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Middle East crisis live: Ships reportedly attacked in strait of Hormuz after Trump extends Iran ceasefire

Here is a summary of the attacks reported in the strait of Hormuz and the statement by the IRGC of the seizure of two of the ships. The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said it received a report of a container ship coming under fire off the coast of Oman by a gun boat linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Greece’s Kathimerini newspaper reported that the ship was identified as the Liberia-flagged Epaminondas, owned by Greece’s Technomar Shipping and operated by MSC. The UKMTO said it received a second report of a ship coming under attack in the strait of Hormuz, near the coast of Iran. It did not say who launched the attack against the cargo ship, which had stopped in the water. Iranian reports suggest the vessel was called Euphoria. The maritime intelligence company Vanguard told the BBC that a third ship was attacked in the strait of Hormuz, identifying it as the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca. Iranian media reported that the IRGC has seized the Epaminondas and MSC Francesca and transferred them to the Iranian coast.

Contested Druzhba pipeline resumes operations with EU close to signing off on €90bn loan for Ukraine – Europe live

Here’s the official confirmation! Hungarian oil giant MOL just passed on a message from the Ukrainian operator, JSC Ukrtransnafta, that “the receipt of crude oil from Belarus via the Druzhba pipeline system began in Ukraine at noon today.” “MOL expects the first crude oil shipments following the restart of the Ukrainian section of the pipeline system to arrive in Hungary and Slovakia by tomorrow at the latest,” it added.

Gibraltar’s monkeys eat mud ‘to avoid upset stomachs from tourist junk food’

Troops of monkeys living on the Rock of Gibraltar have learned to eat soil in what scientists believe is an effort to settle their stomachs after all the junk food they receive – and sometimes steal – from crowds of tourists. Researchers spotted the intentional mud eating, known as geophagy, while observing groups of Barbary macaques in the territory. Monkeys that had the most contact with tourists ate the most soil and consumption peaked in the holiday season, they found. About 230 macaques live on Gibraltar in eight distinct groups, and while local authorities provide them with daily helpings of fruit, vegetables and seeds, tourists routinely feed them snacks ranging from bags of chips and chocolate bars to M&M’s and ice-creams. The observations don’t prove why the monkeys eat soil, but scientists suspect it has a protective effect on the digestive system. The only macaques on the rock that were not seen eating soil belonged to a group that is isolated from visitors and tourists. Dr Sylvain Lemoine, a primate behavioural ecologist at the University of Cambridge, said the monkeys may be eating the soil to rebalance their gut microbiomes, the populations of microbes that live in the digestive tract, which become disturbed by the fatty, salty and sugary snacks the monkeys binge on. “We think that eating this junk food disrupts the composition of the microbiome and we know that bacteria and minerals in soil can help recompose the microbiome and alleviate the negative effects,” Lemoine said. “We think there’s a protective effect of the soil.” Observations between summer 2022 and spring 2024 found that nearly a fifth of all food consumed by the macaques was junk food from tourists. Macaques that lived around the top of the rock, which is particularly popular with tourists, were more than twice as likely to eat junk food than others. They also consumed the most soil. Lemoine said the monkeys were fed junk food by locals as well as visiting tourists, who have offered salted peanuts, chocolate bars, crisps, dried pasta, bread, Coca-Cola, orange juice, M&M’s, ice-cream and more. “There’s a lot of ice-cream. They love Magnums and Cornettos. What they don’t like very much is sorbet.” In total, the researchers recorded 44 monkeys eating dirt on 46 occasions. In three instances, the macaques ate soil shortly after being fed ice-cream, biscuits or bread. When visitor numbers fell in the winter, the monkeys were 40% less likely to eat tourist food and more than 30% less likely to eat soil. Writing in Scientific Reports, the researchers describe how the monkeys appear to learn the habit from others, with macaques favouring different types of soil depending on their troop. Most monkeys search out the terra rossa, or red clay, found across Gibraltar, but the Ape’s Den troop, which occupies the lower western slopes, favours tar-clogged soil from potholes in asphalt roads. Humans around the world eat soil, particularly pregnant women in parts of Africa, Asia and South America, where it is consumed to help with nausea or to provide critical minerals. But the researchers saw no rise in soil-eating among pregnant or lactating monkeys, suggesting the behaviour is not driven by a