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North Korea's state media plays down Kim's nuclear pledge
Merkel’s antisemitism envoy ‘not surprised’ Jews want to leave Germany
Brazil shooting: two supporters of jailed ex-president Lula injured
Dandruff diplomacy: why Macron groomed Trump but Merkel got the brush-off
Oleg Deripaska agrees to cede control of firms hit by US sanctions
Kosovo’s bitter enemies look to heal old wounds
Maypole sales are up as May Day celebrations come back into style
Spain fights to dispel legend of Inquisition and imperial atrocities
Protesters in Israel call for end to Australian live exports
The Wound review – lust in a taboo climate
White House correspondents’ dinner: Michelle Wolf shocks media with Sarah Sanders attack
Peru's brutal murders renew focus on tourist boom for hallucinogenic brew
North Korea will invite foreign observers to shuttering of nuclear test site
Thousands flee in Myanmar amid fighting between army and Kachin rebels
More than #MeToo: 10 ways workplaces can turn the hashtag into action | Tracey Spicer
Cosby is guilty – now how do we stop these abuses from happening again?
'Like father like daughter': comedian Michelle Wolf stuns media with attack on White House team
Guilty: Myuran Sukumaran's final 72 hours depicted in new film – video trailer
Three dead as violence flares at Gaza border protest - video
World's largest known mass grave of children unearthed in Peru - video
Trump tells Merkel: 'We need a reciprocal relationship, which we don’t have' - video

North Korea's state media plays down Kim's nuclear pledge

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 07:24 AM PDT

Kim Jong-un's promise to denuclearise the Korean peninsula given little coverage

North Korea's state media is playing down Kim Jong-un's pledge to pursue denuclearisation, made at a summit with South Korea, raising the stakes for Donald Trump's upcoming talks with the young leader.

Eliminating the nuclear weapons that North Korea claims could hit US cities is Washington's core objective in talks with Pyongyang. It wants a process that is "complete, verifiable and irreversible".

Merkel’s antisemitism envoy ‘not surprised’ Jews want to leave Germany

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 01:00 PM PDT

Felix Klein's comments come after music award is given to bestselling rap album that makes light of Holocaust

A newly appointed special envoy tasked by the German government with tackling the country's rising wave of antisemitism has said he is not surprised that, following a series of high-profile race hate attacks, Jews are considering leaving Germany.

Felix Klein, who is due to take up his post this week, said he plans to launch a nationwide register to chart all crimes against the country's estimated 100,000-strong Jewish community, saying antisemitic attitudes were mainstream in German society.

Brazil shooting: two supporters of jailed ex-president Lula injured

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 07:58 AM PDT

More than 20 shots fired at protest camp in southern city of Curitiba, where Lula is jailed

Two people have been taken to hospital, one in serious condition, following a shooting on an encampment set up to protest against the imprisonment of Brazil's former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the southern city of Curitiba.

More than 20 shots were fired at the camp at around 4am, according to reports from supporters.

Dandruff diplomacy: why Macron groomed Trump but Merkel got the brush-off

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 07:51 AM PDT

This week's Washington visits revealed a president who likes to dominate but predominantly needs to be liked

It is safe to assume that the Oval Office had never before witnessed the practice of dandruff diplomacy. Donald Trump, standing beside Emmanuel Macron, told reporters: "Mr President, they're all saying what a great relationship we have, and they're actually correct," he said. "It's not fake news." The French leader grinned. Then, with unexpected intimacy, Trump reached for Macron's shoulder. "In fact, I'll get that little piece of dandruff off; you have a little piece. We have to make him perfect. He is perfect."

Oleg Deripaska agrees to cede control of firms hit by US sanctions

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 02:39 AM PDT

En+ Group says deal reached in principle for Vladimir Putin ally to cut holding to under 50%

The Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska has agreed in principle to reduce his stake in Russia's En+ Group, which manages his aluminium and hydropower assets, to less than 50%.

Both Deripaska and En+ were targeted by sweeping US sanctions on some of Russia's biggest companies and businessmen on 6 April. The measures were aimed at allies of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to punish Moscow for its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and other so-called malign activities.

Kosovo’s bitter enemies look to heal old wounds

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 12:59 PM PDT

Glimpses of reconciliation as the ethnic divides are slowly being bridged

In a picturesque village in northern Kosovo, Marko Đurić swigged from a bottle of Gazimestan beer and smiled for the cameras. On a visit to the area a few weeks previously, Đurić had been arrested by special forces, bundled into a police van, and unceremoniously deported. This time, Serbia's point man for Kosovo issues was allowed to stay, albeit with a helicopter hovering noisily overhead to keep watch.

