An intense heatwave across south Asia has killed dozens of people with sustained temperatures in excess of 40C (104F) coinciding with power cuts and Ramadan, when many Muslims avoid eating or drinking water. At least 65 people have died in Karachi in recent days according to the charitable organisation that runs the central morgue in the Pakistani port city, as volunteers handed out water to labourers and others working outside in temperatures as high as 44C.

Local media reports claimed the death toll could have exceeded 100 in the sprawling megacity of 15 million, where high temperatures are exacerbated by an absence of green space, estimated to make up just 7% of the urban area. Authorities in Karachi have not confirmed the death toll but urged people to stay indoors and keep drinking water.

Parts of the city have also been suffering from power cuts, particularly early in the morning when more people than usual have been waking to eat before sunrise in line with Ramadan fasting rituals. During the annual month-long rite, Muslims refrain from eating or drinking anything including water between sunrise and sunset, though children, older people, the sick and pregnant women usually do not participate.

The Edhi Foundation, which runs Karachi’s central morgue, said most of the dead in the city were working-class people from poorer neighbourhoods, including children and elderly people.(theguardian)…[+]

In a small holding room in a Baghdad court, French citizen Djamila Boutoutao cradled her two-year-old daughter and begged for help. Boutoutao, 29, is accused of being a member of Islamic State. Whispering in her native tongue within earshot of other accused Isis members – all foreigners like her – she said life had become unbearable.

“I’m going mad here,” said Boutoutao, a small bespectacled woman with a deadpan stare. “I’m facing a death sentence or life in prison. No one tells me anything, not the ambassador, not people in prison.” Guards moved closer as Boutoutao continued. So did her fellow accused – all from central Asia or Turkey, who had all lost husbands and, in some cases, children as the Islamic State collapsed in Iraq last year.

“Don’t let them take my daughter away,” she pleaded. “I am willing to offer money if you can contact my parents. Please get me out of here.” With that, the short conversation was shut down and Boutoutao returned to a corner, waiting for the judge in the adjoining room to summon her. There were no French officials present, and nothing at all to connect her to her former life in Lille. If convicted of joining the terrorist group, she faces life in a central Baghdad jail, or death by hanging.(theguardian)…[+]

The nomination of Giuseppe Conte to serve as prime minister of the incoming populist government of Italy was hit by doubts after questions arose about the accuracy of the law professor’s academic résumé. Conte, a virtually unknown law professor in Florence who has served as a personal attorney to Luigi Di Maio, the head of the Five Star Movement (M5S), has stated on his public CV that he “refined” his legal studies at New York University in 2008 and 2009.

But on Tuesday Italy’s two leading newspapers, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera, seized on a report in the New York Times that said that New York University had no record of Conte ever attending as either a student or a professor. He also stated that he had enhanced his legal studies at Yale University in New Haven, Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Cambridge University in the UK in 2001. Citing confidentiality rules, Cambridge said it could not immediately confirm or deny whether Conte attended the university. A university source later told Reuters that they had not found any trace of a visit, but said the professor might have attended a course prepared by a third party.(theguardian)…[+]

Refuse collectors in the Netherlands are being followed by close protection officers after getting the power to issue red and yellow cards to force householders to properly recycle. The new football-style card system has led to a series of rubbish rage incidents in the south of the country, with collectors threatened, abused and one bin lorry hemmed in to a street by furious householders who had not had their waste taken away.

The Netherlands has been a pioneer in household recycling with some municipalities charging for the collection of bin bags which contain non-recyclable rubbish, and asking householders to separate refuse into up to seven different categories.

However officers known as the buitengewoon opsporingsambtenaar (BOA), who are not police but have the power to arrest suspects and issue fines, had to be brought in to protect the refuse collectors of Best, a town near Eindhoven, after they became responsible for not only collecting the rubbish but inspecting it and dishing out cards to recalcitrant households. Yellow cards are issued to warn people if they have wrongly separated their waste. Red cards are given to repeat offenders, and their rubbish is left to rot on the side of the road, leading to angry confrontations.

The mayor of Best, Hans Ubachs, said: “A garbage man was told: I know where your children go to school. That is unacceptable. “They must stay away from our people, and also from the people who work for us. Residents are not allowed to bother these men in their work, threaten them verbally or swear at them. Fortunately, no physical violence has yet been used.(theguardian)…[+]

Police in Canada have launched an investigation after it emerged that one of North America’s most influential white supremacists lives in Montreal and has been organising a small network of neo-Nazis in the city since 2016. An investigation by the Montreal Gazette unmasked the neo-Nazi propagandist who goes by the pseudonym Zeiger and is best known for his writings on the extreme rightwing news site Daily Stormer. In its report earlier this month, the paper identified him as a local IT consultant in his 30s named Gabriel Sohier Chaput.

