A 35-year-old British man has been named as the victim of Sydney’s first fatal shark attack in nearly 60 years. A friend confirmed Simon Nellist died in the attack on Wednesday. Police have not yet formally identified the victim and his family have not commented. Australian authorities are still searching for the great white shark, with swimmers banned from the water and most city beaches shut after Wednesday’s attack. Mr Nellist – who was a diving instructor – was mauled by a great white shark just off Little Bay in east Sydney. He was a member of the city’s Scuba Diving Social Club and a regular swimmer at the beach, BBC Sydney correspondent Shaimaa Khalil reports. A UK foreign office spokesperson said consular staff are in touch with New South Wales Police. “We are supporting the family of a British man and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time,” the spokesperson said. Shark attacks in Sydney are uncommon because the city has long had nets and other deterrents in its waters.(BBC)…[+]

Kuwait’s constitutional court has overturned a law that criminalised “imitation of the opposite sex” and was used to prosecute transgender people. The Gulf state’s parliament amended Article 198 of the penal code in 2007 to make the offence punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine. But Wednesday’s court ruling said the amendment violated the constitution. Amnesty International called the development “a major breakthrough for transgender rights in the region”. Lynn Maalouf, the human rights group’s deputy Middle East director, said the law was “deeply discriminatory, overly vague and never should have been accepted into law in the first place”. “The Kuwaiti authorities must now ensure that Article 198 is repealed in its entirety,” she added. “They must also immediately halt arbitrary arrests of transgender people and drop all charges and convictions brought against them under this transphobic law.”(BBC)…[+]

A swimmer has been killed after sustaining “catastrophic injuries” in the first fatal shark attack in Sydney since 1963, Australian officials say. Emergency services were called to Little Bay beach near Malabar on Wednesday afternoon where human remains were found in the water, police say. Authorities in the New South Wales state have not named the victim, and an investigation is under way. Little Bay and several nearby beaches are now closed. At the time of the attack at 16:30 local time (05:30 GMT) on Wednesday, there were dozens of people swimming, paddle boarding and fishing on the nearby rocks, according to Sky News Australia. “Some guy was swimming and a shark came and attacked him vertically,” one witness told Nine news. “We heard a yell and turned around it looked like a car had landed in the water,” he said. Another onlooker who was fishing on the rocks at the time told ABC news that the swimmer “was yelling at first, and then when he went down there were so many splashes. “He just went down for a swim, enjoying the day, but that shark took his life,” he said. New South Wales ambulance service said the patient had “suffered catastrophic injuries and there was nothing paramedics could do”. The police said the beach would remained closed while officers searched the area. The police also urged people to be careful on beaches and follow the safety guidance from Surf Life Saving NSW.(BBC)…[+]

A young girl who went missing in 2019 has been found alive in a secret room under a staircase, police in the US state of New York say. Paislee Shultis, now six, was discovered in a house in the town of Saugerties after a search on Monday. She is in good health and has now been reunited with her legal guardian and older sister, the police say. Her non-custodial parents have been charged with custodial interference and endangering the welfare of a child. Paislee was reported missing from Tioga County, New York, in July 2019, according to a police statement. She was aged four. Authorities at the time believed she had been abducted by her parents, Kimberly Cooper, 33, and Kirk Shultis Jr., 32.(BBC)…[+]

Police in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa have surrounded the house of ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández. The officers were deployed hours after the US requested his extradition on drugs charges, which he denies. The Honduran security minister said Mr Hernández was inside his home and that police had been told to surround it to “prevent an escape” while they waited for an arrest warrant to be issued. Mr Hernández governed Honduras from 2014 to January this year. He is accused of having been involved in a drug-trafficking ring which included his younger brother, Tony Hernández, who last year was sentenced in the US to life in prison. During Tony Hernández’s trial, prosecutors alleged that the infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán had personally handed Tony Hernández $1m. According to the prosecutors, “El Chapo” Guzmán told the younger Hernández to pass the money on to his brother Juan Orlando as a bribe.(BBC)…[+]

