Category Archives: World News

Macron in visa cuts row as Algeria summons French envoy

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President accused of chasing rightwing votes by making sudden, tough gestures on immigration

The Algerian foreign ministry has summoned the French ambassador for talks in “formal protest” against France’s decision to sharply reduce the number of visas granted to Algerian nationals, as opposition parties in Paris accused Emmanuel Macron of using the row to court rightwing voters.

The French government announced this week that it would substantially cut the number of visas granted to people from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, three north African countries which were all part of France’s former colonial empire and where many people have strong family ties in France.

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‘Strategy of terror’: 116 dead as Ecuador prisons become battlegrounds for gangs

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Struggle between cartels to control smuggling routes leads to third – and deadliest – prison riot this year

A bitter struggle between rival Mexican cartels to control cocaine trafficking routes in Ecuador has erupted in a day of bloodshed inside a high-security prison which left 116 inmates dead. Many of the victims were butchered with chainsaws or beheaded with machetes.

As security forces battled to retake the Litoral penitentiary in the coastal city of Guayaquil on Wednesday, scores of bodies were found dumped in bathrooms and corridors, piled and burned in courtyards, or even stuffed into air ducts.

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Shakira says two wild boars attacked her in Barcelona park

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Singer held up her dirty and torn bag as evidence on Instagram: ‘They’ve destroyed everything’

Shakira said two wild boars attacked her in a Barcelona park and destroyed her bag.

In an Instagram story post, the singer held up her dirty and torn bag as evidence, which she said boars tried to carry off into the woods.

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China owed $385bn – including ‘hidden debt’ from poorer nations, says report

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AidData finds 42 low-to-middle income countries with ‘belt and road’ exposure exceeding 10% of GDP

Researchers have identified debts of at least $385bn (£286bn) owed by 165 countries to China for “Belt and road initiative” (BRI) projects, with loans systematically underreported to international bodies such as the World Bank.

The four-year study by US-based research lab AidData said the debt burdens were kept off the public balance sheets through the use of special purpose and semi-private loans, and were “substantially larger than research institutions, credit rating agencies, or intergovernmental organisations with surveillance responsibilities previously understood”.

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The climate crisis is destroying the human rights of those least responsible for it | Patrick Verkooijen and AK Abdul Momen

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The UN must urgently appoint a special rapporteur on climate change and human rights to galvanise action on the biggest threat to fundamental freedoms

Climate breakdown is making a mockery of human rights.

Start with the most fundamental right of all: the right to life, liberty and security. Two million people have died as a result of a five-fold increase in weather-related disasters in our lifetimes. And given that 90% of these deaths have occurred in developing countries, which have contributed the least to global heating, the climate crisis is also making a mockery of the notion that we are all born equal – as the UN Declaration of Human Rights and numerous national constitutions assert.

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UK reports 36,480 new cases – as it happened

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Thanks for following along – this blog is now closed. You can catch up with the latest coronavirus coverage here.

Technology allowing Australians to travel overseas with an internationally recognised vaccine certificate will be ready within weeks, as the government prepares to announce a plan for the country’s borders to finally reopen.

In evidence to the Senate’s Covid committee on Thursday, the chief executive of Services Australia, Rebecca Skinner, said the department had developed a visible digital seal for vaccine status that would be ready by the end of October. She said:

Our plan is to have all of the technology in place so that it is a settled and tested situation before the policy decisions need to be made.

We don’t want to be in a situation where policy decisions can’t be taken because the technology isn’t ready.

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‘Someone lied’: French foreign minister accuses Australia of submarine betrayal in latest broadside

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Jean-Yves Le Drian says Australia reassured France everything was fine right up to the day the Aukus pact was announced

France has accused Australia of lying shortly before Canberra cancelled a major submarine contract, with the French foreign minister declaring “someone lied”.

With no sign of any imminent easing of tensions between the two countries, Jean-Yves Le Drian told a parliamentary hearing that Australia had never expressed doubts about the €56bn (A$90bn) submarine contract or the strategic Indo-Pacific pact before breaking the contract.

