How gun violence is reshaping American lives
As gun violence increases and shootings seem to make headlines every few days, the fear of getting caught up in one is changing the lives of millions of Americans.
A shopping mall. A classroom. A teenager's house party.
All have suffered the scourge of a US mass shooting in recent weeks.
To many Americans, it feels like it could happen anywhere.
As National Gun Violence Awareness Day looms on Friday, how is this issue affecting the way people go about their lives?
Tough conversations
Around 60% of adults say they have talked to their kids or other relatives about gun safety, according to a survey by KFF, a non-profit organisation focused on health policy.
Some of these conversations are sparked by lockdown drills in US classrooms. In some cases, students as young as five are taught when to barricade doors and when to run for their lives if a gunman is prowling the corridors.
Recently, Morgan Hook's nine-year-old daughter Elise came home from school and took her family by surprise when she said the drills would not be much use if the gunman just shot down the door.
More than 800m Amazon trees felled in six years to meet beef demand
Investigation involving Guardian shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming in Brazil
More than 800m trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just six years to feed the world’s appetite for Brazilian beef, according to a new investigation, despite dire warnings about the forest’s importance in fighting the climate crisis.
A data-driven investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and Forbidden Stories shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming.
Russia accused of holding 20,000 Ukrainian civilians captive
Families are desperately trying to secure the release of the more than 20,000 Ukrainians held captive by Russia. Rights activists have said the Geneva Conventions are being violated.
"Everyone keeps saying: 'You have to wait.' We've been waiting for a year now. The conditions in captivity are not the best, to say the least," says Anton Chyrkov as he invites people into a living room where several women are sitting at a large table. He takes a seat at the head of the table, a massive piece of furniture that his father Oleksandr Chyrkov, a funeral director, made himself, like much of the furniture in the house.
The house is located on a pleasant housing estate not far from the village of Dymer on the shore of the Kyiv Reservoir, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Ukraine's capital. The Russian army occupied the area on February 25, 2022 as it planned to continue on to Kyiv.
In the first three weeks of the occupation, when the phone lines were down and there was no electricity, Oleksandr Chyrkov and the neighbor Dmytro Bohazhevsky kept life going in the village. Locals often crowded around the Chyrkovs' well. Anton suspects that is why the Russians thought his father, whom he has not seen for over a year, was the leader of the resistance.
Erdogan backs Kurdish Islamist party – and women pay the price
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s alliance with Huda-Par, a hardline Kurdish Islamist party with a shadowy past, for the 2023 vote sparked howls of condemnations. It was part of a strategy to win the Kurdish vote, but women fear that they will pay the price.
As the sun dipped into the Bosphorus Strait dividing Istanbul’s European and Asian sides just days before Turkey held a presidential runoff, Zainab Bilgin explained what was at stake for women in the 2023 vote.
“Religion is dominating politics in this country and this election can change women’s lives and rights,” she declared. “Huda-Par is making public statements that women should not vote, that all women should be married before the age of 30 years. Huda-Par is very powerful and I am very worried,” she said, referring to a fringe Turkish Islamist party.
Bilgin was so afraid of publicly voicing her fears, she asked for her name to be changed and only agreed to be filmed with her back to the camera.
Treason trial of Russian hypersonic missile scientist begins
Anatoly Maslov is one of three scientists involved in Russia’s hypersonic missile programme that are standing trial for treason.
A prominent Russian scientist involved in the country’s hypersonic missile programme has gone on trial accused of state treason amid tight secrecy and concerns over the health of the elderly defendant.
Anatoly Maslov’s trial opened in St Petersburg on Thursday, the first case against three hypersonic missile scientists who worked at an institute in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and who are now facing what the Kremlin has said are “very serious accusations”.
The trial, marked as “top secret”, is closed to the media and public, the St Petersburg court has said. Maslov’s lawyer could not be reached for comment on the opening of proceedings.
Ukraine war hasn’t changed China’s thinking around possible attack on Taiwan, report says
China remains the “leading long-term challenge” to the existing international order and there is no evidence that Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine has changed Beijing’s thinking around “the timescale or methodology” for any potential attack on Taiwan, a top strategic think tank said ahead of a regional security summit in Singapore.
The grinding conflict in Europe may also accelerate trends in the Asia-Pacific region toward increased military spending and efforts to develop military capabilities, said a report released Friday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which hosts its annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this weekend.
The war and its reverberations in the Asia-Pacific region – as well as the growing contest between the United States and China – will be overarching themes at the security summit, the sidelines of which have long provided a platform for top security officials to meet face-to-face.
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