The revelation made waves across North America, and cast a spotlight on the more than 100 hate groups and dozens of far-right figures in Canada. “Zeiger is one of the far right’s most credible, most competent and one of the most influential radio personalities and propagandists out there,” said Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups throughout North America. “He’s proven to be a very effective presence and personality amid this rise in the alt-right.”(theguardian)…[+]

The leaders of the Five Star Movement and the far-right League are to announce their nominee to be prime minister of Italy’s first populist government at a meeting with the president. Italian press reports suggest Giuseppe Conte, 54, a lawyer and M5S member, is to take the job after Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League, and the M5S leader Luigi Di Maio, ruled themselves out. The parties will also present their cabinet lineup and government programme to the president, Sergio Mattarella.

Speaking on Sunday, Salvini said: “We have agreed on the head and ministers and hope that nobody will veto a choice that represents the will of the majority of Italians.”

He had reiterated a day earlier that the prime minister would be neither Di Maio nor himself, but “a professional who contributed to the drafting of the contract”.Conte, relatively unknown in the political world, is a law professor at the University of Florence. He is Di Maio’s personal lawyer and the mastermind behind the anti-establishment party’s pledge to abolish more than 400 “useless laws” that it claims will cut bureaucracy and free up the economy.(theguardian)…[+]

As the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex began married life, a major clean-up operation was under way in Windsor after a wedding that wove royal tradition and African-American heritage into a modern spectacle, winning praise from many quarters. Barriers were being taken down and trucks and lorries lined the streets of the Berkshire town as international TV networks packed up and rubbish collectors moved in.

An estimated 100,000 people had descended on the town for the ceremony to catch a glimpse of the new duchess in her Givenchy wedding gown with five-metre train and veil held firmly by the Queen Mary diamond tiara, as she and Harry rode by open top landau through the streets to Windsor Castle. Inside the 15th-century St George’s Chapel, A-List celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, and George and Amal Clooney sat alongside senior royals, including the Queen and Prince Philip. The bride’s mother, Doria Ragland, 61, a yoga instructor and social worker from Los Angeles, was her sole relative present.

The service, one undoubted highlight of which was the rousing address by the Most Rev Michael Curry, the first black presiding bishop of the US Episcopal Church, was watched by a TV audience of hundreds of millions across the globe. The 600 guests enjoyed a lunchtime reception, hosted by the Queen at Windsor Castle, at which Sir Elton John performed.(theguardian)…[+]

Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak has been asked to make a statement on Tuesday to anti-corruption investigators as he comes under renewed pressure about claims that he looted state funds when in power. As his wife was forced to make a statement through her lawyers about reports of her extravagant lifestyle, Najib also faces the possible reopening of a years-long scandal involving, kickbacks, a murdered Mongolian model and his one-time close associate.

On Saturday, Mongolia’s president asked Malaysia’s new leader, Mahathir Mohamad, to find justice for the dead woman, Altantuya Shaariibuu, while a fugitive policeman convicted of the crime said he would cooperate with any new investigation if he was given a full pardon. Mahathir has already barred Najib from leaving the country after surprisingly defeating his one-time protege in an election on 9 May.(theguardian)…[+]

One of the students killed in the Santa Fe school shooting reportedly turned down romantic advances from Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the suspect in the deaths of 10 people and wounding of at least another 10.

Shana Fisher’s mother, Sadie Rodriguez, told the Associated Press that as Pagourtzis became more aggressive, Shana “finally stood up to him and embarrassed him”. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Rodriguez said: “A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like.” Authorities named the victims of the shooting on Saturday. The Pagourtzis family issued a statement in which they said they “shared the public’s hunger for answers as to why this happened”. The lawyer who issued the statement told the AP he had not heard about any interaction of the sort described by Rodriguez. Nicholas Poehl also said he had spent considerable time disputing false rumours about Pagourtzis’s personal life.(theguardian)…[+]

The UN’s senior human rights official has castigated Israel, saying there was little evidence that the country’s armed forces had attempted to minimise casualties during protests by Palestinians earlier this week that saw dozens of protesters killed.

Speaking at a special session of the UN human rights council, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said that while 60 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured in a single day of protests on Monday, “on the Israeli side, one soldier was reportedly wounded, slightly, by a stone”. “The stark contrast in casualties on both sides is … suggestive of a wholly disproportionate response,” he told the council.

His comments came as the Egyptian president, Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, announced he had ordered the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza for the entire Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the longest length of time since 2013. Sisi wrote on his official Twitter account late on Thursday that the opening would “alleviate the burdens of the brothers in the Gaza Strip”. The Rafah crossing is Gaza’s main gate to the outside world. Egypt has kept Rafah largely sealed off since 2013, after Egypt’s elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was ousted.(theguardian)…[+]