Monitoring sewage thought to be a quicker, more cost-effective way to understand the spread of the virus
Researchers in Thailand are examining wastewater for signs of monkeypox, as part of surveillance efforts to detect the spread of the virus.
Academics from Naresuan University, in Phitsanulok province, northern Thailand, began testing sewage at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport in May, adopting a technique that has also been used to track the spread of Covid-19.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Tigrinya speakers say they face beatings, detention and privation, and blame UN for ‘abandoning’ them, despite right to be in Ethiopia
Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia say they are being targeted for arbitrary arrest and forcible relocation to war-torn parts of the country, despite having UN permission to remain in Ethiopia.
Government security officers are accused of rounding up, abusing and unlawfully detaining refugees who have legal status, as well as Eritreans who have foreign citizenship.
Continue reading...Yang Huiyan, a majority shareholder in Chinese property giant Country Garden, saw net worth plunge to $11.3bn in a year
Asia’s wealthiest woman has lost more than half her fortune over the past year as the crisis engulfing China’s real estate sector continues to worsen, a billionaire index showed on Thursday.
Yang Huiyan, a majority shareholder in China’s biggest property developer Country Garden, saw her net worth plunge by more than 52% to $11.3bn from $23.7bn a year ago, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Continue reading...The bodies of two mountaineers, Eakin and Canadian man Richard Cartier, found on the world’s second-highest mountain in Pakistan
An Australian and a Canadian climber have been found dead on K2, with the world’s second-highest mountain in Pakistan claiming at least three lives in recent weeks.
The Himalayan Times identified the Australian mountaineer as Matthew Eakin and the Canadian climber as Richard Cartier, after reports the two had gone missing last week during their descent from Camp 2 to Camp 1.
Continue reading...Police fired teargas in a bid to stop crowds who entered parliament waving flags, taking photographs, chanting and cheering
Hundreds of supporters of powerful Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr danced and sang in parliament after storming Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone in protest at a rival bloc’s nomination for prime minister.
Police fired barrages of teargas in a bid to stop the protesters from breaching the gates of the heavily fortified Green Zone, but the crowds surged forward and entered parliament.
Continue reading...Robert Crimo, 21, accused of killing seven and wounding dozens in Fourth of July attack in Chicago suburb, indicted by grand jury
The man accused of opening fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago, killing seven, has been indicted by a grand jury on 117 felony charges.
The indictment included 21 first-degree murder counts, 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery, representing the seven people killed and dozens wounded in the attack on the Fourth of July event in Highland Park, Illinois.
Continue reading...With Europe grappling with an energy crisis, Mohammed bin Salman finds he is once again welcome
Smiles, handshakes, backslaps and the Acropolis all to himself. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has landed in Europe – his first trip west since the brutal killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi – and on a continent jittering with energy worries, the Saudi royal has received red-carpet treatment.
Human rights concerns aside, the de facto leader of the world’s greatest oil producer has luxuriated in a welcome that only recently may have seemed impossible.
Continue reading...Father Mattia Bernasconi apologises for any offence after failing to find shade while on camp in Italy with high school students
A priest who celebrated mass in the sea using an inflatable mattress as an altar has been placed under investigation by Italian authorities.
Father Mattia Bernasconi, 36, from the archdiocese of Milan, said he had planned to hold Sunday’s ceremony among the trees by the beach in Crotone, southern Italy, after he had been helping with a week-long summer camp for high school students organised by Libera, an anti-mafia organisation.
Continue reading...The Line – due to be just 200 metres wide – will make Neom world’s most liveable city ‘by far’, officials claim
The promotional material is striking: two mirror-encased skyscrapers stretching more than 100 miles across a swathe of desert and mountain terrain, providing a future home for 9 million people. Is it the ultimate in high-density living, or a grandiose science fiction fantasy?
In short, economists, architects and analysts are not quite sure. So extravagant is Saudi Arabia’s plan to create an urban utopia that even those working on the project, known as the Line, do not yet know if its scale and scope can ever be realised.
Continue reading...From Spain to Hungary, output of staples such as corn forecast to fall by up to 9%, adding to impact of Ukraine war on food security
Yields of key crops in Europe will be sharply down this year owing to heatwaves and droughts, exacerbating the impacts of the Ukraine war on food prices.
