives
A week of national mourning will be held in Sierra Leone as emergency workers struggle to recover hundreds of people who remain buried following a mudslide on Monday morning.
Almost 400 bodies have been found so far, with a further 600 people still unaccounted for, according to the Red Cross.
Raids near Manila latest in campaign that has killed thousands and follow claim US has toned down criticism of rights abuses
Police in the Philippines have killed more than 30 people in a series of raids near Manila, in the bloodiest night yet of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
Supt Romeo Caramat said 67 police operations in various parts of Bulacan, a province north of the capital, had left 32 “drug personalities” dead and more than 100 others arrested.
Continue reading...US president defends far-right marchers and equates Confederate generals with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
Donald Trump has once again defended far-right protesters at the Charlottesville rally, saying they were not all neo-Nazis and white supremacists and laying the blame for the violence equally on what he called the “alt-left”.
The remarks – made during a rowdy press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York – were Trump’s latest switch in stance since Saturday, when the civil rights activist Heather Heyer died after a white nationalist allegedly drove his car into a crowd in the Virginian city.
Continue reading...Baltimore removes its Confederate statues following a motion from the city council on Monday. The statues were removed on Tuesday night, prompted by the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, in which a civil rights activist was killed while demonstrating against a far-right demonstration that wanted to retain a statue of Robert E Lee
Continue reading...Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed while participating in anti-fascist protests, urges mourners gathered inside the Paramount Theater on Wednesday not to let her daughter’s death be in vain. Bro says those responsible for Heyer’s death in Charlottesville have only served to magnify her cause
Continue reading...Drone footage taken on Wednesday silently shows the devastation wrought by the mudslides in Freetown, once-bustling capital of Sierra Leone. Rescuers are still searching for hundreds of missing people after the devastating mudslide and floods engulfed the capital and the surrounding areas on Monday
Continue reading...Hundreds of people gather at the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on Wednesday evening for a candlelit vigil against hate and violence. Marchers assembled peacefully in the same place where hundreds of torch-carrying white nationalists marched on Friday, when several fights broke out. There were chaotic scenes at the weekend during another rally in which a counter-protester was killed.
Continue reading...The Republican party was left reeling after the president defended those who took part in a white supremacist rally. Here’s a look at who said what
The Republican party is reeling after Donald Trump defended people who took part in a far-right rally with white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
The president insisted there was “blame on both sides” as he appeared to assert a moral equivalence between activists protesting racism and neo-Nazis carrying signs with swastikas and racial slurs during the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Continue reading...After tortuous passage through congress, Michelle Bachelet’s bill legalising abortion in some circumstances will go before constitutional tribunal
Chile is on the cusp of finalising a landmark ruling to legalise abortion under certain circumstances in a move that would signal a major victory for President Michelle Bachelet.
Related: Chile to reconsider abortion ban
Continue reading...A port city in the Tunisian capital might seem an innocuous setting for the celebration of a Christian tradition, yet the rekindling of the procession of the Assumption speaks of a culture that defies sectarianism
About 150 people are crowded into the 19th-century church of Saint Augustin and Saint Fidèle in the Tunis suburb of La Goulette. More are gathered outside in the summer heat, behind the iron railings lining the narrow streets of Little Sicily, the neighbourhood where the fishing town’s Italian migrants once settled and established themselves.
The crowds have come to see the first procession of the Assumption to be staged in the city since the tradition died out in the early 60s. In its heyday, the flower-decked statue of the Virgin of Trapani would be carried through the packed streets of La Goulette to the harbour where, alongside the area’s Muslim and Jewish population, priests would bless the fishing boats and their crews.
Continue reading...China and Japan’s postwar truce has always been an uneasy one – and if Washington cools its support for Tokyo, the dynamics in the region could shift dangerously. By Richard McGregor
For news out of east Asia, it is difficult to compete with North Korea’s youthful, jocular despot, Kim Jong-un, and his near-daily threats to fire a nuclear-tipped missile at US territory. On Monday, Kim was pictured surrounded by his top generals mulling over maps with targets closer to home, in South Korea and Japan, while warning again that he was ready to “wring the windpipes of the Yankees”. The young Kim, and his father and grandfather before him, have long tossed violent epithets at their enemies, but Pyongyang’s new capabilities – to potentially deliver a nuclear warhead across the Pacific – have injected fresh danger into the crisis on the Korean peninsula.
