Category Archives: World News

Fresh air or foul odour? How Covid can distort the sense of smell

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Coronavirus-induced parosmia is surprisingly common and the sensory confusion can have profound effects

Deirdre likens her body odour to raw onions; Deepak says his favourite aftershave smells foul, and coffee like cleaning products; Julie thinks coffee and chocolate both smell like burnt ashes.

Most people are aware that a cardinal symptom of Covid-19 is loss of smell, or anosmia. It may last for weeks or even months. Increasingly though, those who have recovered subsequently develop another disorienting symptom, parosmia, or a distorted sense of smell. This typically results in things that once smelled pleasant smelling bad or rotten.

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Covid news live: Russia sets yet another new high for daily deaths; Wales set to tighten rules on self-isolation

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Russia reports 1,163 new Covid deaths, its highest one-day toll of pandemic; whole households to self-isolate in Wales if one person tests positive

Bulgaria has recorded another 5,178 new Covid cases in the last 24 hours. Official data shows that there are 7,553 patients in hospital, 656 of them being in intensive care.

Yesterday a meeting of health authorities agreed to transform Lozenets Hospital in Sofia into an intensive care centre for Covid-19 treatment. Deputy health minister Dimitar Petrov said the government’s intention was to open 30 new beds every 3-4 days in the next two weeks. In addition, students will not be returning to in-person classes next week, with primary school pupils expected to be back at school on 8 November.

The truth of the matter is we wish the UK Government took a more precautionary approach to international travel. But when they choose to change the rules in England, in any practical sense it’s impossible for us to do anything different in Wales, because almost everybody from Wales who travels abroad or who returns to this country from abroad comes in through English ports and airports, and then travels on to Wales. So in a practical sense, we can’t make anything different happen there, although we wish the UK Government took a different approach. What we can do, when we can do things differently, when we have decisions that we can make effectively in Wales, then we take them.

We do have opportunities to discuss this with the UK Government. I have for a number of weeks been urging them to move to Plan B. It would certainly help us here in Wales to have a single communication that says across England and Wales we are all taking this virus as seriously as we need to take it as we go into the autumn and the winter.

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Biden heads to Cop26 as climate agenda hangs in balance | First Thing

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President faces hurdles in reasserting US credibility at the summit. Plus, Texas stand-your-ground laws thrown into spotlight

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Good morning.

Joe Biden is heading to Glasgow for the critical Cop26 global summit, where he will fight to reassert the United States’s credibility after Donald Trump’s presidency, as his spending and climate bill remains unsigned into law.

Phasing out fossil fuels from the grid

Making oil and gas producers pay to emit methane

Introducing a CO2 tax

What are stand-your-ground laws? The controversial laws oppose the idea that faced with danger, you should retreat, and offer provision for homeowners to use deadly force to justifiably defend themselves.

When were these laws introduced? The first law in the US was enacted in Florida in 2005, after lobbying from the National Rifle Association. Opponents say they result in unnecessary deaths and are often a pretext for racism.

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New minister takes helm as Canadian military engulfed by sexual misconduct crisis

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Seven generals have so far been implicated in the billowing scandal – can institutional change be effected?

For nearly a year, Canada’s military has been engulfed in crisis, as one senior officer after another has come under investigation over allegations of sexual misconduct or cover-up.

So far, seven generals have been implicated in the snowballing scandal, which has undermined both public trust in the institution and morale within the ranks – and highlighted a lack of transparency over how the military handles allegations of sexual assault.

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Holy bikini-clad Batwoman! Archive saves Mexico’s scorned popular films

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Permanencia Voluntaria has rescued hundreds of films and is seeking to challenge attitudes towards its legacy

From demons, ghosts and vampires to Martians, mad scientists and spurned lovers, the heroes and heroines of 20th-century Mexican popular cinema faced more than their share of enemies.

Few foes, however, have proved quite as formidable as the combined adversaries of time, critical snottiness and oblivion – not to mention the odd earthquake.

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Macron’s re-election hopes may be driving Brexit fishing row, says Eustice

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UK environment secretary accuses France of using ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric in escalating dispute

Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of being re-elected president may be driving the diplomatic row with France over post-Brexit access to Britain’s fishing waters, the UK’s environment secretary has claimed.

George Eustice accused Paris of using “inflammatory” rhetoric in an escalating dispute over a shortfall in licences for French fishing vessels seeking to operate in the coastal waters of the UK and Jersey.

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Global activists gather at Rome G20 to demand tougher action on China

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Beijing must not be let off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation, say legislators

Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.

Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.

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Bolivia: fate of 11-year-old girl raped by family member sparks abortion debate

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Religious groups seek to force girl to give birth as intervention of the Catholic church questioned

The fate of an 11-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by a family member has unleashed a fierce debate between human rights activists and the Catholic church in Bolivia, as religious groups seek to force her to complete the pregnancy and give birth.

The girl was impregnated after being repeatedly raped and suffering other sexual abuse by the father of her stepfather in the town of Yapacaní, in Bolivia’s eastern Santa Cruz region.

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Franz Kafka drawings reveal ‘sunny’ side to bleak Bohemian novelist

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Surreal drawings by author of The Trial – which he demanded be burnt after his death – to be published

Stricken with self-doubt, paranoia and existential despair, the writings of Franz Kafka have taken generations of readers on what the author called “the descent into the cold abyss of oneself”.

A trove of 150 drawings, retrieved from a Swiss bank vault in 2019 after years of legal wrangling and presented to the public for the first time on Thursday, offers a more cheerful interpretation of the term “Kafkaesque”, however.

