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

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


Taliban confirm leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor killed in US drone strike

Posted: 21 May 2016 11:32 PM PDT

Pentagon says strike was carried out in Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, while militants say successor to Mullah Omar is dead

The Afghan Taliban have confirmed the death of leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor after the US military announced he was the target of a drone strike in Pakistan.

Related: Mullah Akhtar Mansoor: Taliban's new leader has a reputation for moderation

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EgyptAir flight MS804: smoke detected in 'multiple locations' before crash

Posted: 21 May 2016 04:53 AM PDT

French investigators confirm alerts sent in last minutes of flight indicated smoke in cabin, as Egyptian military releases pictures of debris

Smoke was detected in multiple places on board the missing EgyptAir flight MS804 minutes before it crashed, French investigators have confirmed, as the Egyptian military released pictures of the plane's debris.

Signs of smoke were picked up in a toilet and in the aircraft's electronics, according to data from the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (Acars), which routinely transmits data to airlines about the condition of their planes.

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Sri Lanka landslides kill at least 73 with scores more missing

Posted: 21 May 2016 07:43 AM PDT

Torrential rains continue to deluge island nation, with hundreds of thousands in temporary shelters

Landslides and heavy flooding have killed at least 73 people in Sri Lanka, with scores more missing and hundreds of thousands forced to flee their homes.

Torrential rains have deluged the island nation since last weekend, triggering huge landslides that have buried victims in up to 15 metres (50 feet) of mud.

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Vote Leave embroiled in race row over Turkey security threat claims

Posted: 21 May 2016 04:05 PM PDT

Brexit group 'appealing to prejudice' with argument that Turkey's accession to EU would put Britons at greater risk of crime

The official campaign to leave the EU fronted by Michael Gove has been accused of "stoking the fires of prejudice" after it claimed that continued membership would put Britons in danger as a result of a high level of criminality among Turkish citizens.

In a potentially incendiary intervention – on the eve of an England v Turkey football match in Manchester – coordinated statements from a government minister and Vote Leave not only claimed that Turkey was about to join the EU, but that its citizens posed a threat to national security, as well as to public services.

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Fear of migrants and loathing of elites drive a small Austrian town to far right

Posted: 21 May 2016 04:03 PM PDT

Frustrated voters could hand the country's presidency to the populist Norbert Hofer on Sunday after rejecting the major parties

Anyone who wants a glimpse of what kind of country Austria might turn into after this weekend's presidential elections could do worse than visit the town of Wels in Upper Austria.

Related: 'People have lost hope': young Austrians on the rise of the far right

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Everest triumph and tragedy as Australian teen summits but compatriot dies

Posted: 21 May 2016 06:29 PM PDT

Alyssa Azar, 19, becomes youngest Australian to climb highest mountain but Melbourne academic Dr Maria Strydom dies of altitude sickness

A Queensland teenager's feat in becoming the youngest Australian to climb Everest has been thrown into stark relief by the death of a compatriot on the same day.

Alyssa Azar, 19, reached the summit on Saturday, making her the youngest Australian to conquer the world's highest mountain.

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Trump and Clinton on guns: two visions of race, justice and policing in the US

Posted: 21 May 2016 10:00 AM PDT

Amid a national discussion of police violence and a series of high-profile shootings, the 2016 election has seen a rare focus on the fight for gun control

Related: Donald Trump endorsed by NRA despite history of gun control support

For years seen as a losing battle, the push for gun control has become a central conflict of the 2016 presidential election, and part of a broader struggle between competing visions of policing, justice and racism in America.

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Lesbian couple gets $80,000 settlement after arrest in Hawaii for kissing

Posted: 21 May 2016 07:32 AM PDT

Courtney Wilson and Taylor Guerrero say they were harassed and arrested because a police officer didn't like their public displays of affection in a store

Honolulu has agreed to pay $80,000 to settle a lawsuit from two gay women who allege a police officer wrongfully arrested them after seeing them kissing in a grocery store.

Related: Texas Republican party inadvertently suggests most Texans are gay

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Baghdad unrest: at least four anti-government protesters killed

Posted: 21 May 2016 07:10 AM PDT

Iraq security forces used live ammunition, rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas to dislodge demonstrators from green zone

At least four anti-government protesters have been killed and 90 injured as security forces ejected them from Baghdad's heavily fortified green zone, according to medical sources.

Iraqi security forces had used live ammunition, rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas on Friday to dislodge the demonstrators from the central district, which houses government buildings and many foreign embassies.

