A Colorado man who claimed that someone had stabbed him because he looked like a “neo-Nazi” fabricated the story after he accidentally cut his hand with a knife, according to police. Joshua Witt, who has been arrested on false reporting charges, admitted to law enforcement in Sheridan, Colorado, that he lied to officers when he alleged that a black man had attacked him for having a haircut associated with white supremacists, police officials said Monday.

Witt’s original allegations went viral on social media this month, garnering press coverage across the globe, particularly from conservative newspapers that cited the stabbing as an example of violent leftwing activists attacking white people. Witt – a 26-year-old originally from San Diego, California – told officers on 16 August that a suspect came up to him as he was getting out of his car in the parking lot of a burger restaurant. Witt, according to police, reported that the man said, “Are you [one] of them neo-Nazi?” and then tried to stab him with a small knife. Witt said that he was cut while trying to block the knife with his hand. Witt described the attacker as a black man in his mid 20s, 5ft 10in, wearing a green shirt and blue pants, and claimed that the suspect ran off toward a bike path along a nearby river. Sheridan police chief Mark Campbell said in an interview Monday that officers were immediately suspicious of Witt’s story, since the attack allegedly happened in a very busy parking lot and police received no other reports of an assault.(theguardian)…[+]

The destruction of Turkey’s 12,000-year-old Hasankeyf citadel has moved a step closer as authorities have begun to collapse cliff faces around the ruins of the settlement. The move, linked to the construction of a highly controversial dam about 50 miles downstream, is also expected to damage the rich ecosystem of the Tigris river basin.

Local authorities have announced that the rocks were broken off “for safety reasons” and that 210 caves – a fraction of thousands of manmade caves in the area – would be filled before the town’s inundation in order to prevent erosion. The Ilisu dam, part of the Southeast Anatolian project (Gap) and one of Turkey’s largest hydroelectric projects to date, has been mired in controversy ever since it was first drafted in 1954. The dam will raise the level of the Tigris at Hasankeyf by 60m, submerging 80% of the ancient city and numerous surrounding villages, including more than 300 historical sites that have still not been explored. Environmental engineer Ercan Ayboga of the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive warns that close to 80,000 people will be displaced. Many of them will lose their land and their livelihoods. Because of additional debts taken up to purchase new homes, thousands face impoverishment.(theguardian)…[+]

Police are investigating the death of a four-year-old boy believed to have drowned at the end of a week-long family holiday organised by Narcotics Anonymous. Officers and paramedics were called to Knapp House activity centre in north Devon on bank holiday Monday after the child was reported missing.

The police helicopter was involved in the search and the boy was discovered in a swimming pool at the centre. He was taken to North Devon district hospital in Barnstaple but could not be saved. Devon and Cornwall police said they were treating the death as unexplained. A force spokeswoman said: “Police were notified around 2.55pm yesterday [Monday 28 August], to reports of a missing four-year-old boy at Knapp House activity centre in Northam, Bideford. “Following an extensive search assisted by the police helicopter, the child was located in a swimming pool at the site and taken to North Devon district hospital where he was pronounced deceased. “The boy’s next of kin have been informed and enquiries continue. Officers are investigating the circumstances and the death is currently being treated as unexplained.”

A spokesperson for Devon Narcotics Anonymous Campout Committee said something had gone “horrifically wrong”. The spokesperson said: “For the sixth year running, we have organised a week-long summer holiday campout for members of Narcotics Anonymous and their families at Knapp House and we all enjoyed a wonderful week of sharing lives of complete freedom from drug and alcohol use. (theguardian)…[+]

Fourteen people have died from an outbreak of hepatitis A in San Diego, and experts believe it to be the deadliest outbreak of the disease in the US in decades, the Guardian has learned. In large part, the victims were homeless people who have had to contend with a lack of 24-hour public restrooms, even though hand-washing is one of the best defenses against infection.

The number of cases has exceeded other large outbreaks, said a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) spokesperson, and is “likely the most deaths in an outbreak in the US in the past 20 years”, the period in which the CDC has operated its electronic reporting system. In 2003, three people died and at least 124 were hospitalized after eating contaminated salsa at a Pennsylvania restaurant. In 2013, 69 people across 10 states were hospitalized after eating contaminated pomegranate seeds.

