Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Hauliers require a negative Covid-19 test before travelling from Britain to Denmark and the Netherlands, the UK government has said.
Last week the French government said people travelling from non-EU countries to France will no longer be allowed to enter by presenting a negative result from a quick Covid-19 test, but cross-Channel truck drivers would be exempt.
Nigeria has written to the African Union to request 10 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to supplement the COVAX programme and has allocated $26 million for licensed vaccine production, the health minister said.
Nigeria, like other countries across Africa, is grappling with a second wave of coronavirus. As of Monday, Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country of 200 million inhabitants, had 110,387 confirmed cases and 1,435 deaths.
David Perry is giving China a PR coup by acting against pro-democracy activists, foreign secretary says
David Perry QC, the barrister acting for the Hong Kong government in its efforts to jail pro-democracy activists, is behaving in “a pretty mercenary way” and providing the Chinese government with a PR coup, the foreign secretary Dominic Raab said on Sunday.
Perry has agreed to represent the Hong Kong government in prosecuting nine activists, including the media proprietor Jimmy Lai, arising from demonstrations in August 2019. The trial is due to begin next month.
Lai Chi-wai spent 10 hours pulling himself up the tower to raise money for spinal cord patients
Lai Chi-wai has become the first in Hong Kong to climb more than 250 metres of a skyscraper while strapped into a wheelchair, as he pulled himself up for more than 10 hours on Saturday to raise money for spinal cord patients.
The 37-year-old climber, who was paralysed from the waist down in a car accident 10 years ago, could not make it to the top of the 300 metre-tall Nina Tower on the Kowloon peninsula.
At least 49 dead after magnitude 6.2 shock on Sulawesi island, which destroyed roads, bridges and houses
Damaged roads and bridges, power blackouts and lack of heavy equipment on Saturday hampered rescuers after a strong earthquake left at least 49 people dead and hundreds injured on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island.
Operations were focused on about eight locations in the hardest-hit city of Mamuju, where people were still believed trapped following the magnitude 6.2 quake that struck early on Friday, said Saidar Rahmanjaya, who heads the local search and rescue agency.
Chris Liddell says he is staying for Trump’s last days to help manage a ‘volatile’ time, but after Biden takes office he seems destined for a return home
He is Trump’s trusty New Zealander, his right-hand man, one of only a handful of advisers to have seen him through all four years of his presidency – not to mention, an “amazing friend” of the family.
But being among the last Trump staffers standing after the siege of the Capitol seems sure to limit Chris Liddell’s options as he oversees the presidential transition – and finds himself out of a job.
Thousands flee for safety and higher ground after island’s second quake in 24 hours
At least 37 people have been killed and hundreds injured following a strong earthquake that shook the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia early on Friday morning, prompting landslides and destroying houses.
Thousands of people fled their homes to seek safety when the 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit just after 1am local time on Friday morning. The epicentre was 6km north-east of Majene city in West Sulawesi.
As the population declines, traditional gender roles and careers are leading many to forgo childbirth
The outcry created this month by Seoul city government’s advice for expectant mothers – including tips on how to cater to their husband’s every need while heavily pregnant – has reignited the debate over why so many South Korean women are choosing not to have children.
The guidelines, issued by the city’s pregnancy and childbirth information centre, were taken down in response to online fury, but not before they had provided a telling insight into attitudes towards gender roles in South Korea, one of the world’s most advanced economies.
Rediscovered song, which has a ‘cheerful energy’, was likely written by a teenage sailor or shore whaler in New Zealand in the 1830s
Even from “the back of nowhere, far from any city” – not to mention the sea – John Archer caught wind of the sea shanty revival before anyone else.
From his home in landlocked Ōhakune, Archer had noticed a sharp uptick in visitors to the New Zealand Folk Song website he set up in 1998. One 19th-century seafaring epic was of particular interest: Soon May The Wellerman Come.
WARNING: This video contains scenes some viewers may find distressing.
A 6.2-magnitude earthquake on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island has killed dozens of people, injured hundreds and damaged many buildings, the country’s disaster mitigation agency said. The epicentre of the quake was six kilometres north-east of Majene city at a depth of 10 kilometres and hit at 1am local time. Rescuers are still probing the rubble
At a Shenzhen hospital, 21-year-old airport worker Wang Shuyue lines up to receive her second shot.
“I feel it’s safe because so many people around the country have taken the vaccine so there shouldn’t be any major problems,” she tells the Guardian. “I think it should be effective otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people taking it.”
Though questions remain that still need answering, there are encouraging signs that proof of immunity to Covid-19 could help people return to normality
As the world’s biggest ever vaccination programme gets underway, so-called immunity passports are back in the headlines. A document verifying the holder’s status as Covid-free could allow international borders as well as concerts and other events to reopen.
So are immunity passports just the ticket, or do they remain a flight of fancy?
Pre-prepared disaster plans for handling pandemics, natural disasters and terrorist attacks show London had 3,500 mortuary spaces. But the capital braced for the virus with an additional 12,000 mortuary spaces.