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‘I’ll never go back’: Uganda’s schools at risk as teachers find new work during Covid

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Many private schools may not reopen after staff laid off during lockdown say they will not return to the profession

The last message Mary Namitala received from the private school in which she taught was in March last year, the day all schools in Uganda were ordered close due to Covid-19. The message read: “No more payments until when schools open.”

“My husband and I decided to leave our rented house in town and shifted to the village, to our unfinished house. We could not afford to continue paying rent,” says Namitala, from her home in Bombo in central Uganda, about 20 miles north of the capital Kampala.

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‘Roar, roar, roar!’ Japan rolls out rock music against bear attacks

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Authorities hope rock’n’roll song will help people of Iwate prefecture stay safe as number of bear sightings rises

Can rock’n’roll keep people safe from bear attacks? One Japanese region is hoping so, and has commissioned a cautionary anthem warning residents about the threat of its ursine inhabitants.

Bears are common across Japan and regularly spark frantic hunts when they venture into towns, where they have attacked and even killed residents.

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‘The sharks are hiding’: locals claim deep-sea mining off Papua New Guinea has stirred up trouble

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‘Shark calling’, an ancient custom of hunters singing to sharks then catching them by hand, is under threat and locals blame deep-sea disturbances

More in this series
• Race to the bottom: the disastrous, blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea
• ‘False choice’ – is deep sea mining required for an electric vehicle revolution?
• Covid tests and superbug killers: how the deep sea is key to fighting pandemics

To catch a shark in the waters off Papua New Guinea, first the men sing.

They sing the names of their ancestors and their respects to the shark. They shake a coconut rattle into the sea, luring the animals from the deep, and then catch them by hand.

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In its latest cut-and-paste child welfare report, New Zealand fails Māori again | Aaron Smale

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The Māori who have been screwed by the system are once again being silenced and ignored

Sorry means you don’t do it again. So goes a phrase used by Aboriginal protesters in Australia in recent years.

The phrase references the national apology in 2008 by prime minister Kevin Rudd to Aboriginal peoples for the Stolen Generations, the thousands of children who were taken from their families.

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‘We have to fight for these conditions’: why Danish meat plant workers are Europe’s best paid

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Denmark has secured decent pay and conditions within the sector. Will other EU countries finally follow suit?

Read more: ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry

In meat plants, there’s a golden rule: the production line never stops. For 28 years, Frank Vestergaard has worked in Denmark’s meat processing industry. When he started, he says, workers were expected to slaughter 80 pigs an hour on the line; today, that number has rocketed to 432 animals.

He starts work at 6am and deals with animal carcasses. The pigs are first put to sleep with gas, then the workers slit their throats to let the blood drain out. Vestergaard’s job is to remove any injuries from the carcasses, such as broken bones, which the vets on the line identify. If the gallbladder is accidentally punctured, for example, a yellow fluid can seep on to the meat, and Vestergaard has to remove it.

“We have six seconds per pig for one operation, and then there is a new pig. We do the same over and over again. That is how we earn our money.”

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Stephanie Grisham book sheds light on Trump’s bizarre brushes with world leaders

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Memoir reveals Trump once discussed strength of kangaroos in meeting with UK PM – one of the few European leaders he liked

Boris Johnson once devoted a considerable part of a meeting with Donald Trump to discussing how strong kangaroos are, as the British prime minister struck up a robust relationship with a fellow “pudgy white guy with crazy hair”.

In contrast, the then US president considered his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, “a wuss”.

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Democrats search for a path forward as key deadlines loom

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Pelosi says talks moving ‘in positive direction’ as series of legislative and fiscal deadlines loom for Biden’s $1tn public works measure

With the fate of Joe Biden’s domestic agenda on the line, Democrats searched furiously for a path forward after negotiations over a once-in-a-generation expansion of the social safety net neared collapse and a vote on a smaller public works measure appeared increasingly unlikely.

