At least 800 civilians have been killed in strikes in Iraq and Syria by the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State since the campaign began in 2014, according to a report released by the coalition. The estimate in the monthly report, which said coalition strikes had unintentionally killed at least 801 civilians between August 2014 and October 2017, was far lower than figures provided by monitoring groups. The monitoring group Airwars says a total of at least 5,961 civilians have been killed by coalition airstrikes.“We continue to hold ourselves accountable for actions that may have caused unintentional injury or death to civilians,” the coalition said in its report.

Since the start of the campaign against Isis militants, the coalition has carried out more than 28,000 strikes and has received 1,790 reports of potential civilian casualties, the report said. It was still assessing 695 reports of civilian casualties from strikes it carried out in Iraq and in Syria. The coalition says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.(theguardian)…[+]

The leader of Iceland’s Left-Green movement has become the country’s new prime minister at the head of a broad three-party coalition that could restore a measure of political stability after a succession of scandals.

Katrín Jakobsdóttir, 41, a popular former education minister who is considered to be Iceland’s most trusted politician, took office on Wednesday after formally signing a new government accord with the centre-right Independence and Progressive parties.

She told local media the administration’s focus would be on greater investment in healthcare, education and transport infrastructure, sustaining Iceland’s economic recovery from the 2008 financial crash, and improving gender equality and LGBT rights. The outgoing prime minister, Bjarni Benediktsson’s Independence party narrowly won the 28 October election – the country’s second snap poll in less than a year – but lost a quarter of its seats, paving the way for Jakobsdóttir to form a left-led coalition.(theguardian)…[+]

Dutch police have launched a criminal investigation into the death of the Bosnian Croat commander Slobodan Praljak, who swallowed poison as his appeal was being streamed live around the world. The international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has invited local police officers to conduct the inquiry into how the chemical was smuggled into the high security courtroom in The Hague.

A spokeswoman for the war crimes court told the Guardian: “An independent investigation is ongoing which has been initiated by the Dutch authorities at the request of the ICTY. We will cooperate fully.”  She did not reveal whether anybody had yet been arrested or what type of poison Praljak drank.

A Dutch prosecutor, Marilyn Fikenscher, confirmed that the phial that the convicted Croat general hid in his jacket held a deadly poison. “There was a preliminary test of the substance in the container and all I can say for now is that there was a chemical substance in that container that can cause death,” Fikenscher said. An autopsy will be carried out shortly, a prosecution spokesman said. Praljak stunned the ICTY on Wednesday when he gulped down liquid from a small bottle seconds after a UN appeals judge confirmed a 20-year sentence against him.(theguardian)…[+]

With 3,000 customers a day, a restaurant, ample parking and turnover of €26m (£23m) a year, Checkpoint cafe, the largest cannabis-selling coffee shop in the Netherlands, was a fabulous commercial success. That was until it was closed down in 2009 for testing to the limits what the Dutch describe as their gedogenbeleid (tolerance policy) under which prosecutors turn a blind eye to the breaking of certain laws, including in the business of selling cannabis.

The latest and most likely final appeal hearing of criminal charges against the cafe’s owner, Meddie Willemsen, has highlighted what the president of a court in Den Bosch described as “paradoxes” in the Dutch approach to so-called soft drugs. Licensed coffee shops are allowed to sell cannabis from their premises, but can keep only 500g on site at any time. Production of the drug is illegal.

When Checkpoint was at its peak, Willemsen, 66, was regularly keeping about 200kg of cannabis on his large premises in Terneuzen, near the Belgian border. The size of the enterprise could have led to fairly reasonable assumptions that those providing the drugs would be large criminal gangs.(theguardian)…[+]