40 h. ago Ukraine war briefing: UN slashes humanitarian aid after ‘sharp’ fall in funding

Official says UN and its partners have ‘reprioritised’ operations in Ukraine, amid wider drop in aid funding from the US. What we know on day 1,162Faced with a drastic drop in funding, the United Nations will scale back its humanitarian aid efforts in Ukraine, an official from its humanitarian affairs office said on Tuesday. In January, the UN appealed for $2.63bn in funding to assist 6 million people who need aid in Ukraine. But due to a “sharp contraction” in humanitarian funding, “the UN and its partners have further reprioritised” operations in Ukraine to reach 4.8 million people with $1.75bn, Joyce Msuya of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told the UN security council.“The objective is to reach those most at risk and most in need, centring on four core response priorities: people near the frontline, evacuations, emergency response after strikes, and aid to the most vulnerable among the internally displaced people,” she said. “Without increased supp...

Events

3 d. ago Notes to John by Joan Didion review – an invasion of privacy

There’s a crude fascination in seeing the contents of a literary celebrity’s therapy sessions, but no one comes out of it wellMotherhood is a state of continuous loss that is meant to culminate when the dependent baby becomes an independent adult. Joan Didion survived this, as many mothers have, by keeping constant watch over her adopted daughter Quintana, fearing “swimming pools, high-tension wires, lye under the sink, aspirin in the medicine cabinet”. She also survived it, as fewer mothers have, by writing obsessively about the loss she feared. In her arid, fevered masterpiece Play It As It Lays, published when Quintana was four, the narrator’s breakdown is precipitated by her daughter’s long-term hospitalisation with an unnamed mental disorder. A Book of Common Prayer is about the disappearance of the protagonist’s criminal revolutionary daughter. “Marin was loose in the world and could leave it at any time and Charlotte would have no way of knowing” – a description that cou...

Events

9 d. ago Jean Charles de Menezes’s mother says ‘everyone should watch’ TV drama about his killing

Disney+ series revisits killing of Brazilian man wrongly identified as a terrorist by Met police officers in 2005The mother of a man shot dead by police in a London Underground station after being mistaken for a terrorist has said “everyone should watch” a new dramatisation of her son’s killing.Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times by two police marksmen in Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005. De Menezes was wrongly identified as one of the fugitives involved in a failed bombing two weeks after the 7/7 attack in London, which killed 52 people. Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Mother of Jean Charles de Menezes says ‘everyone should watch’ TV drama

Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times by police in Stockwell underground station in July 2005.

Events

2 w. ago Watch: Donald Trump hugs and comforts mother of murdered Rachel Morin

Donald Trump hugged and comforted Patty Morin, the mother of murdered Rachel Morin, in a special White House meeting.

Politics

3 w. ago Phil Foden's instant reaction to Man United fans' 'classless' song about his mum revealed in new footage, as Man City manager Pep Guardiola says they should be 'ashamed'

Foden came under fire during City's limp 0-0 stalemate with United, as sections of Old Trafford's home support taunted the star by labelling his mother, Claire Rowlands, 44, a 's**g'.

Culture

3 w. ago ‘Barcelona or death’: mothers watch and wait as Senegal’s men risk all to reach Europe

For many the perilous journey to Spain seems the only future. Can the country’s new government create enough jobs and prospects to make them stay?The view from the plastic chair in which Fatou Samba sits, looking out to sea, takes in many of the elements of the sorry tale of Senegal’s lost men. She can see the distant shapes of the big industrial foreign fishing ships and tankers, from Europe and China, strung across the horizon.Closer to shore are dozens of empty pirogues, Senegalese wooden fishing boats, rocking idle on a sea mostly denuded of fish. Continue reading...

Events