Category Archives: World News

Top Trump official to plead the fifth to Capitol attack committee

Posted on by

John Eastman, linked to efforts to stop Biden certification, to invoke constitutional protection against self-incrimination

Former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who was connected to efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win on 6 January, will plead the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

The move by Eastman, communicated in a letter to the select committee by his attorney, is an extraordinary step and appears to suggest a growing fear among some of Trump’s closest advisers that their testimony may implicate them in potential criminality.

Continue reading...

Christopher Luxon is out of step with most New Zealanders – can he really challenge Ardern? | Morgan Godfery

Posted on by

The new National leader is a millionaire, anti-abortion, ex-CEO who owns seven homes and is against increases to the minimum wage

In the end, the party of business picked the businessman. Former National party leader Simon Bridges is out – again – and former Air New Zealand chief executive and MP for Botany, Christopher Luxon, is in.

In hindsight it seems like it was always a done deal. Sir John Key, the former prime minister and National party leader, was a prominent supporter while outgoing leader Judith Collins was running an “anyone but Bridges” policy, effectively handing the leadership to Luxon (and making him a hostage to her and her faction’s demands in the process). Political commentators were picking Luxon as a future leader before entering parliament and, only one year later, here he is.

Continue reading...

Joe Biden pledges to make any Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘very, very difficult’

Posted on by

Washington and Kyiv say Moscow has massed troops near border ahead of planned US-Russia video summit

Joe Biden he said he would make it “very, very difficult” for Russia to launch any invasion of Ukraine, which warned that a large-scale attack could be planned for next month.

Washington and Kyiv say Moscow has massed troops near Ukraine’s borders and accuse Russia of planning an invasion.

Continue reading...

Man tortured and killed in Pakistan over alleged blasphemy

Posted on by

Government accused of having emboldened extremists after lynching of Sri Lankan in Sialkot

A mob in Pakistan tortured, killed and then set on fire a Sri Lankan man who was accused of blasphemy over some posters he had allegedly taken down.

Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national who worked as general manager of a factory of the industrial engineering company Rajco Industries in Sialkot, Punjab, was set upon by a violent crowd on Friday.

Continue reading...

‘Heartbreaking’ clean-up of animal corpses as Canada floodwaters ebb

Posted on by

Floods and landslides in British Columbia devastated livestock in ‘easily the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history’

Floods and landslides that battered the Canadian province of British Columbia last month killed hundreds of thousands of farm animals and forced nearly 15,000 people from their homes, new figures revealed, as officials described the scope of the devastation – and the challenges of recovery.

As many as 628,000 chickens, 420 dairy cattle and 12,000 pigs were killed by the floods. An estimated 3 million bees in 110 hives were also submerged.

Continue reading...

Omicron driving record rate of Covid infection in South African province

Posted on by

Officials say variant’s R number is believed to be above 6, though most cases are mild and no deaths reported

The pace of Covid infections in the South African province of Gauteng is outstripping anything seen in previous waves, and officials say Omicron is now the dominant variant.

Angelique Coetzee, the chair of the South African Medical Association, said Omicron’s R number, measuring its ability to spread, was believed to be above 6. The R number for Delta, the dominant variant globally, is estimated to be above 5.

Continue reading...

Poland plans to set up register of pregnancies to report miscarriages

Posted on by

Proposed register would come into effect in January, a year after near-total ban on abortion

Poland is planning to introduce a centralised register of pregnancies that would oblige doctors to report all pregnancies and miscarriages to the government.

The proposed register would come into effect in January 2022, a year after Poland introduced a near-total ban on abortion.

Continue reading...

France stunned as judo star’s coach cleared of domestic violence

Posted on by

Margaux Pinot says she feared her partner would kill her, but judge says there is not enough proof of guilt

French sports stars and politicians have expressed anger at the acquittal of a coach accused of domestic violence against the Olympic judo champion Margaux Pinot, as the state prosecutor launched an appeal.

Pinot, 27, a gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics, had serious facial injuries including a fractured nose when she filed a police complaint in the early hours of Sunday. She said her partner and trainer, Alain Schmitt, had attacked her at her flat outside Paris, wrestled her to the ground, verbally abused her, punched her many times, repeatedly smashed her head on to the ground and tried to strangle her.

