Russian president Vladimir Putin is being briefed on a US paper reaffirming support for Ukraine’s right to pursue Nato membership
The United States has not given a positive response to Russia’s most important security question, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
The Russian news agency Ria Novosti quotes Lavrov as telling reporters that there was “no positive reaction” on the main question.
Continue reading...John Boyne’s story is used by more than a third of teachers in England in lessons on the Nazi genocide, a study found
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas may “perpetuate a number of dangerous inaccuracies and fallacies” when used in teaching young people about the Holocaust, an academic report has said.
According to research by the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London, more than a third of teachers in England use the bestselling book and film adaptation in lessons on the Nazi genocide.
Continue reading...In Puerto Viejo, scuba diving was once just for tourists, but a centre is training young people with few opportunities to care for the ocean on their doorstep
“I put fresh almond leaves in your underwater masks as anti-fogging – a way to avoid using chemicals. You can remove them once in the water, just before diving,” says Salim Vasquez, 14, pushing her dreadlocks away from her mask.
She distributes the equipment to her fellow divers, who are aged between 14 and 24, and Ana María Arenas, a group coordinator. It is 8am on a cloudy Sunday morning in Puerto Viejo, a Jamaican-inspired city in the south of Costa Rica. The young conservationists are preparing to dive into the Caribbean water for their weekly reef monitoring.
Continue reading...Stella Nyanzi talks about challenging Uganda’s President Museveni from her new home and why she had to leave the land she loves
The first few days of Stella Nyanzi’s new life in Germany have not been without their challenges, from navigating the TV and internet in a different language to finding the right school for her three teenagers. On the second day, the family went shopping for clothes – “thick jackets, mittens and scarves” – to see them through the fierce Bavarian winter. For her 14-year-old twins, who have lived their whole lives in sub-Saharan Africa and who insisted on wearing Crocs with no socks on the flight over, the sub-zero temperatures were a rude awakening.
At the centre of it all, however, has been deep sense of relief. Nyanzi, a 47-year-old outspoken scholar, poet and human rights advocate whose irreverent writing about Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has seen her jailed twice, decided enough was enough. She has been accepted on a writers-in-exile programme run by PEN Germany, and has no intention of returning to Uganda while the 77-year-old Museveni is in power. And while there are many concerns about how she and her children are going to settle into Munich life, the sense of freedom is powering her on.
Continue reading...An image titled The Dancing Dreams of a Mountain Girl, depicting a young mountain girl dancing for her grandmother in a village in China, is the overall winner of an international photo competition celebrating Chinese culture. The Global SinoPhoto awards invited photographers to tell Chinese stories, imagining, interpreting and inspiring connections between Chinese culture and the rest of the world. The awards covered four categories: water (as 2022 is the year of the water tiger), home, work and play, and environment.
The Museum of East Asian Art (MEAA) in Bath is to exhibit the winning entries from 16 February until 14 May 2022
Continue reading...Fears that aid missions could spark a Covid outbreak were highlighted when two dozen crew members were diagnosed with the virus
British and Australian navy ships have arrived in Tonga and attempted to deliver aid without making contact with anybody ashore to avoid spreading the coronavirus in a nation that has never had an outbreak.
The danger of spreading the disease was underscored when nearly two dozen sailors aboard the Australian ship HMAS Adelaide were reported infected on Tuesday, raising fears they could bring Covid-19 to the small Pacific archipelago devastated by an undersea volcanic eruption and a tsunami on 15 January.
Continue reading...US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said 'there will be no change 'to Washington’s support for Ukraine’s right to pursue Nato membership, the most contentious issue in relations with Moscow.
The US has presented its written response to Russian demands on Ukraine, offering to negotiate with Russia over some aspects of European security, but not the issue of eventual Ukrainian membership to the Nato alliance.
Blinken was speaking hours after his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, threatened 'retaliatory measures' if the US response did not satisfy the Kremlin
Duke denies Jeffrey Epstein ‘trafficked girls to him’ and demands trial in Virginia Giuffre’s sexual abuse lawsuit
Prince Andrew has denied that he was a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, and insisted on a jury trial in Virginia Giuffre’s sexual abuse lawsuit against him, his lawyers said in court papers filed on Wednesday.
“Prince Andrew hereby demands a trial by jury on all causes of action asserted in the complaint,” his lawyers wrote. The Duke of York also denies that Epstein “trafficked girls to him”, the attorneys said in their legal filings.
Continue reading...Emir expected to tell US president Qatar can provide short-term emergency liquid gas to help replace any loss of supplies
The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, is expected to tell the US president, Joe Biden, that his country will provide some short-term emergency liquid gas to help replace any shortages if Russia cuts off supplies to Germany.
Qatar is looking to supply Europe through transferring excess gas in storage in east Asia. It is also hoping to return to the European market on a bigger scale as its own production levels rise, but wants to see an end to a European Commission anti-trust investigation.
Continue reading...Family says young mother’s health deteriorated rapidly after the twins she was carrying died a week apart in the womb
The family of a Polish woman who died on Tuesday after doctors refused to perform an abortion when the foetus’s heart stopped beating have accused the government of having “blood on their hands”.
