Category Archives: World News

Objectivity concerns over UN’s report on Tigray civil war

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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'

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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”.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Xi Jinping makes no major climate pledges in written Cop26 address

Posted on by

President of China, world’s worst emissions source, calls for more support for developing countries

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has called on developed countries to “provide support to help developing countries do better” in dealing with the climate crisis, in a written statement to the Cop26 climate conference that fails to make any new significant pledges.

The Chinese leader also urged all parties to take stronger actions to “jointly tackle the climate challenge”, and said his country would “speed up the green and low-carbon energy transition, vigorously develop renewable energy, and plan and build large wind and photovoltaic power stations”.

Continue reading...

Hating Peter Tatchell review – crusading activist’s greatest hits

Posted on by

Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and the former archbishop of Canterbury appear in a chummy documentary recounting the gay rights activist’s most outrageous stunts and impressive achievements

“My doctors have said very clearly: ‘No more head injuries.’” So says Peter Tatchell, one of the world’s most tenacious, divisive and necessary activists, as he prepares to fly to Moscow in 2018 to protest against state-sanctioned homophobia. The trip, which returns him to the city where he was beaten and arrested in 2007, forms one of the few present-tense sections of this greatest hits-style documentary. Tatchell has sustained numerous injuries from his lifetime of protest, though claims of memory loss are comically undermined during a kid-gloves interview with Ian McKellen. “Fifty two years of civil disobedience, Peter!” gasps the actor admiringly. “Fifty three now,” Tatchell replies, unable to resist the lure of being right.

As of this year, it’s 54. Tatchell was already an activist when he moved from Melbourne to London in 1971 at the age of 19. Among other achievements, he went on to stage the first gay rights protest in a communist country (East Germany, 1973), co-found the gay pressure group OutRage!, and attempt citizen’s arrests of Robert Mugabe (London, 1999 and Brussels, 2001). The former MP Chris Smith correctly identifies those run-ins with the Zimbabwean dictator as turning points which softened public hostility toward Tatchell.

Continue reading...

Jair Bolsonaro booed and cheered as he is honoured by Italian town

Posted on by

Far-right Brazilian president given honorary citizenship by Anguillara Veneta

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, was met with cheers and jeers as he visited a small Italian town on Monday to collect honorary citizenship.

Bolsonaro’s great-grandfather was born in Anguillara Veneta, a town of 4,200 people in the Veneto region. Tensions have been brewing since its far-right mayor, Alessandra Buoso, approved granting honorary citizenship to the far-right leader.

Continue reading...

Jersey issues 49 more fishing licences to French boats amid row

Posted on by

Officials from France and UK to meet in Brussels after threats from both sides in post-Brexit dispute

Jersey has issued another 49 licences to French boats in an apparent attempt to de-escalate a post-Brexit row over fishing rights in which the UK and France have issued tit-for-tat threats.

The Jersey government said it was allowing another round of temporary licences until the end of January to allow time for new arrangements to be put in place, as the two sides prepared to meet to try to resolve the row.

Continue reading...

Salty language: why are UK and France fighting over fishing licences?

Posted on by

At the heart of the row is the Brexit deal’s failure to spell out what proof French fishers need to get a permit

Britain and France have been at loggerheads over post-Brexit fishing licences for UK waters since the start of the year. Both sides are now threatening imminent action – and mistranslations have not helped.

Continue reading...

Bookshops thrive as France moves to protect sellers from Amazon

Posted on by

Legislation for minimum delivery price aims to stop ‘distorted competition’ against independent bookshops

At her independent bookshop in the small, rural town of Puy-en-Velay in southern France, Anne Helman had seen an influx of customers since the coronavirus pandemic who said they would rather buy books in person than online.

“I’ve never sold as many copies of Albert Camus’s The Plague,” she said. “Children wanted fantasy books. Adults wanted novels and the classics, particularly stories about viruses and the apocalypse. There has been a newfound enthusiasm for buying locally and supporting independent bookshops; it’s seen as the virtuous thing to do.”

Continue reading...

Nearly two-thirds of those who died young in 2019 were male, research finds

Posted on by

Boys and young men neglected in efforts to tackle mortality in 10- to 24-year-olds, Lancet report says, with a failure to address violence, substance use and accidents

Boys and men are more likely than women to die as teenagers or young adults, according to new research that warns the gender gap in mortality rates for that age group is widening in many countries.

In 2019, boys and young men aged 10 to 24 accounted for nearly two-thirds (61%) of all global deaths.

Continue reading...