need to supplement their diets. Instead, Lemoine said the macaques seemed to eat the soil to “buffer their digestive system” against high-energy, low-fibre snacks and junk foods that are known to cause stomach upsets in some primates. Tourists are told not to touch or feed the monkeys on Gibraltar, but the rule is not well enforced. While the junk food may be harmful to the macaques, so might the soil, as much of it is found close to busy roads on the rock. “There are a lot of vehicles passing every day, and most are not electric yet,” Lemoine said. “We want to analyse the soil. We’re very interested in seeing the levels of pollutants.” Dr Paula Pebsworth, a primatologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said geophagy served multiple purposes linked to detoxification and mineral supplementation. In her own work on chacma baboons in South Africa, monkeys consumed substantial amounts of soil, likely in response to plant toxins. “The idea that soil consumption may help monkeys cope with tourist provisioning is also plausible and has been documented at [Japan’s] Arashiyama Monkey Park. However, while geophagy may serve as a coping mechanism, a more effective management approach is to reduce or eliminate the provisioning of human foods,” she said.

Tehran’s embattled Jewish community endures despite Israeli bombing of synagogue

On the evening of 6 April, Asef, 65, and other members of Tehran’s Jewish community braved the US-Israeli bombing campaign to celebrate an evening Passover service at the Rafi’ Nia synagogue in the centre of the Iranian capital. Inside the dim hall, lined with Persian carpets and mint green curtains, Torah verses were recited and prayers murmured under the breath. Asef, his shirt neatly tucked into his trousers and a kippah on his head, sat among the men, while the women sat separately on the other side. The atmosphere was reverent but subdued. “We didn’t let the conflict stop us from celebrating,” he said, adding that the community had made an effort to hold on to their Passover traditions even amid the difficulties of war. It was already dark when he headed home that night; the streets were quiet, with only a few people out. By the time he got up the next morning to get ready for work, an Israeli airstrike had completely destroyed the synagogue. The Israeli army described the destruction as “collateral damage” from a strike targeting a commander, but members of the Jewish community expressed anger and outrage. Nobody was injured, although a staff member had been in the synagogue’s office at the time. The morning after the bombing, synagogue members sifted through rubble and debris, trying to recover what they could: a handful of religious books and three Torah scrolls were pulled from the shatter brick and rebar, but much was lost. “It’s all under the rubble, including some of our historical volumes,” said Homayoun Sameh, a member of parliament and the head of the Jewish Association of Iran, who visited the site. “We condemn this attack. It disrespects our faith. Iran’s Jewish community doesn’t have good relations with the Zionist Israeli government,” he said. Iran’s Jewish community is the largest and oldest outside Israel, dating back about 2,500 years to when Jews were exiled eastwards by Assyrian and Babylonian rulers. Iranian officials have long used antisemitic language to express their hostility to Israel – former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once described the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis as “myth” – but the government maintains that its stance is directed at Israel as a state, not Jews as people. The US-Israeli war on Iran has highlighted the unique dual identity of a community that has itself become collateral damage in a conflict that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asserts has been fought to protect Jews. Until 1979, Iran – under the pro-western monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – was Israel’s closest ally in the region. After the Islamic revolution, the country’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, severed diplomatic ties and the two countries have been locked in confrontation ever since. “Some speak of a so-called golden era before the 1979 revolution, when Tehran and Tel Aviv were close friends, but this was also a period when Israel backed, armed and trained the brutal shah regime,” said Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has spent time with the Jewish community in Tehran. After the revolution, emigration meant the country’s Jewish population dropped from about 100,000 to 10,000-15,000, mostly focused in the bigger cities of Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz. “In the early years after the revolution, society was in turmoil and many people confused us with Zionists. Jewish properties were confiscated, and many Jews were afraid and sought refuge [in Israel],” said Sameh. Others decided to stay, such as the family of the community’s chief rabbi, Younes Hamami Lalehzar, 61, an internal medicine doctor who