Author: The Guardian

Four men have been arrested after £40m worth of cocaine was found in the back of a van in a Yorkshire village pub car park.About 500kg of the drug was discovered in a Vauxhall Vivaro in the car park of the Stags Head Inn in Lelley, East Yorkshire, the National Crime Agency said.It is believed that the drugs had been transferred from a larger vessel sailing off the coast of Hull to shore using a rigid-hulled inflatable boat a few hours before. The boat was abandoned at Easington Beach, the NCA added.The beach is about 18 miles from the pub,…

Mexican authorities said on Sunday the bodies believed to be those of two Australians and an American missing in the Pacific coast state of Baja California showed the trio had been shot in the head.The state’s attorney general, Maria Elena Andrade Ramirez, said family members of the missing had arrived in Tijuana to verbally identify the bodies. Authorities expect official confirmation soon.The initial hypothesis of the investigation is that the missing man was attacked by someone who wanted to steal the car.Dr. Ramon Alvarez Martinez said injuries on the bodies indicated resistance.Three Mexican nationals have been detained, one of whom…

Senior congressional Democrat James Clyburn has responded to remarks made by Donald Trump at a private event on Saturday in which he compared the Biden administration with the Gestapo secret police in fascist Germany, saying it was “incredible but it’s not surprising”.The 83-year-old South Carolina Democrat added that Trump “is given to hyperbole on every subject that he ever approaches … The country got off track after that 1876 election and we are approaching the same kinds of elements today.”The 1876 election between Republican Ohio governor Rutherford Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden was one of the most disputed ever, with…

Israeli authorities closed Al Jazeera’s local offices on Sunday, hours after the government voted to use new laws to shut down the satellite news network’s operations in the country.Critics said the move, which comes as indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas continue, was a “dark day for the media” and triggered a tough call for Benjamin Netanyahu New concerns about government attitudes toward free speech.Israeli officials said the move was justified because Al Jazeera posed a threat to national security. “Israel’s al-Jazeera incitement channel will be shut down,” the country’s prime minister said in a post on social media…

Senior Israeli officials ramped up pressure on Hamas on Sunday, saying Israel would refuse any permanent end to hostilities and threatening a new onslaught “in the very near future” if the militant organisation did not accept recently proposed terms for a ceasefire.In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu once more rejected Hamas’s demands for a definitive end to the war in Gaza, saying that any permanent ceasefire would allow the group to remain in power and pose a continuing threat to Israel.Speaking a day after thousands of people again rallied in Tel Aviv demanding a deal to free the remaining Israeli…

One of the producers of a Channel 4 documentary containing new claims that Kevin Spacey “behaved inappropriately” with men, despite the actor’s public denials this weekend, will air as planned on Monday.Dorothy Byrne, the TV channel’s former head of news and current affairs, told the Daily Mail observer That She hopes the new two-part show, Spacey revealswill spark “men’s #MeToo moment” and start a wider discussion about standards of behavior in the workplace.”We keep going,” Byrne said. “I’ve made a lot of projects over the decades about inappropriate behavior against women, so this was a really interesting project. I do…

In 1970, aged 35, Jack Lueders-Booth left a well-paid management job at an insurance company in his native Boston, Massachusetts, to pursue his interest in photography. “Until then, I was a serious hobbyist,” he tells me over the phone from the city where he still lives, “but my interest had deepened to the point where it was more and more difficult to do my day job. I needed something more stimulating. Photography was my real vocation.”Soon afterwards he landed a job as an administrator for the fledgling photography department at Harvard University, where later he also enrolled as a student.…

If you haven’t yet watched Baby Reindeer, a story that begins with its star Richard Gadd’s experience with a stalker, you probably have a good reason. It will not be because, for instance, nobody has recommended it, told you how extraordinary it is, or powerful, or unique, and it won’t be because you haven’t heard of it – its success has been startling (as I type it’s at the top of Netflix’s UK and US charts weeks after its release) and its themes have made headlines. It could be, as is the case with a friend of mine, that its…

Max Verstappen may have been struggling with the grip and balance of his car so far in this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, but his dominance remains, even when wrestling with the all-conquering Red Bull. He still enjoyed enough of an advantage to take a huge victory in Saturday’s sprint race.There is no doubt that Verstappen and Red Bull will bring more to the table in a race this weekend, having won the previous two races, with the Dutchman looking to further fine-tune the car in qualifying and the race, but The top six remained unchanged in another rather tame sprint,…

As she entered a second consecutive weekend trying to manage fallout from revelations in her upcoming memoir that she shot her dog to death, South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, had conceded that she would need to correct multiple factual inaccuracies in other parts of the book.Meanwhile, a Republican fundraiser which Noem was supposed to headline had to be canceled after threats against the event staff, hotel venue and governor, according to organizers.And in one of the clearest signs yet that she has fallen out of contention to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in November’s election, as she once was,…