Naija Update

Four weeks on from the general election, photographer Theo McInnes reflects on his time documenting Labour's campaign that succeeded against the odds. It’s been just four short weeks since Britain took to the polls in June’s general election, but fuck – so much in that time has changed. When I set out in the days following the calling of the snap election to document Labour’s campaign, they were the underdogs, destined to take a thrashing, there was optimism from the leadership but my fellow journalists and the wider British public thought we knew what to expect. How wrong we were. In the six weeks of campaigning Labour went from strength to strength, as I followed activists, MPs and supporters across the country optimism and inspiration grew. While the Tories went from cock-up to cock-up it was Corbyn and his team who garnered support: ‘for the many not the few’ overtook ‘strong and stable’ as the phrase which defined the election. Watching on firsthand was tense, a ro...

Police treatment of Bijan Ebrahimi, who came to the UK as a refugee from Iran in 2000, had "the hallmarks of what could be construed as racial bias", an IPCC report has found. A disabled refugee who was murdered by his neighbour on his Bristol doorstep was consistently failed by police after appealing for help over a period of seven years, an Independent Police Complaints Commission report has found. Police treatment of Bijan Ebrahimi, who came to the UK as a refugee from Iran in 2000, had "the hallmarks of what could be construed as racial bias", the report found, adding that "it undoubtedly has the hallmarks of the failure to understand and respond to vulnerability" as it outlined the 85 separate phone calls Ebrahimi had made to Avon & Somerset Constabulary. IPCC commissioner for Wales Jan Williams said Ebrahimi had tragically "kept faith with the police throughout", despite the fact that officers had failed to respond to his calls...

The people are thought to have been unusually tall and strong Archaeologists in eastern China have found 5,000-year-old skeletons of people experts say would have been unusually tall and strong. According to the measurements of bones in the graves at the site in Shandong province, a number of the people would have measured at 1.8m or taller, with one man estimated to have been 1.9m,  Xinhua news agency  reported.  Although not particularly unusual by 21st-century Western standards, it is thought their height would have seen them tower over many of their contemporaries. “This is just based on bone structure. If he was a living person, his height would certainly exceed 1.9m,” Fang Hui, head of Shandong University’s school of history and culture, told the agency. Locals in Shandong see their height as a defining characteristic. A study conducted in 2015 found the average height of 18 men to be 1.753m, compared to the country’s national average of 1...

A Muslim man who was left with life-changing injuries following an acid attack in east London has demanded to know why the assault is not being treated as terrorism. Jameel Muhktar had to be put in a coma for two days after a man threw acid at him and his cousin Resham Khan through a car window as they sat at traffic lights in Beckton “If this was an Asian guy like myself, going up to an English couple in a car and acid attacking them, I know for a fact and the whole country knows that it would be classed as a terror attack,” he told Channel 4 News. “It's definitely a hate crime. I believe it's something to do with Islamophobia. Maybe he's got it in for Muslims because of the things that have been going on lately. "I don't know if people are trying to retaliate. We're innocent people. We didn't deserve that. I've never seen this guy in my life. “I don't have any problems with anybody. My cousin is 21, she's a business...

  A disgruntled former employee of a New York City hospital who opened fire and killed at least one while injuring at least five others, has died after turning the gun on himself. The gunman reportedly began to open fire with an assault-style rifle just before 3 p.m. local time, according to the New York City Police Department. Police indicated that the suspect had entered wearing a white lab coat which was used to conceal the rifle. Officials indicated that the gun may have been an AR-15, which is a common assault-style weapon used in mass shootings. "We’ve had a real tragedy here in the Bronx this afternoon, it’s something we’ve seen around the country. Now, we've experienced it here," New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said during a press conference outside of the hospital. "This was a horrific situation unfolding in the middle of a place that people associate with care and comfort. A situation that came out of nowhere. But, even in the midst of thi...

A public car park in East Belfast has been unofficially closed to the public, as preparations are made for a bonfire.   The bonfire site at a car park on Ravenscroft Avenue, just off the Upper Newtownards Road, is a short distance from a site where council staff removed pallets and put them into council owned storage three months ago. Speaking to BBC Newsline on Wednesday night, one of the bonfire makers, who was not named, said: "We had an agreement with the council, that they were going to store the pallets in a safe place. And now, because the agreement was broke [sic], we just thought, 'well, they've let us down, so we'll let them ones down." A car-park in east Belfast has been closed to the public by people building bonfires. The public car-park is just off... Graffiti painted on a wall at the car park reads: "Betrayed by the council". When questioned as to whether the public car park was the best location for a bonfire, he ...

