4 h. ago I don’t want to die with a freezer full of seeds. It’s time to rethink biodiversity and preservation | Chris Smith

Hurricane Helene proved a hard truth: a freezer of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basketAbout a month after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last fall, Roger Wynn and I met in an Asheville, North Carolina, supermarket parking lot. He’d driven two hours from Little Mountain, South Carolina, where the passing storm had also left its destructive mark.“When the power finally came back on,” Wynn said, “two of my freezers didn’t work.” Wynn was worried not about spoiled food inside, but his seed collection. On that autumn day, in an act of forced downsizing and seed philanthropy, Wynn handed over two boxes filled with seeds. He wanted me, as founder of the non-profit Utopian Seed Project, to share the seeds with farmers across the region. The boxes contained a trove of Appalachian varieties: speckled field peas, white mountain half-runner beans, purple-podded bush beans and lots of butterbeans. Continue reading...

Events

10 h. ago Israel executes unarmed Red Crescent paramedics with the west’s blessing | Ahmed Moor

American and European leaders are the authors of this latest atrocity by their Israeli colleagues in GazaThe Guardian reports that Israeli troops “killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one”. “One by one” is another way of saying one person after another, which is another way of saying premeditated murder. Fifteen times over.Dr Bashar Murad, the director of health programs at the Palestine Red Crescent, told reporters that one of the men who was executed by the Israelis was on the phone with colleagues. The victim had been injured and was requesting help. Continue reading...

Politics

26 h. ago Palestinian paramedics shot by Israeli forces had hands tied, eyewitnesses say

Senior doctor who saw bodies says men appeared to have been ‘executed’, adding to evidence of potential war crimeSome of the bodies of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, killed by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave nine days ago in Gaza, were found with their hands or legs tied and had gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to two eyewitnesses.The eyewitness accounts add to an accumulating body of evidence pointing to a potentially serious war crime on 23 March, when Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance crews and civil defence rescue workers were sent to the scene of an airstrike in the early hours of the morning in the al-Hashashin district of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Continue reading...

Politics

54 h. ago Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one, says UN

Workers on a mission to help colleagues were buried in mass grave in southern Gaza, says humanitarian officeFifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave eight days ago in southern Gaza, the UN has said.According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the Palestinian Red Crescent and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan. A Red Crescent official in Gaza said that there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago Jennifer Aniston in new heartache as she's forced to ditch best friend after an 'innocent' mistake turned into a toxic betrayal

Giggling together at awards shows or lounging in the sunshine in Cabo over Thanksgiving, they once seemed inseparable. Then suddenly, it was over...

Events

6 d. ago Gaza’s children: what can the future possibly hold for them?

Tens of thousands of children have been wounded in Gaza, which now has the most child amputees per capita in the world. Even those evacuated for treatment face an impossible pathWhen I entered the home in north-east Philadelphia, Elias, a lively four-year-old boy, grabbed the pack of KitKats I had brought with me and began swinging it over his head. He whirled around in circles, hollering something unintelligible. In a familiar scene – I have small children of my own – his mother tried to impose order, but yielded to the greater force of a kid on sugar kept indoors by a cold snap.Elias, his five-year-old sister Taline and nine-year-old brother Khaled were in the US because Elias and Taline needed urgent medical care. They had sustained staggering injuries when Israel’s military shot a missile at the house they were taking refuge in. The explosion cleaved Elias’s right leg off below the knee. Taline’s injuries were also severe; she arrived in the US with external fixators – pins and ...

Politics

6 d. ago There are more child amputees in Gaza than anywhere else in the world. What can the future hold for them?

Tens of thousands of children have been wounded in Gaza. Even those evacuated for treatment face an impossible pathWhen I entered the home in north-east Philadelphia, Elias, a lively four-year-old boy, grabbed the pack of KitKats I had brought with me and began swinging it over his head. He whirled around in circles, hollering something unintelligible. In a familiar scene – I have small children of my own – his mother tried to impose order, but yielded to the greater force of a kid on sugar kept indoors by a cold snap.Elias, his five-year-old sister Taline and nine-year-old brother Khaled were in the US because Elias and Taline needed urgent medical care. They had sustained staggering injuries when an Israeli pilot or drone operator shot a missile at the house they were taking refuge in. The explosion cleaved Elias’s right leg off below the knee. Taline’s injuries were also severe; she arrived in the US with external fixators – pins and steel in her legs – as she battled infection. ...

Politics

6 d. ago Shocking moment masked carjackers leap from moped and hold driver at knifepoint until he hands over keys

This is the moment masked carjackers jumped off a moped and held a driver at knifepoint, forcing him to hand over his keys before driving off in the VW Golf.

