Rescuers in France find 32 people with hypothermia, including five stranded on sandbank
A man has died while trying to cross the Channel to the UK.
The French authorities said the man was found unconscious and pulled from the water after going overboard.
Continue reading...‘It’s like a museum,’ says princess caught in inheritance feud over one of the world’s most expensive homes
As legend goes, tossing a coin into the Trevi fountain guarantees a return visit to Rome. When, as a 16-year-old American tourist, Rita Carpenter participated in the ritual and made a wish to one day marry a Roman and live in the Italian capital, little did she know that almost five decades on she would return to marry a prince and home would be a 16th-century villa stuffed with history, including the only ceiling mural ever painted by Caravaggio.
But now Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi is facing the prospect of having to move out of the sprawling Villa Aurora, and the vast treasures it contains are at risk of being closed off to the public.
Continue reading...February issue cover shot is an important statement of anti-tokenism, says magazine’s editor
British Vogue has hailed a new era that spotlights African fashion. The magazine’s February issue features nine dark-skinned models of African heritage on its cover, including Adut Akech.
Seemingly referencing Peter Lindbergh’s “Supers” Vogue cover from 1990, which introduced the world to the idea of the supermodel, the shot is a challenge to the traditionally white fashion industry, which has, since the murder of George Floyd, been under pressure to change and become more inclusive and diverse.
Continue reading...In recent days many evacuees have come home, as the island scrambles to find a use for the spewed matter
For three months they were subject to whims of a roaring volcano. Now residents on the small Spanish island of La Palma are wrestling with another dilemma: what do with the millions of cubic metres of lava and ash it left behind.
The volcano rumbled for 85 days, ejecting ash and rivers of lava that swallowed more than 1,000 homes, cut off highways and suffocated the lush banana plantations that drive the island’s economy.
Continue reading...Analysis: After eight years of conflict with the west, many Russians appear resigned to whatever course Putin chooses
Russia’s buildup of a potential invasion force on Ukraine’s borders has produced little reaction at home despite western threats of devastating economic consequences that would harm tycoons, top businesspeople and the general public alike.
Since 2014, recurrent rounds of sanctions over the annexation of Crimea, the shooting down of the MH17 jetliner, the 2016 US elections interference, the Salisbury poisonings, the attempted assassination of Alexei Navalny and other international scandals have steeled Vladimir Putin’s elite supporters and prepared them for the worst.
Continue reading...Pre-Covid the country battled poor learning outcomes, now experts fear fee rises and school closures will see many more children miss out
The gate that once proudly displayed the name of Godwins primary school in Kampala has been removed. The compound, where pupils played at break time, is now a parking area for trucks ferrying goods to the nearby market, while the classrooms have been turned into a travellers’ lodge.
Uganda’s schools were ordered to reopen on Monday 10 January, after nearly two years of closure – the longest school shutdown in the world – but not all were able to welcome pupils back. Godwins, in Kalerwe in Kawempe division, is one of the many schools that will never reopen. It had been in existence for 20 years catering to children whose parents work in nearby Kalerwe market.
Continue reading...More than two thirds of Poland’s Covid-19 medical advisory body resigns; restrictions in the Netherlands will be eased from Saturday
South Korea will extend tougher social distancing rules for three more weeks amid concerns over a looming Omicron wave ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, officials said on Friday.
The curbs were restored a month ago just six weeks after being eased under a “living with Covid-19” scheme, as record-breaking numbers of new cases and critically ill patients threatened to saturate the country’s medical system.
Continue reading...Suspected Russian hackers leave message warning: ‘Ukrainians … be afraid and expect worse’
Ukraine has been hit by a “massive” cyber-attack, with the websites of several government departments including the ministry of foreign affairs and the education ministry knocked out.
Officials said it was too early to draw any conclusions but they pointed to a “long record” of Russian cyber assaults against Ukraine, with the attack coming after security talks between Moscow and the US and its allies this week ended in stalemate.
Continue reading...Giuffre says she will ‘continue to expose truth’ and ‘seek justice from those who hurt me and others’
Virginia Giuffre has praised a court ruling enabling her sexual assault civil lawsuit against the Duke of York to proceed to trial and said she will “continue to expose the truth”.
Giuffre wrote on Twitter she was “pleased” with the ruling, adding: “I’m glad I will have the chance to continue to expose the truth & I am deeply grateful to my extraordinary legal team.
Continue reading...Cargill, which had pledged to clean up its supply chain, sells feed for many of the billion chickens killed annually in UK
A major supplier of animal feed is still buying soya and corn from a farm linked to deforestation in the Amazon, despite having pledged to clean up its global supply chains.
