Category Archives: World News

Sony to start electric car firm as it ‘explores a commercial launch’

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Tokyo-listed shares in Japanese group rise after it shows off second concept vehicle

Sony has revealed plans to start an electric car company, making it the latest electronics manufacturer to target the automotive sector.

The Japanese tech firm is “exploring a commercial launch” of electric vehicles, and will launch a new company, Sony Mobility Inc, in the spring, its chairman and president, Kenichiro Yoshida, told a news conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in the US.

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Rocky road: Paraguay’s new Chaco highway threatens rare forest and last of the Ayoreo people

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Forced from their homes by missionaries, the Ayoreo cling on in the Chaco. Now the Bioceanic Corridor cuts through the fastest-vanishing forest on Earth, refuge of some of the Americas’ last hunter-gatherers

In 1972, Catholic missionaries entered the Chaco forest of northern Paraguay and forced Oscar Pisoraja’s family, and their nomadic Ayoreo people, to leave with them. Many perished from thirst on the long march south. Settled near the village of Carmelo Peralta on the Paraguay River, dozens more died from illnesses. Still, the survivors kept up some traditions – hunting for armadillos; weaving satchels from the spiky caraguatá plant. “We felt part of this place,” says Pisoraja, now 51.

Today, his community – and other indigenous peoples across the Chaco, a tapestry of swamp, savanna and thorny forest across four countries that is South America’s largest ecosystem after the Amazon – are confronting a dramatic new change.

Mario Abdo Benítez, Paraguay’s president, and Reinaldo Azambuja Silva, governor of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil, at the site of a new bridge across the Paraguay River, due to be completed in 2024

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Cuba’s vaccine success story sails past mark set by rich world’s Covid efforts

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The island nation struggles to keep the lights on but has inoculated 90% of population with home-developed vaccines

General Máximo Gómez, a key figure in Cuba’s 19th-century wars of independence against Spain once said: “Cubans either don’t meet the mark – or go way past it.”

A century and a half later, the aphorism rings true. This downtrodden island struggles to keep the lights on, but has now vaccinated more of its citizens against Covid-19 than any of the world’s major nations.

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Empty promise: new political group speaks up for depopulated rural Spain

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Support for España Vaciada in villages such as Milmarcos could threaten the old ruling duopoly

Judith Iturbe grimaces as she thinks about August and what it means for the residents and rhythms of Milmarcos.

At the height of summer, the population of this small and beautiful Spanish village, which sits close to Castilla-La Mancha’s border with Aragón, rises from just 44 to about 1,000.

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Filipinos count cost of climate crisis as typhoons get ever more destructive

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The Philippines adds little to global emissions but faces some of its worst effects in extreme weather. Climate justice is needed

A few days before Christmas, Super-typhoon Rai – known locally as Odette – ravaged the Philippines. The morning after the onslaught, on my way back to Iloilo City from San Jose, Antique, I could see the ocean still boiling; houses blown away and great trees knocked down, making roads impassable. The sights were terrifying.

Lost lives continue to climb two weeks on. Vast numbers of buildings were destroyed – from houses to schools; food crops lost to flooding. At first, I did not know what to feel – anger, helplessness? Later, I knew what I wanted: climate justice.

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Protests erupt in Kazakhstan over fuel price rise – video

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Protests have broken out in several Kazakh towns and cities after the central Asian nation's government lifted price caps on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and the cost of the popular alternative to petrol soared. The government resigned on Wednesday, hours after the president declared a state of emergency in large parts of the country in response to the rare outbreak of unrest. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has appointed Alikhan Smailov as acting prime minister.

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‘People said I didn’t have enough talent’: the rise of Italy’s graphic novel gonzo

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Michele Rech aka Zerocalcare’s book signings attract huge crowds and now he has a hit Netflix animated series inspired by his life

Michele Rech is uncomfortable with success. The shy 38-year-old comic book artist, who works from a modest apartment on the outskirts of Rome, does not use the word “fame” but refers instead to his rise to national prominence as a “thing” he struggles to manage.

In the art world, he is known as Zerocalcare and is the cartoonist’s equivalent of Hunter S Thompson. Rech’s graphic novels are a form of gonzo journalism – inspired by his own adventures as a protester on the frontlines of police violence in Italy, and in Syria, where he was embedded with Kurdish forces.

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Covid live: France, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Netherlands report record daily cases as Omicron surges

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France reports 335,000 new Covid cases as Italy, Portugal, Netherlands and Turkey all see record cases

India is reporting 58,097 new Covid cases, twice the number seen only four days ago, according to health ministry data.

Wednesday’s figure takes the cumulative total to more than 35 million.

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Canada reaches C$40bn compensation agreement to reform Indigenous welfare – video

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Canada has reached an in-principle agreement totalling C$4bn (US$31.bn) to compensate First Nations children who were taken from their families and put into the welfare system, a major step toward reconciliation with the country's Indigenous people. David Sterns, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said: ‘This settlement is the largest class action settlement in Canadian history and it is believed to be one of the largest anywhere in the world.' The agreement includes C$2bn for potentially hundreds of thousands of First Nations children who were removed from their families. Another C$2bn is to reform the system over the next five years

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Thousands of Rohingya shops demolished in Bangladesh, leaving refugees desperate

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Bangladesh praised for taking in nearly a million Rohingya refugees, but destruction of shops that serve communities has attracted criticism

Bangladesh authorities have bulldozed more than 3,000 Rohingya-run shops since last month, a government official confirmed on Tuesday, as struggling refugee families voiced their dismay at the demolitions.