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France grants asylum to family forced into hiding after fleeing Syria

Posted: 21 May 2016 04:03 PM PDT

Campaign to allow Al Elfis to stay succeeds after decision to expel them overturned

Eight-year-old Houmam Al Elfi knew nothing of the politics of war, refugees and migration. He was too young to be sure why his family fled from their home in Homs, Syria, four years ago as the city was pounded to rubble, or what they were doing living in hiding in France. All he knew was he wanted to go to school.

Today Houmam is attending lessons near Béziers after a decision to expel the Al Elfi family was overturned when the plight of Malek, 41, Khaldieh, 32, and their children Hisham, 15, Fata, 12, and Houmam was highlighted by the Observer.

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At least 16 injured as high-speed train crashes into bus in Switzerland

Posted: 21 May 2016 04:27 AM PDT

Incident happened on Friday night at a level crossing in Interlaken, near Berne

At least 16 people have been injured after a high-speed train crashed into a bus in Interlaken, near Berne in Switzerland.

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US quietly drops El Chapo murder charges to ease drug lord's extradition

Posted: 21 May 2016 03:00 AM PDT

The US had originally sought to try Joaquín Guzmán for murders of Mexicans in Mexico but new indictment is seen as removing obstacles to conviction

American authorities preparing for the extradition of the alleged drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán to stand trial in the US appear to have quietly scrapped plans to prosecute him for a series of brutal murders committed inside Mexico.

A detailed list of a dozen specific killings that were previously tied to the notorious Sinaloa cartel leader has been dropped from Guzmán's charge sheet by federal prosecutors in New York without any official announcement.

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‘Corrupt in its roots’: as Oakland police scandals pile up, residents not surprised

Posted: 21 May 2016 08:00 AM PDT

Donald Trump may have called the city one of the 'most dangerous' in the world but community members say the real danger is its police officers

Related: Watching the watchers: Oakland seeks control of law enforcement surveillance

Olga Cortez was getting out of the shower and preparing for bed when she heard a loud banging outside. It was 9.30pm on 7 December, and the Oakland, California, mother saw a man she did not recognize furiously pounding on her front door.

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The world's largest cruise ship and its supersized pollution problem

Posted: 21 May 2016 12:00 AM PDT

As Harmony of the Seas sets sail from Southampton docks on Sunday she will leave behind a trail of pollution – a toxic problem that is growing as the cruise industry and its ships get ever bigger

When the gargantuan Harmony of the Seas slips out of Southampton docks on Sunday afternoon on its first commercial voyage, the 16-deck-high floating city will switch off its auxiliary engines, fire up its three giant diesels and head to the open sea.

But while the 6,780 passengers and 2,100 crew on the largest cruise ship in the world wave goodbye to England, many people left behind in Southampton say they will be glad to see it go. They complain that air pollution from such nautical behemoths is getting worse every year as cruising becomes the fastest growing sector of the mass tourism industry and as ships get bigger and bigger.

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Donkey parents wanted: Hawaiians round up last of feral herd for adoption

Posted: 21 May 2016 09:12 AM PDT

Herd that once numbered 500 has been reduced to 50 in an effort requiring the social animals to be adopted with fellow creatures: 'They have to have a friend'

Hawaiians are rounding up the last 50 donkeys of a feral herd that once roamed 500 strong, and searching for residents to take the asses in.

David Paul Sennett, for instance, had a stuffed donkey as a child but always wanted a real one. Decades later, his childhood dream came true when he adopted Barney, a wild donkey from Hawaii's Big Island who was orphaned when his mother was killed by a car.

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US colleges cut ties with scholarships that ban HIV-positive applicants

Posted: 21 May 2016 03:30 AM PDT

Princeton University and Boston University have taken down postings for scholarship programs in South Korea that require HIV testing

Two prominent American colleges have removed advertisements for South Korean government scholarships that bar people with HIV, following the intervention of human rights activists.

Princeton University on Thursday took down a posting on its website that advertised the Korean Government Scholarship Program, which funds study at universities in South Korea, over concerns that it was discriminatory. The move came less than a fortnight after the Frederick S Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University quietly removed references to the scholarship in similar circumstances.

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Tyrannosaurus rouge: lips may have hidden T rex's fierce teeth

Posted: 21 May 2016 02:00 AM PDT

New research takes aim at the fanged portrayal of the T rex, suggesting enamel on its teeth was probably kept moist by thin, scaly lips much like those of lizards

Its image is one of a fierce predator who towered over most others, baring dozens of jagged, bone-crushing teeth.

But new research out of Toronto seeks to challenge depictions of the Tyrannosaurus rex, suggesting that its fearsome incisors might have been hidden behind a pair of lips.

