From protecting fishing communities to regrowing coral reefs, Guardian readers and environmentalists share how they’re working to defend the ocean
World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them.
Continue reading...WHO official walks back asymptomatic transmission comments; world faces worst food crisis in 50 years; UK NHS waiting list could hit 10m
Japan’s lower house of parliament has approved an emergency budget worth nearly over £230bn, doubling the scale of measures to pep up the world’s third-biggest economy after the coronavirus tipped it into recession, AFP reports.
Their raucous clucking deprives residents of sleep. They leave the neighbourhood “wrecked”. And food left out for them attracts “rats the size of cats” to an otherwise peaceful, leafy suburb.
New Zealand’s national lockdown to quell the spread of Covid-19 appears to have vanquished the virus, but it has had one unintended consequence: the re-emergence of a plague – not of frogs or locusts but of feral chickens, a flock of which is once again menacing an area of west Auckland.
Related: 'Like a Stephen King movie': feral chickens return to plague New Zealand village
Continue reading...Asylum applications in Europe fall to lowest level for a decade as borders closed; world faces worst food crisis in 50 years
Louise Taylor and David Conn report:
Premier League clubs should be braced for a collective £500m loss of revenue because of the coronavirus pandemic, Deloitte has warned.
Related: Premier League clubs set for £500m collective loss due to coronavirus
Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak so far today include:
Continue reading...Nurses say they have been left without promised compensation as £75m set aside for renovation of parliament buildings
Plans by Nigeria’s government to cut healthcare spending risk undermining the country’s coronavirus response and severely impacting already strained services, health and transparency groups have warned.
Funding for local, primary healthcare services will be cut by more than 40% this year in a revised budget expected to be passed into law in the coming weeks.
Continue reading...Ali Kushayb, wanted for human rights abuses and war crimes, faces trial in The Hague
One of the most notorious Sudanese militia leaders in the brutal conflict in Darfur has been arrested in the Central African Republic and handed over to the International criminal court.
Ali Kushayb, who had been on the run for 13 years, surrendered to authorities in a remote corner of northern CAR near the country’s border with Sudan, said a spokesman for the ICC.
Continue reading...South Africa warns pandemic could last up to two years; Indonesia reports largest daily rise in infections
Moscow has partially lifted its lockdown despite Russia reporting thousands of new daily cases and Spain’s government said face masks would remain mandatory in public as Europe continued to emerge from the first phase of its struggle against Covid-19.
Concern mounted, however, over the spread of coronavirus in Africa and elsewhere, with Nigeria confirming 600 deaths from a previously undetected outbreak and South Africa warning its pandemic could last up to two years.
Continue reading...Peaceful demonstration in Nairobi a response to increase in violence and killings during the coronavirus curfew
Photographs by Ed Ram
A crowd of up to 200 people peacefully marched through Mathare slum in Nairobi on Monday to protest against police brutality and an increase in extrajudicial killings in the Kenyan capital.
The march was organised by three grassroots organisations from the area in response to a rise in the number of police killings since a dusk-till-dawn curfew was enforced in March to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. It was also organised to show solidarity with movements worldwide to protest against police brutality.
Continue reading...More than 500 Moroccans remain in limbo, far from home and with few resources to support themselves
On 14 March, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, ordered the country into Covid-19 lockdown, saying “extraordinary decisions” needed to be taken as the country struggled with a “health, social and economic crisis”.
The Moroccan authorities had taken their own extraordinary decision the day before, when they ordered the shutdown of the border crossings that connect the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla with the rest of the country. With the only land borders between Africa and Europe closed, many citizens from both continents found themselves trapped.
Continue reading...The trail for the killer of the Swedish prime minister had gone cold until a diplomat picked up the 1986 case as a hobby
Dag Hammarskjöld brought me to Olof Palme. Two Swedish leaders, both supporting small nations on the world scene, both of whom refused to be controlled by global superpowers; both died a violent death. Were they also victims of the same forces?
For 11 years I investigated the mysterious aeroplane crash that killed the former UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld, a a project that became the subject of the documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld.
Continue reading...Unseasonal rains have allowed desert pests to breed rapidly and spread across vast distances leaving devastation in their wake
Locust swarms threaten a “rolling emergency” that could endanger harvests and food security across parts of Africa and Asia for the rest of the year, experts warn.
An initial infestation of locusts in December was expected to die out during the current dry season. But unseasonal rains have allowed several generations of locust to breed, resulting in new swarms forming.
