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

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


Queen to be evacuated if Brexit turns ugly – reports

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 06:07 PM PST

Cold war plans revived to move royals to safe locations away from London if unrest follows no deal

British officials have revived cold war emergency plans to relocate the royal family should there be riots in London if Britain suffers a disruptive departure from the European Union, two Sunday newspapers have reported.

"These emergency evacuation plans have been in existence since the cold war but have now been repurposed in the event of civil disorder following a no-deal Brexit," the Sunday Times said, quoting an unnamed source from the government's Cabinet Office, which handles sensitive administrative issues.

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Ronny Jackson: Trump makes controversial doctor his chief medical adviser

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 10:24 PM PST

Pentagon is still investigating misconduct claims that scuppered rear admiral's attempt to head Veterans Affairs

President Donald Trump has appointed his former doctor to be his assistant and chief medical adviser.

Saturday's announcement by the White House follows Trump's decision to re-nominate Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson for a second star due to inaction by the previous Congress.

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'We are very close': Tens of thousands in Venezuela demand Maduro's exit

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 01:04 PM PST

Protests take place in cities across the country amid optimism from the opposition, as president speaks to rival march

Tens of thousands of Venezuelan protesters streamed on to the streets of the capital on Saturday for what they described as the final push to force Nicolás Maduro from power.

"I believe [the end] is coming very soon – this week," said Barbara Angarita, 49, as she and thousands of other demonstrators poured down the Avenida Principal de las Mercedes in Caracas. "We must have a free country, free for all Venezuelans and for our descendants."

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Stansted 15 activist: ‘Jail separation from my baby would be horrific’

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 05:00 AM PST

Emma Hughes tells of her fears as group await sentence for halting deportation flight

One of the 15 activists convicted of a terrorism offence for blocking the takeoff of a deportation charter flight from Stansted has spoken of her anguish before the group's sentencing this week, saying she fears a "horrific" separation from her newborn son.

The Stansted 15, who were convicted at Chelmsford crown court in December of endangering the safety of an aerodrome, hope they will be given non-custodial sentences, though the offence carries a maximum of life imprisonment. Their convictions under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990, were condemned as a "crushing blow for human rights" by Amnesty International. Their lawyers have lodged an appeal.

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Dam collapse: the desperate search at Brazil's 'ground zero'

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 11:00 PM PST

More than 230 remain missing after an avalanche of liquid mining waste swept through the countryside of Minas Gerais

Helicopters clattered overhead as teams of men and sniffer dogs picked their way across the few areas of red mud solid enough to walk on. Other recovery teams gathered around a digger as its shovel scooped up the sludge and drained it, again and again.

Related: Brazil dam collapse: bodies pulled from toxic mud as hope fades for survivors

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Townsville faces further flooding as council moves to open dam gates

Posted: 03 Feb 2019 01:14 AM PST

Residents warned after another downpour pushes up dam level to 237% of capacity

Townsville residents have been urged to move away from riverbanks and get to higher ground before 8.30pm on Sunday evening.

Locals were warned the dam's floodgates were expected to be completely opened between 8.30pm on Sunday and 6.30am on Monday.

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UK weather: England records its coldest night this winter

Posted: 03 Feb 2019 01:33 AM PST

Chillingham Barns in Northumberland reaches a low of -11.7C while Braemar in the Scottish Highlands falls to -12.6C

England had its coldest night of the winter so far as temperatures tumbled across the UK. A low of -11.7C (10.9F) was recorded at Chillingham Barns in Northumberland in the early hours of Sunday morning, the Met Office said.

In Scotland, a low of -12.6C (9.3F) was seen at Braemar in the Highlands, although it was a few degrees off the -15.4C seen there on Thursday. Elsewhere on Sunday morning, the coldest spot in Wales was at Swyddffynnon in Dyfed, where it was -6.5C (20.3F), while in Northern Ireland the lowest temperature recorded was -2.6C (27.3F) in Katesbridge, Co Down.

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Yang Hengjun: lawyers denied access to Australian held in China

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 11:53 PM PST

Authorities say Chinese-born writer refused to see legal team but secretive process means claim can not be verified

Two lawyers hired by the wife of an Australian detained in Beijing for suspected espionage have said they were denied access to him by Chinese authorities, who said the detainee had not agreed to their appointment.

Yang Hengjun, a 53-year-old Chinese-born writer, was detained in the southern city of Guangzhou while waiting for a transfer to Shanghai in January. He had flown in from New York.

