With not enough workers to pick the upcoming harvest, Australia faces potential food shortages, and its farmers face economic devastation
As Victoria’s Covid-19 outbreak threatens to spiral out of control and beyond its borders, Australia faces another pandemic-related crisis.
We are sailing into a food shortage and few are talking about it. This needs to change.
Continue reading...Animals including leopards have almost disappeared in protected habitats
Efforts to protect the giant panda have failed to safeguard large mammals sharing its habitats, according to research showing dramatic declines in leopards and other predators.
In its effort to save the giant panda, China has cracked down on poachers, outlawed the trade in panda hides and mapped out dozens of protected habitats.
Continue reading...New research has found extreme melting of the country’s glaciers in 2018 was at least ten times more likely due to human-caused global heating
Twice a year, glaciologist Lauren Vargo and her colleagues set up camp beside two small lakes close to New Zealand’s Brewster glacier. Each time the trek to carry the measuring stakes takes a little bit longer as the glacier’s terminus gets further away.
Dr Vargo, a native of Ohio now working at the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington, is studying New Zealand’s glaciers from the air and on the ice.
Continue reading...Health officials to perform coronavirus testing, the first time a mainland team has been part of city’s pandemic response
Seven Chinese health officials arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, the first members of a 60-person team that will carry out widespread Covid-19 testing in the territory as it races to halt another wave of illness.
The initiative marks the first time mainland health officials have assisted Hong Kong in its battle to control the epidemic.
Continue reading...Many countries that believed they were past the worst are grappling with new outbreaks, says WHO
Mexico has recorded more than 9,000 daily coronavirus cases for the first time, as the country overtook the UK with the world’s third-highest number of deaths from the pandemic after the US and Brazil.
The surging numbers were reported as the World Health Organization warned of “response fatigue” and a resurgence of cases in several countries that have lifted lockdowns.
Continue reading...What have resurgences around the world taught us about how local clusters emerge?
It is not always possible to pinpoint the origin of a local spike in cases, particularly in countries like the UK, where the disease is still circulating at relatively significant levels.
But in countries where overall caseloads are lower, and with rigorous test-and-trace schemes, it has been possible to pinpoint the factors that have sparked or fuelled local outbreaks.
Continue reading...Dissidents urge united stand against Chinese and look to eastern bloc tactics for inspiration
Prominent Hong Kong democracy activists have responded to China’s crackdown on opposition politicians, student campaigners and tenured academics by considering tactics that would have seemed exaggerated in the open city a few months ago.
The student leader Nathan Law, who was placed on a police “wanted” list just weeks after flying into exile in the UK, said he would cut off all contact with relatives living in his home city, in an apparent bid to protect them from suspicion or pressure.
Continue reading...With tourism devastated by the pandemic, many have returned to work the fields. Some believe they will never go back
Ni Kadek Erawati, 40, used to work in a villa in her village, Tegallalang, a Balinese district famous for its Instagram-able rice terraces.
But in March, her employer asked her to take a break until further notice. Her husband is unemployed and she needs to pay school fees for three children, but the only job she could find was working on a farm.
Continue reading...Packages marked as ‘earrings’ spark biosecurity concerns and global investigations into origins
There is not much that Jan Goward does not grow in her small Eastbourne garden. “I grow everything,” she says. “I’ve got the exotics: the aubergines, the chillies …”
But some mystery seeds she received in the post this week – ostensibly from Singapore, and marked as stud earrings – will not be joining them.
Continue reading...Filipino medics plead for lockdown as health system teeters; US suffers deadliest month; South Korea arrest sect leader
U-turns and chaos: a terrible week for Boris Johnson
Coronavirus latest updates
Senior doctors in the Philippines have pleaded with the government to impose a strict lockdown in the capital Manila or risk losing the battle to contain the spread of coronavirus.
As the World Health Organization recorded the highest daily number of new cases so far during the pandemic, the medics said the Philippines’ fragile health system needed a “time out” to avert collapse.
Continue reading...Hong Kong police have issued arrest warrants for six pro-democracy activists living in exile, the first time the city’s authorities have used a sweeping new law to target campaigners living outside Hong Kong.
They include Samuel Chu, an American citizen who lives in the US, Nathan Law, a prominent campaigner who recently relocated to the UK after fleeing Hong Kong, and Simon Cheng, a former British consular staffer who was granted asylum in the UK after alleging he was tortured in China.
