Saturday 3 August 2019 The Guardian •
World^33
New Zealand
Activists call for Ardern
to act over land disputeActivists involved in a land dispute
in New Zealand called on the prime
minister, Jacinda Ardern, yesterday
to recognise that the Māori nation is
in “a state of emergency”.
Hundreds of activists staying in
tents and cars continue to occupy a
sliver of land at Ihumātao in South
Auckland – land they say is sacred to
Māori, but which has been sold to a
private developer for housing.
“ We call on Jacinda Ardern to
show some leadership here ,” said
Pania Newton, 29, co-leader of
activist group Soul (Save Our Unique
Landscape). “She needs to take heed
of what is happening here.”
After a request by Ardern last
week , Fletcher Building stopped
work until the stand off is resolved.
However, Ardern has been criticised
for failing to visit the occupation.
Eleanor Ainge Roy DunedinIn brief
Belgium
Woman survives six
days trapped in carItaly
Asylum for Eritrean
mistaken for traffi ckerA Belgian woman spent six days
trapped in her overturned car as
temperatures in the country rose to
a record 41.8C (10 7F) last week.
Corine Bastide, 45, ran off the
road and into woods near Liè ge in
the south-east. She told the state
broadcaster RTBF that during the
fi rst night her phone rang constantly
but she was in such pain she
couldn’t reach it. “The next day the
telephone stopped ringing. I knew
the battery had run out.”
She survived on water she
collected when a storm hit. “The
hardest thing was lying on my back
on broken glass. I thought I would
never get out. But I wanted to live
for my children. I didn’t want them
to think I had done something
stupid, like kill myself. No, it was an
accident.” A P BrusselsItalian authorities have granted
refugee status to the Eritrean
victim of one of the country’s most
embarrassing cases of mistaken
identity. Medhanie Tesfamariam
Berhe had been acquitted last
month of human traffi cking, more
than three years after his arrest in a
joint operation between Italian and
British authorities. He was moved
to a deportation centre in Sicily
following the verdict, but a panel
of judges yesterday accepted his
asylum request.
“I can’t describe how happy I am,”
Berhe, now 32, told the Guardian
outside the expulsion centre. “It
was a nightmare. A nightmare which
lasted too long.” Lorenzo Tondo
CaltanissettaUS military
tests the use of
balloons for
surveillance
over six states
to 65,000 f t, the balloons are intended
to “provide a persistent surveillance
system to locate and deter narcotic
traffi cking and homeland security
threats ”, according to a fi ling made
for the Sierra Nevada Corporation, an
aerospace and defence company.
The tests have been commissioned
by the US Southern Command (South-
com), which is responsible for disaster
response, intelligence operations and
security cooperation in the Caribbean
and Central and South America.
Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst
at the American Civil Liberties Union,
said: “We do not think that American
cities should be subject to wide-areasurveillance in which every vehicle
could be tracked wherever they go.
“Even in tests, they’re still collect-
ing a lot of data on Americans: who’s
driving to the union house, the church,
the mosque, the Alzheimer’s clinic,” he
said. “ It’s disturbing to hear that these
tests are being carried out, by the mil-
itary no less.”
The Southcom surveillance tests
are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Scott Wickersham, vice-president of
Raven Aerostar, told t he Guardian that
it has also been working with Sierra
Nevada and the Pentagon’s research
arm Darpa on stratospheric balloon
navigation.Robert F Kennedy’s
granddaughter dies
at family compound
Caroline Davies
A granddaughter of the assassinated
US presidential candidate Robert F
Kennedy has died following an
apparent overdose in the latest tragedy
to hit the political dynasty.
Saoirse Kennedy Hill was found on
Thursday at the home of her grand-
mother, Ethel Kennedy, in Hyannis
Port , Massachusetts, and pronounced
dead at Cape Cod hospital. She was 22.
She was the only daughter of Court-
ney Kennedy, the fi fth of Robert and
Ethel Kennedy’s eleven children, and
Paul Michael Hill, who was one of the
Guildford Four wrongly convicted of
a 1974 IRA pub bombing.
“Our hearts are shattered by the
loss of our beloved Saoirse. Her life
a private preparatory school in
Massachusetts, Kennedy Hill wrote:
“My depression took root in the begin-
ning of my middle school years and
will be with me for the rest of my life.”
She described “deep bouts of sadness
that felt like a heavy boulder on my
chest”.
Kennedy Hill’s parents married in
1993, shortly after Hill’s release from
prison after serving 15 years before
his conviction was overturned. The
couple separated in 2006.
Kennedy Hill, whose fi rst name
means freedom in Irish, reportedly
spend part of her childhood in Ireland.
The authorities issued a statement
confi rming a death at the property but
did not disclose the identity of the
deceased or the cause of death.
“Early this afternoon Barnstablepolice responded to a residence on
Marchant Avenue in Hyannis Port for
a report of an unattended death,” said
Tara Miltimore of the Cape and Islands
district attorney’s offi ce. “The mat-
ter remains under investigation by the
Barnstable police as well as state police
detectives ”.
The Kennedy family has suff ered
numerous tragedies. Kennedy Hill’s
grandfather Robert – or Bobby –
was the brother of the assassinated
president John F Kennedy , and was
himself running for the presidency
when he was murdered fi ve years
later in 1968.
John F Kennedy’s son, John F
Kennedy J r, was killed when the light
aircraft he was piloting to a wedding at
Hyannis Port crashed into the sea off
Martha’s Vineyard 20 years ago.
Robert and Ethel’s son David died
of a drug overdose in 1984, aged 28,
and another of their sons, Michael,
was killed in a skiing accident in 1997,
aged 39.
This latest tragedy comes weeks
after the 50th anniversary of the
Chappaquiddick scandal involving a
fatal car accident in which Robert F
Kennedy’s younger brother, the former
senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, drove
off a bridge, killing his passenger,
Mary Jo Kopechne.Mark Harris
SeattleThe US military is conducting wide-
area surveillance tests across six
mid west states using experimental
high-altitude balloons, documents
fi led with the Federal Communica-
tions Commission (FCC) reveal.
Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered
balloons are being launched from rural
South Dakota and drifting 250 miles
through an area spanning portions of
Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Mis-
souri, ending in central Illinois.
Travelling in the stratosphere at upwas fi lled with hope, promise and
love,” the family said in a statement.
Her grandmother added: “The world
is a little less beautiful today. She lit
up our lives with her love, her peals
of laughter and her generous spirit.”
The family did not release any
details about cause of death. How-
ever, the New York Times cited two
unnamed sources, described as being
close to the family, as saying that Ken-
nedy Hill had apparently overdosed
while staying at the Kennedy family’s
summer compound.
The newspaper reported that
Kennedy Hill, who was the vice-
president of the College Democrats
at Boston College, where she was
studying communications, had previ-
ously spoken of suff ering depression.
In a 2016 article in a student news-
paper while at the Deerfi eld Academy,▲ The Kennedy family’s summer base
in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts Saoirse
Kennedy Hill,
22, was studying
at Boston
College, where
she was the
vice-president
of the College
Democrats
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