Category Archives: World News

Wrist-worn trackers can detect Covid before symptoms, study finds

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Sensor tech can alert wearer to Covid early, helping to prevent onward transmission

Health trackers worn on the wrist could be used to spot Covid-19 days before any symptoms appear, according to researchers.

Growing numbers of people worldwide use the devices to monitor changes in skin temperature, heart and breathing rates. Now a new study shows that this data could be combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose Covid-19 even before the first tell-tale signs of the disease appear.

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‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’: Georgia elections workers describe how Trump upended their lives

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Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Trump and his allies fueled harassment and racist threats

In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.

Testifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”

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Dom Phillips was ‘collateral damage’ in drunken ambush, claims Brazil vice-president

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Hamilton Mourão’s claim sparked anger from Indigenous communities who believe organised crime was involved

Brazil’s vice-president has claimed that British journalist Dom Phillips was “collateral damage” in an attack on his travelling partner, the Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira, as grisly details emerged about the killing of the two men in early June.

One of the three men in custody for the killings said he and his accomplices tried to burn the bodies after shooting them dead at the edge of a river in western Brazil.

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Tokyo mayoral win a ‘huge surprise’ for candidate living in Belgium

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Japanese national Satoko Kishimoto won ward of 500,000 people 5,800 miles away with online campaigning

A Japanese woman living in Belgium has been elected as mayor of a district in Tokyo after coming to prominence through her online campaigning during the Covid pandemic.

Satoko Kishimoto, 47, who has lived in the Belgian city of Leuven with her husband and children for a decade, is now mayor of Suginami city, a ward of 500,000 people, more than 5,800 miles away from her home.

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Two Jesuit priests and man seeking sanctuary killed in Mexican church

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Incident occurred in violence-plagued remote mountainous region of Chihuahua, which has strong organized crime presence

Two elderly Jesuit priests have been killed inside a church after a man pursued by gunmen apparently sought refuge in a remote mountainous area of northern Mexico.

Javier Campos Morales, 79, and Joaquín César Mora Salazar, 80, were killed on Monday inside the church in Cerocahui, Chihuahua.

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Covid surges across Europe as experts warn not let guard down

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Calls grow for greater measures against wave of BA.4 and BA.5 cases in countries from Spain to Denmark

Multiple European countries are experiencing a significant surge in new Covid-19 infections, as experts warn that with almost all restrictions lifted and booster take-up often low, cases could soar throughout the summer leading to more deaths.

According to the Our World in Data scientific aggregator, the rolling seven-day average of confirmed new cases per million inhabitants is on the rise in countries including Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark.

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Two Canadians found dead in Playa del Carmen Mexican beach resort

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The victims, a man and woman, are the latest in a string of several violent incidents in Quintana Roo state

Two Canadians – one of whom was sought by Interpol – have been found dead of knife wounds in Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort of Playa del Carmen, the state prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.

Prosecutors in Quintana Roo state, also home to resort towns including Cancún and Tulum, said the man and the woman were found dead on Monday at a hotel or condominium in the troubled resort, and a third person was reported injured.

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The small town with a big potato that inspired a global poetry win

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Robertson might be tiny but for poet and schoolteacher Peter Ramm, it is the secret weapon that helped him win the UK’s biggest prize for unpublished poetry

Robertson is a small, pretty town perched on the edge of the New South Wales southern highlands, almost teetering on the escarpment that falls away to the Illawarra and Shoalhaven coasts.

It is most famous as the home of The Big Potato – an appropriately tuber-shaped concrete monolith on the main street – and a triumphant rugby league team called the Spuddies.

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Police investigated over response to attack on female diners in Tangshan

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Spotlight on violence against women in China as nine men arrested and officers accused of ‘violating discipline’

Five police officials in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan are being investigated over their handling of a vicious attack on a group of women at a restaurant.

The provincial discipline commission of Hebei province said the five, including the district head of the Lubei police force, Ma Aijun, were accused of “seriously violating discipline and law”. Hebei province’s public security bureau announced separately on Tuesday that Ma’s deputy, Li, had been removed from his post.

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‘Like a scene from Titanic’: floods in Assam submerge entire villages

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India’s monsoon season has been worse than usual, sweeping away possessions and leaving people huddling on raised ground

People living in Assam, in north-east India, are usually stoical about the flooding that occurs to a greater or lesser extent every monsoon season. But this year they say the situation is dramatically worse. “It was like a scene from Titanic,” one man told local media of the rising waters that have flooded all but two of the state’s districts.

In some places entire villages are under water, while across the state 114,000 hectares of crops have been submerged and 5,000 livestock have been washed away. For those that remain, fodder is running out.