The woman, identified only as Agnieszka T, was said to have been in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy when she was admitted to the Blessed Virgin Mary hospital in Częstochowa on 21 December. Her death comes a year after Poland introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
Continue reading...Joe Biden will meet with several CEOs this afternoon to discuss Democrats’ Build Back Better Act, the $1.75tn spending package that includes massive investments in healthcare, childcare and climate initiatives.
“This afternoon, I’m meeting with CEOs who support passing my Build Back Better Agenda to discuss how it’ll invest in American workers, grow our economy, and lower inflation in the long-term,” Biden said on Twitter.
Continue reading...UK also records over 102,000 daily cases; Danish plan would mean most far-reaching easing among Nordic countries
The key lines from UK foreign secretary Liz Truss on Sky News are that she has reiterated her 100% support for the prime minister, she has said that she herself attended no parties during lockdown, and she also said – albeit with a slight pause – that she had not been invited to any parties during lockdown. She declined, when asked, to call for Labour leader Keir Starmer to also be investigated by police over having a beer in a constituency office.
Beyond that she said “I’m not going to prejudice the findings of the Sue Gray report, or indeed, the police investigation” or words to that effect quite a lot. She said:
I believe that he’s done a fantastic job as prime minister, whether it’s delivering Brexit, delivering the Covid vaccines, the booster programmes. We’ve now got a much faster growing economy than many of our competitors, thanks to his work, and I believe that’s what we should focus on … I don’t think it’s helpful to speculate on specific claims or specific accusations about what may or may not have happened.
Continue reading...Observational study finds double-jabbed people 41% less likely to report Covid symptoms 12 weeks after a positive test
Vaccination could reduce the risk of long Covid, research by the Office for National Statistics suggests.
The study, of more than 6,000 adults, found those who were double-vaccinated had a 41% lower likelihood of self-reporting Covid symptoms 12 weeks after first testing positive.
Continue reading...French president seeks to address France’s colonial legacy in north Africa
Emmanuel Macron is to meet representatives of the Pieds Noirs – the Algerian-born French citizens who fled to France after Algerian independence in 1962 – as he seeks to address France’s colonial legacy in north Africa ahead of a bid for re-election this spring.
The Elysée said the aim was to continue Macron’s drive to build a “calm, shared memory, common to all” of the Algerian conflict.
Continue reading...PM called claims he intervened to help evacuation of animal charity ‘complete nonsense’
Foreign Office emails appear to contradict Downing Street’s insistence that Boris Johnson did not personally authorise the controversial rescue of cats and dogs from a British animal charity in Afghanistan.
The release of two emails on Wednesday prompted claims that the prime minister lied, while he faces separate accusations about misleading parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal.
Continue reading...French, German, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats are meeting in Paris in the latest effort to de-escalate the crisis
The Normandy format is an informal forum that was set up by French, German, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats in 2014, after Russia kickstarted a separatist conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. It takes its name from the Normandy landings in the second world war. The first meeting took place in Normandy on the margins of the ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the allied landings.
Continue reading...President signals more cautious approach to climate crisis and says China must ‘overcome notion of rapid success’
China’s ambitious low-carbon goals will not be realised easily and should not come at the expense of energy and food security or the “normal life” of ordinary people, its president, Xi Jinping, has said, signalling a more cautious approach to the climate emergency as the economy slows.
China, the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, has been under pressure to “enhance ambition” and take more drastic action to tackle global heating. In the past two years, Beijing has also made a number of pledges to show its commitment.
Continue reading...Jozef Puska, 31, appeared before Cloverhill district court, Dublin, on Wednesday via video link
A man charged with the murder of Irish schoolteacher Ashling Murphy has appeared in court and been remanded in custody for a further two weeks.
Jozef Puska, 31, of Mucklagh in Co Offaly, appeared before Cloverhill district court in Dublin, on Wednesday via video link.
Continue reading...Hundreds of people, mostly women, condemned during witch-hunts that persisted well into 18th century
The Catalan parliament is on Wednesday expected to pass a resolution to pardon up to 1,000 people – the majority of them women – condemned for the crime of witchcraft in the region 400 years ago.
The move follows similar gestures in Scotland, Switzerland and Norway after more than 100 European historians signed a manifesto titled: They weren’t witches, they were women.
Continue reading...Frank Hurley’s 1919 silent footage turns Sir Ernest Shackleton’s gruelling expedition into a travelogue with cute penguins
Pioneering Australian photographer and film-maker Frank Hurley was the official witness to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s gruelling expedition attempting to cross the Antarctic landmass, which lasted three years from 1914 to 1917. For most of the time the crew were utterly cut off from news of the outside world and the expedition became an epic ordeal when, on the way there, their ship (aptly named Endurance) was crushed and sunk by pack ice. Shackleton and his men were forced to journey onwards in a lifeboat in the desolate cold, finally to South Georgia, then rescued and brought by a Chilean vessel to the harbour in Valparaíso where they were accorded a hero’s welcome.
This 1919 silent movie is Hurley’s filmed record of Shackleton’s voyage and what is startling about it is its weird tonal obtuseness: so often it feels like a home-movie travelogue in which the mood is bafflingly jaunty. Towards the end of the film, just at the point when their lives have been saved and disaster averted, the film spends about 10 minutes on the adorable behaviour of the penguins. This is at the moment when Shackleton’s victory was said to consist simply in his heroic survival, the expedition itself having, of course, been a failure, but the film simply sets aside the obvious poignant or tragic dimension.
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