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Police are on the hunt for an 18-carat gold toilet stolen overnight from Winston Churchill’s birthplace.Officers were called to reports of a burglary at Blenheim palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, where the loo – valued at £1m – was on display as part of a contemporary art exhibition, just before 5am on on Saturday.DI Jess Milne of Thames Valley police said: “The piece of art that has been stolen is a high-value toilet made out of gold that was on display at the palace.“The artwork has not been recovered at this time, but we are conducting a thorough investigation to find it and bring those responsible to justice.”A 66-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the theft.The burglary has left the palace with significant damage and flooding. The toilet, designed by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, had been plumbed in and was available for visitors to use.The golden lavatory, named America, drew large crowds when it was exhibited in New York. It had been installed in a wood-panelled chamber opposite the room where Churchill was born.Blenheim palace is the ancestral seat of the Duke of Marlborough.Ahead of the toilet’s installation, the duke’s half-brother, Edward Spencer-Churchill, founder of the Blenheim Art Foundation, said last month the lavatory wouldn’t be “the easiest thing to nick”.“Firstly, it’s plumbed in and secondly, a potential thief will have no idea who last used the toilet or what they ate,” he told the Times. “So no, I don’t plan to be guarding it.”The palace’s chief executive, Dominic Hare, urged anyone with any information about the theft to contact police.“Following the Thames Valley police statement we can confirm ‘America’, the art piece by Maurizio Cattelan, has been stolen in the early hours of this morning,” he said.“We are saddened by this extraordinary event, but also relieved no one was hurt. We are very grateful to our staff and to Thames Valley police for their rapid and brave reactions.“We knew there was huge interest in the Maurizio Cattelan contemporary art exhibition, with many set to come and enjoy the installations. It’s therefore a great shame an item so precious has been taken, but we still have so many fascinating treasures in the palace and the remaining items of the exhibition to share.”Hare said the investigation continued, but “it will be business as usual from tomorrow”. Blenheim palace was closed on Saturday.Visitors to the palace had been given three minutes of solitude to test out the golden throne. The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones has described the experience as “much like peeing on porcelain … but here, among all the photos of young Winston, it also feels like pissing on British history”.

Italy’s new left-leaning government has authorised 82 migrants to disembark from an NGO rescue ship, marking a break from the hardline immigration measures of the former interior minister Matteo Salvini.It is the first time this year that Rome has allowed the disembarkation of an NGO rescue vessel. Previously ships carrying migrants had been barred from Italian ports.The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, operated by the French charities SOS Méditerranée and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), asked Italian and Maltese authorities on Wednesday for safe haven for its passengers.The new coalition in Rome formed of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the centre-left Democratic party (PD) granted permission for them to disembark in Lampedusa, Sicily, on Saturday.The decision follows an agreement with the European commission, which received a request on Wednesday night to coordinate the redistribution of migrants onboard the Ocean Viking among member states.A plan for the passengers to be redistributed among other countries without having to land them in Lampedusa was also considered.“Italian authorities have offered to the Ocean Viking a safe port to disembark,’’ the two charities tweeted. “MSF and SOS Méditerranée are relieved”.”Italy’s new government, which won a vote of confidence in the senate on Tuesday – the final step needed to exercise its full powers – intends to draw a line under a crisis sparked by Salvini, the far-right leader of the League.Giuseppe Conte, on his second mandate as prime minister, had promised to revise the previous government’s anti-immigration policies, which provide for the closure of seaports to rescue vessels carrying migrants, the seizure of NGO boats and fines for ships that bring asylum seekers to Italy without permission.NGO rescue vessels have been stranded at sea up to 20 days over the last 14 months because of the Salvini’s measures. There have been 25 standoffs between rescue vessels and Italian authorities since Salvini took office as interior minister in June 2018, according to the Institute for International Political Studies (Ispi).Given the medical and psychological condition of their passengers, the ships have often broken the blockade and allowed them to disembark without permission.In almost all cases, this resulted in the temporary seizure of the ship and heavy fines. Carola Rackete, the captain of Sea-Watch 3, was arrested in June after forcing her way into Lampedusa with 40 migrants on board. She risked ramming a navy vessel that tried to obstruct her entrance into the port. She was eventually released.Germany and France are prepared to take in 25% each of the migrants onboard the Ocean Viking. Other EU states including Italy will take the remainder.Following a meeting with the European council president, Donald Tusk, in Brussels on Wednesday, Conte said EU member states that refused to share the burden of the arrival of migrants should face financial penalties.“Those who do not participate in the redistribution of migrants at the European level will feel the impact in a significant way in financial terms,” he said.“The new government has opened again its seaports to migrants,” Salvini said on Twitter. “The new ministers must hate our country. Italy is back to being Europe’s refugee camp.”