Maize, sunflower and soya bean yields are forecast by the EU to drop by about 8% to 9% due to hot weather across the continent. Supplies of cooking oil and maize were already under pressure, as Ukraine is a major producer and its exports have been blocked by Russia.
Continue reading...State-run Gazprom reduces flow through Nord Stream 1 to around 20% of its capacity
Germany has accused Moscow of engaging in “power play” over energy exports, as Russian state-run Gazprom further throttled gas supplies into Europe.
As announced two days earlier, the energy giant on Wednesday reduced the gas flow through Nord Stream 1 to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s total capacity and half the amount it has been delivering since resuming service last week after 10 days of maintenance work.
Continue reading...Senators call for investigation into top prosecutor after charges against president shelved
Brazilian senators are calling for an investigation into one of the country’s top prosecutors after she shelved several charges against the president, Jair Bolsonaro, over his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A damning congressional inquiry had recommended that Bolsonaro be charged with nine offences, including crimes against humanity and charlatanism, for promoting false treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
Continue reading...Foreign Office confirms British-Iranian man is at home in Tehran and officials are working to free him permanently
Morad Tahbaz, the British-Iranian man held in a Tehran prison, has been released on an electronic tag, the UK Foreign Office has confirmed.
He had been due to be released on a tag at the same time as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were allowed to return to the UK in March, but he was only allowed to return to his mother’s home in Tehran for a few days before he was sent back to Evin prison.
Continue reading...Male identified as one of a group of monkeys that have wounded 49 people and counting in Yamaguchi
Hunters on the trail of a group of monkeys that have attacked and wounded nearly 50 people in western Japan have caught and killed one of them.
Officials in Yamaguchi city have been trying for weeks to track down the group, who have made national headlines by assaulting residents, leaving mostly mild scratches and bites.
Continue reading...Moscow has ‘definitively’ lost initiative in battle for eastern region; Ukraine attacks key Russian held bridge in Kherson
Peter Beaumont in Kyiv has filed this report on a night when it appears that Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian-occupied Kherson:
A key Russian held bridge into the occupied southern city of Kherson was hit with a barrage of rocket fire by Ukrainian forces who appeared to be stepping up operations to isolate the city.
Continue reading...Ukrainian forces strike Antonivskiy Bridge in Russian-occupied Kherson to disrupt Moscow’s supply routes
Continue reading...Infowars founder ‘attacked the parents of murdered children’ by telling audience shooting in which 26 died was a hoax, court hears
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones repeatedly “lied and attacked the parents of murdered children” when he told his Infowars audience that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, an attorney for one of the victim’s parents told a Texas jury on Tuesday at the outset of a trial to determine how much Jones must pay for defaming them.
Jones created a “massive campaign of lies” and recruited “wild extremists from the fringes of the internet … who were as cruel as Mr Jones wanted them to be” to the families of the 20 first-graders and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack on the school in Newtown, Connecticut, attorney Mark Bankston said during his opening statement as Jones looked on and occasionally shook his head.
Continue reading...Protesters and United Nations personnel among dead after incidents that left about 50 injured
At least 15 people were killed and about 50 wounded during a second day of violent anti-United Nations protests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern cities of Goma and Butembo, authorities have said.
The dead included demonstrators and UN personnel as UN sites were attacked by crowds.
Continue reading...Industry to feel pinch first after all countries in bloc except Hungary agreed to voluntary reduction
The EU has agreed to cut its gas consumption by 15% in an attempt to stave off a winter crisis triggered by a sharp reduction or total shutdown of Russian gas supplies to the bloc.
Continue reading...Family of retired geologist Jim Fitton, 66, ‘over the moon’ after court quashes 15-year jail sentence
A retired British geologist is to be released from an Iraqi prison after his 15-year jail sentence for smuggling antiquities was quashed, according to his family and lawyer.
Jim Fitton, 66, was jailed after collecting 12 stones and shards of broken pottery as souvenirs while visiting a site in Eridu as part of an organised geology and archaeology tour.
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