has long worked at Tehran’s Jewish hospital. His family, merchants originally from the city of Yazd in central Iran, had always been proudly both Iranian and Jewish. Today, the vibrant community maintains about 30 synagogues, as well as schools, kosher restaurants and supermarkets. Judaism is constitutionally recognised and protected in Iran, although Jews are barred from holding certain high government or military positions. It is a community that defies easy categorisation. “Many in the Jewish community are understandably cautious of outsiders, self-censorship is common, some are what I’d call quiet Zionists while others are fiercely critical of Israeli crimes against Palestinians and opposed to Zionism,” said Loewenstein. “Many are deeply opposed to the Trump administration and Israeli destruction of Iranian infrastructure during the recent war. The Israeli airstrike that destroyed a prominent synagogue in Tehran confirmed the fears of many Iranian Jews that Israel and Netanyahu don’t really care about their fate.” About two decades ago, Israel encouraged Iranian Jews to emigrate, offering cash incentives in an attempt to prompt a mass migration. At the time, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed the offer as “immature political enticements” and said their national identity was not for sale. At a service at Sukkat Shalom synagogue before Shabbat last week, members of the community echoed this sentiment, expressing pride in their community’s long history. Setareh, a 60-year-old woman and “proud Iranian”, said synagogues in Tehran were left without guards and “remain open throughout the day”, even during war. “Muslim and Jewish communities live here together, we’re not separated. We all live together in peace,” said another man, Ayman, 35. “We are all Iranians and this is our home.”

Wednesday briefing: Can Keir Starmer’s premiership survive more revelations about his handling of diplomatic posts?

Good morning. On Monday, Keir Starmer told MPs that officials had failed to inform him Peter Mandelson had been refused security vetting before being appointed ambassador to Washington. Yesterday, the ousted Foreign Office permanent secretary Olly Robbins gave his own account in parliament. Not only did Robbins’s retelling differ from the prime minister’s version, it also included further damaging claims about the pressure his department had been under from the Downing Street operation to confirm the New Labour grandee in the role. Robbins, who gave two and a half hours of evidence to the foreign affairs select committee, also revealed he had been under pressure to appoint another Starmer aide to a senior diplomatic role – while keeping the foreign secretary firmly out of the loop. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Guardian policy editor Kiran Stacey about the gaps between the two accounts, the questions that remain unanswered and where Starmer goes from here. First though, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Olly Robbins, the former top official at the Foreign Office, said No 10 took a “dismissive” attitude to vetting, and Peter Mandelson was given access to the Foreign Office building and to “higher-classification briefings” before he was granted security clearance. Middle East crisis | Donald Trump unilaterally announced an extension of the two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday amid frantic efforts to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table. Labour | The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told “white liberal” hecklers to “fuck right off” after being accused at an on-stage event of copying the policies of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. US politics | Tucker Carlson has said he is “tormented” by his support of Donald Trump, issuing an extraordinary mea culpa that called for “a moment to wrestle with our own consciences”. UK news | Seven more people have been arrested after a series of arson attacks on Jewish sites in London. In depth: ‘He said he’d been made a scapegoat’ Opening yesterday’s session, the foreign affairs committee chair Emily Thornberry was withering about how candid Olly Robbins had been to the same committee previously. “You clearly told us the truth,” she said, “but you only told us part of the truth. It’s a little bit like saying ‘I had to run to work today’, but not saying you were chased by a bear.” Robbins was, Kiran Stacey says, clearly aggrieved at how he has been treated. “He said he’d been made a scapegoat and insisted he’d done everything by the book.” *** What did Robbins tell the committee? Robbins’s argument boiled down to this: by the time he took up his role, Mandelson’s appointment had already been announced, approved by King Charles and accepted by the US – and the Foreign Office was under “constant pressure” from No 10 Downing Street to get him to Washington as quickly as possible. He insisted this pressure bore no part in his decision-making. However, on our live blog coverage of the hearing yesterday, my colleague Andrew Sparrow had more