Report finds the nation ranks 21st out of 23 countries when it comes to helping developing countries adapt to global heating
New Zealand is not living up to its climate change promises when it comes to helping fund poorer countries adapt to a warming world, a report by Oxfam has found.
A new report says the country’s climate finance has “stagnated” in recent years putting it far behind comparative countries in per capita terms.
Continue reading...Australia declared in 2013 that asylum seekers who arrive by boat would never settle here. Hundreds of people’s lives are still on hold to prove that point
For more than seven years, Australia’s policy has been clear: if you seek asylum by boat you will never be settled here. You will be sent offshore and have your asylum claims heard there.
Between the declaration of that policy by prime minister Kevin Rudd on 19 July 2013 and the last transfer offshore in December 2014, Australia sent 3,127 people seeking protection as refugees to Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
Continue reading...First results released from trial of Sinopharm shot involving 31,000 people
The United Arab Emirates said a Chinese coronavirus vaccine tested in the federation of sheikhdoms has 86% efficacy, in a statement that provided few details but marked the first public release of information on the performance of the shot.
The announcement brought yet another contender into the worldwide race for a vaccine to end the pandemic, a scientific effort in which China and Russia are competing with western firms to develop an effective inoculation.
Continue reading...Agents travelled from China at Swiss taxpayers’ expense to interview deportation targets
The full text of a secret deal between Switzerland and China that allowed Chinese security officials access to the country at Swiss taxpayers’ expense has been revealed for the first time as the government pushes to renew it.
The five-year “readmission agreement”, which was signed in 2015 and expired on Monday, lay out terms for Chinese agents to travel to Switzerland and interview suspected Chinese nationals that Swiss authorities wished to deport.
Continue reading...Police ordered to pay £15,500 to man trafficked to UK from Vietnam as a boy who was detained and threatened with deportation
The Metropolitan police is to pay £15,500 to a victim of slavery who tried to report his traffickers but was instead arrested for immigration offences and sent to a detention centre.
The man, referred to in court as KQT, was 15 when he was taken by traffickers from Vietnam through Russia to the UK in a refrigerated lorry. He was arrested on arrival and placed in foster care, but shortly after was collected by his traffickers and forced to work on a cannabis farm, where he was locked inside a storeroom and only fed one meal a day. In January 2018, he escaped his captors and walked into a police station to report his ordeal.
Continue reading...The post-pandemic test voyage is open only to city-state residents but 2,000 passengers were confined to their cabins after one contracted the virus
A passenger on board a “cruise-to-nowhere” from Singapore has tested positive for Covid-19, the operator Royal Caribbean said on Wednesday.
Singapore has been trialling the trips which are open only to the city-state’s residents, make no stops and sail in waters close by. At 2.45 am on Wednesday morning, the captain of the Quantum of the Seas informed the 2,000 passengers that the ship was to return to dock a day early and that they should stay in their rooms, the Straits Times reports.
At 8.10 the captain confirmed that a passenger had tested positive. Breakfast would be served to passengers in their rooms, he said.
Continue reading...Trade minister Simon Birmingham says ‘targeted nature’ of China’s measures raise concern about its adherence to trade deal and WTO obligations
China appears to be breaching its trade deal with Australia by taking a series of “disruptive and restrictive measures” against Australian exports, the Morrison government has said.
As concerns grow among Australian exporters about the impact of a widening range of actions, the trade minister, Simon Birmingham, told the Senate on Wednesday all dispute settlement options were on the table.
Continue reading...UK prioritising over-80s, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents; France unlikely to end lockdown on 15 December; Brazil to make vaccines free
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC Good Morning Scotland the next doses of the vaccine will arrive next week. He said:
The next scheduled arrival will be next week and the numbers depend on how quickly Pfizer can manufacture it.
It is being manufactured in Belgium and obviously right across the UK the job is to be able to get the vaccinations done as quickly as the manufacturer can create it, so we’ve been all working together really closely, the UK Government, which has been buying the vaccine and getting it delivered into the country, and then the NHS in the four nations of the UK.