About 850,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority are packed into overcrowded displacement camps in Bangladesh, most having fled neighbouring Myanmar after a 2017 military clampdown that prompted an international genocide investigation.

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Macron declares his Covid strategy is to ‘piss off’ the unvaccinated

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French president stokes divisions as parliament debates tighter requirements for mandatory health pass

Emmanuel Macron has prompted a furore after saying that his government’s vaccination strategy is to “piss off” people who have not had coronavirus jabs by continuing to make daily life more and more difficult for them.

“I am not about pissing off the French people,” the president said in an interview with readers of Le Parisien daily on Tuesday. “But as for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.”

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Nearly 100 Nigerian hostages rescued after two months of captivity

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Weary abductees including children and babies ‘freed unconditionally’, say police in troubled northern states

Nearly 100 hostages, most of them women and children, have been rescued more than two months after they were abducted by armed groups in northwest Nigeria.

Among the 97 freed hostages were 19 babies and more than a dozen children, Ayuba Elkana, police chief in Zamfara state, said on Tuesday.

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Capitol attack panel seeks cooperation from Fox News host Sean Hannity

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Committee requests answers from Hannity about communications with Donald Trump before, on and after day of 6 January attack

The US House of Representatives panel investigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol last January is seeking cooperation from Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and one of Donald Trump’s closest allies in the media, as the committee continues to widen its scope.

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the committee, and vice-chair Liz Cheney have requested that Hannity answer questions in relation to communications between Hannity and the former president, as well as the former president’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, and others in the days leading up to the attack, the day itself and in the aftermath.

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Kazakhstan president declares state of emergency after rare outbreak of unrest

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Thousands join demonstrations in Almaty, the largest city, and Mangystau province sparked by rising fuel prices

Kazakhstan’s president has declared a state of emergency in large parts of the country, as authorities struggled to respond to a rare outbreak of unrest.

Sparked by rising fuel prices, protests began in the west of the country over the weekend and have spread quickly.

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Canada agrees C$40bn deal to reform child welfare for First Nations

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Half of total to be offered in compensation to 200,000 individuals and families who suffered from discriminatory system

A C$40bn agreement-in-principle has been reached in Canada to reform the child welfare system for First Nations people and compensate more than 200,000 individuals and families who suffered because of it.

At the heart of the deal is a legacy of discrimination in child welfare systems that saw many children removed from their homes and placed in state care, and others who were denied adequate medical care and social services because of their Indigenous identity.

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France opens terror investigation after Dakar rally explosion

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French racing driver Philippe Boutron was seriously injured in blast in Saudi city of Jeddah

French prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation after a car participating in the Dakar rally was hit by an explosion in Saudi Arabia last week that badly wounded its driver.

After the 30 December attack in the city of Jeddah, the driver, Philippe Boutron, underwent surgery in Saudi Arabia for serious leg injuries before returning to France.

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‘A real miracle’: dog saves injured hiker stranded in Croatian mountains

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Dog kept man warm and safe until rescuers found him

A dog saved a hiker injured in the Croatian mountains by lying on top of him for 13 hours until they were rescued, according to local media.

The dog, called North, kept Grga Brkic warm after he fell while out hiking and was unable to move. The other two hikers with him were unable to reach them, so they raised the alarm.

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Emma Watson pro-Palestinian post sparks antisemitism row

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Israeli officials attack actor’s message, and are accused of ‘cynical weaponisation’ of term

Emma Watson has been accused of antisemitism by Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations after she posted a message of support for the Palestinian cause.

Watson, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, posted an image on Instagram showing a photograph of a pro-Palestinian protest with the banner “Solidarity is a Verb” written across it. It was accompanied with a quote about the meaning of solidarity from the intersectional feminist scholar Sara Ahmed.

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Melania’s latest NFT is selling for £180,000 – at last one of the Trumps is showing entrepreneurial spirit | Arwa Mahdawi

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The former first lady has launched a jewellery line and caviar moisturiser, but digital portraits could be her real money maker

There’s no rest for the wicked, eh? While a lot of people have spent the past few weeks trying to do as little as possible, it has been go-go-go for the Trump family. Donald, Ivanka and Donald Jr have been issued with subpoenas as part of a fraud inquiry into the family’s businesses. Melania, meanwhile, has been busy building a business of her own. The former first lady, turned crypto queen, has jumped on the non-fungible token (NFT) trend: last month she was flogging a digital painting of her eyes titled Melania’s Vision (and promising an unspecified portion of the proceeds from her digital ventures would go to children ageing out of foster care). The price? One SOL (Solana, the cryptocurrency, is worth about £128). Now, she has released a picture of herself dressed in white for a starting bid of just 1,415.86 SOL (£180,000).

Melania’s NFT venture isn’t her first brush with entrepreneurship. She had a jewellery line and once developed a skincare range called Melania Trump’s Caviar Complexe C6™ with Lipid Matrix Receptor™ Technology. She tested her caviar creams on her then seven-year-old son Barron (“It smells very, very fresh … He likes it!” Melania told reporters at the time). Alas, no one else got a chance to use them due to a complicated lawsuit that killed the product before it got to the shops.

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