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Across Africa, the worst famine since 1985 looms for 50 million

Posted: 21 May 2016 11:00 PM PDT

A second year without rain threatens to bring catastrophe for some of the poorest people in the world. Donor countries, in the grip of wars and refugee crises, have been slow to pledge funds. But by the time they do, it could be too late

Harvest should be the time for celebrations, weddings and full bellies in southern Malawi. But Christopher Witimani, Lilian Matafle and their seven children and four grandchildren had nothing to celebrate last week as they picked their meagre maize crop.

Related: 'It's a disaster': children bear brunt of southern Africa's devastating drought | Lucy Lamble

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50 million Africans face famine after crops fail again

Posted: 21 May 2016 11:00 PM PDT

UN fears that food aid will not arrive in time to help people of ravaged countries

Up to 50 million people in Africa will need food by Christmas as a crisis across the continent triggered by El Niño worsens, the UN and major international charities have warned.

A second year of deep drought in much of southern and eastern Africa has ravaged crops, disrupted water supplies and driven up food prices, leaving 31 million people needing food now, and 20 million more likely to run out this year.

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Press privacy finds its last redoubt on their lordships’ island of injunctions

Posted: 21 May 2016 10:59 PM PDT

The ruling in the supreme court makes a mockery of the law. But it's also odd to see pro-Brexit papers asking for another country's privacy law to prevail

There's a huge irony to all the press fury over the supreme court's decision to keep a privacy gag on that (now rapidly ageing) celebrity threesome. Current law, doggedly putting an English interpretation on privacy and freedom of expression rights as laid out in the Strasbourg charter, seems to mean maintaining the injunction to at least four out of the five supreme arbiters. But the three names involved have been published all over America, all over the internet, all over Scotland. There were 78,000 Twitter clicks on judgment day alone. Even the judges anticipated that the Daily Mail and others would cry "ass", "Canute" and much, much more.

Wait a second, though. Aren't the papers most anxious to deride our supreme court in this matter also the ones who want us to quit Europe because our supposed sovereignty lies in peril? But now, when it suits them, they condemn most judges as donkeys for not seeing that American privacy legislation – nothing to do with Europe – is drastically different from English or continental law. America, in broad terms, is far tougher on intrusion of the phone-hacking variety, but far more relaxed when celebrities are caught up to no good with pants up or down. First amendment rights. No prior restraint.

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Zookeepers shoot man with tranquiliser while trying to save him from lions

Posted: 21 May 2016 10:49 PM PDT

Two lions shot dead and man gravely injured after getting into animals' enclosure at Santiago zoo, stripping naked and taunting them into attacking him

A man who climbed into a lion enclosure, stripped naked and taunted them into attacking him was shot with a tranquiliser dart by zookeepers trying to save him from a near-fatal mauling.

Visitors to Santiago's Metropolitan Zoo in Chile watched aghast as staff eventually shot and killed two of the lions with live ammunition. The man had been carrying what appeared to be a suicide note, authorities said.

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East West Street by Philippe Sands review – putting genocide into words

Posted: 21 May 2016 10:30 PM PDT

A compelling family memoir intersects with the story of the Jewish legal minds who sowed the seeds for human rights law at the Nuremberg trials

On 20 November 1945, exactly 10 infernal years after the Nazis' Nuremberg laws had instituted the legality of antisemitism – robbing Jews of citizenship, rights, property, and eventually of life itself – the ancient Bavarian city was host to the war crimes trials that gave birth to the modern system of international justice.

For the first time in history, national leaders were indicted for their murderous acts before an international court. Hermann Göring and other leading Nazis such as the "butcher of Poland", Hans Frank, Hitler's preeminent legal adviser and the head of occupied Poland's "general government", met their ultimate judgment. It was here, too, that the concepts of "crimes against humanity" and "genocide", so central to contemporary political life, had their first courtroom airing.

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Ports of call: a wine tour of the Douro

Posted: 20 May 2016 11:00 PM PDT

Portugal's Douro region is famous for its port, but also produces fine, good-value reds and top nosh. Perfect, then, for thirsty foodies like our writer

The Douro river is wild and tamed, fertile, rich and dust poor. She is the heart, soul and life force of the region she gives her name to. For 900km, from central Spain to Atlantic Porto, she pushes and runs, fat, green, inexorable. The Douro region is about the size of Suffolk but, unlike East Anglia, has barely a metre of flat ground. Instead, dizzying mountain slopes are creased and folded and combed with the millions of vines that make those juicy Douro table wines and its celebrated ports.

Visitors have been welcomed here for centuries but it's taken until just now for the Dourense region to cotton on to eno-tourism, that happy marriage between travel and tippling. Though frequented mostly by cashmere-and-smart-slacks travellers, the Douro is also a fine destination for the thirsty but thrifty.