We’ve got a broad schedule, there will be several million for the UK as a whole, so several hundred thousand for Scotland over the remainder of this month.
We’ve got that as a broad delivery schedule but obviously the manufacturing process itself is complicated, so we’ve got to get the stuff in the country and then once it’s in the country we can be confident that we’re able to deliver it, and I’m sure the NHS across Scotland and across the whole of the UK is up to the challenge.
We are not proposing to have a sort of immunity certificate that allows you to do different things.
Got a bit of a lump in the throat watching this. Feels like such a milestone moment after a tough year for everyone.
The first vaccines in Scotland will be administered today too. https://t.co/KKaEhf19Jo
NHS nurse Mrs Parsons said it was a “huge honour” to be the first in the country to deliver the vaccine to a patient.
She said:
It’s a huge honour to be the first person in the country to deliver a Covid-19 jab to a patient, I’m just glad that I’m able to play a part in this historic day.
The last few months have been tough for all of us working in the NHS, but now it feels like there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Continue reading...Church describes act as ‘political retaliation’ by authorities over support of pro-democracy protestors and comes as eight more arrested
The pastor of a Hong Kong church says HSBC has frozen bank accounts belonging to him, his wife and the church’s charity in what he said was “political retaliation” by authorities for their assistance to young protesters.
It comes as police arrest more opposition figures, and a day after the accounts of former legislator Ted Hui and his family were refrozen under police orders, after they left Hong Kong to live in exile in the UK.
Continue reading...New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern apologises for police and security failings but says they would not have stopped the attack
New Zealand’s security agencies were “almost exclusively” focused on the threat from Islamist terrorism at the time of the 2019 Christchurch shooting, in which a gunman shot dead 51 Muslim worshippers, an inquiry into the country’s worst peacetime massacre has found.
The landmark Christchurch royal commission report, which was released on Tuesday after 20 months of consultation, also revealed police failed to enforce proper checks on firearm licences.
Continue reading...Shuang bao tai 双胞胎 is the Chinese word for twin. Following on from Land of Ibeji, Sanne de Wilde and Bénédicte Kurzen travel to Mojiang in Yunnan for the second chapter of their project about the mythology of twinhood. The area has an exceptionally high percentage of twins, celebrated in its annual tropic of cancer twin festival
The first chapter of this project was called Land Of Ibeji. West Africa, and specifically Yorubaland, has 10 times more twins than any other region in the world. Ibeji, meaning “double birth” and “the inseparable two” in Yoruba stands for the ultimate harmony between two people. “Shuang bao tai”, 双胞胎 is the Chinese word for twin, which translates as: 双 double 胞 womb 胎 embryo.
Continue reading...Joseph Wu says Beijing is seeking to expand its ‘authoritarian order’ and calls for ‘like-minded’ nations to act together to protect Taiwan
The international community must join together in resisting China’s expansionism and preventing an invasion of Taiwan by sharing intelligence, rethinking Chinese business ties and boosting Taipei’s presence on the world stage, Taiwan’s foreign minister has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Joseph Wu said China’s activities in the South China and East China seas, its border skirmishes with India, and its crackdown on Hong Kong were evidence of it seeking to “expand its authoritarian order”, and that Taiwan was its next target.
Continue reading...Peers prepare to back cross-party move to block trade agreements with any country deemed to be committing genocide
Ministers face a double defeat in the Lords over Britain’s trading links with China as peers prepare to back a cross-party move to block trade agreements with any country deemed by the UK high court to be committing genocide.
The manoeuvre is in addition to Labour-led plans in the upper house to require a government human rights risk assessment before backing a Brexit trade deal.
Continue reading...Uighurs in the diaspora are fighting to keep the art form alive as poets and writers in Xinjiang are silenced or detained
A few weeks ago Mamutjan Abdurehim was trying to remember a poem that he and his wife used to teach their four-year-old daughter. The rhyming couplets were easy to remember instructions on etiquette at the dinner table – to say bismillah before eating and to start with one’s right hand. He hoped that by helping his daughter recite the qoshaq, a traditional Uighur folk poem, she would remember where she came from even as the family was living overseas.
