Category Archives: World News

Two Hong Kong universities remove Tiananmen artworks after Pillar of Shame dismantled

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CUHK’s Goddess of Democracy and a sculpture at Lingnan University were removed overnight as authorities move to erase memorials to the massacre

Two more Hong Kong universities have removed works of art marking Beijing’s deadly 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square democracy protesters, as authorities move to erase memorials to the event.

The removals come a day after Hong Kong’s oldest university took down a statue named the Pillar of Shame, commemorating the events of 1989, sparking outcry by activists and dissident artists in the city and abroad.

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Locked-out New Zealanders outraged as visa scheme for rich foreigners resumes

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Critics say the wealthy will be able to buy their way in while citizens lose out on quarantine spots

A controversial New Zealand scheme that offers visas to wealthy foreign investors has resumed operating after a year’s hiatus due to the pandemic, prompting concern from overseas New Zealanders who fear it will place additional strain on the country’s overburdened managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) system.

Martin Newell, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Grounded Kiwis, said the scheme’s resumption would prompt “disbelief” among New Zealanders overseas, who may lose out on MIQ spots to the investors.

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Why Putin is acting like a man who has run out of time

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Analysis: As Ukraine drifts from the control he desires, disdain for potential negotiating partners leaves the option of force

Vladimir Putin has deployed his troops to the border with Ukraine, delivered impossible demands on Europe and appears ready to launch a new offensive to establish his domination over Kyiv.

Putin is said to feel a “historical mission” to reverse Ukraine’s drift towards the west, despite his own role in creating a rift by annexing Crimea and fuelling a war in Ukraine’s south-east. But his current fast pace raises questions of why he appears to feel the moment to act is now, as if he is running out of time.

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‘They keep telling us: war, war, war’: Putin accuses west of expanding towards Russia – video

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Vladimir Putin has accused the west of 'coming with its missiles to our doorstep' as he reiterated demands for no further Nato expansion in Europe. 'They keep telling us: war, war, war,' Putin said on Thursday.

The Russian president did little to reduce tensions over Ukraine as he spoke at a televised press conference, saying he would be prepared to launch an intervention if he felt Ukraine or its western allies were preparing an attack on Russia’s proxies in the country

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Typhoon Rai: more than 3m people directly affected in Philippines

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Some areas still cut off a week after disaster, with power outages and shortages of food and clean water

More than 3 million people have been directly affected by the devastation wreaked by Typhoon Rai, which caused widespread power outages and water shortages, and has left some areas completely cut off from relief teams even a week after the disaster.

Rai first hit the Philippines last Thursday, and has been described by the Red Cross as one of the worst typhoons to hit the country in December in five decades. The true scale of the destruction is still unknown because of the extensive communication cuts, and damage to roads, ports and airports.

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Harry and Meghan release first photo of Lilibet on Christmas card

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Image taken at home shows daughter held up by her mother, as prince sits with son Archie on his knee

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have released the first picture of their daughter, Lilibet, with Meghan holding up the laughing child in an image on their Christmas card.

The photo, which also shows Prince Harry with curly haired Archie on his knee, was taken by Alexi Lubomirski this summer at the couple’s home in Santa Barbara, California.

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Putin accuses west of ‘coming with its missiles to our doorstep’

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Russian president again voices anger at Nato expansion and says he would be prepared to intervene in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has accused the west of “coming with its missiles to our doorstep” as he reiterated demands for no further Nato expansion in Europe.

The Russian president did little to reduce tensions over Ukraine as he spoke at a televised press conference, saying he would be prepared to launch an intervention if he felt Ukraine or its western allies were preparing an attack on Russia’s proxies in the country.

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The dog who got me through 2021: Leo the Peke made my blood pressure drop and my heart swell

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He is not a big name among dogfluencers, but whenever I felt stressed, something about this pekingese Instagram pup calmed me

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, went the New Yorker cartoon. Nearly 30 years later, it says so in your profile.

My Instagram feed is full of dogs, or people posting as their dogs from their own accounts. Some I know well, like my sister’s sweet but vacant pug Margot.

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Volcano-hit La Palma gets a piece of Spain’s biggest lotto

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After volcanic eruptions and tourism woes, island gets some Christmas cheer as tickets scoop €400,000

After grappling with volcanic eruptions that dragged on for three months, piling on to the tourism woes brought by the coronavirus pandemic, a bit of luck has landed in the Canary Island of La Palma.

Spain’s Christmas lottery – the two-century-old tradition that on Wednesday showered €2.4bn in prize money across the country – included a nugget of good news for the hard-hit island as two local kiosks said they had sold winning tickets worth a total of €400,000.

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‘We don’t have a limit’: Yasuyoshi Chiba – agency photographer of 2021

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Yasuyoshi Chiba has been chosen by the picture desk as its agency photographer of the year. We hear from the AFP photojournalist

In 2021 Yasuyoshi Chiba’s work consistently stood out to the Guardian picture editing team. From his coverage of the elections in Uganda at the start of the year, through to his images from the Kimana Sanctuary in Kenya and the harrowing work in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

Yasuyoshi Chiba

The year has been a reminder that my work is dealing with an unexpected future. Thanks to the delivery of the Covid-19 vaccines, the world has slowly resumed, and I also again feel the value of being in the field for photography.

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Voices of Covid doctors: ‘It was always about trying to save you’ – video

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Healthcare workers around the world have been on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic for almost two years, which put them through the darkest days of their careers. Five doctors who have worked in hospitals in Uganda, New Zealand, the US, India, the UK and Brazil told the Guardian about how the pandemic had tested them personally and professionally, but how they continue to find hope and resolve to keep working.