While the German and French leaders celebrated the close ties between their countries during this week's EU summit, divisions between western and eastern European leaders grew. Christoph Hasselbach reports from Brussel. The summit was intended to spread a bit of optimism. The professionals, it was announced, would now take care of Brexit negotiations, and the British government even promised to protect EU citizens' rights in the United Kingdom after withdrawal. Although that proposal is now being criticized as inadequate and vague, it is still being touted as a sign of progress. After that, the remaining 27 member states sought to create momentum for new projects.   Merkel and Macron show united front at EU summit The joint press conference held by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron was then appropriately symbolic. Merkel described the mood of the two-day summit, which ended on Friday, as "optimistic and dynamic." Such words ar...

Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the architect of Germany's 1990 reunification and mentor to Angela Merkel, has died at age 87, his Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) says. The mass-selling newspaper Bild reported that Kohl died on Friday morning in bed at his home in Ludwigshafen, in western Germany, with his second wife, Maike Kohl-Richter, at his side. Merkel, Germany's incumbent chancellor who grew up in communist East Germany before being appointed by Kohl to her first ministerial post, said he "changed my own life path decisively" by reuniting Germany.   "When a new spirit began to stir in eastern Europe in the 1980s, when, starting in Poland freedom was seized, when brave people in Leipzig, East Berlin and elsewhere in East Germany began a peaceful revolution, then Helmut Kohl was the right man at the right time," added Merkel, wearing black.

A notorious prisoner got FOUR female guards pregnant as he played “kingpin” inside a corrupt jail, a court has heard. Gangster Tavon White was serving 20 years for attempted murder inside Baltimore City Detention Centre. But he managed to make tens of thousands of dollars a week by smuggling in drugs and mobile phones, CBS Baltimore reports, and was once heard saying: “This is my jail. My word is law.” Prosecutors say gang members held the balance of power inside the prison, and sex between guards and inmates led to four guards becoming pregnant.

Residents in Okpoko of Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State were, on Thursday, shocked when the news broke that a housewife in the community, names withheld, had dumped her newborn baby into the toilet. She was said to have a protruded stomach, a peculiar nature that made many people in the area, not to be aware that she was pregnant. She decided to dump the newborn baby into the toilet, to save her the agony of nursing a baby, which, she said, could disturb her business. Nigerian Tribune gathered that when a member of the family, her brother-in-law, wanted to use the toilet, he discovered that water could not flush the waste, as his faeces remained floating.

SIALKOT- Indian troops again resorted to unprovoked firing on Sialkot's Charwah sector. According to sources, Pakistani rangers effectively responded to the Indian fire. Meanwhile, Chenab Rangers strongly retaliated, silencing the Indian guns.

ISTANBUL - A prominent Turkish professor on Thursday began a jail sentence after being convicted of preventing a female student wearing a Muslim headscarf from entering the university where he worked, his lawyer said. Rennan Pekunlu, a former professor of astrophysics at Ege University, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012 for violating a headscarf-wearing student’s ‘constitutional right to education’ by barring her from entering the faculty.

PARIS- France is now working with partners on a final diplomatic push to overcome the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians. "If this final effort to reach a negotiated solution fails, then France will have to do what it takes by recognizing without delay the Palestinian state," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told parliament.

  Survivors of typhoon Haiyan during a religious procession in Leyte.. The World Press Photo exhibition arrives in Northern Ireland for the first time on Monday. The exhibition's 150 photographs were chosen from 98,000 images submitted by 5,754 journalists from 132 nations. American photographer John Stanmeyer was selected by the international jury of the 57th annual contest to win Photo of the Year. Other prize-winners hail from the far corners of the globe, including Iran, Serbia and Mexico. A series of events exploring journalism, law and rights will complement the week-long exhibition, hosted by Queen's University Belfast.

Police near the tree where two teenage girls were found hanging after they were gang raped in Katra village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in May (AP)..... Two Indian teenagers believed to have been raped and hanged by attackers actually committed suicide because of shame over a relationship with a boy, the country's top investigative agency said. An earlier probe by local police and post-mortem reports were incorrect and five innocent men were arrested over the deaths of the two girls, Kanchan Prasad, spokeswoman for the Central Bureau of Investigation, said. Six months ago, images of the girls' bodies in their village of Katra in Uttar Pradesh state shocked the country, long inured to violence against women.