Category Archives: World News

Rolling Stones review – a funky, heavy first show without Charlie Watts

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The Dome at America’s Center, St Louis, Missouri
The veteran rockers return to the road with an emotional tribute to their longtime drummer and a reinvigorated sense of purpose

For many musicians, it has been an emotional return to live music after the coronavirus pandemic put a protracted end to touring. For the Rolling Stones, picking up their No Filter tour in Chuck Berry’s hometown of St Louis, Missouri, the stakes are even higher. Not only have the stalwart performers not played in more than two years; it’s also a commemoration for drummer Charlie Watts, who died last month.

It opens with an empty stage and only a drumbeat, with photos of Watts projected on the stage backdrop. The band appear, kicking their way through Street Fighting Man and It’s Only Rock’N’Roll (But I Like It), before Mick Jagger pauses the show to devote the tour to Watts’s memory. He along with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, walk centre stage to thank fans for the outpouring of love and support for Watts.

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‘Getting into Europe is a relief every time’: an HGV driver reflects on UK crisis

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Christopher Johns talks about what conditions are like for drivers in the UK and whether any solutions might be forthcoming

Christopher Johns, 37, from Burwash, Sussex, has been an HGV driver for more than 10 years, and drives long distance in UK and Europe. Here he speaks about what conditions are like for HGV drivers in the UK, and why he feels there may be no quick solution to the current truck driver crisis.

“I’m always staggered by how much truck drivers have been taken for granted in the UK. We work so hard for very little money. Our wages have desperately needed improving for such a long time. A friend’s starting salary at Lidl is the same as that of many trucker friends. I could earn more if I did temp work, like many others do, but I have a wife and three kids, I need job security. I only earn enough now because I do a lot of overseas work, where you get bigger expenses allowances.

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Earthquake strikes Crete, killing man and damaging buildings

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Residents sent fleeing into the streets and schools evacuated from quake on Greek island

The Greek island of Crete has been hit by an earthquake killing one man and injuring 20, while damaging homes and churches and causing rock slides near the country’s fourth-largest city.

The quake, which had a preliminary magnitude of at least 5.8, sent people fleeing into the streets in the city of Heraklion, where schools and older buildings were evacuated.

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Germany: SPD intends to form coalition with Greens and liberals

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Centre-left contender to replace Angela Merkel announces plan for ‘social-ecological-liberal’ alliance

The centre-left contender to fill Angela Merkel’s shoes has announced his intention to forge a “social-ecological-liberal coalition” following Sunday’s knife-edge German national vote, as momentum slips from the outgoing chancellor’s own designated successor.

Related: Germany election: what happens next as parties vie to form government

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French police face action over failures in case of woman burned to death by husband

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Chahinez Boutaa killed months after telling police her estranged husband had ambushed and beaten her

French police officers are facing disciplinary action over the death of a woman who was shot and burned alive in the street by her estranged husband, weeks after she told police she feared for her life.

Mounir Boutaa allegedly shot his wife, Chahinez, at least twice in the legs yards from her home on the outskirts of Bordeaux in broad daylight in May, before soaking her with petrol and setting light to her as she lay injured on the ground.

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Richard Gere may testify in Matteo Salvini trial over rescue ship standoff

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Actor helped deliver food to people onboard NGO vessel that was refused entry to Italian port by then minister

Richard Gere has agreed to testify against Italy’s far-right former interior minister Matteo Salvini, who is standing trial for refusing to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019.

Prosecutors in Sicily have accused Salvini of dereliction of duty and kidnapping for blocking the NGO vessel Open Arms from docking in August 2019 as part of his closed-ports policy. Onboard were 147 people rescued in the Mediterranean. During the standoff, as the ship was anchored off the island of Lampedusa, some people threw themselves overboard in desperation.

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Dutch PM given extra security amid fears of drug gang attack

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‘Spotters’ were seen scoping out movements of Mark Rutte, who cycles to work in The Hague

The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, who cycles to work in The Hague, has reportedly been given extra personal security in response to raised fears of a kidnapping or attack by organised crime.

The decision was made after “spotters” were seen scoping out Rutte’s movements, raising concerns about a possible move by one of the country’s drug gangs.

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Fears for Afghan psychiatrist abducted by armed men

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Dr Nader Alemi, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital, had received death threats before being taken on his way home from work last week

One of Afghanistan’s most prominent psychiatrists has been abducted on his way home from work by a group of armed men.

Dr Nader Alemi, 66, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was stopped by seven men in a white car last week, said his family.

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Anne at 13,000ft review – a woman uses skydiving as therapy

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Confident microbudget feature zones in on one woman’s unhappiness, and how skydiving provides an unlikely but dramatic release

Deragh Campbell is an award-winning Canadian actor and film-maker whose recent movie MS Slavic 7 I have to confess to finding weirdly inert and indulgent. She has a starring role in this movie, which is a confident, intimate microbudget feature shot almost entirely in searching closeup, directed by Campbell’s longtime collaborator Kazik Radwanski. It is a more approachable piece of work and Campbell’s performance is unsettlingly real.

She plays Anne, an unhappy young woman with a job in a children’s daycare centre and an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, whose life is turned upside down when she tastes the ecstatic thrill of skydiving. Anne gets on pretty badly with her grumpy, humourless colleagues – who may nevertheless have a point about her unprofessional, casual and derisive attitude – and argues with her mother. She meets a nice guy called Matt (Matt Johnson) at a co-worker’s wedding, though she may well be about to alienate him too. But all this is against the background of skydiving, which she took part in as part of the bachelorette party: the bride and all the maids-of-honour did it once, but Anne wants this amazing and passionate experience again and again. Could it be a miraculous therapy for her? Or is skydiving simply enlarging and intensifying her already troublesome and anarchic personality?