Continue reading...Sisi’s initiative includes peace talks in Geneva and is backed by rebel general Khalifa Haftar
Egypt’s president has announced an initiative to end nearly a decade of civil war in Libya, backed by the main commander in the oil-rich country’s east, whose siege of the capital, Tripoli collapsed this week.
President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said a ceasefire will start on Monday and is meant to pave the way for elections. He called for peace talks in Geneva and the exit of all foreign fighters from Libya.
Continue reading...Abdelmalek Droukdel was one of the Maghreb’s most experienced Islamist militants
French forces in northern Mali have killed al-Qaida’s north Africa (AQMI) chief, a key Islamist fighter whom its forces had been hunting for more than seven years.
“On 3 June, French army forces with the support of their local partners, killed al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s emir, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and several of his closest collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali,” the French armed forces minister, Florence Parly, wrote on Twitter on Friday.
Continue reading...Activists welcome move but say government is still dragging its feet over crackdown on waste in lakes and waterways
The Malawian government this week ordered the closure of factories belonging to two major plastic producers for flouting the country’s plastics ban.
The companies – OG plastics and City Plastics – were found to still be manufacturing thin plastics, often used to make plastic bags, despite a ruling last year that banned its production, import and use.
Continue reading...Girls were allegedly told they were to have Covid-19 vaccinations but were cut by doctor after being sedated
Egypt’s public prosecutor has ordered the immediate trial of a father on charges of forcing his three young daughters to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), after he told them they were going to be vaccinated against coronavirus. The doctor involved will also go on trial.
The procedure was banned in 2008 and criminalised in 2016.
Continue reading...Women arrested in May went missing for two days before reappearing badly injured
Zimbabwe’s government has accused two opposition activists and an MP who described torture, humiliation and repeated sexual assaults after being abducted by suspected state security services of inventing the entire episode.
The three women, all leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change’s youth section, were arrested at a roadblock guarded by police and soldiers last month at a protest in Harare against the state’s failure to provide for the poor during the country’s Covid-19 lockdown last month.
Continue reading...Several accounts reactivated after protests with social media giant blaming ‘technical error’
The Facebook accounts of several high-profile bloggers and activists in Tunisia were among those deactivated without warning over the weekend.
Up to 60 accounts are understood to have been deactivated, including that of journalist and political commentator Haythem El Mekki.
Continue reading...A bicycle scheme is shaving hours off long journeys to get milk fresh to market, boosting women’s incomes and benefiting their whole community
Shooting of Lamin Sisay, son of former UN diplomat, last week prompts outrage as family and friends reject police version of events
The Gambia has demanded the US investigate the police killing one of its citizens, a former UN diplomat’s son.
The shooting of Lamin Sisay, 39, in Atlanta last week prompted anger in the Gambian community, who have described it as another example of the police brutality against black Americans that has prompted country-wide protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
Continue reading...Yemen aid funding falls short by US$1bn; Zoom profits double; global cases pass 6.3m. Follow the latest updates
China reported one new coronavirus case and four new asymptomatic Covid-19 cases in the mainland on 2 June, the country’s health commission said.
The National Health Commission said the one confirmed case was imported involving a traveller from overseas. Mainland China had five confirmed cases, all of which were imported, and 10 asymptomatic cases for 1 June.
China does not count asymptomatic patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but not exhibiting symptoms, as confirmed cases.
Total number of infections to date in the mainland stands at 83,021. The death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
Dan Collyns brings you this action-packed update from Bolivia:
“Thanos is beating us” warned a Bolivian government minister in a live televised press conference on Monday as he called for his compatriots to comply with sanitary measures and lockdown restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Mientras tanto, en bolivia pic.twitter.com/5VPR4sDoX3
Continue reading...Sweden death rate now higher than France; Pakistan records largest single day rise in new infections; global deaths pass 380,000. This blog is now closed
We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:
Related: Coronavirus live news: Germany reveals major stimulus plan as global cases grow by 100,000 a day
At least three people were reported dead as coronavirus-hit Mumbai appeared to escape the worst of Cyclone Nisarga Wednesday, the first severe storm to threaten India’s financial capital in more than 70 years, AFP reports.
The city and its surrounds are usually sheltered from cyclones - the last deadly storm to hit the city was in 1948. Authorities had evacuated at least 100,000 people, including coronavirus patients, from flood-prone areas in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat ahead of Nisarga’s arrival.
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