The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send thousands of Haitians to a home country they fled because of natural disasters and political turmoil.
Related: White House criticizes border agents who rounded up migrants on horseback
Continue reading...Official preliminary results show SPD secured 25.7% of the vote and CDU won 24.1%
If you speak some German, here’s an interesting analysis from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which suggests that Germany wanted change – but also not really, noting that the election results throw up more questions than they answer.
“Germans longed for new horizons, but in the end they didn’t really trust themselves, “ the authors write. They discuss Germans changing allegiances in the run up to the poll, and make the point that never before has the strongest party in the Bundestag been simultaneously so weak.
Bei der Bundestagswahl wollte Deutschland den Wechsel - aber nicht so ganz. Warum das so ist - eine Analyse in Daten und Grafiken. #btw #ddj https://t.co/Lj2bw11MAF
It’s just past 6am in Germany, where people are waking up to the official preliminary results of Sunday’s federal election. If you’re just joining us, here’s a brief summary of what they were:
Continue reading...The cause of the accident was not immediately clear and federal safety authorities will investigate
At least three people were killed on Saturday afternoon when an Amtrak train that runs between Seattle and Chicago derailed in north-central Montana, toppling several cars onto their sides, authorities said.
The westbound Empire Builder train derailed at about 4pm near Joplin, a town of about 200, Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said. The accident scene is about 150 miles north-east of Helena and about 30 miles from the border with Canada.
Continue reading...States including Idaho and Kansas report throwing away thousands of expired doses; clashes in Norway as bars, restaurants and nightclubs reopen
Here is a round-up of all the top Covid stories from the UK and around the world so far today:
A decline in public services in the UK could be hidden behind a “Covid crisis smokescreen”, unions have warned.
It comes amid calls from union chiefs for rail and bus services to be renationalised to avert “disastrous” cuts to services and jobs and increases in fares.
People just will not travel on trains if fares go up, and coupled with the new ways of working, there is a real danger that the railways will be hollowed out.
Continue reading...‘Marriage for All’ proposal backed by 64.1% of voters in nationwide referendum
Swiss voters have decided by a clear margin to allow same-sex couples to marry, in a referendum that brings the Alpine nation into line with many others in western Europe.
Official results showed the measure passed with 64.1% of voters in favour and won a majority in all of Switzerland’s 26 cantons.
Continue reading...Speaker says she will work to build consensus on Biden’s separate $3.5tn social agenda, which has caused division within the party
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Sunday Democrats will pass a $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill this week.
Related: ‘We couldn’t be more inconsistent’: discordant Democrats imperil Biden’s agenda
Continue reading...Leeds United have offered support but players face return to Taliban regime unless accepted soon
The UK government is being asked to urgently resettle female players from Afghanistan’s junior football team who fled the Taliban and have been offered a new life with Leeds United.
The 35 young women – many of whom are in their teens – their families and football coaches are in Lahore, Pakistan, on 30-day visas. But the 136-strong group face returning to Afghanistan unless they are accepted by a third country soon – they have to leave Pakistan by 12 October.
Continue reading...Katrín Jakobsdóttir’s future as PM in doubt as Left-Green Movement loses ground to rightwing partners
Iceland has become the first country in Europe to have more women than men in parliament, a day after a general election that left the future of the prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, in doubt despite her left-right coalition winning a clear majority.
Of the 63 seats in the Althing parliament, 33 – or 52% – were won by women, projections based on the final results showed on Sunday. No other European country has had more than 50% female lawmakers, with Sweden coming closest at 47%, according to data compiled by the World Bank.
Continue reading...Vibrantly illustrated Sephardic Jewish book is believed to have been made in Spain in the 14th century
Seven centuries after it was created, a priceless Sephardic Jewish book whose wine-stained pages have somehow survived exile, the Inquisition, the rise and fall of an empire, two world wars and the Bosnian conflict, is making a homecoming. Of sorts.
The codex, known as the Sarajevo Haggadah after the city where it has been kept since at least 1894, is thought to have been made in north-east Spain in about 1350, possibly as a wedding present to mark the union of two prominent Jewish families.
Continue reading...Landlocked state within central Italy is one of last places in Europe with total ban on abortion
Residents in San Marino are voting over whether or not to lift a ban on abortion following a tense referendum campaign.
The extremely conservative landlocked state within central Italy, which has a population of about 33,000, is one of the last places in Europe that has a total ban on abortion.
Continue reading...A coalition is inevitable but there are likely to be months of complicated negotiations in the months ahead
Polling stations have opened in Germany as the nation decides who will succeed in the race to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor after 16 years.
As final rallies were held across the country by the the main candidates on Saturday, with polls showing the lead held by the Social Democrats’ Olaf Scholz over Armin Laschet of the Christian Democrats to have narrowed to a tiny margin, voter participation among the more than 60 million Germans eligible to vote, was predicted to be high.
Continue reading...Haitian deportees arriving from Texas say they were ‘rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals’
When Evens Delva waded across the Rio Grande with his wife and two daughters, he had dreams of starting a new life in Florida. But less than a week later, he and his family stepped on to the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, the sweltering and chaotic capital of Haiti, with nothing except traumatic memories and a feeling of bubbling anger.
