‘She will forever be a Kiwi’: Grace Millane’s father praises New Zealand’s compassion

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David Millane attended Māori blessing ceremony close to where backpacker’s body found

The father of a British backpacker found dead in New Zealand has thanked the country’s people for the love and compassion they have shown his family, saying his daughter “will forever be a Kiwi”.

David Millane, who is taking the body of his daughter, Grace, home in the coming days, praised the New Zealand police for a “concise, stringent and thorough investigation”, the local media for not intruding and being “respectful and courteous at all times” and locals who took his daughter into their hearts.

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Two more Japanese medical schools admit discriminating against women

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Sexism row deepens as one university claims women ‘mature faster’ and male applicants need extra help

A sexism row engulfing Japan’s medical schools has deepened after two more universities admitted discriminating against female applicants, months after it was revealed that Tokyo Medical University had manipulated exam scores to favour male candidates.

Juntendo University and Kitasato University, both in Tokyo, said this week that they had set a lower pass mark for men than for women in order to secure a sufficient number male graduates to enter the medical profession.

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Jacinda Ardern’s heartfelt apology spoke volumes about compassion | Afua Hirsch

Nobody demanded that the New Zealand leader say sorry for Grace Millane’s murder. I can’t imagine British leaders showing such humanity

The story of Grace Millane – the backpacker murdered in New Zealand – is unspeakably sad, and its terrible denouement came quickly. What began as concern for a missing person swiftly became a murder investigation, and then the process of identifying a body. Details were scant and our focus turned to the sorrowful words of New Zealand’s prime minister. No one demanded an apology from Jacinda Ardern, but she gave one anyway.

“There is this overwhelming sense of hurt and shame that this has happened in our country,” she said, “a place that prides itself on our hospitality.”

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The EU’s response to Russia must be bold and unanimous | Norbert Röttgen

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All measures short of war should be taken into account when trying to solve the crisis in Ukraine

It was always just a matter of time before the smouldering conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the Sea of Azov, a body of water to the north-east of Crimea, escalated militarily. After it opened a bridge across the Kerch strait in May 2018, Russia has gradually brought the entire area under its control, causing severe economic damage to the Ukrainian trading ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk. A volatile situation morphed into an unprecedented, open act of aggression when on 25 November the Russian navy rammed a Ukrainian tugboat, seized three vessels and their crews and temporarily blocked passage through the strait.

Two months earlier I’d made the point that, with rising tensions in the Sea of Azov, we might soon witness a “second Crimea” – another territorial grab. That has now come true. Russia has in effect seized the Sea of Azov through military means. This must be seen as just the latest in a long chain of Russian military interventions outside its own territory.

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My shopping habits help Amazon take over the world. Alexa, this ends now | Krista Burton

Bit by bit, other specialty firms are replicating Amazon and taking pieces away permanently. Amazon has maybe another 5 years and it will the next Sears, Yahoo or AOL.

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Underneath my glee at the deals and the convenience, I know Amazon is not good. And so, I’m starting with Christmas.

This holiday season, what I’d like is some self-discipline. Not towards cookies or festive cranberry-flavored cocktails – give all those to me – but towards the incredible ease and convenience of buying every last one of my gifts on Amazon.

Last year I did not purchase a single major present that did not come from Amazon. Not one. And while I’ve been lured in by the reasonable prices and free (for a fee!) Prime shipping for years, it’s only in the last 12 months that I’ve finally realized: the reason Amazon keeps taking over the world, despite having terrible labor practices, is … me.

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As climate change bites in America’s midwest, farmers are desperate to ring the alarm

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‘The changes have become more radical’: farmers are spending more time and money trying to grow crops in new climates

Richard Oswald did not need the latest US government report on the creeping toll of climate change to tell him that farming in the Midwest is facing a grim future, and very likely changing forever.

For Oswald, the moment of realisation came in 2011.

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Christmas editorial, 1944: ‘we need a new Europe, democratic, prosperous, progressive’

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23 December 1944: With the sixth Christmas of the war surely being the last, our aim should not be merely peace but the reconstruction of Western civilisation

This weekend Christmas will be celebrated in some fashion throughout Europe – in Berlin as well as in London, in the caves and cellars of Cologne as well as in Manchester. It is a symbol, perhaps a relic, of that unity of the Western world which Christianity did so much to promote and which we in this century have done so much to destroy. But Christianity was not the only creative force, nor are the great wars the only cause of decay. Our civilisation also rests, as the Bishop of Chichester pointed out this week, on the great traditions of humanism, science, and law. And he might have added on the common heritage of the arts – that spring from the old enchantment of ancient Greece where the Nine Muses were born “in shepherds’ cabins on the steep hillside.”

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How Native American tribes are bringing back the bison from brink of extinction

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The continent’s largest land mammal plays crucial role in spiritual lives of the tribes

On 5,000 hectares of unploughed prairie in north-eastern Montana, hundreds of wild bison roam once again. But this herd is not in a national park or a protected sanctuary – they are on tribal lands. Belonging to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Fort Peck Reservation, the 340 bison is the largest conservation herd in the ongoing bison restoration efforts by North America’s Indigenous people.

The bison – or as Native Americans call them, buffalo – are not just “sustenance,” according to Leroy Little Bear, a professor at the University of Lethbridge and a leader in the bison restoration efforts with the Blood Tribe. The continent’s largest land mammal plays a major role in the spiritual and cultural lives of numerous Native American tribes, an “integrated relationship,” he said.

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Turkey primed to start offensive against US-backed Kurds in Syria

The second Turk genocide begins – first the Armenians and now the Kurds.

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President Erdoğan’s planned attack on militias he sees as terrorists risks row with Trump

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said that Turkey will launch a military operation against the Kurds in northern Syria within days, in a decision that could signal a shift in Turkish-US relations and have far-reaching consequences for Syria’s future.

Long frustrated by US support for Kurdish militias that Turkey views as terrorists, Erdoğan has threatened to push deeper into north-eastern Syria since sending Turkish forces into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in February.

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Still have your childhood teddy? The psychological power of the toys we keep

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Infants often find comfort in ‘transitional objects’ that help them on the path to independence. Guardian readers discuss the security blankets and teddies they have held close

When he was four years old, Chris had a piece of blue cloth he took everywhere with him, which he called Boo-Boo. Now 60, a retired teacher, husband and father of three adult children, he still remembers the feeling of safety he found when he gently rubbed the soft fabric against his face or between his fingers. “My Boo-Boo provided me with the comfort and security I craved. I wanted it with me, a bit like I wanted my mum with me all the time when I was little,” he says.

Shortly before Chris’s first day at school, his mother told him that he could not take his Boo-Boo with him and that he should throw it into their fire. “I can see it now, the lounge and the open fire, my mum telling me that I had to throw this Boo-Boo in. I couldn’t have it any more, I had to grow up. I can’t remember whether I cried or not, I can just feel the anguish. I had a sense of loss, an emptiness, without understanding.”

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