Category Archives: World News

Polish activists protest after woman’s death in wake of strict abortion law

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Demonstrations and candlelit vigil after woman, 30, dies of septic shock in 22nd week of pregnancy

A Polish hospital has said that doctors and midwives did everything they could to save the lives of a pregnant woman and her foetus in a case that has put the spotlight on the country’s new stricter abortion law.

The 30-year-old woman died of septic shock in her 22nd week of pregnancy. Doctors did not perform an abortion, even though her foetus was lacking amniotic fluid, according to a lawyer for the family.

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House Democrats push for twin votes despite Manchin doubts over spending bill – live

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Senator Joe Manchin said it would take “quite a while” to pass the reconciliation package, even as the House looks to hold votes on that proposal and the bipartisan infrastructure bill by the end of the week.

“You’re talking about overhauling the entire tax code. That is tremendous. And there needs to be input. We need to know what the effect’s going to be,” the West Virginia senator told CNN on Capitol Hill.

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Civilian casualties grow as battle for Yemeni city intensifies

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At least 29 people killed on Sunday in rebel missile strike in escalating fight for control of Marib

More than 100 civilians in the Yemeni province of Marib have been killed or injured in the past month as fighting rages for the country’s last major government-loyal stronghold.

Marib city has been under sustained attack since the beginning of the year from Houthi rebels, whose forces have steadily closed in on the central desert area on three different fronts.

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Yahoo withdraws from China as Beijing’s grip on tech firms tightens

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Internet firm cites ‘increasingly challenging business and legal environment’ as reason for exit

Yahoo has announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market in the latest retreat by foreign technology firms responding to Beijing’s tightening control over the industry.

“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” the company said on Tuesday.

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Chinese urged to stockpile amid ongoing Covid outbreak

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Ministry of Commerce website notice posted amid price rises and ongoing Covid outbreak

Chinese families have been encouraged to stockpile daily necessities, prompting panic-buying, amid surging vegetable prices linked to recent extreme weather, fears of supply shortages and an ongoing Covid outbreak.

A notice posted on the website of the Ministry of Commerce late on Monday urged local authorities to stabilise prices and families “to store a certain amount of daily necessities as needed to meet daily life and emergencies”.

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French officials vent fury over Australian leak of Macron text message

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Confidence shattered by ‘crude’ leak of president’s message to prime minister Scott Morrison, says adviser

Elysée officials have expressed fury at the decision of Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, to leak a private text message from the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as the diplomatic rift between the two countries deepened.

“Confidence has been completely shattered,” a close adviser to Macron told French media on Tuesday. “Disclosing a text message exchange between heads of state or government is a pretty crude and unconventional tactic.”

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Canadian academic on leave amid row over Indigenous ancestry claims

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CBC investigation into Carrie Bourassa has drawn comparisons with case of Rachel Dolezal in US

A Canadian official and academic specialising in Indigenous health issues has been placed on administrative leave from her university after an investigation challenged her claims of Indigenous ancestry.

Carrie Bourassa, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, has described herself as having Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit heritage. In 2019 she appeared at a TEDx talk wearing a blue embroidered shawl and holding a feather, where she identified herself as “Morning Star Bear”.

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Objectivity concerns over UN’s report on Tigray civil war

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Scope of UN investigation constrained by Addis Ababa’s involvement, experts say

An international human rights investigation into the brutal civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigray province will be published on Wednesday amid concerns that the scope of the UN inquiry has been constrained by both Addis Ababa and the ongoing conflict.

Due to be released almost exactly a year after the conflict began, the joint UN Human Rights Office and government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), will nevertheless be the most authoritative overview of the war and its consequences.

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Life, death and limbo in the Calais ‘Jungle’ – five years after its demolition

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The refugee camp became notorious in 2015, as 1 million people fled war and danger to come to Europe. Years after it was demolished, 2,000 migrants are still waiting there, at the centre of a political storm

A small group of Ethiopian and Eritrean men stand shoeless and shivering in Calais. A few hours earlier, they almost drowned in the Channel, trying to cross to the UK. They got into difficulty when the motor on their boat failed. Their jeans are stiff and sodden with sand and seawater.

“We called the French coastguard to rescue us but they told us to call the English coastguard,” says one man. “Eventually, the French rescued us and brought us back to Calais.

Migrants and police at the ‘Old Lidl’ site in Calais. The police clear the site regularly, evicting anyone living there and seizing remaining belongings.

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Cop26: ‘You might as well bomb us,’ says president of Palau – video

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The president of the Pacific island state of Palau has told the Cop26 summit that parallels could be drawn between the climate crisis and the traditional Palau story of a boy who grew into a giant and 'wouldn’t stop growing ... depleting all the natural resources'. Surangel Whipps Jr said the story was 'eerily reminiscent' of today’s climate crisis. Speaking about the environmental impact on island nations, he added: 'There is no dignity to a slow and painful death: you might as well bomb our islands'

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France backed down in fishing row after Jersey offer ‘to move things forward’

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Exclusive: Paris shelved plans to ban UK boats from French ports following last-ditch talks

France backed down on its threats to clog up British trade and ban UK fishers from its ports after Jersey offered to expedite approval for “five or six” new fishing vessels in its waters.

Ian Gorst, Jersey’s minister for external affairs, said the offer from his administration and the UK government had proven to be a “good way to move things forward”.