Continue reading...

Screen sensation: the single-shot thriller bringing time-travel into the Zoom era

Posted on by

It was shot in a week and premiered to 12 people, but micro-budget sci-fi movie Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has become the breakout success of the year

“We made the film in seven days, shooting non-stop from six in the evening to six in the morning. It was hell. We were always tired. And the cast and crew were always picking on me because my brain would just go completely dead at 2am every day.” Japanese film-maker Junta Yamaguchi is talking about his first feature film, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, which was shot almost entirely inside a real cafe in Kyoto. “We couldn’t film anything during their opening hours.”

But Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes isn’t your average small-scale indie film. It’s a nicely innovative time-travel yarn that asks: in our world of remote working and Zoom calls, what if the face staring back at us from our computer was a version of ourself two minutes in the future? It’s also the latest example of the nagamawashi (long-shot) film, the micro-genre currently putting no-budget Japanese cinema on the map after the success of One Cut of the Dead – the 2017 zombie horror-comedy that became an international cult sensation, grossing over $30m (£22m) worldwide from a $25,000 budget.

Continue reading...

Johnson’s imperial bombast could suck Britain into more deadly interventions | Simon Jenkins

Posted on by

As tensions with Russia and China increase, the prime minister meddles in foreign policy to distract from domestic woes

Relations between the world’s great powers are tenser than ever since the cold war. Troops are massing along Russia’s border with Ukraine. Chinese ships and planes are openly threatening Taiwan. Japan is rearming in response. Turkey is renewing its belligerence towards its neighbours. Russia is backing east-west fragmentation in Bosnia.

Where Britain stands in all this is dangerously unclear, drifting on a sea of Boris Johnson’s gestures and platitudes. The Royal Navy currently has a £3.2bn aircraft carrier waving the union flag in the South China Sea, completely unprotected. China could sink it in an hour. In the Black Sea, a British destroyer provocatively invades Russian waters off Crimea, showing off to the world’s media. Last week, the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, advanced her bid for her party’s leadership by sitting astride a tank in Estonia and warning Russia that Britain “stood firm” against its “malign activity” in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Britain’s outgoing defence chief, Sir Nick Carter, estimates that the risk of accidental war with Russia is now “the highest in decades”.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Covid news: 75 more cases of Omicron variant found in England; Ireland announces new restrictions – as it happened

Posted on by

More than 100 cases of new variant have now been found in England; Strict social distancing will be required in Ireland’s bars and restaurants with mandatory table service and a maximum of six people per table

California is reporting its second confirmed case of the Omicron variant in as many days.

The Los Angeles County public health department says a full vaccinated county resident is self-isolating after apparently contracting the infection during a trip to South Africa last month.

Continue reading...

Shell to go ahead with seismic tests in whale breeding grounds after court win

Posted on by

Judgment rules company can blast sound waves in search for oil along South Africa’s eastern coastline

Royal Dutch Shell will move ahead with seismic tests to explore for oil in vital whale breeding grounds along South Africa’s eastern coastline after a court dismissed an 11th-hour legal challenge by environmental groups.

The judgment, by a South African high court, allows Shell to begin firing within days extremely loud sound waves through the relatively untouched marine environment of the Wild Coast, which is home to whales, dolphins and seals.

Continue reading...

Remain in Mexico: migrants face deadly peril as Biden restores Trump policy

Posted on by

The US has struck a deal with Mexico to make asylum seekers wait south side of the border while their applications are processed

The Biden administration’s move to revive Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy will subject thousands of people to “enormous suffering” and leave them vulnerable to kidnap and rape as they languish in dangerous Mexican border cities, migration advocates have warned.

After reaching a deal with Mexico, the US will by 6 December start returning asylum seekers from other Latin American countries to Mexico where they will be obliged to wait while their case is assessed.

Continue reading...

India’s ‘pencil village’ counts the cost of Covid school closures

Posted on by

Ukhoo village in Kashmir supplies 90% of wood used in the country’s pencils, but the industry, a major employer in the area, has seen a dramatic drop in demand

School closures in India during the pandemic have left their mark on more than the children who have seen delays to their learning. In one Kashmiri village the impact has been catastrophic on employment.