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Cardi B 'stands behind' Colin Kaepernick in refusing Super Bowl show

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 05:29 AM PST

  • Rapper 'got to sacrifice a lot of money' by not playing halftime
  • Grammy nominee will perform in Atlanta on Saturday

Cardi B turned down an offer to perform at the Super Bowl, she said, in order to "stand behind" the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who "stood up" for minorities by kneeling down during playings of the pre-game anthem.

Related: Super Bowl half-time show won't reflect Atlanta's music industry

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Misconduct claims after pregnant woman forcibly removed from Stockholm metro

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 04:59 AM PST

Incident caught on video prompts accusations security guards targeted black woman

Swedish police have launched two separate investigations after a video of a heavily pregnant woman being forcibly removed from the Stockholm metro and pinned down on a bench went viral, prompting accusations of racial profiling by security guards.

Swedish public radio SR said Stockholm police were investigating the incident at the Hötorget station on Thursday evening as a potential case of misconduct and assault by the guards, but also "violent resistance" by the woman, who was travelling with her young daughter.

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'Identity is a pain in the arse': Zadie Smith on political correctness

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 07:55 AM PST

At Hay Cartagena festival author questions role of social media in policing personal development

The writer Zadie Smith laid into identity politics in a headline session at the 14th Hay Cartagena festival, insisting novelists had not only a right, but a duty to be free.

Asked how she felt about cultural appropriation, she told an audience of nearly 2,000 at the festival in Colombia on Friday: "If someone says to me: 'A black girl would never say that,' I'm saying: 'How can you possibly know?' The problem with that argument is it assumes the possibility of total knowledge of humans. The only thing that identifies people in their entirety is their name: I'm a Zadie."

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Rosamund Pike: 'You never regret saying yes!'

Posted: 03 Feb 2019 12:00 AM PST

From Bond girl to Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike's versatility has seen her star in some massive blockbusters. Here, she talks about Syria, sleeping under the stars, and the perils of social media…

Rosamund Pike has an intoxicating effect on me. She is so mesmerisingly self-possessed, speaking gently, thoughtfully, in her own time, entirely unafraid of the silences, that it is only after I've replayed the interview tape at home and transcribed her soft voice that I realise how wildly luvvieish her claims are. It's almost delicious. For example, the star of Gone Girl and the new film A Private War says that when, as a child, she sat watching her opera singer parents in their rehearsal room: "All I was really looking at was, do I believe it, do I not believe it? Whether I believed the performance, whether I believed that this was something that was real and human and true. I think all I've ever been interested in is truth." Which she immediately follows with the claim that hers was not a highbrow family, thereby suggesting the existence of a whole raft of brows higher than a childhood spent searching for la verité in your mum and dad's arias.

We have met up because she plays the war reporter Marie Colvin in A Private War, a film whose American release has gained an average score of 89% on rottentomatoes.com (ie very good reviews) and which is about to open in British cinemas. It is a breathtaking, stop-you-in-your-tracks movie with a lot of the action set during the current Syrian war and it is directed by the documentarist Matthew Heineman who blurs the lines between reportage and feature film.

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Libby Squire: search for missing Hull student enters third day

Posted: 03 Feb 2019 02:17 AM PST

Police, friends and students join search for 21-year-old who disappeared on Thursday

The search for missing Libby Squire has entered its third day after scores of police, her friends and fellow Hull University students spent Saturday looking for the 21-year-old in bitingly cold conditions.

Squire disappeared late on Thursday night and police have said they are "extremely concerned" for her welfare.

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Leave Brigitte Macron alone. We French need to lay off our first ladies | Agnès Poirier

Posted: 03 Feb 2019 01:30 AM PST

France has long loved the idea of a powerful woman pulling the strings of the president

It's almost a ritual. In France, it takes only a few months after the election of a new president for essays, pamphlets, picture albums, novels even, about the great man's political ideas – but also his "true" or "hidden" personal story – to start flooding bookshops. More surprisingly, and perhaps more revealingly, France's first ladies get a similar treatment.

Although Emmanuel Macron has been in power for only 18 months, his wife, Brigitte, has already been the subject of five books. In January 2018, Brigitte Macron: L'affranchie came out, followed four months later by Brigitte Macron: La confidente. We were also treated to Les Macron and Lettre Ouverte à Brigitte Macron, a plea for assisted dying by an author hoping she would pass the message on to her other half so he'd make it legal.