Cargill, a giant agricultural multinational that sells feed to British chicken farms, buys crops from a farm growing soybeans on deforested land in the Brazilian Amazon.
Continue reading...While wealthiest got richer, 140m people fell into poverty as jobs were lost, wiping out years of gains for poorest, report finds
Twenty new “pandemic billionaires” have been created in Asia thanks to the international response to Covid-19, while 140 million people across the continent were plunged into poverty as jobs were lost during the pandemic, according to Oxfam.
A report by the aid organisation says that by March 2021, profits from the pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and services needed for the Covid response had made 20 people new billionaires as lockdowns and economic stagnation destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of others.
Continue reading...Care International report highlights ‘deep injustice’ neglected by world’s media, as extreme weather along with Covid wipes out decades of progress
From Afghanistan to Ethiopia, about 235 million people worldwide needed assistance in 2021. But while some crises received global attention, others are lesser known.
Humanitarian organisation Care International has published its annual report of the 10 countries that had the least attention in online articles in five languages around the world in 2021, despite each having at least 1 million people affected by conflict or climate disasters.
Continue reading...International Energy Agency says pollution from power generation will worsen until alternatives are found
The global surge in demand for energy could spark another three years of market volatility and record power plant pollution unless countries make major changes to how they generate electricity, the world’s energy watchdog has warned.
The International Energy Agency recorded the steepest ever increase in electricity demand last year, which triggered blackouts in major economies and led to historic energy price highs and record emissions.
Continue reading...Analysis: sentencing of former colonel to life by German court may not be last chink in Assad’s armour
It was a moment thought nearly impossible after a decade of impunity: a senior Syrian intelligence officer jailed for life for helping direct the horrors of one of modern history’s most brutal wars.
But as Anwar Raslan, a former colonel in Bashar al-Assad’s forces, bowed to his fate, survivors of the barbarous regime of torture that he helped run finally had something to cling to.
Continue reading...Up to 170,000 people are thought to have left homes in Myanmar’s Kayah state due to intensified fighting
Nan and her family had just one hour to gather their belongings and prepare to flee their home. A charity had offered to drive them away from Loikaw, the capital of eastern Myanmar’s Kayah state, to relative safety. She considered staying behind, with the plants, dogs and pigs that she had raised, but knew she had to leave.
Since last week, Loikaw has seen intense fighting between groups opposed to last year’s military coup and the armed forces, which have launched airstrikes and fired artillery. An artillery shell had dropped near Nan’s fence, terrifying her cousin’s children, who ran to hide under their bed. “It was so loud,” she said. “My grandma was shocked and sweating, we had to give her medication to calm her down.” Other homes in Nan’s neighbourhood have been hit.
Continue reading...Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe said he tested positive even as region resumes events, hockey games and in-person learning
A day after dismissing the need for more restrictive measures to combat the coronavirus, the premier in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has tested positive for Covid-19.
“I’m feeling fine, but will be self-isolating and working from home for the next five days,” wrote Scott Moe on Twitter, alongside an image of a positive antigen test.
Continue reading...Russia calls talks a ‘dead end’ and it becomes clear that troop build-up is not a bluff to achieve other ends
The Guardian’s world affairs editor assesses the outcome of three rounds of talks this week about the fate of Ukraine, involving Russia, the US, Nato and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Did the talks achieve anything?
Continue reading...Poland's foreign minister has warned that Europe is closer to war than it has been at any time in the last three decades, at the launch of his country's year-long chairing of the region's largest security organisation. Without naming Russia in his address on Thursday to envoys from the 57 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Zbigniew Rau mentioned tensions in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova, all countries with active or frozen conflicts in which Russia has been alleged to be a party
Continue reading...Stocks run perilously low, with main supply route into region of northern Ethiopia unusable since December
Humanitarian organisations in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia are running perilously low on food and fuel stocks as an intensified wave of airstrikes further hampers a threadbare aid effort already stymied by lack of access.
In what it calls a de facto blockade, the UN says fighting between Tigrayan rebels and forces loyal to the Ethiopian government has rendered the main supply route into the war-torn region unusable since mid-December.
Continue reading...Germany one of first countries in the world to recommend boosters for teenagers; Hungary to make fourth Covid jab available to people who ask for it
Daily coronavirus cases in Japan have exceeded 13,000 for the first time in more than four months, as the country confronts a sixth wave of infections driven by the Omicron variant.
It reported 13,244 new cases on Wednesday, including 2,198 in Tokyo and 1,711 in Osaka. The number of new infections in the Japanese capital was more than double that recorded the previous day and a fivefold increase from the same day the previous week.
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