World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Vietnam war: your stories, photographs and memories
BR Ambedkar: Google celebrates man who fought for India's 'untouchables'
Paedophiles sell child abuse images for bitcoin
Video games need fewer 'sexy' women and more you can actually fancy
King's Cross airport? The outlandish plans for London that almost got built
Is Chad managing to beat the 'oil curse'?
Dutch government facing legal action over failure to reduce carbon emissions
South Africa's ageing white mercenaries who helped turn tide on Boko Haram
Do not Track: an online, interactive documentary about who’s watching you
Chibok kidnapping: one year on, hope and stoicism as girls remembered
The future of Cuba’s socialist ice-cream cathedral
World's largest refugee camp scapegoated in wake of Garissa attack
Experts reject Japan's new whaling plan
Russell Brand pleads for clemency for Bali Nine pair in video posted online
UN security council to vote on arms embargo against Yemen Houthi rebels
'Grave concern' about renewed Ukraine fighting, say European foreign ministers
East West Link: complaints from Spain and France won't change Victoria's mind
Alaska Airlines flight returns to Seattle after worker trapped in cargo hold
Bedspread thought to be from Abraham Lincoln's deathbed to be tested for blood
Marco Rubio announces his candidacy for 2016 Republican presidential nomination – video

Vietnam war: your stories, photographs and memories

Posted: 14 Apr 2015 01:01 AM PDT

It is 40 years since the end of the Vietnam war and a chance to reflect on the experiences of those affected by it. Find out how to share your story

BR Ambedkar: Google celebrates man who fought for India's 'untouchables'

Posted: 14 Apr 2015 12:35 AM PDT

'Babasaheb' was leading figure in India's struggle for independence who drafted the new republic's constitution and championed rights of the dalits

Paedophiles sell child abuse images for bitcoin

Posted: 14 Apr 2015 12:08 AM PDT

Almost 40 websites reported to Internet Watch Foundation for trading child sexual abuse content for cryptocurrency

Video games need fewer 'sexy' women and more you can actually fancy

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 11:00 PM PDT

I'm spoiled for choice when it comes to digital crushes, but there's little out there for my boyfriend – and that makes games worse for him

King's Cross airport? The outlandish plans for London that almost got built

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 11:00 PM PDT

From a rival to the Eiffel Tower that would have dwarfed the Shard, to a circular airport perched over Kings Cross station, Douglas Murphy remembers some ill-fated projects that could have transformed the capital

Is Chad managing to beat the 'oil curse'?

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 11:00 PM PDT

Much is being done to challenge the negative impact of oil production in Africa. In her new book, Celeste Hicks looks at the complexities of the scramble for oil, and what has been achieved

Dutch government facing legal action over failure to reduce carbon emissions

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 11:00 PM PDT

Landmark case brought by 886 Dutch citizens aims for more robust policy to cut emissions within targets set by IPCC to help avoid critical 2C rise in global temperatures

South Africa's ageing white mercenaries who helped turn tide on Boko Haram

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 11:00 PM PDT

Battle-hardened soldiers, many of them paramilitary leftovers of the apartheid regime, have pursued private wars simply to put bread on the table

Leon Lotz was once a member of the Koevoet – "crowbar" in Afrikaans – a paramilitary police unit created by South Africa's apartheid regime to root out guerrillas in what is now Namibia. Thirty years later, something persuaded him to take up arms again in a foreign country. He was killed in March, apparently by friendly fire from a tank in northern Nigeria. Among the most striking facts about Lotz was his age: 59.

A wealth of media reports, witness accounts and photos on social media suggest that he is not the only white mercenary who helped turn the tide against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in recent weeks, allowing Nigeria to hold a relatively peaceful election. Whether as technical advisers or frontline combatants, some are said to have come from the former Soviet Union but about 300 are reportedly from South Africa and nearing retirement age.

They are mercenaries. The point is they have no business to be there

These guys are in their 50s, but for a pilot or tank driver it doesn't really matter

Do not Track: an online, interactive documentary about who’s watching you

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 11:00 PM PDT

Brett Gaylor is creator and director of the show that reveals how we are being followed online by a host of companies Continue reading...

Chibok kidnapping: one year on, hope and stoicism as girls remembered

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 10:39 PM PDT

Loved ones rally to mark anniversary of abduction by Boko Haram and demand security from new Nigerian president

Reverend Enoch Mark waited for his daughter as long as he could.

For half a year after Boko Haram gunmen snatched 17-year-old Monica from her dormitory in Chibok, he stayed on in the town even as militants repeatedly attacked it, hoping each day she might return.

I have no choice but to be positive because if not, how can I encourage my own community?

The future of Cuba’s socialist ice-cream cathedral

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 10:00 PM PDT

In the 1960s, Fidel Castro created Coppelia – a state-run ice‑cream parlour that came to embody Cuba's revolutionary ideals. As relations with the US begin to thaw, can it survive?