than a little suspicion on this score, writing: “You can choose to believe that if you want.” Kiran says that Robbins’s message here was “the appointment had effectively already been made – agreed, announced and tied up. If I’d refused clearance, I’d have killed the appointment after it had already been announced. I would have been reversing the prime minister’s decision.” Crucially, Robbins maintained that the vetting outcome had been presented to him as “borderline” and manageable – despite reports that officials had in fact recommended clearance be denied – and he also claimed not to have been presented with any of the documentary evidence around the vetting process. *** A new line of attack against Starmer One new piece of information that came out of Robbins’s session was his suggestion that the No 10 operation had been seeking a diplomatic role for Matthew Doyle, who was then the prime minister’s director of communications. This line, Kiran says, “came out of nowhere”. “He was obviously prepared for it and just waiting for the right moment to drop it in,” Kiran says. “I don’t know whether he’d briefed the committee in advance, but it was completely out of the blue – not directly related to what he was talking about, but a pretty amazing revelation.” Robbins then told the committee he had been told not to inform the then-foreign secretary David Lammy about this – which seems quite extraordinary. In the Commons, the current foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said she was “extremely concerned” about the suggestion a permanent secretary was being ordered to keep a minister in the dark. Doyle, who was made a Labour peer, was suspended from the House of Lords in February after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children. Doyle said later on Tuesday that he “never sought” a post as an ambassdor and that he was “never aware of anyone speaking to the FCDO about such a role for me”. Kiran tells me that given the overall tenor of Robbins’s testimony – that Starmer desperately wanted Mandelson in place, come what may – “to then add: ‘Oh, and by the way, he also wanted another mate, someone who’s been tarred by association with a paedophile, to take on a diplomatic role’. Well, that adds to a growing feeling among Labour MPs that Starmer’s political judgment is all over the place.” *** A story Robbins wanted to bury Robbins also confirmed the Guardian’s story that senior government officials had considered whether to withhold from parliament sensitive documents about the vetting process, which was denied last week by Darren Jones, the prime minister’s chief secretary. In fact, the former senior civil servant seemed regretful the episode had come into the public domain at all, saying the leak to the Guardian of details of Mandelson’s vetting was “a grievous breach of national security”. He implied it would only be helpful to “hostile powers”, and that anything that undermined the integrity of the security vetting process could pose a risk to people working in embassies in Moscow or Beijing. “It’s important to stress that he confirmed our reporting that they were considering covering the whole thing up,” Kiran says. “In fact, he said he would have preferred that.” Kiran points out that even once it became clear during the process in the Commons that forced the government to release documents pertaining to Mandelson’s appointment, Robbins’ preference was still not to publish it. “He was at loggerheads with others,” Kiran says, “and who knows how it would have played out. But if we hadn’t published our story, the public might never have known about any of this.” *** Where do we go from here? Robbins stuck to his insistence – however much Thornberry suggested surely he must have picked up the phone to someone senior at some point after the decision was reached – that he did not tell anyone in No 10 about the vetting recommendation. That will bolster the prime minister’s claims in the House of Commons that neither he nor any of his aides knew about the debate around Mandelson’s vetting status, describing the decision to keep the information from him as “frankly staggering”. “Starmer said due process was followed,” Kiran reminds me. “He can still say that was true – it’s just that he wasn’t told the full detail of the process.” What does this mean for Starmer’s already frail position? An expected mauling in May’s local elections is “baked in” says, says Kiran, but there is a danger that the Mandelson story will continue to haunt what remains of Starmer’s premiership. “It’s one of those stories that gets reignited by fresh information – another transcript, more documents, perhaps the vetting recommendation, if that’s published.” Thornberry referenced being chased by a bear this morning. It isn’t clear that Starmer is out of the woods yet. What else we’ve been reading The Guardian has relaunched its Cotton Capital series as part of the next phase of its 10-year plan to address and atone for the organisation’s historical links to transatlantic enslavement. Our Legacies of