Pollution of the world’s rivers from medicines and pharmaceutical products poses a “threat to environmental and global health”, a report says. Paracetamol, nicotine, caffeine and epilepsy and diabetes drugs were widely detected in a University of York study. The research is among the most extensive undertaken on a global scale. Rivers in Pakistan, Bolivia and Ethiopia were among the most polluted. Rivers in Iceland, Norway and the Amazon rainforest fared the best. The impact of many of the most common pharmaceutical compounds in rivers is still largely unknown. But it is already well established that dissolved human contraceptives can impact the development and reproduction of fish, and scientists fear the increased presence of antibiotics in rivers could limit their effectiveness as medicines.(BBC)…[+]

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act to crack down on anti-vaccine mandate protests. Mr Trudeau said the scope of the measures would be “time-limited”, “reasonable and proportionate” and would not see the military deployed. With no need for court orders, banks can freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests. Hundreds of demonstrators remain in Canada’s capital city. On Sunday, law enforcement cleared anti-mandate protesters at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor – a critical pathway for Canada-US trade – after a week-long stalemate. What began as a rally against a new rule that all truckers must be vaccinated to cross the US-Canada border, or quarantine upon return, has grown into a broader challenge to all Covid health restrictions. “This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people’s jobs,” Mr Trudeau told a news conference on Monday. He said the police would be given “more tools” to imprison or fine protesters and protect critical infrastructure. Mr Trudeau told reporters the legislation would be applied temporarily and in a highly specific manner.(BBC)…[+]

An eight-year-old boy whose kidnapping caused outrage in Syria when a video of him being tortured by his abductors was posted online has been freed. Fawaz al-Qataifan was handed over on Saturday after his family paid a ransom to the gang who seized him in Deraa province in November, state media said. He seemed to be in good health when he recounted his ordeal in a TV interview. Local police said they had arrested four suspects last week by tracing a telephone number used to send threats. The kidnappers then twice agreed times and places with Fawaz’s family for a handover, but failed to turn up on both occasions, according to Deraa Police Commander Brigadier Dirar al-Dandal. On Saturday, they told the boy’s father to take the ransom – reportedly 500m Syrian pounds ($199,000; £147,100) – to a location near the town of Nawa. After receiving the money, they left Fawaz outside a pharmacy.(BBC)…[+]

Film-maker Ivan Reitman, who directed blockbuster comedies including the original Ghostbusters, has died at the age of 75. After his family fled Communist oppression in post-war Czechoslovakia, Reitman grew up in Canada, where he trained in film-making. His big break came when he produced the 1978 frat-house comedy National Lampoon’s Animal House. His other films as director included Twins, Kindergarten Cop and Junior. He died peacefully in his sleep at his home in California, his family said. “Our family is grieving the unexpected loss of a husband, father and grandfather who taught us to always seek the magic in life,” his children said in a statement.(BBC)…[+]

French police have shot dead a man wielding a knife who threatened them at Paris’s Gare du Nord train station. The man attacked two police officers on patrol at the station, with a 30cm (12in) knife, police said. An anti-police inscription was found on the man’s knife, reports say. No police officers were injured in the incident, which occurred at about 07:00 local time (06:00 GMT) on Monday. The authorities believe the incident was not terrorism-related. “The police used their firearms, thus eliminating all danger, both for themselves and for travellers,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin wrote in a tweet (in French). An eyewitness told BFMTV: “I was climbing up the stairs that go up to the Eurostar platform, I heard screams on the right. I saw a man, quite tall, a large knife in his hand with a very impressive blade who threatened two or three policemen who were armed… The police made us go up on the platform, made us lie on the ground.” Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari later told RMC TV the man was known to the police “as someone who wandered around in the station”.(BBC)…[+]