If cemeteries could not cope, bodies would be frozen to await their final committal. There were plans to transport scores of bodies at a time between storage locations in trucks, the official said, a practice that risks misidentifying or even losing the dead:
England’s high street pharmacies will begin rolling out Covid vaccines, as the virus death toll across the UK climbed above 100,000.
Boots and Superdrug branches will be among the six stores across England which will be able to administer the jabs from Thursday while the Government aims to hit its target of vaccinating all people in the four most vulnerable groups by the middle of next month.
Andrews Pharmacy in Macclesfield, Cullimore Chemist in Edgware, north London, Woodside Pharmacy in Telford and Appleton Village pharmacy in Widnes will be in the first group to hand out the injections, alongside Boots in Halifax, and Superdrug in Guildford.
Boris Johnson also told MPs that distribution “will be going to 24/7 as soon as we can” but said supply of doses remained the main barrier.
The Scottish Government published its vaccine delivery plan on Wednesday evening, including details of how many doses it expects to receive for each week until the end of May, prompting a row with London, which has declined to publish its numbers.
The six pharmacies have been picked because they can deliver large volumes of the vaccine and allow for social distancing, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was “fantastic” that jabs would be available on the high street.
“Pharmacies sit at the heart of local communities and will make a big difference to our rollout programme by providing even more local, convenient places for those that are eligible to get their jab,” he said.
By the end of the month more than 200 community chemists will be able to give vaccines, according to NHS England.
The pharmacies join the 200 hospitals, around 800 GP clinics and seven mass vaccination centres where jabs are already being handed out.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer urged ministers to go further and use England’s 11,500 pharmacies to deliver round-the-clock vaccinations by the end of next month.
The expanded vaccination service in England comes as the daily reported UK death toll reached a new high on Wednesday, with 1,564 fatalities recorded within 28 days of a positive test.
The latest figures meant the grim milestone of more than 100,000 deaths involving coronavirus has now been passed in the UK, according to official data.
Eleven people, aged 18 to 72, have been arrested on suspicion of helping 12 democracy activists flee Hong Kong by boat last year
Hong Kong police have arrested 11 people under the national security law for allegedly helping 12 pro-democracy activists accused of attempting to flee the city by boat for Taiwan last year, local media and activists reported on Thursday.
Police arrested eight men and three women aged 18 to 72 for “assisting offenders”, according to the South China Morning Post, which cited unnamed sources.
Lee Luda, built to emulate a 20-year-old Korean university student, engaged in homophobic slurs on social media
A popular South Korean chatbot has been suspended after complaints that it used hate speech towards sexual minorities in conversations with its users.
Lee Luda, the artificial intelligence [AI] persona of a 20-year-old female university student, was removed from Facebook messenger this week, after attracting more than 750,000 users in the 20 days since it was launched.
Study finds macaques go for tourists’ electronics and wallets over empty bags and then maximise their profit
At the Uluwatu temple in Bali, monkeys mean business. The long-tailed macaques who roam the ancient site are infamous for brazenly robbing unsuspecting tourists and clinging on to their possessions until food is offered as ransom payment.
Researchers have found they are also skilled at judging which items their victims value the most and using this information to maximise their profit.
Conservationist on a remote Papua New Guinean island finds message from American girl thrown overboard more than 2,500km away
This bottle was different. Glass, with its lid sealed tight, it contained a handful of rice grains and a few seashells. And a note.
In November, on the remote Conflict Islands of Papua New Guinea, conservation ranger Steven Amos was cleaning the beachfront on Panasesa island when he stumbled across something that was not thoughtlessly thrown away, but consciously sent as a message to an unknown recipient, somewhere in the world.
As a student, I learned English was the language of opportunity – a belief that keeps most Chinese invisible to the global elite
I remember the muted pain in my classmate’s voice when he raised his hand to speak. He wanted to know why, as a Chinese person studying science in China, he was required to take English and pass proficiency tests in order to graduate. “Leave English to the English majors,” he said.
The teacher explained that English is the global language of science: the best journals are published in English. The best schools are taught in English, which also means that they are located outside of China. A competent scientist, regardless of nationality, needs to be able to communicate in English.
A dramatic rise in coronavirus cases in Tokyo has reignited speculation about the Olympic Games, which are due to open in the city in just over six months’ time.
Japan widened its coronavirus state of emergency to cover more than half the country’s population on Wednesday, as surging infections sparked warnings of intense pressure on hospitals.
Human Rights Watch lists persecutions in Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet and Hong Kong but notes new willingness to condemn Beijing
China is in the midst of its darkest period for human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre, Human Rights Watch has said in its annual report.
Worsening persecutions of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet, targeting of whistleblowers, the crackdown on Hong Kong and attempts to cover up the coronavirus outbreak were all part of the deteriorating situation under President Xi Jinping, the organisation said.
When Taal volcano, a popular tourist site in Batangas, erupted a year ago 5,000 people fled the island. It’s still considered dangerous. The government bans former residents from returning but some still live there in tents