Enslavement programme director Ebony Riddell Bamber reopens the series with this remarkable piece asking: what would repairing the harm of enslavement actually look like? Patrick Tom Vanderbilt is wistfully – and slightly oddly – nostalgic about old-school street scams, which he says he much prefers to the faceless phone-snatchers of today. Martin This time in April is traditionally understood to have been the week of William Shakespeare’s birth. To celebrate, the Guardian’s former theatre critic Michael Billington ranks all 35 of the plays. Patrick Daniel Lavelle explains how, after the release of various snippets of evidence from US intelligence, he dropped everything and went UFO-chasing in the US. Martin Zoe Williams is funny (as always) on the unspoken social rules of dropping off her niece at university. Patrick Sport Football | Ferdi Kadıoglu, Jack Hinshelwood and Danny Welbeck were all on target as Brighton moved above Chelsea into sixth place with an emphatic 3-0 win. Football | Karren Brady made a shock announcement that she has stepped down as West Ham’s vice-chair after 16 years. Boxing | The world heavyweight title contender Lawrence Okolie has pledged to clear his name after a failed a drugs test before his bout against Tony Yoka this weekend. The front pages Our Guardian print edition opens the day with “Robbins accuses No 10 of applying huge pressure over Mandelson job”. Similarly the Financial Times reports “Robbins tells of No 10 pressure to approve role for Mandelson”. The Times splashes on “Starmer on the ropes over Mandelson vetting fiasco” while the Telegraph has “Labour MPs vent fury at ‘toxic’ No10”. Gleefully the Mail reports “Starmer’s support starts to crack” while the Mirror goes a bit Metro with “Eye of the Starm”. Speaking of the Metro its headline is “Peers pressure” as it focuses on claims of a bid to get Lord (Matthew) Doyle a diplomatic job. The i paper runs with “Wounded Starmer given public dressing down by his cabinet”. Something else entirely in the Express: “Hero manager Sean must get his job back!”. He “tackled” a shoplifter in Morrisons. Today in Focus The security report the UK government doesn’t want you to see – podcast Fiona Harvey tells Nosheen Iqbal why the climate crisis is a threat to national security Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad In many UK cities, we have to learn to live alongside foxes. In some cities in Germany, racoons are the main wild companion. But in Nepal, the recovery of wildlife populations near Chitwan national park has been so dramatic that some megafauna walk down the street in the middle of the day. This photo essay by James Whitlow Delano has extraordinary photos of a wild rhinoceros in the middle of nearby cities. Human-wildlife conflict has become a problem as populations of rhinos, tigers and other species have recovered, but James also profiles some of the extraordinary conservationists keeping the peace. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Spain champions migration’s benefits with regularisation scheme – but queues are long

A few minutes’ walk from Calle Ponzano, where many madrileños go to drink, graze and chat into the early hours, a more sober ritual is playing out in the austere surroundings of the offices of Madrid’s regional transport consortium. Every few minutes, individuals or couples emerge from its doors into the bright spring sunshine. The unlucky ones leave with a frown; the lucky ones with a document confirming their use of public transport through a trackable, top-up travel card. Humdrum as it may seem, the certificate is one of the documents that allows undocumented migrants to prove prior residence in Spain and regularise their status under a new government decree that is set to benefit at least 500,000 people. Among them is Gimbad Mosquera, a 46-year-old musician from Antioquia in Colombia who had travelled to the consortium office in the hopes of taking advantage of the decree so that he can start playing gigs across Spain and the rest of Europe with his vallenato band. Shiva Pyuthani and his girlfriend Sirjana Ghising, both from Nepal, had collected their transport certificates and would like to work in hospitality. “We’ve come here so that we can work and so that we can earn money to send home so we can support our parents and our families,” said Ghising. At a time when many European countries are pulling up drawbridges and sharpening their anti-migrant rhetoric, Spain’s socialist government has decided to champion the economic and social benefits of migration with the massive regularisation programme, which began last week. The scheme, whose application period runs until the end of June, offers a legal residence permit with an initial validity of one year. It is open to undocumented migrants who can prove they arrived in Spain before 31 December last year, have been in the country for at least five months at the time of application, and can show that they have no criminal convictions in Spain or in their countries of origin. As far as Spain’s governing socialists are