Continue reading...Kurdish Iranian journalist is adapting to quietness and isolation of New Zealand after six years of struggle
It’s the middle of the day in a sleepy, affluent suburb of Christchurch and Kurdish Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani is burning lunch.
It has been seven months since he arrived in New Zealand and the subtleties of cooking elude his grasp – and interest. His large house down the road from the University of Canterbury has a bachelor-pad vibe. Books are stacked untidily on every surface, and two broken heaters sit on the floor beside a heat pump turned to max.
Continue reading...The decision is ‘an assault on fundamental freedoms’, says Hong Kong Watch, as democracy deteriorates
The Hong Kong government has postponed its upcoming elections for one year, citing the growing coronavirus outbreak in the territory but sparking immediate accusations that the pandemic was being used as a pretext to suppress democracy.
The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced on Friday she had invoked colonial-era emergency regulations to delay the 6 September vote to 5 September 2021, saying it was the “hardest decision I have made in the past seven months”, but had the full support of the Chinese central government.
Continue reading...More needs to be done to limit Beijing’s political interference and any short-term damage will be worth it in the long run
This week New Zealand announced it was suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong as a result of Hong Kong’s new national security law. At the same time, NZ changed its policy on military and dual-use goods and technology exports to Hong Kong, subjecting the city to the same as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The New Zealand government also issued a travel warning to New Zealanders on the risks of travelling to Hong Kong.
In a statement, Wellington said it “can no longer trust that Hong Kong’s criminal justice system is sufficiently independent from China.” No explanation was given for the suspension of sensitive technology exports.
Continue reading...Nation’s first popularly elected president oversaw transition from martial law to democracy
Lee Teng-hui, known as Taiwan’s “father of democracy” and its first popularly elected president, has died, according to a statement from his family.
Lee, who oversaw Taiwan’s transition from martial law to one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia, died of septic shock and multiple organ failure at Taipei Veterans general hospital on Thursday evening. He had been in hospital for more than five months after choking while drinking milk and later contracting pneumonia. He was 97 years old.
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Here in Britain, roughly one in three furloughed workers returned to work in the first two weeks of July, when pubs, bars, restaurants and hotels reopened, official data from the Office for National Statistics showed today.
Businesses surveyed between 29 June and 12 July said 7% of their staff had returned from furlough within the past fortnight, while 17% remained on leave. The government-funded job retention scheme pays 80% of their salaries and covers more than 9 million people at the moment, about a third of the private-sector workforce. But it will be scaled back from Saturday and come to an end on 31 October.
Here is our full story on Airbus. The Toulouse-based planemaker has been hit hard by the collapse in air travel, and received only eight new orders between April and June, compared with 290 in the first quarter.
Related: Airbus slows plane-making as Covid-19 leads to £1.7bn loss
Continue reading...Move to control spread of coronavirus abandoned after widespread public anger
Hong Kong’s government has reversed a day-old ban on restaurants serving dine-in customers that was introduced to control the spread of coronavirus, following widespread public anger.
All restaurants in the city of 7.5 million were ordered to serve only takeaways from Wednesday as part of a raft of ramped-up social-distancing measures to combat a fresh wave of virus cases.
Continue reading...Three men and one woman are the first political activists to be held since controversial legislation was imposed by Beijing
The arrests of four students in Hong Kong’s first crackdown on political figures after the enactment of a sweeping national security law imposed by China have prompted widespread public outrage.
Tony Chung, 19, the convenor of disbanded pro-independence group Studentlocalism and three other members were arrested late on Wednesday.
Continue reading...More than a dozen ‘black rain’ plaintiffs died during legal battle to prove people living further away also suffered radiation exposure in 1945
A court in Japan has for the first time recognised dozens of people who were exposed to radioactive “black rain” as survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, even though they lived outside the area hit hardest by the attack in August 1945.
The Hiroshima district court said the 84 plaintiffs, who are suffering from illnesses linked to radiation exposure, were entitled to the same medical benefits as survivors who lived closer to where the bomb struck.
Continue reading...Both sides seeking deal to secure continuous trade once Brexit implemented on 1 January
The UK is close to sealing a “continuity” trade deal with Japan that will mirror that of the EU pact that Britain will no longer be part of next January.
But in order to strike an agreement in time for it to be ratified by the Japanese parliament, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, has had to drop her ambitions for preferential treatment for British food exports.
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