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UN security council votes unanimously for month-long Syria ceasefire
Democrats defend Russia inquiry in response to Republicans' Nunes memo
Fresh row over mysterious sickness affecting US diplomats in Cuba
'A boys' club': UN agency accused over sexual harassment claims
NRA calls companies' Florida shooting boycott 'political and civic cowardice'
Red Cross finds 21 cases of sexual misconduct in last three years
Julian Assange negotiations: Ecuador blames UK as talks break down
Emma Chambers, The Vicar of Dibley actor, dies aged 53
The Real Thing singer Eddy Amoo dies in Australia
Ivanka Trump calls for 'maximum pressure' on North Korea
'They are strong and attractive': Vespa Club Uganda – in pictures
‘We can change this reality’: the women sharing news of war in Ghouta
Lake District Notebook: ‘There’ll be no zip wire across the icy waters, no screams from on high’
Golden goal lifts OAR to Olympic men's hockey title over Germany in classic
Yemen attack: at least 14 killed in raid on Aden counter-terrorism headquarters
Voting in Rhodesia: 2 March 1980
America's bump stock capital: can this tiny Texas town survive Trump's ban?
Colombia: no guns, no drugs, no atrocities, no rape, no murder. Just bananas…
Can a tourist ban save DiCaprio’s coral paradise from destruction?
Anger grows over leaking of Joyce accuser's identity
How I fell in love with performing as a drag king | Dani Weber
From Spain to Germany and Italy, the outflanked centre-left cannot hold | Jon Henley
Moscow mired in Syria as Putin’s gameplan risks a deadly ending
As Florida teens show us how it's done, my anger is turning to hope

UN security council votes unanimously for month-long Syria ceasefire

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 01:35 PM PST

United Nations votes to allow humanitarian access and evacuations
Moscow mired in Syria as Putin's gameplan becomes bogged down

The UN security council voted unanimously on Saturday for a month-long ceasefire across Syria to allow for humanitarian deliveries and medical evacuation.

Democrats defend Russia inquiry in response to Republicans' Nunes memo

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 05:36 PM PST

Long-awaited memo by Democrats on House intelligence committee condemns GOP document as 'effort to undermine' investigations

In a long-awaited memo released on Saturday, Democrats on the House intelligence committee defended official investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Fresh row over mysterious sickness affecting US diplomats in Cuba

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 04:00 AM PST

Study into 'health attacks' on embassy staff sparks controversy, with some experts claiming situation is being spun for political gain

When a mystery illness rippled through the US embassy in Cuba in late 2016, the diplomatic fallout was rapid.

The US slashed the number of people at its Havana mission and expelled 15 Cuban diplomats after at least 24 American staff and family reported a mix of headaches, dizziness, eyesight, hearing, sleep and concentration problems.

'A boys' club': UN agency accused over sexual harassment claims

Posted: 25 Feb 2018 01:16 AM PST

Leading campaigner, current and former staff call for inquiry into bullying and sexual assault at UNAids

The head of a leading women's rights movement has called for an independent investigation into what she calls pervasive bullying and sexism within a UN agency, alleging that she was harassed and sexually assaulted while working for the organisation.

Malayah Harper, now general secretary of the World YWCA, one of the world's oldest women's rights organisations, said the agency UNAids must urgently review how sexual harassment allegations are handled.

NRA calls companies' Florida shooting boycott 'political and civic cowardice'

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 02:31 PM PST

More than a dozen prominent businesses end partnerships
Opinion: Young people could tip balance on gun laws

The National Rifle Association has criticized more than a dozen companies for choosing to sever partnerships following the shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead. The lobby group called such moves a "shameful display of political and civic cowardice".

Red Cross finds 21 cases of sexual misconduct in last three years

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 04:10 AM PST

Internal review finds ICRC staff were dismissed or resigned for paying for sexual services

More than 20 employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross have left the organisation for sexual misconduct since 2015, the humanitarian institution said.

The ICRC director general, Yves Daccord, said 21 staff members were either dismissed or resigned for paying for sexual services in the last three years. Another two workers suspected of sexual misconduct did not have their contracts renewed at the Geneva-based organisation.

Julian Assange negotiations: Ecuador blames UK as talks break down

Posted: 23 Feb 2018 11:31 PM PST

Ecuador's foreign minister says: 'To mediate you need two parties, Ecuador is willing, but not necessarily the other party'

Talks between the UK and Ecuador over the future of Julian Assange at its London embassy have broken down, the South American country's foreign minister has said.

Maria Fernanda Espinosa suggested British officials had been unwilling to negotiate over the Wikileaks founder's potential release.

Emma Chambers, The Vicar of Dibley actor, dies aged 53

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 11:04 AM PST

Dawn French, who worked with the comedy star, described her as a 'unique and beautiful spark'

Emma Chambers, best known for playing Alice Tinker in The Vicar of Dibley, has died aged 53, it was announced on Saturday.

Dawn French, the star of The Vicar of Dibley, described her as "a unique and beautiful spark".

