| | | 29/04/2024 Education in crisis as autism and ADHD rise; Gaza ceasefire talks; thousands rally against men’s violence |
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| | | Good morning. Almost a million Australian schoolchildren – equivalent to one in four pupils – are classified as having a disability and schools are buckling under the pressure. Parents, teachers and advocates say education is at crisis point, with some caregivers removing their children altogether from a school system that’s failing to accommodate them. Today Guardian Australia launches The Classroom Divide; an investigation into an education system no longer fit for purpose. Meanwhile, the US attempts to restart Israel-Hamas talks, and how a fossil unlocked the secrets of an extinct kangaroo. |
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| World | | Israel-Hamas war | The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to Saudi Arabia to try to restart fraught ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel, amid fears of a looming Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than a million people are thought to be sheltering. | US protests | Student protests on US university campuses against Israel’s war on Gaza showed little sign of letting up at the weekend. Elsewhere, at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Joe Biden made fun of Donald Trump’s legal woes while critics of his handling of Gaza war protested outside. | Exclusive | The British Home Office will launch a major operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK today, weeks earlier than expected, in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, refused to rule out a July election as he slumped in the polls. | Racism row | The French actor Omar Sy, the star of the hit Netflix series Lupin, said in interviews promoting his book that it was hard to be black in France. | Justice | A senior British coroner decried as “inhumane” and “indefensible” the treatment of a man who killed himself 17 years into an indefinite prison sentence that had a minimum length of just 23 months. |
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| Full Story | | Why are police cracking down on US campus protests?
As the Israel-Gaza war grinds on amid a worsening humanitarian crisis, the world’s attention has been captured by a battle on the campuses of elite US universities. Pro-Palestinian student protesters were arrested en masse by New York City police at the prestigious Columbia University, prompting outrage that spread across other college sites. The Guardian US reporter Erum Salam describes to Michael Safi the scenes on Columbia’s campus. And the columnist Margaret Sullivan, who teaches at Columbia’s journalism school, explains how the protests have exploded into global news. | |
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| In-depth | | “It was just causing everyone so much distress that we had no choice,” Alicia Cook tells Guardian Australia. Her decision to remove her eight-year-old son, Emerson, from school, she says, was “devastating”.
Emerson would later be diagnosed with anxiety,ADHD and autism, making him one of the 25% of Australian schoolchildren who need support and adjustments to attend a mainstream school.
Advocates say children like Emerson should not have to leave their schools and that instead, Australia’s education system urgently needs a “systematic, seismic” shake-up to accommodate the new reality – from the government funding system down to classroom design. |
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| Not the news | | It’s almost enough to make you stop doomscrolling: dull devices are now cool. A feature-free flip phone became a hot new accessory after it was unveiled at Milan Design Week. While sales figures show smartphones are under no real threat, there’s a growing appetite among younger people to bin them amid ballooning fears about attention-harvesting and data privacy. “There is evidence of this generation modifying their smartphone behaviour, with concerns around the negative impacts of being constantly digitally connected driving this,” says Joe Birch, a technology analyst. “Three in five gen Zers say they’d like to be less connected to the digital world.” |
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| What’s happening today | Yoorrook Commission | The Victoria premier, Jacinta Allan, will appear before the Yoorrook Justice Commission Wurundjeri in Melbourne. Here’s why it’s important. | Pauline Hanson | A five-day hearing is scheduled in a racial vilification case, brought by the Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, over an allegedly “hateful” tweet from the One Nation leader. |
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| Brain teaser | And finally, here are the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. | |
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