Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
A policy of making men and women leave their homes on alternate days during lockdown in Bogotá is fuelling violence towards the transgender community by the police and the public, activists say.
The mayor of the Colombian capital, Claudia López, announced last month that women were permitted to go outdoors for essential tasks on even-numbered days and men on odd-numbered days, in an effort to limit numbers on the streets.
From jungle stakeouts to burning drug dealers’ property, a group of mothers is willing to do whatever it takes to free their community from addiction
Sister Ester keeps several small plastic bags of colourful methamphetamine – or meth – tablets beside her bed, along with a pistol and a plastic box of bullets.
“All of these items were seized by our group in raids on houses selling drugs over the past few weeks,” she says.
Antibody tests have been hailed as a key to understanding the spread of the coronavirus and even as a means of easing us out of lockdown. But what are they, and what can they tell us?
The coronavirus crisis seems to be encouraging belief in radical change. An astonishing 71% of Europeans are now in favour of introducing a universal basic income, according to an opinion poll designed by my research team at Oxford university and published today. In Britain, the figure is 68%. Less encouraging, at least to anyone who believes in liberal democracy, is another startling finding in the survey: no less than 53% of young Europeans place more confidence in authoritarian states than in democracies to tackle the climate crisis. The poll was conducted by eupinions in March, as most of Europe was locking down against the virus, but the questions had been formulated earlier. It would be fascinating now to ask Europeans which political system they think has proved better at combating a pandemic, as the United States and China, the world’s leading democracy and the world’s leading dictatorship, spray viral accusations at each other.
Those two contrasting but equally striking survey results show how high the stakes will be as we emerge from the immediate medical emergency, and face the subsequent economic pandemic and its political fallout. What kind of historical moment will this turn out to be, for Europe and the world? It could lead us to the best of times. It could lead us to the worst of times.
Health secretary says Professor Neil Ferguson was right to step down after breaking lockdown rules; Boris Johnson to face Keir Starmer for the first time at PMQs
Rory Stewart has abandoned his bid to become London mayor, saying that campaigning has become impossible after the election was delayed due to the coronavirus crisis. The former Tory cabinet minister said it had been an “agonising decision” but it was unfair on the unpaid volunteers working on his campaign.
I have decided that I will not be standing again for Mayor in the now delayed 2021 election. It has been a great privilege to work with so many amazing people with such passion and vision for London. Thank you very much again from the bottom of my heart. https://t.co/pDve6kTcjq
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has just started taking part in a Q&A on Sky News. And he started by escalating the criticism of Prof Neil Ferguson, suggesting there could be a case for the police getting involved.
Asked by the presenter Kay Burley if Ferguson should be prosecuted for breaking the lockdown rules, Hancock replied:
You can imagine what my views are.
It’s a matter for the police. As a government minister, I’m not allowed to get involved in the operational decisions of police matters. But I think that the social distancing rules are very important and people should be followed.
Absolutely I back the police. I back the Scottish police, I would back the police here. They will take their decisions independently from ministers, that’s quite right. It’s always been like that.
And that’s why, even though I’ve got a view as to what I think, as a minister the way we run the police is that they make their decisions like this. So I give them their space to make that decision. But I think he took the right decision to resign.
Researchers link exposure to mining pollutants to greatly increased risk of conditions such as spina bifida and limb abnormalities
Thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are being exposed to dangerous levels of toxic pollution that is causing birth defects in their children as they mine for cobalt used to make rechargeable batteries for smartphones, laptops and electric cars, a new medical study has found.
Research published in the Lancet last week found that local people working in mines in the African “copperbelt”, a mining region stretching across Zambia and the DRC, are at significantly higher risk of having children born with serious birth defects.
The head of a global partnership to end tuberculosis (TB) said she is “sickened” by research that revealed millions more people are expected to contract the disease as a result of Covid-19 restrictions.
Up to 6.3 million more people are predicted to develop TB between now and 2025 and 1.4 million more people are expected to die as cases go undiagnosed and untreated during lockdown. This will set back global efforts to end TB by five to eight years.
From The Assistant to Support the Girls, American cinema is swapping feelgood escapism for gritty unsettling realism. We talk to the women spearheading this new wave
‘I wanted it to be relatable to any woman who’s ever worked in an office,” says Kitty Green of her new film The Assistant. “Everything in the film has been in the press already. But I wanted to take viewers on an emotional journey, so they could empathise with the character.”