In April, a 15-year-old female relative of mine attempted to escape from al-Hawl camp, the displacement facility in eastern Syria that hosts families of Islamic State fighters. My cousin was one of thousands of civilians displaced from areas previously held by Isis and kept at the camp as they fled the group’s last strongholds.My relative never joined the organisation, nor did any member of her family. But when she was caught, the guards noticed she was wearing a burqa, the face veil that Isis imposed on women living under its so-called caliphate. Since she was no longer living under Isis, the Kurdish interrogators accused her of being a “Daeshiyah” – a pejorative word to describe female Isis sympathisers. Rather than defending herself as a civilian with no association or sympathy to Isis, she opted for a defiant tone: “This is Islam, like it or not.”To outsiders, such answers are often taken as evidence of persistent loyalty to Isis. While in some cases this may be true, others are a sign of the limited success Isis had in persuading portions of the population that certain practices represented authentic Islam, which does not necessarily equate to loyalty to the organisation or its ideology.About 80,000 people live in al-Hawl, which is in southern Hasakah near the border with Iraq. Most of those are children, women and old men. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-dominated coalition backed by the US, held fleeing families in the camp, without a process to vet or release them. In May, the SDF planned to introduce a system allowing elders from villages and towns to vouch for individuals before their release, but the plan never materialised. As a result, families have been trapped in the camp – some for six months, since the caliphate collapsed in March, and others for up to two years. Despite the lack of a system to determine the backgrounds of those in the camp, officials somehow classify all those inside as Isis families.Most of the people in the camp are children, women and the elderly. Photograph: Ali Hashisho/Reuters
This treatment is creating a popular backlash that has gone largely unnoticed: increasingly, families see the internationally backed force as invaders who have contempt for the local population. This is creating a widening schism between the force and residents affected by the situation.Helpless, some local people appear to find in Isis or its slogans an expression of defiance against what they view as strangers running their areas and labelling them as “dawaesh”, or adherents to Isis. Moreover, there is a risk of radicalisation merely in keeping innocent civilians, especially children, among hardened Isis sympathisers.Discussions about al-Hawl camp have centred on foreign fighters and their families, and the understandable dilemma facing western governments in accepting individuals who travelled thousands of miles to live under an extremist Islamic caliphate. But the dynamics for locals can be entirely different, and lumping them in the same camp – quite literally – could breathe new life into the Isis ideology.Most of those currently held in the camp can still be peeled off from the ideology. Like thousands of children and young people there, my relative was traumatised by the war and life under Isis. She left her village after her mother was killed in shelling by Kurdish forces.Civilians had already endured so much under Isis, and many had no choice but to stay in their homes until the end; they had nowhere else to go. The risk is that, when they find themselves trapped in a camp in the middle of the desert under horrible conditions, they become focused not on the radical group that caused them to suffer but on those holding them and accusing them of being sympathetic to the jihadists they despised.

Indonesia is stepping up efforts to protect people with mental health conditions by affording national agencies new powers to monitor and close down institutions found to be abusing patients.The country’s human rights commission and its witness and victim protection unit are among the agencies empowered to monitor facilities to check they don’t contravene a 1977 government ban on “pasung” – shackling or detaining patients in confined spaces.Under the new agreement, which was made public in early September, agencies will have a mandate to visit places of detention, such as faith healing centres and private and state social care and mental health institutions, on a regular basis. They will have the authority to shut down or sanction facilities that use shackling.Widespread stigma and insufficient support mean thousands of people with psychological disabilities suffer abuses including physical and sexual violence, involuntary treatment such as electroshock therapy, seclusion, restraint and forced contraception, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).A 2016 report by the organisation highlighted the alleged abuses suffered by people with mental health conditions. Following publication, the government launched a programme to raise awareness about mental health issues and provide training to health workers. The scheme involved health workers visiting people’s homes to collect information about mental health conditions in families and to check they were receiving adequate services. According to HRW, the programme made it “easier for community health workers to detect cases of shackling and facilitate the release of shackled people”.Kriti Sharma, an HRW researcher who has been studying shackling in Indonesia for five years, welcomed the new agreement.“Shackling people with mental health conditions is illegal in Indonesia and yet it remains a widespread and brutal practice,” she said. “People spend years locked up in chains, wooden stocks or goat sheds because families don’t know what else to do.