concerned, the regularisation programme is a long-overdue attempt to bring workers out of the informal economy and provide them with the same rights that others enjoy. But their conservative opponents in the People’s party (PP) have suggested the move will overwhelm Spain’s public services, while the far-right Vox party has again claimed that the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is trying to replace the Spanish population and “accelerate the invasion”. The political point-scoring mattered little to those who have travelled to the regional transport consortium as they wrestle with the rules of regularisation. Mosquera, who has been in Spain for 13 months, had managed to obtain an appointment to present all the necessary documentation for Wednesday morning. The problem was that he still did not have his transport certificate – hence his trip to the consortium office – or two other supporting documents. “There’s been lots of confusion and it’s hard to know how to navigate the process,” he said. His Venezuelan partner, Yelitza Villega, said that while the system was complicated, “to be honest, I thought it would be even more difficult”. She added, however, that those who could afford to were paying lawyers to handle their applications and make the necessary appointments. One Peruvian woman, who did not give her name, said that Latin Americans – who make up the overwhelming majority of undocumented workers in Spain – were using WhatsApp groups to share information on documentation and appointments. “You just have to be on top of all this,” she said. “It’s really useful to go to the talks that NGOs are organising, where lawyers explain exactly what you need and where you need to go to get it. The official information isn’t great, so people are relying on NGOs or paying lawyers – if they can spare €300.” The woman also said that some people seeking certificates of vulnerable status from NGOs were having to get up at dawn and queue for hours. Photos from different parts of Spain have shown huge queues outside town halls and consular offices as the regularisation process begins. Although the government has said it expects the scheme to benefit around half a million people, others have suggested that many more could be eligible. According to a report from the Funcas thinktank, there are around 840,000 undocumented migrants in Spain. Most of them – 760,000 people – are Latin American (including 290,000 Colombians; 110,000 Peruvians, and 90,000 Hondurans), while 50,000 are from African countries and 14,000 are from Europe. Police unions have warned that the sheer scale of applications could saturate the system and tie officers up in bureaucracy. Last week, immigration officers called off a strike that had been proposed to highlight the conditions resulting from the regularisation scheme after the government offered them improved conditions. Then there have been the political squabbles. While Sánchez has acknowledged that the scheme swims against the prevailing tide, he has insisted it is the right thing to do both morally and economically. “When did recognising rights become something radical?” the prime minister asked in January. “When did empathy become something exceptional?” The government has also pointed out that this is hardly the first such process to be implemented in Spain: between 1986 and 2005, more than one million people were regularised in six separate schemes – two of which were implemented by PP governments. But the PP’s current leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is opposed to the latest regularisation, claiming it is irresponsible, will apply to more than a million people, and will regularise migrants who have “assaulted a woman or robbed a [Spanish] citizen”. The government has reminded Feijóo that only those without criminal records are eligible, and has accused him of “mud-slinging”. Vox, meanwhile, has asked Spain’s supreme court to suspend the regularisation process “in order to avoid such awful consequences as the forced change of the electoral body or the collapse of public services”. The migrants heading in and out of the regional transport consortium on Tuesday morning all said their main aim was finding decent work. Were everyone eligible for regularisation to find a job, the benefits for Spain’s economy could be significant. The authors of a study into the 2005 regularisation of almost 600,000 non-EU immigrants found that tax revenues increased by about €4,000 per regularised immigrant a year, and that the policy had not led to “magnet effects” in encouraging further arrivals. MD Abdal, a 23-year-old Bangladeshi who has been in Spain since last November, said he was taking Spanish lessons and looking forward to becoming part of society. “I think Spain is a kind, humanitarian country and I’m very grateful to its government,” he said. “I chose Spain because it’s a multicultural and diverse country that supports people.” Abdal is hoping to find work in a restaurant. In the meantime, he has a simple plan: “I will do my best and I will work hard.”