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Bosnia is in danger of breaking up, warns top international official

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Exclusive: high representative says threat by Serb separatists to create their own army risks return of conflict

The international community’s chief representative in Bosnia has warned that the country is in imminent danger of breaking apart, and there is a “very real” prospect of a return to conflict.

In a report to the UN seen by the Guardian, Christian Schmidt, the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that if Serb separatists carry out their threat to recreate their own army, splitting the national armed forces in two, more international peacekeepers would have to be sent back in to stop the slide towards a new war.

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Move over, Aristotle: can a bot solve moral philosophy?

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Delphi, an online AI bot, promises to answer any moral question users pose. We put it to the test

Corporal punishment, wearing fur, pineapple on pizza – moral dilemmas, are by their very nature, hard to solve. That’s why the same ethical questions are constantly resurfaced in TV, films and literature.

But what if AI could take away the brain work and answer ethical quandaries for us? Ask Delphi is a bot that’s been fed more than 1.7m examples of people’s ethical judgments on everyday questions and scenarios. If you pose an ethical quandary, it will tell you whether something is right, wrong, or indefensible.

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New Zealand’s children will all soon study the country’s brutal history – it’s not before time | Vincent O’Malley

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A more truthful understanding of history is largely dependent on education. A lot is riding on the success of this new curriculum

Aotearoa New Zealand has come a long way in the past few years in its efforts to engage with its history in a more upfront and honest manner. For those of us who have campaigned for such a change, this is not before time.

This newfound willingness to move beyond a rose-tinted approach to the nation’s past in which anything uncomfortable or considered to reflect poorly on the Pākehā (European) majority is shunned and ignored has taken considerable effort and is still very much a work in progress.

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‘Many people are inside’: Building collapses in Nigeria, trapping workers – video

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A residential high-rise building under construction in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos collapsed, trapping up to 100 workers under a pile of concrete rubble. The building was in the affluent neighbourhood of Ikoyi, where many blocks of flats are under construction. Building collapses are frequent in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, where regulations are poorly enforced and construction materials often substandard.

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India sets target of net zero by 2070 at Cop26 – live

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World leaders have convened on Glasgow for the first day of the UN’s climate conference

Travel chaos hampered many delegates and observers’ arrival in Glasgow for Cop26 yesterday, with a tree on the tracks taking out the west coast main line for a large part of the day. Trains on the east coast line were also delayed after overhead wires near Peterborough sustained damage.

Guardian reporters Patrick Greenfield (who ended up having to hire a van from Luton and drive to Glasgow) and Phoebe Weston (who endured a heavily delayed journey up the east coast line) have more details here.

1. The arrival. Here we go again. Teams of jet-lagged lobbyists, diplomats, journos, bankers and business folk queue with delegations of indigenous peoples and youth groups, lawyers, NGOs and economists to enter the parallel universe that is a UN climate Cop. Within hours, the complaints will start about the price of coffee, the distance between meeting rooms, the Glaswegian accents, the rain, the trains, the traffic, the UN security, the heavy policing and the dearth of good restaurants.

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House Democrats hope to vote this week on infrastructure and reconciliation bills – live

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About 80% of US adults now have at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 70% of American adults are fully vaccinated.

According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 206,333,974 American adults have now gotten at least one vaccine dose, and 179,729,970 of them are fully vaccinated.

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Tigrayan forces’ capture of two towns raises fears for Ethiopian capital

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Addis Ababa at risk after fall of Dessie and Kombolcha as PM urges a fight to the death against rebels

The weekend seizure of two key towns on the main road to Addis Ababa has alarmed Ethiopian leaders who fear that the rapid advances by Tigrayan rebel forces may soon threaten the capital itself.

The sudden push into the towns of Dessie and Kombolcha was accompanied by short bursts of intense fighting that had reportedly subsided by Monday evening. While Dessie was confirmed to have fallen to the rebels on Sunday, the fate of Kombolcha was less clear, with accounts of continuing sporadic gunfire.

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Coronavirus live news: global Covid death toll hits 5m; Greece reports highest infections total

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US, Brazil, India, Mexico and UK account for over half of deaths in Johns Hopkins University tally

Singapore could see as many 2,000 Covid-19 deaths annually over time, mainly among the elderly, but it was focused on avoiding excess mortality, a minister said this morning, as the country battles its biggest surge in infections.

Reuters report that at 0.2%, Singapore’s Covid-19 case fatality rate is similar to the rate of deaths from pneumonia before the pandemic struck.

If we lose staff over the winter period our ability to provide care is compromised. We’ve got a very, very difficult winter coming up and we know the NHS is going to be at full stretch, so it makes sense to set that deadline once that period has passed. If we lose very large numbers of unvaccinated staff, particularly over the winter period, then that also constitutes a risk to patient safety and quality of care.

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Dozens feared trapped after building collapse in Nigeria’s largest city

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Witness in Lagos says more than 100 people could be trapped under rubble of building that was under construction

A 21-storey apartment building under construction in an upmarket area of Nigeria’s largest city has collapsed, with dozens of workers feared trapped under the rubble.

Construction worker Eric Tetteh, 41, said construction teams were waiting for an excavator to arrive at the site when the building suddenly crumbled into a heap of debris.

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