Delva, along with nearly 2,000 other Haitians, was deported from southern Texas this week to Haiti, despite having lived in Chile for the past six years and having few remaining connections to his home country. His younger daughter, who is four, does not hold Haitian citizenship, having been born in Chile, and speaks more Spanish than Haitian Creole.
Continue reading...Tough controls on immigration, a restricted role for European courts, a new politics of patriotism: why is the EU’s former Brexit chief negotiator, now running for the French presidency, sounding more and more like a Eurosceptic? As his Brexit diaries are published in English, he reveals all
My Secret Brexit Diary, Michel Barnier’s blow-by-blow account of the Brexit negotiations, is at times quite a dry and technical read. But every now and then it offers glorious moments of comic relief. There is, for example, the day that Lord Digby Jones and a jovial bunch of leave-voting businessmen pitch up optimistically at Barnier’s Brussels office, plonking a patriotic gift-basket on his desk. Running his eye over it, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator spies some cheddar, wine, tea and jam, a book of Shakespeare’s plays and an essay on Winston Churchill’s life and political philosophy. With a smile, Barnier points out that some of the foodstuffs are processed from European products and protected by EU designations of origin. As for Shakespeare and Churchill, one, he suggests, was a very “continental playwright” and the other a “very European British statesman” who backed a united Europe.
This false start is the prelude to some unsuccessful lobbying by the British delegation on behalf of the City’s financial services industry. When Barnier bats away demands for full post-Brexit access to European markets, he writes that the mood suddenly turns sour: “Digby Jones dares to say to me: ‘Mr Barnier, your position is contrary to the interests of the economy. You are going to make life even more difficult for the worker in the Ruhr, the single woman in Madrid or the unemployed man in Athens.’” The rhetoric and tone, concludes Barnier in his diary entry for 10 January 2018, was “morally outrageous”; the desired bespoke agreement on financial services never materialises.
Continue reading...In June 1940, a Dutch salesman, acting as a consul in Lithuania, issued Jewish refugees with pseudo visas to escape Europe. His remarkable story is only now being told
He helped save more Jewish lives than Oskar Schindler, but while the brave deeds of the German industrialist were known around the world because of an Oscar-winning film, few know the name Jan Zwartendijk, a Dutch radio salesman who helped thousands of Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe.
Now a book by the celebrated Dutch writer Jan Brokken seeks to rescue Zwartendijk from obscurity, as well as other courageous officials who bent the rules to help several thousand Jews trapped between Nazi Europe and the Soviet Union.
Continue reading...After 10 years of bloodshed, foreign allies are seeking to rehabilitate the Syrian leader
For almost a decade he was a pariah who struggled to get a meeting abroad or even to assert himself on his visitors. Largely alone in his palace, save for trusted aides, Bashar al-Assad presided over a broken state whose few friends demanded a humiliating price for their protection, and weren’t afraid to show it.
During regular trips to Syria, Vladimir Putin arranged meetings at Russian bases, forcing Assad to trail behind him at functions. Iran too readily imposed its will, often dictating military terms, or sidelining the Syrian leader on decisions that shaped the course of his country.
Continue reading...Prominent pro-democracy group Hong Kong Alliance voted to disband after many of its leaders were arrested
The Hong Kong pro-democracy group that organised three decades of vigils commemorating the victims of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square massacre has voted to disband in the face of China’s sweeping clampdown on dissent.
The Hong Kong Alliance was one of the most prominent symbols of the city’s former political plurality, and its dissolution on Saturday is the latest illustration of how quickly China is remoulding the business hub in its own authoritarian image.
Continue reading...In a letter to Democrats on Saturday the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, set her sights high, saying Joe Biden’s $3.5tn spending package, a bipartisan infrastructure deal worth $1tn and a measure to expand government funding “must pass” next week.
Related: ‘We couldn’t be more inconsistent’: discordant Democrats imperil Biden’s agenda
Continue reading...The country’s pandemic policy has left many of its overseas citizens feeling alienated – a failure to amend election law could cement that
What makes a New Zealander outside of New Zealand? An accent (which can be lost), or a passport (which can be bought)? Is it a set of irrevocable rights, an identity that anyone can claim and no one can question? Or does it depend on how often you go back?
What if you don’t know when you’ll be home again?
Continue reading...Judge granted temporary injunction and referred the case to a three-judge panel while mandate was set to go into effect Monday
New York City schools have been temporarily blocked from enforcing a vaccine mandate for teachers and other workers by a federal appeals judge, days before it was to take effect.
Related: CDC overrides advisory panel to back Pfizer booster for Americans with high-risk jobs
Continue reading...All eyes are on Xi Jinping as expectation grows that the government will have to intervene to protect small creditors
In May 2020, Chen (not his real name) decided to invest 300,000 yuan (£34,000) in property in the north-eastern Chinese city of Shenyang. “I thought the price was not too expensive and I had some extra money so I invested it,” he said. “I thought it was going to be all right because Evergrande is such a big name and enterprise.”
Chen was following in the footsteps of countless fellow Chinese, getting in on a booming property market that had turned big cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai into some of the world’s most expensive, amid the huge transfer of the population from rural to urban areas.
Continue reading...