With almost no margin for error and little time left to break an impasse that threatens to imperil its passage – and possibly the entirety of the president’s program – Democrats charged ahead on Thursday, even as a crucial Democratic holdout called for shrinking the $3.5tn plan in half. But assurances of progress offered little comfort to nervous Democrats on Capitol Hill, where a series of legislative and fiscal deadlines loom.

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‘I’ve been dead so many times’: the life and times of New Orleans’s blues king

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Little Freddie King has survived three shootings, stabbings, a near fatal bike accident, a stomach ulcer, an accidental electrocution, Hurricane Katrina, and now a pandemic

In a dark, wood-panelled room, thick with humidity and reeking of smoke, the bluesman sits on a battered red couch that droops in the middle. He takes a moment to reflect before walking to the stage. He’s dressed in a pair of shades, a straw fedora, and a technicolor suit jacket splashed with turquoise, pink and peach. His flamboyance is an instant contrast with the dingy surroundings. He takes a final drag of a cigarette, down to the butt, before adjusting his tie.

Little Freddie King has played this venue – BJ’s Lounge, a ramshackle bar in the Bywater neighbourhood of New Orleans – for the past 27 years. But tonight is special. Tonight is his 81st birthday.

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‘Haves and have-nots’: how the housing crisis is creating two New Zealands – a photo essay

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The next generation will be increasingly divided into those can leverage intergenerational wealth to buy a home, and those who cannot

Returning home to a country he couldn’t afford to secure a home in, New Zealand photographer Cody Ellingham began to roam suburban streets at night with his camera. In a new series of photographs, he reflects the unease and discomfort of a generation locked out of one of the world’s most unaffordable housing markets.

Earlier this month, property data analytics companies said the average national house price was hitting between NZ$937,000 and $1m, nearly eight times the annual household income. Real Estate Institute data shows there was a 31% increase over the year to July.

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Kim Jong-un orders hotline with the South to reopen as he condemns ‘cunning’ US

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North Korean leader said Biden offer of dialogue is ‘a facade’ and blamed the US for ‘hostile policy’

Kim Jong-un has condemned a US offer of dialogue as a “facade”, state media reported, but said he had ordered officials to restore communication lines with South Korea to “promote peace”.

Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, the North Korean leader accused the US of continuing a “hostile policy” against his nuclear-armed country, despite the Biden administration’s offers of negotiations without preconditions.

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Cutting methane should be a key Cop26 aim, research suggests

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Oil and gas producers could reduce emissions at low cost or even at a profit by staunching leaks, says thinktank

Sharp cuts in methane from leaking gas drilling platforms and production sites could play a major role in the greenhouse gas emissions reductions necessary to fulfil the Paris climate agreement, and should be a key aim for the Cop26 UN climate talks, new research suggests.

Cutting global emissions of methane by 40% by 2030 is achievable, with most cuts possible at low cost or even at a profit for companies such as oil and gas producers. It would make up for much of the shortfall in emissions reductions plans from national governments, according to the Energy Transitions Commission thinktank.

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Death toll in Ecuador prison riot exceeds 100 with some inmates beheaded

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Clash is the most deadly act of violence ever reported in the country’s prison system

The death toll in a gang battle at one of Ecuador’s largest prisons rose to 116, president Guillermo Lasso said, as authorities discovered the bodies of more victims including at least six that had been beheaded.

Another 80 inmates were injured during the Tuesday night clashes at the Penitenciaria del Litoral in Guayas province, which has been the scene of bloody fights between gangs for control of the prison in recent months.

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Indigenous children set to receive billions after judge rejects Trudeau challenges

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  • First Nations children entitled to government compensation
  • Canada ‘wilfully and recklessly’ discriminated against them

A federal court in Canada has paved they way for billions in compensation to First Nations children who suffered discrimination in the welfare system, after a judge dismissed a pair of legal challenges by the government.

Two years ago, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that the federal government had “wilfully and recklessly” discriminated against Indigenous children living on reserves by failing to properly fund child and family services.

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