Former UN food agency official claims he was fired for highlighting hunger in Gaza 06. October 2026 (13:31) Benjamin Davis appealing against dismissal from FAO, after being accused by director general of playing ‘political games’A former senior UN food agency official has alleged he was fired last week for his work highlighting hunger in Gaza, and has launched an appeal against his dismissal.Benjamin Davis said the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had refused to renew his contract as director of its rural transformation and gender equality division because his team had published a brief on hunger in Gaza and held a seminar on the subject last year, and because he taken part in weekly “moment of silence” vigils on FAO grounds for those killed. Continue reading...(The Guardian)
‘This is state violence’: Paris students rage at politicians and heavy-handed policing 06. October 2026 (13:28) Unprecedented protests that began in low-income banlieue are turning ugly, with investigations under way into police brutalityBefore dawn on Tuesday outside the Lycée Sophie-Germain in central Paris, hundreds of teenagers dragged wheelie bins, metal barriers and shopping trolleys to build a barricade outside the front door of their secondary school.Climbing to the top of the piles of bins, pupils held banners calling for more funding and greater equality in French schools. But they were also protesting against French riot police, who have been accused by human rights groups of using disproportionate force against children in what is fast becoming the biggest youth protest movement in decades. Continue reading...(The Guardian)
OpenAI delivers a mea culpa to the Australian government in person – but answers still elude 06. October 2026 (13:12) Jason Kwon’s answers were provided in a helpful, quiet and calm manner. For a company under intense scrutiny, there were no missteps Open AI’s Jason Kwon flew 15 hours from San Francisco to Sydney to give the company’s first in-person mea culpa after it admitted – in an unsigned email, to a public departmental inbox – that one of its AI agents had accessed a Services Australia website without authorisation and grabbed data related to Medicare.Kwon – polite, friendly, even-toned – got through a potentially dicey committee hearing unscathed, promising to do better and pledging assistance to Australia. No missteps, no viral moments, just delivering his answers helpfully, in a quiet and calm manner, sympathising with the questioner and the point they were making.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...(The Guardian)
Ukraine blitzes Moscow with the second largest drone strike of the war
Labour council condemned for 'wasting' nearly £50k on 'childish' mural in dark underpass that forced schoolchildren to walk in the road