The North Korean crisis is one of the few creations of the cold war to have outlived the Berlin Wall, despite persistent predictions that the communist dynasty would collapse. There are many factors driving the confrontation, chief among them paranoia in Pyongyang, where the Kim dynasty is focused above all on preventing regime change. In neighbouring China, Beijing is paralysed: it is caught between anger at Kim for destabilising the region, and fear that if it pushes Pyongyang too hard, the regime will collapse, and fall into the hands of South Korea, an ally of the US. The US itself also seems impotent, knowing that starting any war could lead to devastating attacks on its allies in Seoul and Tokyo.
Continue reading...Top Trump aide leaks his own plan to purge rivals and humble China … anxious wait for A-level results is over … and the pointed legal battle over Toblerone
Good morning – Warren Murray bringing you today’s briefing.
Continue reading...The far-right activists who gathered in Charlottesville included members of a range of distinct groups, as old as the KKK and as recent as the Proud Boys
The “Unite the Right” torchlight march and rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend descended into violent clashes with counter-protesters, as far-right groups chanted racist slogans and – many kitted out with shields, sticks, helmets and pepper spray – performed the Hitler salute and waved neo-Nazi flags. The events shone a spotlight on a number of disparate groups and individuals who have been emboldened since Donald Trump’s populist rightwing election victory.
The Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights organisation has identified the leading rightwing extremist organizations whose members and cheerleaders attended Charlottesville and who could be spotted at a growing number of such events around the US, as they seek to expand their reach, raise their profiles and coalesce around an agenda of militant white glorification.
Continue reading...Bipartisan committee supports creation of modern slavery act as well as independent commissioner to report and advise on issues of modern slavery
Australia should create an independent anti-slavery commissioner to fight the practice of modern slavery and worker exploitation, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
The joint committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade is looking into the creation of a modern slavery act, which would target forced labour, human trafficking and slavery-like practices in the operation of Australian businesses, companies and governments.
Nobel laureate shot in head at age of 15 after pushing for Pakistani girls to be educated confirms she will study PPE
Five years ago, the Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai in the head for advocating the right of girls to be educated. Now she has won a place at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, to study philosophy, politics and economics, or PPE.
The 20-year-old Nobel peace prize winner tweeted a screenshot of the confirmation and said: “So excited to go to Oxford!! Well done to all A-level students – the hardest year. Best wishes for life ahead!”
Continue reading...French president’s wife tells Elle magazine her position ‘will be determined not by law but by transparency charter’
Brigitte Macron has said she will have a clear role at the Élysée Palace despite public opposition to her taking the official title of France’s first lady.
In her first interview since her husband Emmanuel was elected president in May, she also said she could not understand the fuss over their relationship and the 25-year age gap.
Continue reading...Nash, like Barnaby Joyce, will remain in cabinet but wait on high court ruling following her discovery she is a British citizen by descent
The Turnbull government’s political crisis over dual citizenships has intensified, with the deputy leader of the National party, Fiona Nash, joining Barnaby Joyce in referring herself to the high court – in her case, on the basis she has British citizenship by descent.
Nash made a short, unheralded statement to the Senate on Thursday evening just before the adjournment confirming the likelihood of her dual citizenship.
Continue reading...Zoo head says a wave of thefts in recent weeks had affected 10 species including a buffalo, which he said was cut up and sold
Venezuela authorities are investigating the theft of animals from a zoo in western state of Zulia that were likely snatched to be eaten, a further sign of hunger in a country struggling with chronic food shortages.
A police official said two collared peccaries, which are similar in appearance to boars, were stolen over the weekend from the Zulia Metropolitan Zoological Park in the sweltering city of Maracaibo near the Colombian border.
Continue reading...Charlie Alliston says he would not have had time to pull a brake on track bicycle he was riding when he struck Kim Briggs
A cyclist accused of killing a woman by ploughing into her on a track bicycle has told a court that having a front brake would not have prevented the collision.
Charlie Alliston, then 18, was said to have been travelling at 18mph before he struck Kim Briggs, 44, as she crossed Old Street in central London on 12 February 2016.
Continue reading...Statues installed on five buses with the support of the Seoul mayor – although use of public space to highlight this wartime atrocity has angered Japan
Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
Appearing on the front seat of buses in the South Korean capital earlier this week, the statues were installed by the Dong-A Transit company as a potent reminder of an unresolved wartime atrocity whose roots lie in Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.
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