Events

7 d. ago 'I was in the room as Rachel Reeves stared down her critics with a punchy Spring Statement'

Today’s event was not a Budget - it was meant to be a temperature check on the economy. But events had forced Ms Reeves’s hand

Politics

7 d. ago 'I won £3m Omaze house with infinity pool but handed keys back after just three days'

Glen Elmy was left speechless upon winning Stealth House in Devon, which features an infinity pool and stunning ocean views - but the foundry worker was reportedly forced to hand the keys back

Economics

7 d. ago Hilarious footage emerges of baffled Kylian Mbappe removing a remote controlled car from the pitch after it broke down before France's Nations League clash with Croatia

The French superstar was forced to hand off the faulty miniature vehicle after it failed to return to the sideline after taking the match ball to the centre circle.

Politics

1 week ago Prince William arrives at Nato base just 90 miles from Putin's Russia as he 'gets his hands dirty' with British forces in show of support to Estonia

The future king is at Tapa Camp, just under two hours drive from the border, in his role as Colonel-in-Chief of the Mercian Regiment .

Politics

1 week ago A look at Israel's multilayered air defense as military says it shot down missile from Yemen

The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen early Thursday before it reached Israeli airspace, as air raid sirens and exploding interceptors were heard in Jerusalem

Events

2 w. ago Duterte’s arrest gives ‘a sense impunity ends’, says Nobel peace prize winner

Maria Ressa said rules-based order ‘can perhaps still exist’ but social media is being used to undermine democracy around the worldThe arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is a welcome sign that the rules-based order continues to hold, the Nobel laureate Maria Ressa has said, even as the global order has been marred by the US “descending into hell” at the hands of the same forces that consumed the Philippines.Ressa’s remarks came after Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, made his first appearance before the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, accused of committing crimes against humanity during his brutal “war on drugs”. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Pregnant rail passenger is forced to sit on the FLOOR for journey before being handed £600 fine for not printing out ticket

Daisy Mumba, 32, who was travelling from Slough to Sheffield, was forced to sit on the floor next to the toilet of a CrossCountry train service because she could not get to the seat she had booked.

Economics

3 w. ago Israel to cut off electricity in Gaza in apparent effort to force hand of Hamas

Humanitarian officials say move could hit already meagre water supply, as ceasefire talks grow increasingly chaoticIsrael is to cut off any remaining electricity supplies to Gaza in an apparent attempt to ramp up pressure on Hamas amid increasingly chaotic multi-track negotiations over the fragile ceasefire in the territory.The potential consequences of the Israeli decision for the 2.3 million residents of the devastated Palestinian territory are unclear, as most rely on diesel-fuelled generators for power. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago ‘Here you will die’: detainees speak of executions, starvation and beatings at hands of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces

Haunting accounts of torture in newly found detention centre lead to calls for an investigation into what experts say could be among the worst atrocities of Sudan’s civil warEvidence of torture found as detention centre and mass grave discovered outside KhartoumLying between the makeshift graves is a mattress, a large bloodstain visible in the midday sun. A name is scrawled in Arabic on its ragged fabric: Mohammed Adam.Who was Adam? Had he ended up here, in a bleak corner of a remote military installation in Sudan’s Khartoum state? Had his body been stretchered on the mattress from the detention centre nearby and dumped into one of hundreds of unmarked graves? Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Evidence of torture found as detention centre and mass grave discovered outside Khartoum

Exclusive: What appears to be a vast burial site found at former Rapid Support Forces base in Sudan, while rescued detainees speak of torture, starvation and deaths of fellow inmates‘Here you will die’: detainees speak of executions, starvation and beatings at hands of Sudan’s Rapid Support ForcesMore than 500 people may have been tortured or starved to death and then buried in a secret mass grave north of Khartoum, according to evidence seen by the Guardian.A visit to a base belonging to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shortly after it was retaken by the Sudanese military found a previously unknown detention centre, with manacles hanging from doors, apparent punishment chambers and bloodstains on the floor. Accounts from people held at the detention centre describe being repeatedly tortured by their captors. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Legal action fund to block Sadiq Khan's Oxford Street pedestrianisation voted down

Conservative councillors had hoped a judicial review could ‘force the mayor’s hand’ over what they call an ‘ill thought out vanity project’

Politics

3 w. ago Dramatic moment daughter clasps her dying mother's hand and forces her to sign over her £700,000 fortune

EXCLUSIVE: Margaret Baverstock, 76 was so ill she could 'barely flicker an eyelid' in March 2021 when she was 'forced' to sign a will by her daughter Lisa.

Events