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Man arrested in Surrey on suspicion of murder after woman found dead

Posted: 21 May 2016 01:10 PM PDT

Body of 38-year-old woman found at Weybridge address where a man was also found with serious injuries

A 46-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a woman was found dead at a house in Surrey.

The body of the 38-year-old woman was found at a house in the St George's Hill area of Weybridge on Saturday morning, Surrey police said.

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Gunman fires into concert crowd in Austria, killing two and wounding 11

Posted: 21 May 2016 11:44 PM PDT

Police say gunman shot and killed himself after opening fire into the crowd, apparently at random

Police say a gunman has fired shots into a small crowd attending an open air concert in Austria's westernmost province, killing two people and wounding 11 others before shooting himself to death.

Police say the overnight shooting was preceded by a loud argument between the gunman and a woman in a nearby parking lot.

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Louisiana: girl aged five shoots and kills herself with handgun at home

Posted: 21 May 2016 06:48 PM PDT

Girl's father told investigators his daughter was playing with the gun when she shot herself

Authorities say a five-year-old girl shot and killed herself with a handgun at a Louisiana home.

Related: 'Did a bunch of little kids get shot today?' Stars join march for 'gun sense'

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Deadly volcanic eruption in Indonesia leaves village swamped by ash

Posted: 21 May 2016 09:43 PM PDT

There have been several deaths and serious injuries after Mount Sinabung unleashed a series of eruptions on Saturday

The death toll from a volcanic eruption in western Indonesia has climbed to six, an official said Sunday, with fears more could have been trapped by the hot ash.

Three people also remain in a critical condition after Mount Sinabung, a highly-active volcano on Sumatra island, unleashed a series of eruptions on Saturday afternoon, disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

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Tim Costello says indefinite detention of asylum seekers is 'torture'

Posted: 21 May 2016 07:43 PM PDT

Opposition leader Bill Shorten says World Vision CEO 'has a point' and accuses government of delays in resettlement

Indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru is psychological torture, World Vision Australia's chief executive, Tim Costello, has said.

Speaking on Sky on Sunday, Costello said: "There's no question that the psychological torture of not being able to actually resettle, and you can't go back home, is torture."

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MH17 families sue Russia and Putin for compensation

Posted: 21 May 2016 09:50 PM PDT

Application reportedly filed in European court of human rights seeking $10m in compensation per passenger

An Australian law firm has reportedly filed a compensation claim against Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, in the European court of human rights on behalf of families of victims of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

The jetliner crashed in Ukraine in pro-Russian rebel-held territory on 17 July, 2014, killing all 298 people on board, including 28 Australians.

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Top US commander in Middle East makes secret Syria visit

Posted: 21 May 2016 02:42 PM PDT

  • Joseph Votel enters country to see progress in building of anti-Isis alliance
  • Votel is highest-ranking US officer to enter country since campaign began

The top US commander for the Middle East secretly visited Syria on Saturday, for a first-hand look at efforts to build cohesive alliances of Arab, Kurd and other local fighters to defeat the Islamic State.

Army Gen Joseph Votel, head of US central command, became the highest-ranking US officer known to have entered Syria since the US began its campaign to counter Isis in 2014.

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Cyclone Roanu leaves 21 dead and more than 100 injured in Bangladesh

Posted: 21 May 2016 02:26 PM PDT

Up to 500,000 people transferred to shelters as cyclone causes landslides, house collapses and embankments to break in Chittagong

A cyclone battered coastal Bangladesh on Saturday, killing at least 21 people and injuring many more.

It has now weakened into a depression that, according to the weather office, could still bring brief periods of violent wind or rain.

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In Venezuela’s housing projects, even loyalists have had enough

Posted: 21 May 2016 01:30 PM PDT

As activists demand President Maduro's removal, his natural supporters are joining protests against shortages and high prices

The Villa Poligono housing project, near the city of San Félix, in Venezuela's south-eastern Bolívar state, is somewhere President Maduro might once have felt his popularity was secure.

His smiling, moustached image features prominently on a vast poster at the entrance to the complex of bungalows. Poligono is part of the socialist government's Gran Misión Vivienda, the great housing mission designed to provide rent-free homes to those most in need, under the slogan "decent homes for the people".

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EgyptAir uncertainty shows fear makes victims of us all

Posted: 21 May 2016 01:16 PM PDT

Whoever or whatever was behind the latest plane crash, we fear the worst

Terrorism's primary aim is to cause and spread fear. Whether the issue is a fake bomb in a men's lavatory at Old Trafford or a plane unaccountably disappearing over the Mediterranean, the immediate response, rational or otherwise, is conditioned by recent collective memories of very real horrors.