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Paraguay on the brink as historic drought depletes river, its life-giving artery

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Severe drought that began in late 2019 continues to punish the region while experts say climate change and deforestation may be intensifying the phenomenon

In the shadow of towering grain silos that line the bank of the River Paraná, South America’s second-longest waterway, Lucas Krivenchuk stands watching workers rush to load a barge with soybeans.

“Twelve barges had to leave today, but only six will make it out: there’s no time, the water’s dropping too fast,” said Krivenchuk, general manager of the Trociuk private port in southern Paraguay. “It’s the first time that any have left in two months.”

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‘It’ll kill me’: Zimbabwe counts cost of rise in illicit alcohol use

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Lack of jobs and Covid lockdowns fuel boom in cheap but lethal hooch made in backyard stills

It is 7pm and inside the shebeen, or unlicensed bar, in Harare, men and women clutch small bottles of “whisky” and talk animatedly as they dance to loud music.

One man staggers and falls over, to the amusement of other drinkers. He mumbles inaudible words as he drifts into sleep. Nearby, two other men doze after spending hours in the bar on a sweltering September day.

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Online child abuse survey finds third of viewers attempt contact with children

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Largest major survey of its kind finds 70% of respondents first saw child sexual abuse material when they were under 18

The largest major survey of people who watch online child sexual abuse has found that one-third of respondents attempted to directly contact a child as a result of the illegal images they watched online.

The survey, by Protect Children, a Finnish human rights group, was posted on the “dark web” so users would find it while actively searching for illegal content of children. The analysis was based on more than 5,000 people who responded initially to the survey about why and how they watched children being abused online, although 10,000 responses have been received so far.

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‘I think about everyone I save’: the mine clearance hero of Kurdistan

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Hoshyar Ali has cleared more than 750,000 landmines in 104 villages, despite having lost both legs to landmines. Iraqi Kurdistan is one of the most contaminated countries for landmines and explosive remnants of war, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

A dust cloud trails behind a metallic grey Kia Sportage as it meanders along a rocky dirt road toward the last town on this thoroughfare before reaching the Iraq-Iran border.

People walk along the road, waving at independent deminer Hoshyar Ali as he drives by, recognising him by the red flag on his antenna, indicating the vehicle is transporting explosives, and by the stickers of various landmines on his vehicle.

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Olaf Scholz seeks three-way coalition after SPD’s narrow German election win – video

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The conservative rule in Germany under Angela Merkel's centre-right CDU party has ended after 16 years, as official preliminary results show the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) secured 25.7% of the vote and CDU won 24.1%. 

The SPD leader and current finance minister, Olaf Scholz, said in a speech on election night that Germans had voted for the party because 'they want the name of the next chancellor to be Olaf Scholz'.

He said the citizens of Germany had given 'a clear mandate' for a three-way coalition between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP

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Ambassador in limbo makes plea for Afghans to be allowed into EU

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Former Afghan government’s ambassador in Greece appalled by Athens’ media blitz against ‘illegal migrant flows’

In other times, Mirwais Samadi would have welcomed a campaign to deter his compatriots from opting to become illegal migrants and embarking on the often dangerous trek from Afghanistan to Europe.

By far the worst part of his job as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Athens – apart from the strange limbo he has found himself in representing a nation whose leaders he refuses to recognise – is notifying families back home of loved ones who died along the way. Invariably they are the victims of smuggling networks motivated solely by profit.

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‘A great loss’: tributes pour in for pioneering PNG female doctor who died from Covid

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Naomi Kori Pomat, the first female doctor in her province, died in country’s first government-confirmed death of a health worker from virus

Tributes have poured in for a doctor in Papua New Guinea’s Western Province who died last week, in the country’s first death of a healthcare worker from Covid-19 confirmed by the government.

Dr Naomi Kori Pomat, 60, the director for curative health services at the Western Provincial Health Authority (WPHA), was medevaced to Port Moresby after contracting the virus and died on 19 September.

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Children set for more climate disasters than their grandparents, research shows

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Climate crisis brings stark intergenerational injustice but rapid emission cuts can limit damage

People born today will suffer many times more extreme heatwaves and other climate disasters over their lifetimes than their grandparents, research has shown.

The study is the first to assess the contrasting experience of climate extremes by different age groups and starkly highlights the intergenerational injustice posed by the climate crisis.

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Covid has wiped out years of progress on life expectancy, finds study

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Pandemic behind biggest fall in life expectancy in western Europe since second world war, say researchers

The Covid pandemic has caused the biggest decrease in life expectancy in western Europe since the second world war, according to a study.

Data from most of the 29 countries – spanning most of Europe, the US and Chile – that were analysed by scientists recorded reductions in life expectancy last year and at a scale that wiped out years of progress.

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Gabby Petito: mourners gather in Long Island as search for fiance goes on

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Mourners attended a Long Island funeral home on Sunday for a viewing for Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman whose death on a cross-country trip sparked a manhunt for her fiance.

Related: Gabby Petito’s death is tragic. But I wish missing women of color got this much attention | Akin Olla

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New York may use national guard to replace unvaccinated health workers

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The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, is considering using the national guard and out-of-state medical workers to fill hospital staffing shortages, as tens of thousands of workers are unlikely to meet a Monday deadline for mandated Covid-19 vaccination.

Related: Uncontrolled Spread review: Trump’s first FDA chief on the Covid disaster

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