The Real Thing singer Eddy Amoo dies in Australia

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 05:47 AM PST

Amoo, 74, led UK soul band which had No 1 single with You To Me Are Everything

Eddy Amoo, the lead singer of the Real Thing – the British soul group who had a UK No 1 single with You To Me Are Everything in 1976 – has died, aged 74.

The singer-songwriter died suddenly on Friday in Australia, according to a statement from his brother Chris, and Dave Smith who still play in the band that was formed in 1972 in Liverpool.

Ivanka Trump calls for 'maximum pressure' on North Korea

Posted: 23 Feb 2018 07:59 PM PST

Experts say North's diplomatic overtures aimed at driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul

Ivanka Trump is leading a US delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in an effort to show a softer side of US diplomacy on the peninsula while calling for maximum pressure to be put on North Korea.

Trump watched snowboarding events in Pyeongchang with South Korea's first lady, Kim Jung-sook, and foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha. Wearing a Team USA hat and red snowsuit, she captured the attention of local media. Her trip comes less than two weeks after Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un's younger sister, visited the South and largely overshadowed US vice president Mike Pence.

'They are strong and attractive': Vespa Club Uganda – in pictures

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 09:00 AM PST

Once seen as a status symbol in Uganda and the capital Kampala, the iconic Piaggio Vespa is now derided as an anachronism. For devotees, though, old habits die hard

‘We can change this reality’: the women sharing news of war in Ghouta

Posted: 23 Feb 2018 11:00 PM PST

As bombs fall on the besieged area of Syria, women's voices are at the forefront

When the bombs start falling, two dozen adults and children gather in one room in Bayan Wehan's home in besieged eastern Ghouta, Syria. They hold hands, hug each other and try to find hope.

"I put my brother's daughter in my lap, she is five-years-old, and I try to make her forget the shelling noises. I tell her stories about beautiful things," says Wehan, who has endured half a decade under siege.

Lake District Notebook: ‘There’ll be no zip wire across the icy waters, no screams from on high’

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 04:04 PM PST

In the Cumbrian beauty spot that has fended off high-level zip slides, local people and visitors are mostly glad that it won't now be 'a glorified theme park'

On a crowded island like Britain, encountering absolute silence is rare. But one place where true tranquility can be guaranteed for the foreseeable future is in Cumbria's north lakes, on the shores of Thirlmere.

Plans to stretch eight of the longest zip wire rides in the country across its icy waters, highlighted in the Observer, were abandoned last week to the unbridled delight of many locals. Zip wire advocates had argued the landscape should be opened up for everyone and not "preserved in aspic". The Lakes, said opponents, should offer a place of escape and peace. The small-C conservatives won the day.

Golden goal lifts OAR to Olympic men's hockey title over Germany in classic

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 11:13 PM PST

Kirill Kaprizov's overtime goal lifts OAR to win in thrilling final
Germany took, then lost lead in final seven minutes of regulation
Players and fans sing Russian anthem in defiance of IOC ban

Russia did not in fact win their first gold medal in men's hockey in 26 years with a heart-stopping 4-3 overtime win over Germany on Sunday afternoon.

Instead a team competing neutrally as Olympic Athletes from Russia, the IOC's inspired nomenclatural workaround to incorporate Russians at the Pyeongchang Games despite a wholesale doping ban, held off a stingy German team in the game of the tournament to capture Olympic men's hockey gold, the first for a Russian-affiliated team since Albertville 1992.

Yemen attack: at least 14 killed in raid on Aden counter-terrorism headquarters

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 07:26 PM PST

Isis says it carried out attacks that security sources say involved two car suicide bombers and six gunmen

At least 14 people have been killed and 40 wounded when car suicide bombers and gunmen tried to storm the headquarters of a Yemeni counter-terrorism unit in Aden on Saturday, security and medical sources said.

Islamic State, in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency, claimed responsibility for what it described as two "martyrdom operations" targeting the camp in Tawahi district in south-western Aden. The agency provided no immediate evidence for the claim.

Voting in Rhodesia: 2 March 1980

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 11:30 PM PST

Photographer Neil Libbert documented Zimbabwe's first election since the end of white minority rule for the Observer. Robert Mugabe won a landslide victory in the historic poll.

Twelve black Rhodesian policemen last week moved, lightly armed and without flags or trumpets, into the Delta guerrilla assembly place, 130 miles north-east of Salisbury, led by their red-haired, liberally freckled section officer, Lance Lucas.

Tomorrow they take over the administration of the camp and the 2,700 men and women of Robert Mugabe's ZANLA guerilla army, as 34 Australians of the Commonwealth ceasefire monitoring force set off on a four-day journey back to Perth. Continuity at Delta will be provided for a week or so by Royal Engineers Captain Stephen Pearce and two British corporals.

America's bump stock capital: can this tiny Texas town survive Trump's ban?

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 11:00 PM PST

Moran has a population under 300 and is home to the first and best-known manufacturer of the controversial device

When Don Boyett was asked if he believes that bump stocks should be banned, he gestured to the moss green SUV in his driveway.