The #MeToo saga has been examined to near exhaustion, but The Assistant manages to add something new. Rather than perpetrators or victims, it focuses on a relative bystander: a young office worker at a New York film production company. We follow this character, played by Julia Garner, through her demeaning routine: commuting in before daybreak, photocopying, printing, taking her male co-workers’ lunch orders, clearing up leftover pizza from the meeting room (as the men come in for the next meeting, she is humiliatingly caught with a crust in her mouth).
Britain could exit the coronavirus lockdown by relaxing restrictions on more than half of the population and beefing up protection for those over 70 and vulnerable people, scientists have said.
The strategy from researchers at Edinburgh University, known as “segmenting and shielding”, is intended to create leeway for ministers to ease the lockdown on those least at risk from the virus while ensuring that vulnerable people only come into contact with carers and family members who are free from infection.
Brazil, France and Germany say UN can’t hear complaint against five countries of flouting child rights to clean air
Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out.
The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September.
More than 50% of voters must say yes to the proposed changes for parliament to consider the changes
New Zealanders will be asked at September’s national election whether they want to pass a bill that would legalise cannabis and regulate how it is used and sold. This will include producing and selling fresh and dried cannabis, including plants and seeds – for people over 20 years old. The change would impose more stringent restrictions than the rules around sales of alcohol and tobacco.
Comments in authorised biography also associate gay marriage with the Antichrist
The former pope Benedict XVI has accused opponents of wanting to silence him, while associating gay marriage with the Antichrist and attacking humanist ideologies in an authorised biography published in Germany.
The 93-year-old, whose original name is Joseph Ratzinger, said in Benedict XVI – A Life he had fallen victim to a “malignant distortion of reality” in reactions to his interventions in theological debates.
I am about to go through an invasive therapy for my cervical cancer. The process has brought me closer to my seven-year-old self
In a large black planner that I keep next to my bed, I mark off each round of chemotherapy and radiation. And after each one, I feel a growing sense of dread.
That’s because every mark means I’m one step closer to brachytherapy, a process that involves doctors sticking radioactive materials into my cervix – or what’s left of it anyway. It’s a way for them to aim high doses of radiation at my tumor, without risking the other nearby organs.
The Ugandan government has launched an investigation into the activities of a megachurch in Kampala after seven members of its internationally renowned children’s choir were diagnosed with Covid-19 following an overseas tour.
The country’s child affairs minister, Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi, told the Guardian the Internal Security Organisation was investigating Watoto church for allegedly breaching child labour laws, taking the children out of the country without permission and putting them at risk by not cancelling the tour as coronavirus cases escalated and countries closed their borders.
It is a mystery that has left doctors questioning the basic tenets of biology: Covid-19 patients who are talking and apparently not in distress, but who have oxygen levels low enough to typically cause unconsciousness or even death.
The phenomenon, known by some as “happy hypoxia” (some prefer the term “silent”) is raising questions about exactly how the virus attacks the lungs and whether there could be more effective ways of treating such patients.
Fewer than one in five of the British public believe the time is right to consider reopening schools, restaurants, pubs and stadiums. The findings, in a new poll for the Observer, suggest Boris Johnson will struggle to convince people to return their lives to normal if he tries to ease the lockdown soon.
The poll by Opinium, taken between Wednesday and Friday last week, found 17% of people think the conditions have been met to consider reopening schools, against 67% who say they have not been, and that they should stay closed.
The communities secretary has announced £76m in support for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse who have been affected by the coronavirus lockdown. Admitting the measures have been 'a nightmare' for people trapped at home with abusers, Jenrick said the money would be used to provide more safe spaces and accommodation, recruit workers for survivors of sexual violence and support frontline charities working with those in need
Kamrul Islam doesn’t dare visit his local supermarket. Over the last few weeks, he said three of his closest friends fell ill with the coronavirus shortly after shopping there. One friend’s mother became seriously unwell after contracting the virus and sadly died.
The 40-year-old former cab driver says a day doesn’t go by when he isn’t aware of a death or infection of someone he knows. While the coronavirus has spread widely across the UK, the pandemic has taken a huge toll on the area where Islam lives, the east London borough of Newham, which has recorded the worst mortality rate in England and Wales.
Scientists working for the US military have designed a new Covid-19 test that could potentially identify carriers before they become infectious and spread the disease, the Guardian has learned.
In what could be a significant breakthrough, project coordinators hope the blood-based test will be able to detect the virus’s presence as early as 24 hours after infection – before people show symptoms and several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading it to other people. That is also around four days before current tests can detect the virus.