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Eleven killed in Aleppo as war-damaged block of flats collapses

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 08:42 AM PST

Five-storey building falls in formerly rebel-held neighbourhood of Syria's second city

At least 11 people, including four children, have died after a block of flats collapsed in Aleppo, Syria, on Saturday, according to state media.

One child was pulled out alive from the rubble of the five-storey, war-damaged block after rescue teams worked to remove the shattered breeze blocks that had buried him, AFP photographers said.

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They say Boko Haram is gone. One mother’s terror tells another story…

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 08:00 AM PST

Nigerian refugees are chased from homes as president stakes re-election bid on claims that Islamist group has been beaten

When Boko Haram stormed into Baga in a hail of gunfire on Boxing Day, Zara Abubakar was lying in bed, waiting for her two-week-old triplets, Maryam, Muhafat and Mohammed, to go to sleep so she could have a bath. Heart pounding, she shouted for her four other children playing in the yard to come in, covering the babies with her body. For hours they all lay inside, waiting for the battle to let up.

Then there was silence, followed by shouts of Allahu Akbar, and Baga mosque's loudspeakers crackled into life. "Boko Haram made an announcement that they were not here for us but for the infidels [the military] and that they were now in charge," Abubakar recounted, jogging one of the triplets in the crook of her elbow and another on her knee.

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How to change the minds of climate deniers

Posted: 03 Feb 2019 02:00 AM PST

Recent polls have found the number of people who believe climate change is real has jumped. What convinced them?

For some people, the awakening comes in science class.

In the Reddit thread titled "Former climate change deniers, what changed your mind?" the most popular comment comes from chucklesthe2nd (probably not his real name). Chuck, as we'll call him, essentially inherited his dad's views on climate change.

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Tens of thousands protest in Venezuela to urge Nicolás Maduro to resign - video

Posted: 03 Feb 2019 02:12 AM PST

Opposition supporters held a nationwide protest on Saturday in a bid to keep up the pressure on president Nicolás Maduro after the international community widely recognised self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president.

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Slavery in Britain: the photographer documenting the streets where people have been held

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 09:00 AM PST

About 13,000 people are kept in slavery in the UK. Amy Romer's book The Dark Figure* reveals the terrifying ordinariness of the sites of their captivity

In 2013, a 22-year-old Hungarian woman responded to an online ad for a babysitting job in London and, after a telephone interview, was offered the post. When she arrived in Budapest to travel to London, she was met by three men who confiscated her mobile, drove her to Slovakia and forced her on to a coach bound for Manchester.

There was no babysitting job. Instead, the woman had been "bought" for £3,500 by a Pakistani man and was told to prepare for marriage. After being held captive at various Manchester addresses, she finally alerted the police from a house in Cunliffe Street, Chorley, where she was rescued and later repatriated home.

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Only Venezuela can solve its problems – meddling by outsiders isn’t the solution

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 06:30 AM PST

The whole world waded in after Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president, but the global tug-of-war is dangerous and unhelpful

All crises are global, all solutions are local – and Venezuela is the latest case in point. No sooner had the young pretender, Juan Guaidó, declared himself interim president last month, ostensibly supplanting the corrupt old revolutionary, Nicolás Maduro, than the world piled in. The Trump administration insisted all countries must "pick a side" and back the "forces of freedom". Russia denounced a US-backed "coup". China, Latin American neighbours, Britain and the EU all scrambled for position, in accordance with their particular interests and prejudices.

In the past week, this international tug-of-war over Venezuela's future has grown increasingly dangerous – and unhelpful – as protesters and security forces face off on the streets and the political impasse deepens.
John Bolton, the US national security adviser, is threatening "serious consequences" (meaning military intervention) should Guaidó be harmed or opposition supporters attacked. Maduro warns that the US could face a second Vietnam.

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Italian firefighters save teenagers trapped in swollen muddy river – video

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 08:53 AM PST

On Saturday, firefighters used ropes and planks of wood to rescue three teenagers from a muddy river after their car swerved off the road in heavy rain.

Several regions across Italy are on high alert as fierce winds and rain have lashed the country for days

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Groundhog Day 2019: Punxsutawney Phil's big day - in pictures

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 06:57 AM PST

Thousands gather on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to witness the celebrated rodent's weather prediction

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New York prisoners' protest at no heating heard from outside – video

Posted: 02 Feb 2019 05:06 AM PST

Prisoners at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York have been banging on the walls and windows of their cells to get attention from people on the street in protest against conditions inside. The facility has not had any heating in the last week despite the freezing temperatures

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