"Let's take my Ford Expedition here. Let's say I get drunk and I run over 30 people out in the middle of the road. Are we going to sue Ford and get rid of Ford Expeditions? It's the person behind the wheel. The same thing with a gun. To me, it's the person behind that gun that's at fault. It's not the gun's fault," he said.

Colombia: no guns, no drugs, no atrocities, no rape, no murder. Just bananas…

Posted: 25 Feb 2018 12:30 AM PST

Colombia's farmers can hope again after bloody decades of civil war – but they're not relying on politicians to help them

Don José Manuel Suarez has seen some things. Father of seven and grandfather of 15, his 80 years have been spent farming a patch of land that has also been a battleground in the longest civil war in modern history. At an outdoor meeting of a co-operative of banana farmers in Ciénaga, near the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia, Don José Manuel sits in one shady corner of a clearing, patiently waiting his turn to speak. The other men and women are his old friends and neighbours. The question I've asked them is this: what have been the worst of times, and what the best?

In the hot morning sun, among the creaking plants hung with clenched hands of green bananas, the answers to the first part of that question have come thick and fast.

Can a tourist ban save DiCaprio’s coral paradise from destruction?

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 10:00 PM PST

South-east Asian idylls – from Philippine islands to the Thai bay made famous in The Beach – plan to turn tourists away so that devastated coral reefs have some time to recover. Will it be enough?

Our Thai tour guide, Spicey, takes a drag on her cigarette and gestures sadly towards the beach. "The problem with people is that they are too greedy. They see a beautiful place and they want it. They take, take, take from nature. And then they destroy it."

The golden sands of Maya Bay where Spicey stands are some of the most famous in the world. This once-idyllic cove, on the tiny Thai island of Koh Phi Phi Leh, was the paradise location of The Beach, Danny Boyle's 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It was then pushed by tourism officials in advertising campaigns to entice more wealthy visitors to Thailand.

Anger grows over leaking of Joyce accuser's identity

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 11:23 PM PST

Deputy leader Bridget McKenzie says complainant's wish for confidentiality has been respected by party

The president of Australia's most powerful rural body, the National Farmers Federation, has leant public support to a Western Australian woman who has lodged a sexual harassment claim against Barnaby Joyce, and suggested the Nationals leaked against her.

The NFF's president, Fiona Simson took to social media on Sunday to back the woman, describing her as "undeniably one of the most fair dinkum people I know".

How I fell in love with performing as a drag king | Dani Weber

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 06:01 PM PST

Drag performers have an incredible opportunity to challenge stereotypes and shine a spotlight on gender roles

I never thought I'd grow up to be a drag king. When I thought of drag, I thought of gay men in dresses, mocking women and making transphobic jokes. But when I moved to San Francisco and explored my queerness and the rich history and diversity within drag, I soon found myself in the spotlight.

As a baby bisexual in Melbourne, my only interaction with queer communities was through being a "fag hag". I was only taken to bars and clubs by gay men to be an accessory – someone to dance with while they looked around for men to cruise. I was always read as a straight woman, but I knew that wasn't really me, and I didn't know how to find my people. When I met my partner Ben, who is also bisexual, we decided to move overseas so that we could be a bit more adventurous. I also had a feeling that I needed to explore who I was, away from family and friends.

From Spain to Germany and Italy, the outflanked centre-left cannot hold | Jon Henley

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 04:05 PM PST

The collapse of the social democratic vote across the continent calls for radical solutions – including a decisive break with the centre-right

These are troubling times for Europe's social democrats. Centre-left parties face fresh threats next Sunday, when Italians will vote in their first general election for five years and Germany will learn whether its centre-left SDP will approve a new coalition with Angela Merkel's centre-right CDU.

The two ballots are the latest tests for a mainstream centre-left which, outflanked on left and right, appears in full retreat – all but wiped out in France and the Netherlands, humiliated in Germany, struggling even in its Scandinavian heartland.

Moscow mired in Syria as Putin’s gameplan risks a deadly ending

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 12:15 PM PST

Russian leader's gamble backing Bashar al-Assad increasingly looks miscalculated

From his spot in the ruins of east Ghouta, Arif Othman sees the current phase of Syria's war as brutally simple. The longer he holds out against Bashar al-Assad and his allies, the worse it will get – especially at the hands of the Russians.

"We were supposed to have surrendered by now," he said at the end of the most intensive week-long barrage anywhere in Syria in the past three years.

As Florida teens show us how it's done, my anger is turning to hope

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 08:05 AM PST

Watching them take apart politicians with ease and turn grief into action – it's the first time in a long while that I've thought things will start to get better

It's hard to imagine finding light and hope in the aftermath of a tragedy like the one that left 17 people dead in Parkland, Florida. Yet somehow we have, thanks to the sheer determination of student survivors. They're flooding cable television and social media, starting walkouts and marches. Even better, they're fighting back against rightwing smears with the kind of online savvy that only young people have.

Now if we could just do half as much for them as they're doing for this country ...

Aneka Info

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

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