Đurić was in Kosovo, which Serbia still officially regards as its province, to tour a microbrewery producing beer named in honour of a medieval battle which is key to Serbia's emotional attachment to Kosovo. He also visited a spa resort, under construction to cater to Serbian pilgrims to the 14th-century Banjska monastery.

Maypole sales are up as May Day celebrations come back into style

Posted: 29 Apr 2018 01:00 AM PDT

After years of decline, folk dance groups are on the rise and thousands will join the festivities on Tuesday

It is a date that was at the heart of British culture for centuries: May Day, the moment when spring enters full bloom and summer is a-coming in.

Now, after a long decline in interest, traditional May Day activities are experiencing their own rebirth. Sales of maypoles are growing and the number of morris dancing teams is also on the rise, with crowds attending May Day festivals of a size not seen for decades.

Spain fights to dispel legend of Inquisition and imperial atrocities

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 10:59 PM PDT

Campaigners want to reclaim the country's past from 'distorted propaganda'

Beyond the cliched vistas of bullfights and beaches, and beneath the stereotypes of sunshine and sangría, fiestas and siestas there lurks a dark view of Spain that some of its people find bitterly and enduringly unfair.

For more than 500 years, they say, the country's past has been disfigured and distorted by the propaganda spread by its former opponents and rivals. The so-called leyenda negra – black legend – was spun by chroniclers in England and the Netherlands who supposedly sought to depict their Roman Catholic enemies as unusually cruel and bloodthirsty and to exaggerate the brutality of the Spanish empire and the Inquisition.

Protesters in Israel call for end to Australian live exports

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 10:26 PM PDT

March in Tel Aviv comes ahead of Sunday departure of live export ship from Western Australia

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Animal rights activists have marched in Israel against live exports, seeking to maintain pressure on both governments to end the "cruel industry".

Protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to call for an end of live animal imports from Australia. Animals Australia said about 3,000 people attended the rally.

The Wound review – lust in a taboo climate

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 11:59 PM PDT

A tribal coming-of-age ritual is the setting for this tough but sensual gay romance

John Trengove's tough, beguiling debut looks at what happens when queerness throws a wrench in the rusty machinery of traditional masculinity. Set in the mountains of South Africa's Eastern Cape, it centres on the Xhosa tribe's circumcision ritual of Ukwaluka, in which young men come of age under the careful watch of their "caregivers". Co-written with Thando Mgqolozana (whose 2009 novel A Man Who Is Not a Man visits the same subject), it embeds itself in a community of scythe-swinging, dick-slinging machismo.

Xolani or "X" (Nakhane Touré) is a young, closeted factory worker in Queenstown who is assigned as caregiver to a young initiate from the city: sensitive, pouty Kwanda (Niza Jay Ncoyini). "They trust you with the softies," says a colleague. Kwanda could indeed be called a softie (or certainly, a snowflake); teased for his expensive shoes, and prone to politically charged monologues, he is marked as an anomalous initiate with western attitudes (perhaps acting here as a stand-in for white South African director Trengove).

White House correspondents’ dinner: Michelle Wolf shocks media with Sarah Sanders attack

Posted: 29 Apr 2018 01:39 AM PDT

The comedian was scathing about Trump's press secretary and his daughter Ivanka in a performance dubbed 'disgusting' by Sean Spicer

The comedian Michelle Wolf stunned guests at a prestigious media dinner in Washington with a risque speech that eviscerated members of Donald Trump's administration, some of whom were in the room.

Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, told the Guardian he thought the performance was "absolutely disgusting", but others praised Wolf for pulling no punches about the president and his aides.

Peru's brutal murders renew focus on tourist boom for hallucinogenic brew

Posted: 29 Apr 2018 01:30 AM PDT

A faith healer was killed, and a Canadian tourist was lynched in revenge – deaths that expose the dangers of the unregulated world of ayahuasca tourism

All traces of blood have been scratched from the dirt under the palm tree outside Olivia Arévalo's clapboard home in a remote hamlet in the Peruvian Amazon. A week later, it is as if the villagers want to rub out all signs of the shocking outbreak of violence that erupted here.

Arévalo, a traditional healer, was shot twice under a midday sun on 19 April. Witnesses say she collapsed to the ground, gasping: "They've killed me! They've killed me!" as her daughter Virginia ran to cradle her dying mother's head.