Pick up a pencil anywhere across India and it is likely to come from the poplar trees of Ukhoo.

Continue reading...

Philippines court allows Nobel laureate Maria Ressa to go to Norway

Posted on by

Journalist permitted to receive peace prize in person after judge eases travel restrictions

The Philippine journalist Maria Ressa will be allowed to travel overseas so she can accept her Nobel peace prize in person after a court gave her permission to leave the country to visit Norway this month.

Ressa, who is subject to travel restrictions because of the legal cases she faces in the Philippines, shared the prize with the Russian investigative journalist Dmitry Muratov, amid growing concerns over curbs on free speech worldwide.

Continue reading...

‘She didn’t deserve to die’: Kenya fights tuberculosis in Covid’s shadow

Posted on by

For the first time in a decade deaths from TB are rising, with the curable disease killing 20,000 Kenyans last year. Now testing ‘ATMs’ and other innovations are helping to find ‘missing cases’

One day in May last year, Violet Chemesunte, a community health volunteer in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, got a call from a colleague worried about a woman she had visited who kept coughing.

She asked if Chemesunte could go round and convince the 37-year-old woman, a single mother to three young children, to seek medical help. She suspected tuberculosis (TB), and feared it might already be too late.

Continue reading...

Rights groups urge EU to ban NSO over clients’ use of Pegasus spyware

Posted on by

Letter signed by 86 organisations asks for sanctions against Israeli firm, alleging governments used its software to abuse rights

Dozens of human rights organisations have called on the European Union to impose global sanctions on NSO Group and take “every action” to prohibit the sale, transfer, export and import of the Israeli company’s surveillance technology.

The letter, signed by 86 organisations including Access Now, Amnesty International and the Digital Rights Foundation, said the EU’s sanctions regime gave it the power to target entities that were responsible for “violations or abuses that are of serious concern as regards to the objectives of the common foreign and security policy, including violations or abuses of freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, or of freedom of opinion and expression”.

Continue reading...

‘Electric vibe’: Auckland celebrates end of lockdown with brunch and traffic gridlock

Posted on by

Vaccinated people in New Zealand’s largest city can now go to the pub for the first time in over 100 days

In Auckland, nature was healing. The ungroomed lined up for their eyebrow appointments. Bars flung open their doors with the promise of free drinks. Locals posted photos of their flat whites and brunch menus. The city’s sky tower was lit up for the first day of the “traffic light” reopening. And, in perhaps the truest sign that the gridlock-plagued city was on its pathway to normalcy, four lanes of the southern motorway were bumper to bumper.

The traffic light system, announced by prime minister Jacinda Ardern in late November, ends lockdowns in favour of restrictions on the unvaccinated. The red, orange and green levels depend on vaccination rates and the level of strain on the health system, but even at red – the strictest level – businesses are fully open to the vaccinated, with some restrictions on gathering size.

Continue reading...

Russia’s activity on the Ukraine border has put the west on edge

Posted on by

Analysis: a full-scale attack seems improbable – but the troop buildup is enough to have Nato warn of sanctions

It is the second time this year that Russia has amassed forces near its borders with Ukraine, so why has the estimated 90,000 troop buildup left western governments and independent analysts more concerned?

The stark warning by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Wednesday that Russia has made plans for a “large-scale” attack is backed up by open source analysis – and western intelligence assessments. “There is enough substance to this,” one insider added.

Continue reading...

How probable is it Omicron Covid variant will take hold in UK?

Posted on by

Analysis: UK’s early vaccine deployment and use of different vaccines from South Africa mean it’s too soon to say

Omicron is causing consternation around the world, with the variant found to be behind an exponential rise in Covid cases in South Africa. Yet with just 42 cases confirmed in the UK so far, and most European countries seeing numbers in the double rather than triple figures, could this be a tentative sign the variant may fail to take hold outside southern Africa? The bottom line is, it is too soon to say.

One issue is that there are important differences that make it difficult to compare the situations in South Africa and beyond.

Continue reading...