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Russian forces capture settlements near Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

Reuters reports the Georgian prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, has said at an economic conference in Qatar that his country is committed to joining Nato, but must solve its territorial problems with Russia first.

Georgia is sandwiched between Russia in the north, with Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan to its south. The breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are internationally recognised as part of Georgia’s territory, although a handful of states, including Russia, officially recognise them.

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US volunteer fighters captured in Ukraine could face death penalty, says Russia

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Alexander Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, from Alabama have been taken into detention in Donetsk

The Kremlin has said that two captured US volunteers are not covered by the Geneva conventions and could face the death penalty.

The remarks were made by Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, following claims in the Russian media that two of three US volunteers missing in Ukraine had been captured and were being held by pro-Russian separatist forces.

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Russian mercenaries accused of deadly attacks on mines on Sudan-CAR border

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Dozens of people said to have been killed in attacks allegedly involving Wagner Group fighters

Russian mercenaries have mounted a series of bloody attacks on artisanal mines in the lawless border zones between Sudan and Central African Republic (CAR) in an effort to plunder the region’s valuable gold trade, witnesses and experts have said.

Dozens of miners are thought to have died in at least three major attacks this year allegedly involving mercenaries working for the Wagner Group, a private military company that has been linked to the Kremlin by western officials. There are also reports of further attacks on mines in at least six other places across CAR.

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Indian police: grenade launcher seized from suspects in rapper’s murder

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Hip-hop star Sidhu Moose Wala was shot dead in his car in Punjab last month

Indian police say have arrested three men accused of murdering hip-hop star Sidhu Moose Wala and that they have seized a cache of weaponry including a grenade launcher from the suspects.

Moose Wala – also known by his birth name Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu – was shot dead in his car in the northern state of Punjab last month.

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Don’t swipe, write: Japanese city encourages daters to send love letters

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Matchmaking initiative in Miyazaki has brought together 17 couples, as Japan battles falling birthrate

Japan’s faltering campaign to raise its birthrate has gone analogue, with authorities in a southwestern city encouraging potential suitors to put pen to paper and wait patiently for a reply rather than simply swiping right.

The city of Miyazaki says hundreds of men and women have dabbled in old-fashioned letter writing since the matchmaking scheme was launched two years ago. While there have been no wedding bells, the programme has spawned 32 face-to-face meetings and brought together 17 couples.

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MP whose murder sparked Irish civil war to get Commons plaque

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Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was assassinated by IRA gunmen 100 years ago and then all but forgotten

On 22 June 1922 Sir Henry Wilson, an army field marshal turned MP, unveiled a plaque to railway employees who had died in the first world war before returning to his stately home in Belgravia, central London.

He was a distinctive figure – tall, in uniform, with a facial scar that had earned him a nickname as the “ugliest man in the British army”.

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Visa delays leave UK families with adopted babies stranded in Pakistan

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Home Office accused of leaving mothers and traumatised children stranded for months while priority is given to Ukraine refugees

British couples who travelled to Pakistan to adopt children have been left stranded after the Home Office told them to expect months of delays in processing visas because of the Ukraine refugee crisis.

The delays are part of wider failings in visa processing that have left families around the world stuck waiting to return to the UK.

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US ban on cotton from forced Uyghur labour comes into force

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Fashion industry told to avoid cotton from Xinjiang, which accounts for 84% of China’s exports of the product

The fashion industry has been told it must wean itself off cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, as a new law comes into force giving US border authorities greater powers to block or seize goods linked to forced labour in China.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which comes into force today, assumes that any product partly or wholly made in Xinjiang, north-west China, is linked to the region’s labour camps. Since 2017, the Chinese authorities have detained as many as one million Uyghurs and subjected them to forced labour.

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UK lawyers gather evidence for action against countries over Yazidi genocide

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Yazidi Justice Committee has been working privately for more than two years to show states failed to protect minority group

A group of high-level British lawyers have been working privately on compiling evidence to show that one or more countries failed in their international obligations to prevent genocide against the Yazidis in northern Iraq.

The lawyers, who formally announced their collaboration as the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC) on Tuesday, have been working over the past two and a half years to investigate the genocide committed from early 2013 by Islamic State.

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‘He’s been betrayed’: sister of Moroccan man captured in Ukraine pleads for help

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Brahim Saadoun’s sister Iman says marine sentenced to death by Russian proxies has been abandoned by his own government

The sister of Brahim Saadoun, the Moroccan man who was captured while serving in the Ukrainian military, has said she feared he has been abandoned by his own government and has called on the international community to “claim my brother”.

“I just want any authority, anybody who is willing to help, to come and help,” Iman Saadoun said in an interview with the Guardian, describing being left in limbo while seeking government support for him.

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