Thanks to Dr Peter Kavuma, Dr Dalilah Restrepo, Dr Yogesh Kalkonde, Dr Anne Menezes and Dr Megan Smith, who is also a spokesperson at the campaigning organisation EveryDoctor

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‘A breakthrough, not a breakdown’: one woman’s quest to transform mental health care in India

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Psychologist Ratnaboli Ray’s recovery from a mental health crisis inspired her to fight for women suffering in ‘abysmal’ conditions in West Bengal’s state institutions

  • Photography by Ranita Roy for the Guardian

Ratnaboli Ray regards one of the lowest points of her life as a breakthrough. After years in an arranged marriage in which she felt stifled and trapped, her mental health took a catastrophic turn in 1997, when she was in her mid-30s.

“I was feeling very caged, I was not able to express myself,” she says, from her home in West Bengal, India. She describes the psychological symptoms as like a pressure cooker bursting. “I used to get angry, have weeping spells. I was neglectful of my young son.”

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Mandatory Covid jabs in Malawi ‘violate human rights’, say civil society groups

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Measure aimed at frontline workers to reduce spread of Omicron variant may increase unrest in country with low vaccine take-up, critics warn

Civil rights groups in Malawi have cautioned the government on its decision to make the Covid-19 vaccination mandatory for frontline workers.

From January, it will be compulsory for public sector workers, including healthcare staff, police and teachers, as well as journalists, to be vaccinated, after an announcement by Malawi’s health minister, Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, last week.

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Covid live: Catalonia to introduce curfew; Italy bans public NYE celebrations

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Latest updates: UK says risk of hospitalisation 70% lower with Omicron; France set to report highest case numbers

The premier of Australia’s most populous state of NSW, Dominic Perrottet, addressed the media on Thursday to confirm masks will be mandated for inside areas and density limits would also be imposed.

As of midnight tonight, we will be requiring that masks are worn in indoor settings.

We are encouraging people, particularly over the holiday period, if you can work from home, please work from home.

In addition to that, we’re encouraging people not to mingle and when you’re out and out at a restaurant or cafe and a pub or a club, please where possible don’t mingle.

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New Zealand ends 2021 with one of world’s best Covid outcomes – but it wasn’t all good news

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Few cases and high vaccination rates, but these successes have come at a cost

As the Covid-19 pandemic hurtles towards its second anniversary, New Zealand will emerge from 2021 with some of the best health outcomes in the world, despite confronting its toughest few pandemic months.

This year New Zealand experienced its longest lockdown, its highest daily case numbers (222 in mid-November), more hospitalisations than in 2020 and a pivot away from the government’s ambitious elimination approach to one of strict virus control. But it can now boast a 90% double vaccination for the eligible population and one of the lowest per capita death rates, while its cases in the current outbreak are trending downwards.

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Outcry as memorial to Tiananmen Square victims removed from Hong Kong University

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Site of the Pillar of Shame at city’s oldest university under guard after workmen cut up statue

Hong Kong’s oldest university and the territory’s authorities have been accused of rewriting history after cutting up and removing a statue mourning those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

The erasure of the memorial from where it had stood for nearly 25 years came as Beijing has intensified its targeting of political dissent in Hong Kong since the Covid pandemic.

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Nord Stream 2: how Putin’s pipeline paralysed the west

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Gazprom’s $11bn project to deliver gas from Russia to Germany seems impossible to abandon and impossible to carry forward

The saga of Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany running along the Baltic seabed, has been stuck so long it has been likened to a suitcase at an airport without a handle – impossible to abandon, and impossible to carry forward. Most of the original cast of characters – Jean-Claude Juncker, Angela Merkel, Matteo Renzi, David Cameron, Petro Poroshenko – have left the political stage. Only one politician has survived the entire story: Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, and the master of divide and rule.

First announced in 2015, the $11bn (£8.3bn) pipeline owned by Russia’s state-backed energy giant Gazprom has been built to carry gas from western Siberia, doubling the existing capacity of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and keeping 26m German homes warm at an affordable price.

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Asia’s factory workers at the sharp end of the west’s supply chain crisis

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Migrant workers ate and slept in factories swarming with Covid, sealed off from outside world

For weeks, Hoang Thi Quynh* worked and slept inside a garment factory in Tien Giang province, in southern Vietnam. She would start her shift at 7.15am and then, after a day spent sewing sportswear garments, enter an empty hall of the factory complex and settle down for the night.

Each worker had a tent, set one or two metres apart, containing a foil mat, pillow, blanket and a box to store their belongings. No workers were permitted to meet anyone from outside the factory; even speaking to a visitor over the gates was forbidden.

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Cat burglar: New Zealand pet steals bong, bag of white powder and lacy underwear

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Keith the cat is known locally for making off with everything from live eels to tradesmen’s boots

A New Zealand cat with a reputation as a talented thief has taken his habit to new lows by bringing home drugs and a pair of lacy black knickers, according to his owners.

Keith’s crime wave started three years ago, when he began stealing bras from nearby clothes lines and bringing home live eels from the local Heathcote river in Christchurch.

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Tiananmen massacre statue removed from Hong Kong university – video

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A monument at a Hong Kong university that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings was boarded up by workers. Drilling sounds and loud clanging could be heard coming from the boarded-up site, which was patrolled by guards, as workers barricaded the Pillar of Shame monument at the University of Hong Kong. The 8-metre-tall (26ft) Pillar of Shame, which depicts 50 torn and twisted bodies piled on top of each other, was created by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt to symbolise those who lost their lives during the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Galschiøt said he believed the sculpture had been cut up into pieces, and that he was considering pursuing legal action to save it.

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