Yet in San Diego, 264 people have been hospitalized, roughly 70% of them homeless, in an outbreak that began last November, according to local health officials. Nine of the 14 deaths have occurred since mid-July. The virus, which impairs liver function, causing jaundice, fatigue, joint pain and, in the most serious cases, death, is largely spread through food or water contaminated by fecal matter. Hepatitis A has a long incubation period – up to 28 days – which means people can spread the disease before they’re aware they’re infected.(theguardian)…[+]

Pope Francis will travel to Myanmar and Bangladesh this year for a landmark visit that is likely to focus international attention on the plight of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority. The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics will be in Myanmar from 27 to 30 November and neighbouring Bangladesh from 30 November to 2 December, the Vatican said on Monday. The visit to Myanmar will be the first by any pope to the country formerly known as Burma. Pope John Paul II visited Bangladesh in 1986. Francis has regularly spoken out in defence of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. On Sunday he bemoaned the latest “sad reports of the persecution of a religious minority, our Rohingya brothers” adding: “I would like to express my closeness to them and all of us ask the Lord to save them and to prompt men and women of good faith to help them and ensure their full rights.”(theguardian)…[+]

A nurse jailed for life for killing two patients with lethal drug overdoses murdered at least 90 patients in total, police said. Niels Hoegel, 40, was jailed in February 2015 for two murders and several attempted murders of intensive-care patients at Delmenhorst hospital near the northern city of Bremen. Police said on Monday that investigators exhuming and analysing more bodies had since found evidence of many more murders.

“The death toll is unique in the history of the German republic,” said the chief police investigator, Arne Schmidt, adding that Hoegel killed randomly and preyed especially on those in critical condition. “[There was] evidence for at least 90 murders, and at least as many [suspected] cases again that can no longer be proven,” he told a press conference, declaring himself “speechless” at the outcome. Hoegel admitted to injecting patients with a drug that can cause heart failure or circulatory collapse so he could then try to revive them and, when successful, shine as a saviour before his medical peers. He said he felt euphoric when he managed to bring a patient back to life, and devastated when he failed.(theguardian)…[+]

At least 16 US government employees associated with the US embassy in Havana have suffered unexplained health problems, including hearing loss, that officials believe could be caused by a covert sonic device. The US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Thursday that reports of the “incidents” had started in autumn 2016 and ended in April this year.

Earlier, US officials had said the symptoms appeared to have resulted from a covert sonic device. But Nauert said on Thursday no device nor any perpetrator had yet been found and that Cuba was cooperating with the US investigation. “We take this situation extremely seriously,” Nauert added. Diplomats and their spouses were among those treated in May by doctors in Cuba or the US, Nauert said. Some of the 16 are still in Cuba, while others have returned to the US. Earlier this month the US state department revealed that it had expelled two diplomats from the Cuban embassy in Washington in May after Americans in Cuba “reported incidents which have caused a variety of physical symptoms”. Cuba employs a huge state security apparatus to facilitate constant surveillance of potentially thousands of people, and US diplomats are among the most closely monitored.(theguardian)…[+]

Thailand’s former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra may have fled the country after failing to appear in court to hear the verdict in her long-running trial, according to the junta that ousted her in a coup in 2014 and reports in local media. Thousands of Yingluck’s supporters had massed outside the country’s supreme court on Friday morning to witness the outcome of the trial over allegations of failing to prevent alleged corruption. However, the 50-year-old did not turn up. Her lawyer told the judge that his client was suffering from an issue with fluid in her ear and was unable to attend. The judge ruled the court would issue an arrest warrant and seize her bail bond. “We don’t think that the defendant is ill. We think that the defendant is hiding or has fled … We have pushed back the verdict date to 27 September,” a statement from a supreme court judge said. “She asked for sick leave not to show up today.”(theguardian)…[+]

At least 13 people have died in riots and arson attacks that broke out across two states in northern India after a flamboyant Indian spiritual leader was convicted of raping two of his female followers. The Indian army was deployed in the city of Panchkula on Friday shortly after the court found Ram Rahim Singh guilty of sexual assault. The self-styled “godman” and leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect has been taken into custody and will reportedly be flown by helicopter to a jail in Haryana state before sentencing on Monday.

A police official told Reuters that 13 deaths had been confirmed in Panchkula. Electricity supplies, mobile internet and cable television had been cut in parts of Haryana and Punjab states before the verdict as up to 200,000 members of the sect massed in Panchkula in a show of defiance and support. Live television footage showed smoke billowing above a railway station and petrol pump in Punjab that was allegedly set alight by supporters of the guru.(theguardian)…[+]

Police using water cannon and batons have clashed with refugees who had occupied a square in Rome in defiance of an order to leave a building where they had been squatting. Television images from the dawn operation showed people screaming and trying to hit police, who were dressed in riot gear, with sticks. The square, one block from Rome’s main train station, was strewn with mattresses, overturned rubbish bins and broken plastic chairs. Hung on the building was a sheet with writing reading: “We are refugees, not terrorists,” in Italian. A small fire burned on the pavement and a sheet hanging from a first-floor window was set alight by squatters inside. Witnesses who arrived at the square after the clearance operation described a scene of carnage.“When I arrived at about 9am trash was scattered all over. About 50 people were still in the square, which had been partially closed down to traffic in the meantime. They were sad, frustrated and with no idea where to go,” said Francesco Conte, founder of TerminiTv, an online channel based in Rome’s Termini train station.(Theguardian)…[+]