There is a black-and-white photograph of Fidel Castro that was taken during his whirlwind April 1959 trip to New York, just three months after his rebel forces ousted Fulgencio Batista, a US-backed dictator who had turned Havana into a playground for the mafia. Dressed in his trademark military fatigues, Castro is surrounded by minders and journalists, hunkered in the back of the miniature train that ferries visitors around the Bronx zoo. He has a pensive look in his eyes. His face is buried in an ice-cream cone.

Castro was in the US at the invitation of a group of newspaper editors who were smitten with his war stories and swashbuckling style. Aside from the photo ops, the trip did not go well: President Dwight Eisenhower refused to meet with him; after delivering a confrontational speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Castro was angered by several questions from the audience and stormed out. Upon returning to Havana, Castro nationalised all US interests without compensation. Washington responded by breaking diplomatic ties and imposing a trade embargo. The CIA began arming and training Cuban exiles for a mission that culminated in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, just two years after Castro's US tour. At a funeral service for "martyrs" in the wake of the attack, Castro vowed "Socialism or death!" and hitched his island of 10 million people to the Soviet Union. Hostilities with America would endure for more than five decades.

Castro decided to create something better than his Yankee rivals, priced for everyone to enjoy: '¡Helado por el pueblo!'

As new generations developed a taste for Coppelia's ice‑cream, Cuba grew increasingly dependent on foreign subsidies

A plump woman in a starched white apron dished the ice-cream up next to a sign touting 56 years of revolution

World's largest refugee camp scapegoated in wake of Garissa attack

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 09:00 PM PDT

The Kenyan government has called Dadaab 'a nursery for al-Shabaab' and is demanding its closure. But dismantling the home of 350,000 people will not happen quickly or make the country safer, says Simon Allison

Experts reject Japan's new whaling plan

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 08:50 PM PDT

International Whaling Committee say proposal to resume hunt in Southern Ocean offers no scientific evidence that it is necessary

Japan's hopes of resuming its whale hunts in the Southern Ocean have suffered a setback after International Whaling Committee experts said its latest plan offered no scientific justification for the slaughter.

The IWC panel said Japan's revised programme, known as Newrep-A, did not contain enough information for experts to determine whether Japan needed to kill whales to fulfil two key objectives: calculating the size of populations necessary for a return to sustainable commercial hunting, and gaining a better understanding of the Antarctic marine ecosystem.

Russell Brand pleads for clemency for Bali Nine pair in video posted online

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 08:16 PM PDT

British celebrity says Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who are facing the death penalty in Indonesia, are reformed and executing them would be 'brutal' and 'immoral'

UN security council to vote on arms embargo against Yemen Houthi rebels

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 08:12 PM PDT

Draft resolution to be put to vote on Tuesday also seeks to impose asset freeze and travel ban on leaders of Houthi rebels and their supporters

Crisis in Yemen – the Guardian briefing

The UN security council has scheduled a vote on a draft resolution that would impose an arms embargo on leaders of Yemen's Shia Houthi rebels and their key supporters – ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh and his son.

The resolution, with the vote to be held on Tuesday, is aimed at ending the Houthis' military campaign against supporters of the embattled current president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the rebels' attempt to take over the strategic Middle East country.

'Grave concern' about renewed Ukraine fighting, say European foreign ministers

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 07:33 PM PDT

Ceasefire must be 'more comprehensively' respected, says Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier, after meeting in Berlin with French, Russian and Ukrainian counterparts

French, German, Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers expressed "grave concern" on Tuesday about violations of a shaky ceasefire in separatist-held east Ukraine, but pledged to continue dialogue.

As surging fighting around hotspots put fresh pressure on the accord, the four gathered in Berlin late on Monday to assess progress in the truce deal agreed in February between the Ukraine government and pro-Russian rebels to end a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people over the past year.

East West Link: complaints from Spain and France won't change Victoria's mind

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 06:47 PM PDT

State treasurer says Labor is determined to keep its election promise to dump the road and negotiations to axe the contract should be resolved by 5 May

Alaska Airlines flight returns to Seattle after worker trapped in cargo hold

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 06:41 PM PDT

Flight 448 from Seattle to Los Angeles took off and was in the air for 14 minutes before the pilot made an emergency landing after he heard banging

An airport worker who fell asleep and found himself trapped in a plane's cargo hold forced a Los Angeles-bound Alaska Airlines flight to return to Seattle on Monday.

Flight 448 had just taken off when the pilot turned the plane around and made an emergency landing after hearing banging and screaming from below deck, an airport spokesman said. It was in the air for 14 minutes. The ramp agent was found inside the pressurised, temperature-controlled area after the plane landed.

Bedspread thought to be from Abraham Lincoln's deathbed to be tested for blood

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 05:47 PM PDT

Experts will test for human blood on cotton bedspread given to Wisconsin Historical Society in 1919, said to have covered US president as he lay dying

Marco Rubio announces his candidacy for 2016 Republican presidential nomination – video

Posted: 13 Apr 2015 05:32 PM PDT

Marco Rubio officially launched his campaign for president on Monday evening in Miami. The 43-year-old senator from Florida held a rally, where he drew heavily on his biography as a first-generation immigrant whose parents left Cuba in the 1950s and struggled to give their children a better life in the United States Continue reading...