Good Hope School, a well-known subsidized girls’ school in Hong Kong, has recently sparked widespread public attention and debate due to a graduation video production guideline. The online circulated document reveals that the school stipulated all narration and dialogue could only be in English or Mandarin, explicitly stating “Cantonese strictly forbidden,” and even warning that any Cantonese audio would be muted or required to be re-recorded. Subtitles were also required to use standard written language, not colloquial Cantonese.

The guidelines quickly triggered an online backlash, with critics questioning whether the school was improperly suppressing Hong Kong’s most important everyday language. Facing public pressure, Dr. Gary Harfitt, the principal of Good Hope School, issued a public apology to parents and students late at night, clarifying that the circulated document was an “unrevised draft” containing inappropriate wording and did not represent the school’s official policy. He emphasized that the school had absolutely not banned the use of Cantonese and fully affirmed the importance of both Cantonese and Mandarin in learning and daily life.

However, some graduates and current students pointed out that this is not the first time such restrictions have been imposed; previous students were also asked to remove Cantonese content at the end of their graduation videos. The Hong Kong Education Bureau expressed serious concern and immediately contacted the school to understand the situation, requesting the school to review the relevant arrangements to ensure smooth communication between students’ rights and the campus.

A special rapporteur for the UN human rights council has concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the United States attacks on boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Pacific and Caribbean “constituted crimes against humanity”.

The boat strikes, carried out since September 2025 on the stated grounds of stopping drugs being trafficked by sea to the US, have killed more than 230 people. The latest, on Saturday, killed four people in the Caribbean.

The UN itself, along with several human rights organisations, lawyers and international law experts, had already described the bombings as “extrajudicial killings”, but special rapporteur Ben Saul went further to confirm the notion. 

The special rapporteur also wrote that the crews were not “militarily armed and possessed the intent and capacity to launch military attacks” against the US. Journalists and human rights groups have also managed to identify some of the victims, who in many cases were innocent or, when suspected of involvement in criminal activity, were at best low-ranked participants in trafficking networks.

The report cites 68 US attacks that killed 223 people. It is unclear how recently the figures were updated – tallies by organisations such as the Washington Office on Latin America put the death toll at 234 people in 66 attacks. As has become standard in announcements of such attacks, the US did not identify the victims or provide any details about the alleged intelligence that supposedly confirmed their involvement in drug trafficking.

British journalist Earl Spencer, who is also Princess Diana’s brother, says Prince Harry and his wife Meghan should be given official security, because the media now treats them much the same way as it treated his sister in the years leading up to her death.

Princess Diana was 36 when she was killed in a 1997 Paris car crash while being pursued by photographers on motorbikes. Her death sparked an outpouring of grief and a reckoning over whether the media, which splashed details of Princess Diana’s life across front pages for years, bore some responsibility.

Earl Spencer has been speaking to the media in the lead-up to the publication of his book about his sister, which is critical of her former husband, the now-King Charles. He said his sister’s death could’ve been preventable, and his book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, has made headlines around the world because it includes accusations about Charles making incendiary comments in the days after the princess’s death.

Asked by the BBC how he could prove the conversations had taken place, Spencer said he had included a specific line in his much-lauded eulogy at Diana’s funeral to counter the comments. Spencer also said his revelations about King Charles would not come as a surprise to Prince Harry or his older brother, heir-to-the-throne Prince William, and he said while he knew many more details about the king, he had chosen not to include them.