Body of New Zealand man swept away by floods found, as Wellington recovers after widespread damage

The body of a man who was swept away after severe flooding tore through his home in New Zealand’s capital has been found, police confirmed on Wednesday, as the city picked up the pieces after widespread damage. Philip Sutton was looking after a property for his sister in Karori, in Wellington’s west, when a torrent of flood water smashed through it early on Monday. Search and rescue teams had been scouring the area but were forced to pause operations when Tuesday brought further torrential rain. In a media briefing, police said Sutton was found some distance from his car just after midday on Wednesday. There was a “substantial distance” between the car and where Sutton was found, they said. “The family are aware that we have located Phillip, so as you can imagine they are now moving to that privacy space so they can manage what they need to manage,” Inspector Fleur de Bes said. Speaking to RNZ, Insp Dean Silvester said the search in the semi-rural area had been challenging. Flood debris was found in trees more than a metre off the ground, he said. “So that gives some indication of the ferocity.” Wellington was placed under a rare state of emergency on Monday after the city experienced rainfall totals that nearly tripled monthly averages. More than 70mm of rain fell in one hour in parts of southern Wellington – the highest on record for the city, Metservice said. Residents woke to rivers rushing through their streets, cars flipped over and dragged out to sea, landslides and flooding. On Wednesday morning a dead cow was found washed up on a popular south coast beach. Further showers were forecast for Wellington but all rain and wind warnings had been lifted on Wednesday. However, the state of emergency was still in place, Wellington city council said. “Although conditions are improving, hazards are still present – particularly landslides, slips, flooding, debris, and unstable structures. These risks can occur suddenly, even after the rain has eased.” Emergency services and response teams were working in affected areas, it said, and asked residents to “not self-deploy” to assist with the clean-up. That hasn’t stopped some community efforts – with groups out in the streets cleaning up debris and assisting people whose homes or businesses were damaged. The Newtown Residents Association told RNZ locals had been pulling together to help residents of the local community and its neighbouring suburbs, Mount Cook and Berhampore, which faced widespread flooding. “Wellington’s resilient, Newtown’s resilient, and we just check in on each other,” said Merio Marsters, its president.

Millions in India stripped of vote before critical state election, as government seeks to ‘purify’ electoral roll

Millions of people in the Indian state of West Bengal have been stripped of their vote ahead of a critical state election this week, after a controversial electoral revision described by critics as a “bloodless political genocide” and mass disenfranchisement of minorities. In West Bengal, a total of 9.1 million names have been deleted from the register, more than 10% of the electorate. While many were dead or duplicates, about 2.7 million people have challenged their expulsions, but still been removed. The process of revising the electoral roll, known as Special Intensive Revision (SIR), has been taking place in states and territories across India, justified by the Narendra Modi government as a way to stop “infiltrators” – a pejorative term largely referring to illegal Muslim Bangladeshi immigrants – from voting. The divisive exercise by the central Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government to “purify” the electoral roll – in the words of home minister Amit Shah – has led to a chorus of fury. The drawing up of a new electoral register has been carried out at unprecedented speed, ahead of the West Bengal state elections which will begin on Thursday. The BJP, led by prime minister Modi, is hoping to seize power from Trinamool Congress (TMC), the party that has ruled the state for 15 years. “What has happened in Bengal is a constitutional crime. It is a crime against the people of India, against the people of Bengal,” said Sagarika Ghose, an MP for TMC. “This will go down as a scandal in the history of post-independence India,” added Ghose. “One person, one vote is a great right given to the Indian people by the Constitution. However poor you are, however helpless you are, you have that right to vote. But that has been snatched away.” According to experts and organisations, Muslims and other religious minorities have been disproportionately expunged from the electoral roll in West Bengal, leading to allegations of deliberate targeting and persecution. “As per our research, religion has been the biggest differentiator,” said Sabir Ahamed, who leads Sabar institute which has been closely monitoring and documenting the cases based on official data. “Muslims have been disproportionately affected.” While the BJP has succeeded in gaining hegemony over most Indian state governments, it has failed to gain a foothold in West Bengal, in part because of it does not have the backing of state’s sizeable Muslim population, who are wary of their Hindu nationalist agenda. In some Muslim-majority constituencies, almost half the voters have been deleted, including those who have documents to show they are born and bred Indian citizens and either they, or their parents, were on the 2002 voter roll, the cut off point for voter eligibility. ‘All