“The Indonesian government has made a serious effort to tackle the practice of shackling since we published our report in 2016. But with little oversight, thousands of people remain in chains or locked up in institutions across the country.”Sharma said the new agreement was important because “it provides for regular and independent monitoring of government and private institutions. If they find any abuse, the authorities should take action, and ultimately they should support people with mental health conditions to live independently in the community”.The 2016 study highlighted serious shortcomings in mental healthcare, with only 600–800 psychiatrists providing services for a population of more than 250 million. More than 57,000 people in Indonesia have suffered from pasung at least once in their lives, the report said.It also raised alarms about the level of hygiene in overcrowded institutions, where researchers said “people are routinely forced to sleep, eat, urinate and defecate in the same space”.One woman experiencing mental health issues told HRW she was chained three times in Yayasan Galuh rehabilitation centre in Bekasi, West Java. “I got hit by the staff and was handcuffed for one whole week,” she said. “I couldn’t even go to the toilet – I had to pee there, in my clothes.”Thanks to awareness campaigns, including work by local groups such as the Indonesian mental health association, the number of patients shackled or locked up in confined spaces has fallen from 18,800 in 2016 to roughly 12,800 in July 2018, according to government data cited by HRW.Indonesian women suffering ‘epidemic’ of domestic violence, activists warn
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A woman, 52, confined to her room for five years in Cijeruk, Bogor, was eventually rescued by health workers after a home visit. “She would sleep on the floor; she couldn’t walk because her muscles had stopped working,” her sister said. “We gave her a bucket to urinate and defecate i

The Philippine health ministry has urged local officials to ramp up efforts to combat dengue fever after the death toll from the epidemic reached 1,021.The young have born the brunt of the outbreak, with children under the age of 10 accounting for more than a third of the deaths recorded in the eight months up to August, when a national epidemic of the mosquito-borne disease was declared.Health undersecretary Rolando Enrique Domingo, who said 13,192 new cases and 38 deaths have been recorded since 18 August, called on local governments to do more to find and destroy mosquito breeding sites.“What we need [to do] is to go down to the village level,” he said. “It also needs to be done daily.“We understand that sometimes it may be tiring, but the threat of dengue is continuous. We ask for a little more effort because as we can see there are still a lot of cases.”Domingo recommended insecticide fogging, especially in areas where cases have risen, and advised people to wear insect repellent and clothes that cover the skin.The government fears cases could rise further as the country enters typhoon season.Following a national ban on a controversial vaccine blamed for children’s deaths, cases of dengue fever in the Philippines have more than doubled compared with figures for the same period last year.The Department for Health has recorded 249,332 cases since the start of the year, dwarfing the 119,224 cases recorded in 2018. The figures are the highest since 2012.Quick guide
Dengue fever in the Philippines
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The government is considering appeals to lift its ban on Dengvaxia, a drug developed by French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur that remains the only vaccine available against dengue. However, many remain cautious due to claims that improper use in the country had led to children’s deaths. The World Health Organization issued a conditional recommendation for the vaccine in areas where dengue is highly endemic.The Dengvaxia scandal has caused a widespread vaccine scare in the Philippines, resulting in increased cases of dengue and measles. There is growing concern that polio could also return to the country for the first time since 1993.While the epidemic has already prompted some villages to double down against dengue, some efforts appear to have been misguided. In Quezon City, a village chief reportedly released hundreds of frogs into drainage canals in a bid to fight dengue, only to realise that the frogs were invasive species that could disrupt the environment.Dengue, a viral infection, is widespread throughout the tropics. The virus thrives in areas of rapid urbanisation, poor sanitation and the absence of a vaccine.The Department of Health has warned parents to monitor their children for fever accompanied by severe headache, pain behind the eyes or muscle and joint pain lasting two days or more. Dengue can lead to haemorrhaging and organ failure in severe cases.Dengue is not confined to specific regions, although the highest number of cases have been recorded in Western Visayas (42,694 cases) and southern Luzon (35,136 cases). Metropolitan Manila reported 15,819 cases.Philippines declares epidemic after dengue fever kills more than 600
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Esperanza Cabral, the former health secretary, told the Guardian that government efforts will never be enough until the ban on Dengvaxia vaccine is lifted.Cabral said: “The government has focused its campaign on reducing the number of mosquitoes and on cleanliness. Doing just that will not work. We know there’s a vaccine that is not perfect but is effective enough. Unfortunately, it is not available.”Cabral added that the government should work harder to restore public confidence in vaccines. “We need to preve