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Gordon Brown urges rich countries to airlift surplus Covid vaccines to world’s poorest

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Ex-UK PM and almost 200 global figures write to G20 summit host calling for 240m vaccines to be shared

Gordon Brown has called on the British government and other G20 countries to urgently arrange a military airlift of surplus Covid vaccines to poorer countries before they expire, saying it is their “moral responsibility” to do so.

The former prime minister has organised a letter from more than 160 former world leaders and global figures calling for richer countries to send 240m vaccines stored in the US, Europe and Canada to countries struggling to vaccinate their populations.

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Pope Francis urges leaders to take ‘radical’ climate action at Cop26

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Pontiff calls for ‘rethink on future of our world’ in special message recorded on eve of global summit

Pope Francis has urged world leaders to take “radical decisions” at next week’s global environmental summit in a special message recorded for BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.

Leaders attending the Cop26 conference in Glasgow must offer “concrete hope to future generations”, the pontiff said.

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We know who caused the climate crisis – but they don’t want to pay for it | Vanessa Nakate

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My country, Uganda, and much of Africa has been battered by climate-related disasters. Cop26 is a chance for the biggest polluters to set up a compensation fund

While walking with a friend through central Kampala last month, we saw a police truck go by, a body in the back.

It’s a sight that has become more common in Uganda. The life of that person, and many others, was taken by a heavy downpour in my home city. Uganda has been battered by floods in recent years, as well as droughts and plagues of locusts. So much has been damaged and lost here as a result of the climate crisis.

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‘Apocalypse soon’: reluctant Middle East forced to open eyes to climate crisis

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With the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the world but oil spoils keeping regimes in power, leaders are in a bind

Northern Oman has just been battered by Cyclone Shaheen, the first tropical cyclone to make it that far west into the Gulf. Around Basra in southern Iraq this summer, pressure on the grid owing to 50C heat led to constant blackouts, with residents driving around in their cars to stay cool.

Kuwait broke the record for the hottest day ever in 2016 at 53.6, and its 10-day rolling average this summer was equally sweltering. Flash floods occurred in Jeddah, and more recently Mecca, while across Saudi Arabia average temperatures have increased by 2%, and the maximum temperatures by 2.5%, all just since the 1980s. In Qatar, the country with the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world and the biggest producer of liquid gas, the outdoors is already being air conditioned.

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Wealthy nations urged to meet $100bn climate finance goal

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Countries must close gap on funding target for developing countries says European Commission president

The European Commission president has urged wealthy countries to close the gap to meet a $100bn annual climate finance target for developing nations a year earlier than expected.

Speaking before crucial meetings on the climate emergency at the G20, and at the UN Cop26 talks, the president, Ursula von der Leyen, said rich countries had “to try harder” to close the shortfall in climate finance.

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Biden releases new $1.75tn framework for Democrats’ reconciliation package – live

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Joe Biden rallied House Democrats behind a proposed $1.75tn framework deal that he said could win the support of every Democrat in the Senate and prove to the world that American democracy can deliver.

“I am back here to tell you that we have a framework that will get 50 votes in the United States Senate,” he told House Democrats during a morning caucus meeting, according to a source familiar.

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Covid live: Vallance warns of ‘difficult UK winter’; Moscow in partial lockdown amid record Russian cases, deaths

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Chief scientific adviser to UK government says high level of cases ‘remains a concern’; Russia records over 40,000 new cases and record 1,159 Covid deaths

Stephen Reicher is a member of the Sage subcommittee in the UK advising on behavioural science, and he writes for us this morning saying that Covid measures give us choice – they are not restrictions on British life:

Regarding ventilation, I would institute a system whereby all public spaces were required to indicate their “clean air” status, just as kitchens in restaurants are required to indicate their hygiene status. I would also improve the messaging so that people know how important it is and how to know when they are safe. This wouldn’t amount to a restriction. It’s a protection. It doesn’t limit choice. On the contrary, in increasing the number of spaces that are safe, it gives us more choice.

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Russia brings in harsh new Covid measures amid record cases and deaths

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Moscow closes schools and Putin authorises week-long holiday as many resist getting vaccinated

Regions across Russia have reintroduced severe anti-coronavirus restrictions as the country faces record deaths and new infections amid a lacklustre vaccination campaign.

Schools, dine-in cafes and many offices in Moscow will be closed until 7 November, and Vladimir Putin has authorised a week-long holiday period for all Russians that is seen as a creeping lockdown to fight surging Covid numbers, with records for numbers of cases and deaths being broken on a daily basis.

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By banning six Palestinian NGOs, Israel has entered a new era of impunity | Raja Shehadeh

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I founded al-Haq in 1979. Israeli now considers it to be a terrorist group, along with other vital humans rights organisations

  • Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian writer and lawyer

I was one of the founders of the human rights organisation Al-Haq in 1979 and remain proud of its work over the past four decades in defending human rights in the Israeli occupied territories. I was horrified when it was declared to be a terrorist organisation by the Israeli defence minister on 19 October, along with five other Palestinian NGOs.

During the many years of direct Israeli occupation, from 1967 to 1995, there was a long and expanding list of proscribed groups issued by the Israeli military commander under “emergency” regulations first put in place by the British in 1945. Al-Haq was never on this list.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian writer and lawyer. His most recent book, Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation, won the 2020 Moore prize

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Hungary: anti-Orbán alliance leads ruling party in 2022 election poll

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Six-party grouping ahead by four points after choosing Péter Márki-Zay as prime ministerial candidate

A six-party opposition alliance that aims to topple Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in elections next year has pulled four points clear of the authoritarian prime minister’s Fidesz party after electing a common leader, according to an opinion poll.

The poll, published late on Wednesday, 10 days after the alliance chose a small-town mayor, Péter Márki-Zay, as its prime ministerial candidate, showed support for the united opposition at 39%, compared with 35% for Fidesz and 23% who were unsure.

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