those removed here are Muslims’ In Sherpur village of Murshidabad district, near the Bangladesh border, among those deleted was 36-year-old Jaber Ali, who was one of the officials tasked with collecting documents for the voter roll revision. Over four months, Ali visited more than 700 households, checked documents and uploaded records late into the night. The work was relentless, he said. “I worked 12 hours in the field, then spent most nights on the computer. I barely slept.” But when the revised rolls were published in late February, Ali said most of those he verified were missing, including his own name. “People started calling me, saying I hadn’t done my job,” he said. “The irony is my own name, and my brothers’ were also removed.” Ali said there was now “panic” in the village, as lifelong Indian citizens feared being treated as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and pushed out of the country. He believes the deletions in his area followed a pattern. “All those removed here are Muslims,” he said. “People feel they are being targeted and stripped of their voting rights.” Critics have legally challenged SIR as unconstitutional and described it an effort to manipulate and rig the electoral system to benefit the BJP. Political opposition and legal experts said the election commission, which is overseeing the exercise, can no longer be viewed as an independent and neutral body. SY Quraishi, the former election commissioner of India, was among those who raised concerns over the justification and the processes of SIR, both in West Bengal and other states, and said it raised serious questions over the election commission’s role. “I feel very awkward and hesitant about commenting on my successor, but as a citizen, I see what is happening and I must speak out,” he said. “The SIR is completely unnecessary, it is designed to harass. Administratively it is a disaster and the intentions are not noble. He added: “It took us 30 years to achieve 99% accuracy in the rolls. They expect to exceed this in three months. Why this frantic rush if the main objective is accuracy?” Quraishi was among those who raised concern over the election commission’s decision to deploy a new AI-assisted algorithm in West Bengal to flag so-called “logical discrepancies” in voter data, which led to millions of Bengalis having to prove their citizenship – including Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen – with many ending up on the list of 2.7 million deleted voters. Experts say the algorithm failed to take into account key cultural issues, including that there is no standard form of transcribing Bengali names into English script, and that Bengali surnames have been adapted over generations, leading to small spelling inconsistencies between family documents. It also flagged parents under 16 and more than five siblings as a “logical discrepancy” even though both were common in older generations. Quraishi said in his time, the election commission had been highly aware and sensitive to this. “If software is being used to delete voters on the basis of these minor discrepancies, then is it a weapon against citizens rights and not fit for purpose,” he said. Many of those who had spent their lives dedicated to serving the Indian state are among those suddenly disenfranchised. Sixty-two-year-old Senarul Haque, who retired two years ago from India’s paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force after 35 years of service, found his name missing from the voter rolls, even as his wife and two sons remained listed. “It is deeply disappointing. I served the country in some of the most difficult areas. Then when my name was missing from the voter list, I submitted my documents properly, and still my name is missing,” Haque said. “I have been on election duty across the country. Now I am being denied the right to vote, and no one is answerable. This feels like a mockery of the system. How can so many people be erased from the rolls just ahead of an election?” he added. While tribunals are ongoing for voters to challenge the removal of their vote, only a small number have taken place before voting begins in the state elections on Thursday. Himani Roy, 55, a government school teacher in Howrah district, is among those who has not had her case heard in time, meaning she will not be allowed to vote for the first time in her lifetime. Ironically, her name is still down to be a polling officer. “I met the concerned officials and they have no clear answer why my name is missing,” said Roy. “When we talk about democratic backsliding, this is what it looks like. These are very bad days for democracy and our nation’s independent institutions.” More than a dozen national and state BJP spokespeople declined to comment on the allegations when contacted by the Guardian. However, in past comments, BJP home minister Amit Shah has described SIR in states such as West Bengal as “not only necessary for the country’s security”, but also essential to “prevent infiltration in order to protect the country’s democratic system from being polluted”. Parakala Prabhakar, an Indian economist and author, emphasised that swathes of citizens being unilaterally removed from the electoral roll had grave implications that went far beyond just state elections. “After this is completed, it will create two classes of Indians: those who are allowed full participation in political society and the political process – and those who are shut out,” said Prabhakar. “This is about killing the citizenship of minorities. It is a bloodless political genocide.”