A Tanzanian journalist charged with money laundering and leading organised crime could face up to five years in jail without trial because bail is not guaranteed in cases involving alleged economic crimes, his legal team has warned.Erick Kabendera’s lawyers and family also criticised Tanzanian immigration authorities for refusing to return his wife and children’s passports, even though allegations over his citizenship have been dropped.A prominent figure who has consistently held John Magufuli’s government to account, Kabendera appeared in court on Thursday for the fourth time since his arrest in August only for his case to be postponed. Footage subsequently appeared on Twitter of the journalist limping from court.Zitto Kabwe Ruyagwa
(@zittokabwe)
Investigative journalist @kabsjourno Kabendera was brought to court today, limping. His right leg in severe pains. Though brave and strong, he is sick. Trumped up, bogus and retaliatory charges against him must be dropped and he he gets treatment #FreeErickKabendera pic.twitter.com/ECVeoIWioMSeptember 12, 2019
Widely held to be politically motivated, Kabendera’s detention is part of a “very disturbing” pattern of increasing media repression and intimidation in Tanzania, according to the International Federation of Journalists.The accusations against him changed several times, ranging from claims that he was not a Tanzanian national to sedition under cybercrime laws, before the police settled on economic crimes.Kabendera’s lawyer said resolving the economic crimes allegations in the near future would be “mostly impossible”.“Some people stay [in detention] even for five years,” Jebra Kambole said. “The only issue that can help Erick is if the investigation will be completed on time, or if the state decides to drop charges against Erick.”Kabendera’s health has deteriorated since being detained, but so far he has not been allowed to go to hospital for medical checks.“He complains of breathing difficulties, especially during the night. We don’t know what the problem is because there are no proper medical tests done,” Kambole said. “In mid-August, both his legs had some sort of paralysis and he said he was getting weak.”Kabendera’s sister, Prisca Kabendera, said she thought he could be experiencing panic attacks.She described the ordeal that their family has gone through, especially soon after his arrest, when the authorities said they were trying to “clarify his citizenship”.“My father was interrogated by the immigration officers for hours,” she said, adding that the 82-year-old had endured this alone, as he lives on the other side of the country. “He was taken to his parents’ and grandparents’ graveyards, taking pictures of him at the graves and even using marker pens to write on unlabelled graves. That devastated him so much.”They also confiscated the passports held by Kabendera’s wife and children, in effect holding them hostage, Prisca said.“They cannot go anywhere and immigration don’t want to return the passports or clear their citizenship allegations. They won’t return the passports or issue a statement to clear him.“He’s worried about his family, especially the kids. Knowing this whole thing was made up to torture him, he doesn’t know how far they can go.”It is very hard to believe that the case against Kabendera is motivated by anything but his work as a journalist, said Kajubi Mukajanga, the executive secretary of the Media Council of Tanzania.“Kabendera’s case has been handled politically from the first moment. Kabendera’s case has left a lot of questions unanswered from the word go,” he said.“Accusations against him kept changing, changing, changing – they brought the citizenship thing, it couldn’t stick, so they left it, they went to cybercrime, that didn’t stick either, so they left it, they went to sedition, it couldn’t stick either, so they left it, and eventually they said: ‘What the hell? Just charge him with economic crimes, throw him

Drones attacked the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and a major oilfield operated by Saudi Aramco early on Saturday, the kingdom’s interior ministry said, sparking a huge fire at a processor vital to global energy supplies.A military spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the strikes.Yahia Sarie made the announcement on Saturday in a televised address carried by the Houthi movement’s al-Masirah satellite news channel.He said the rebels had sent 10 drones to attack the Abqaiq oil processing facility and the Khurais oil field. He said attacks against the kingdom would get worse if the war in Yemen continued.“The only option for the Saudi government is to stop attacking us,” he said. A Saudi-led coalition has been at war with the rebels since March 2015.It was unclear whether there were any injuries in the attacks, or whether they would affect the country’s oil production. They are, however, likely to heighten tensions in the region, where Saudi Arabia and Iran are effectively fighting a proxy war in Yemen, and Tehran is at loggerheads with Washington over the latter’s withdrawal from its nuclear deal with world powers.Online videos apparently shot in Abqaiq included the sound of gunfire in the background. Smoke rose over the skyline and flames could be seen in the distance at the oil processing facility.The fires began after the sites were targeted by drones, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. It said an investigation was under way.Saudi Aramco describes its Abqaiq facility as the largest crude oil stabilisation plant in the world. It is thought to be able to process up to 7m barrels of crude a day.Saudi Arabia and UAE attempt to paper over Yemen cracks