North Korea will invite foreign observers to shuttering of nuclear test site

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 09:10 PM PDT

Kim Jong-un has pledged to allow outside experts to witness the decommissioning in May ahead of a meeting with Donald Trump

Trump says summit with Kim Jong-un could happen in 'three or four weeks'

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has pledged to shutter a nuclear test site and invite foreign experts and journalists to witness the decommissioning in May as he prepares to meet Donald Trump as early as next month.

Kim also said there was no need for the North to maintain a nuclear arsenal if a peace treaty is formalised and relations with the US improve, according to South Korea's presidential office.

Thousands flee in Myanmar amid fighting between army and Kachin rebels

Posted: 29 Apr 2018 12:04 AM PDT

UN says more than 4,000 people have fled in three weeks in the northern Kachin state and many civilians remain trapped

Thousands of people have fled renewed fighting between Myanmar's army and ethnic insurgents in the country's remote north.

More than 4,000 people have been displaced in the country's northern-most state of Kachin near the border with China in the last three weeks, the head of UN's office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA), Mark Cutts, said on Friday.

More than #MeToo: 10 ways workplaces can turn the hashtag into action | Tracey Spicer

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 04:50 PM PDT

In an edited extract of a speech given at the Global Summit of Women, Tracey Spicer urges employers to step up and stamp out sexual harassment

My first job was working behind the Yummies Bar at our local roller-skating rink, swirling soft serves ice-creams into crispy cones to a soundtrack of Sweet with Ballroom Blitz for the speed skate and Barbara Streisand for the couples' skate.

I remember being so proud to be 14 years old in the workforce, earning the stellar sum of $2 an hour.

Cosby is guilty – now how do we stop these abuses from happening again?

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 07:00 AM PDT

We need to examine systems that allow harassers to flourish, and for the #MeToo movement to ask: what is our endgame?

The Week in Patriarchy is a weekly roundup of what's happening in the world of feminism and sexism. If you're not already receiving it by email, make sure to subscribe.

'Like father like daughter': comedian Michelle Wolf stuns media with attack on White House team

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 11:57 PM PDT

The comedian takes aim at the Trump administration, congress and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Ivanka Trump and the president himself at the annual correspondents' dinner

Guilty: Myuran Sukumaran's final 72 hours depicted in new film – video trailer

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 04:03 PM PDT

Melding archival footage with drama, Matthew Sleeth's independent film Guilty aims to document the final 72 hours of Bali Nine drug trafficker Myuran Sukumaran, who was executed by Indonesian firing squad in April 2015.

Sleeth, an artist, ran workshops with the Australian in Kerobokan prison alongside acclaimed artist Ben Quilty, and the film was made with the Sukumaran family's involvement. Adam McConvell plays Sukumaran in reconstructions, and is joined by Sukumaran's spiritual adviser, Pastor Christie Buckingham, who plays herself.

The film is screening as part of the Human Rights Arts & Film festival, which opens in Melbourne on 3 May before travelling to Tasmania and Canberra. An abridged version of the film is available to watch on iView

Watch the trailer

Three dead as violence flares at Gaza border protest - video

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 09:45 AM PDT

Palestinians converge on the Gaza border for a fifth round of weekly protests, some throwing stones and burning tyres. Gaza's health ministry said three Palestinians had been killed and more than 600 people wounded by Israeli troops firing from across the border fence. Since late March, thousands have demonstrated every Friday in five protest tent camps, each set up several hundred metres from the border fence

Three dead and hundreds injured as Israeli troops open fire on Gaza border

World's largest known mass grave of children unearthed in Peru - video

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 08:53 AM PDT

Archaeologists in northern Peru say they have found a burial site, known as Las Llamas, that contains the remains of 140 children. They were aged between five and 14 when the Chimú empire sacrificed them during a ceremony about 550 years ago as floods ravaged the Peruvian coastline.

Largest known child sacrifice site discovered in Peru

Trump tells Merkel: 'We need a reciprocal relationship, which we don’t have' - video

Posted: 28 Apr 2018 04:13 AM PDT

Donald Trump and Angela Merkel tried hard to present a united front on Friday but were unable mask deep differences in substance and style. At a joint White House press conference, Trump bemoaned the US's $151bn trade deficit with the EU and said: 'I blame the people that preceded me for allowing this to happen'

Trump and Merkel tried – and failed – to hide their differences in Washington