Given that in the current, deeply unsettled international climate the threat posed by cross-border terrorism seems to be intensifying, it is unsurprising that speculation about the cause of Thursday's EgyptAir crash has focused on terrorist action.

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After riots and terror, will MS804 crash deepen Egypt’s crisis?

Posted: 21 May 2016 01:01 PM PDT

Nearly half of those killed on flight were Egyptians, many forced to leave their families and go abroad for work

It had been four years since Farrag Diab said goodbye to his family and set off for work in Saudi Arabia, and he was longing for the wedding that would bring him back home this month. But his son had found work closer to home as a security guard on the national carrier, EgyptAir, and had been assigned to fly MS804 from Paris late on Wednesday evening.

Diab rushed home last week in terror rather than celebration, to wait for news of a missing plane, and then begin the long mourning for his son. Without a body, Mohamed Diab's mother refuses to accept his death.

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Fort McMurray evacuation orders lifted as some workers and residents return

Posted: 21 May 2016 11:22 AM PDT

  • Better weather conditions allow more firefighters to fight blaze at key points
  • Officials hope to remaining evacuees can return starting 1 June

Alberta officials have lifted mandatory evacuation orders in some areas north of Fort McMurray, where a raging wildfire has forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 people and the closure of oil sands operations.

Officials said on Saturday conditions had improved in some parts north of the oil sands city. Suncor Energy and Syncrude will now be able to resume their idled northern oil sands operations and bring back evacuated workers.

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Women's Voluntary Services - in pictures

Posted: 21 May 2016 05:55 AM PDT

During the second world war one in ten of Britain's female population joined the WVS. Monthly reports were kept and photographs taken to document the work they undertook between 1938 and 1941.

Now the Royal Voluntary Service want to bring these fascinating, previously unseen archives to the public with the help of crowdfunding

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Syrian refugees give new life to struggling city of Malmö

Posted: 21 May 2016 05:22 AM PDT

Migrants fleeing war in the Middle East have brought a vibrant culture and a trade revival to Sweden's third city

When Fisal Abo Karaa stepped off the train in Malmö's central station this time last year, exhausted after a long journey by train and boat, he looked like any other victim of Syria's terrible civil war.

It wasn't until April, when Malmö's main shopping street was filled with the sound of Syrian bagpipes, drums and dancing that he made his presence felt. The opening of Jasmin Alsham, his new restaurant, was the most visible sign yet of an unexpected injection of Syrian money hitting Sweden's third city.

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Banana raffles and dog wool: the ingenuity of a wartime women’s army

Posted: 21 May 2016 04:45 AM PDT

Appeal aims to give access to photos and reports of the Women's Voluntary Services

A raffled banana that raised 15 shillings, a demonstration of how to comb dog hair into a serviceable replacement for wool, and the serving of thousands of meals to homeless women, children and the elderly in the blitzed streets of Britain. The everyday struggles of the forgotten "hidden army" of female volunteers during the second world war, all carefully detailed in quadruplicate monthly reports, have been stored away in dusty boxes for more than 60 years.

Now the Royal Voluntary Services (RVS) – formerly the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS) – is launching a fundraising campaign to digitise the archive and offer public access to some 30,000 pages of documents, written by female volunteers who gained the nickname "the army that Hitler forgot".

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Clintons continue to tout legacy where others see era of mistakes and scandal

Posted: 21 May 2016 07:57 AM PDT

Announcement that Hillary Clinton would ask her husband Bill for economic advice reveals stark contrast between their supporters and the Americans who agree with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders' darker vision of the decade

Like the upcoming sequel to Hollywood's 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, this summer Bill Clinton is hoping to revive the spirit of the 90s after two decades away from the White House.

Related: Why Hillary Clinton's 90s nostalgia is so dangerous | Thomas Frank

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Freak spring snowstorm in California closes roads and causes accidents – video

Posted: 21 May 2016 08:38 AM PDT

Northern California has seen a late season snowstorm which caused chaos on the roads and resulted in the closure of Interstate 80 on Friday. The rare May weather left cars covered in snow and reduced visibility for drivers, leading to a huge traffic snarl-up. More snow is forecast for the coming days

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Armed man shot by secret service at White House – video

Posted: 21 May 2016 04:13 AM PDT

A man has been shot and arrested after he approached a White House security checkpoint armed with a gun on Friday. The man was shot after he refused orders from security personnel to drop the firearm, and was later transported to hospital in a critical condition. President Barack Obama was not at the White House at the time

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