Memories like these are dear to Abdurehim who has not been able to see or speak to his family in Xinjiang in almost five years. His daughter is 10 years old now; his son would be 5. He believes his wife has been detained in an internment camp or sent to prison, one of more than one million Uighurs caught up in what human rights advocates say is a state-led campaign of cultural genocide. Abdurehim, now living in Sydney, asked his friends on Facebook if anyone knew the rest of the poem but no one could remember.
Continue reading...The lights are on, but the party’s over - in the time of Covid, we can’t even buy duty-free
Everything seemed just the same when I flew into Wellington this week, which is to say the last 10 minutes were a living hell. Hello turbulence, my old friend. The plane sank like a rock, the wind picked it up again and flung it left, then right; down below, the waters of Cook Street boiled and fumed. But it’s a familiar nightmare. It’s just the way it almost always is when you fly into Wellington.
The truly disorienting part of arriving was walking through Wellington domestic airport.
Continue reading...Yellow-clad supporters cheered King Maha Vajiralongkorn during a tribute to his late father
Thousands of yellow-clad supporters greeted Thailand’s king on Saturday as he led a birthday commemoration for his revered late father, the latest in a series of public appearances at a time of unprecedented challenge to the monarchy from student-led protesters.
King Maha Vajiralongkorn, accompanied by Queen Suthida, waved as he arrived at Bangkok’s Sanam Luang ceremonial ground. Supporters of the monarchy held Thai and yellow royal flags to welcome them, with some cheering “Long live the king”. The crowd wore yellow shirts, the colour associated with the royal institution.
Continue reading...The 27-year-old activist, who was forced to flee the city by Beijing’s crackdown, is determined to continue the fight for freedom
Nathan Law began 2020 planning a new run for office in Hong Kong. He has ended it a political exile in Britain, unsure if he will ever be able to return to the city he calls home, or speak to his family again, because of his work campaigning for democracy.
The end of the year has been particularly painful for the 27-year-old. He has watched from the other side of the world as friends in Hong Kong, including Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, have been jailed for their campaign work. He has been unable to send them even an email of support.
Continue reading...Capsule will burn through atmosphere before landing in South Australia in the early hours of Sunday morning
Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully separated a capsule and sent it toward Earth to deliver samples from a distant asteroid that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on our planet.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the capsule successfully detached Saturday afternoon from 220,000km (136,700 miles) away in a challenging operation that required precision control. The capsule is now descending to land in a remote, sparsely populated area of Woomera, Australia, on Sunday.
Continue reading...My friend Aynür’s life tells the story of how Uighurs have been purposefully dehumanised by the party-state
During my first year living in Ürümchi, the capital of Xinjiang, I met Aynür (not her real name). It was 2007, and she described life in China as difficult but improving for Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking predominantly Muslim people. Aynür spoke both Uighur and Mandarin, and was proud of being “in-between cultures”. She described herself as a bridge between the Han majority, who make up about 90% of China’s population and the Uighurs, Xinjiang’s ethnic majority.
Aynür invited me to her home and we watched China’s national day celebrations – parades of tanks, warheads, and motorcades – on TV . Aynür could not understand my lack of amusement; the spectacle made her proud of China’s rapid development and hopeful that Xinjiang’s problems could be resolved. Over the years, as new policies affected her work, her home and her family life, her outlook changed. The hints had been there when we first met: she worried aloud about future generations’ ability to speak the Uighur language and their right to practise their religion. When Aynür asked to see pictures of my “homeland”, she was stunned by the sight of Scottish flags adorning Edinburgh castle. She was amazed that “minority people” within larger nations could express their own identity. “If we were allowed to do this, most of our problems would be gone.”
Continue reading...Five still trapped after accident involving workers dismantling underground equipment at Diaoshuidong coal mine
Eighteen miners have been confirmed dead after a carbon monoxide leak at a coal mine in southwestern China, state media reported, with rescue efforts under way to reach five others still trapped underground.
Twenty-four miners were caught up in the accident at the Diaoshuidong mine in the city of Chongqing, around 1,800km south-west of Beijing, after the gas leak occurred on Friday, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
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