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Militants have targeted the plant in the past. Suicide bombers claiming to be from al-Qaida tried but failed to attack it in February 2006.The Khurais oil field is thought to produce more than 1m barrels of crude a day. It has estimated reserves of more than 20bn barrels, according to Aramco.There was no immediate impact on global oil prices, because markets are closed for the weekend. Benchmark Brent crude had been trading at just above $60 a barrel.Abqaiq is 205 miles (330km) north-east of Riyadh.A Saudi-led coalition has been at war with the Houthi movement in Yemen since March 2015. The Iranian-backed rebels hold the capital, Sana’a, and other territory in the Arab world’s poorest country.The war has triggered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The violence has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine and more than 90,000 people have been killed since 2015, according to the US-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which tracks the conflict.Quick guide
The Yemen conflict
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Houthi rebels have been using drones in combat since since the start of the Saudi-led war. The first appeared to be off-the-shelf, hobby-kit-style drones, but later versions have been nearly identical to Iranian models. Tehran denies supplying the rebels with weapons, but the west and Gulf Arab nations say it does.The rebels have flown drones into the radar arrays of Saudi Arabia’s Patriot missile batteries, according to Conflict Armament Research, disabling them and allowing them to fire ballistic missiles into the kingdom unchallenged.They launched drone attacks targeting Saudi Arabia’s crucial east-west pipeline in May as tensions heightened between Iran and the US.Houthi drones also struck the Shaybah oil field in August. The field produces 1m barrels of crude a day near the Saudi border with the United Arab Emirates.UN investigators have suggested that the rebels’ new UAV-X dronemay have a range of up to 930 miles (1,500 kilometres), meaning they would be able to reach Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, who was trying to lead an al-Qaida resurgence, is believed dead, according to US reports.NBC News reported the US had received intelligence that he had died, citing three American officials. The New York Times, quoting two unnamed officials, also reported Hamza bin Laden had been killed sometime over the past two years, and it had taken time to confirm the death.The report said the US had a hand in the death of the al-Qaida heir, thought to have been aged about 30.Hamza bin Laden had been seeking to stage attacks on western targets with the aim of restoring al-Qaida’s status at the vanguard of extreme jihadist groups, after many years of decline and eclipse by Islamic State. He was thought to have been based in Pakistan’s tribal areas, along the border with Afghanistan.Who is Hamza bin Laden? Heir who sought to revive al-Qaida
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“They were clearly grooming him to be a next generation successor,” said Peter Bergen, an al-Qaida expert and director of international security programme at the New America foundation. “Ayman al-Zawahiri [al-Qaida’s official leader] hasn’t been a particularly effective leader. He’s got a sort of charisma deficit. And they were trying to put this guy forward.”Although Hamza bin Laden had made public statements in recent years, Bergen raised questions over whether he was an operational leader. While al-Qaida affiliates have been active in Syria, Yemen and Africa, central al-Qaida, which was behind the 9/11 attacks, has not carried out significant operations.“Had he really done anything? Had he overseen any operation of any significance? It is an interesting question,” Bergen said.Donald Trump was asked by reporters on Wednesday if the US had intelligence that Hamza bin Laden was dead, to which the US president replied: “I don’t want to comment on that.”Separately, the White House declined to comment on whether any announcement was imminent.In his last known public statement, made through al-Qaida’s media outlet in March 2018, Hamza bin Laden had threatened Saudi Arabia and called on the people of the Arabian peninsula to revolt.In March of this year, Saudi Arabia had revoked his citizenship after the US offered a $1m (£800,000) reward for help locating him as part of its “rewards for justice” programme.Ten days before the Manchester bombing in 2017, Hamza’s voice was heard on an audio recording released by al-Qaida that called for its supporters to strike against “Jews” and “Crusaders”. However, investigators established no link between the attack in the UK and al-Qaida.In May 2016, he urged fighters in Syria to unite and “liberate Palestine”, while he also warned Americans they would be targeted.From 9/11 to Sri Lanka: the terrorists’ deadly message we have failed to grasp
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He also called for attacks against US, French and Israeli interests in 2015, as well as acts of terrorism in western capitals on behalf of al-Qaida, according to the UN security council.Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces who raided his compound in Pakistan in 2011. Hamza was thought to be under house arrest in Iran at the time, and documents recovered from the compound indicated that aides had been trying to reunite him with his father.Hamza was at his father’s side in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks on the US, and spent time with him in Pakistan after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan pushed much of al-Qaida’s senior leadership there, according to the Brookings Institution.A notice on the UN security council website said: “Hamza bin Laden has been given a more prominent role within al-Qaida, and is considered to have the capability to follow through with his threats. Hamza’s popularity is increasing among followers of al-Qaida, and he has become the most probable successor of a new version of al-Qaida.“Hamza seeks to grow al-Qaida’s network and use a new phase of terrorist attacks in major western cities to raise his profile

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Yet another amazing song, making the streets dance ‘ShakuShaku’ , inspiring and fun-filled afropop music.Download