Category Archives: World News

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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Scrapping submarines deal broke trust, Macron tells Australian PM

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French president says Scott Morrison should propose tangible actions to heal rift, in first call since row

The French president has told the Australian prime minister that the scrapping of a multibillion-dollar submarine contract “broke the relationship of trust” and said Canberra should propose “tangible actions” to heal a diplomatic rift.

In their first phone call since Australia dumped the submarine plans, Emmanuel Macron also encouraged Scott Morrison to adopt a more ambitious climate policy, including a commitment “to cease production and consumption of coal at the national level and abroad”, according to a French government readout of the conversation.

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Violent abductions target Sudanese civilians in aftermath of coup

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Dozens of politicians, journalists and activists have been swept up by army officers since takeover

In the days since Sudan’s military coup, it has become a familiar scene in Khartoum and other cities. At a home or an office, a convoy of vehicles crowded with armed men usually in plainclothes from army intelligence and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces suddenly arrives to make an arrest.

Bundled away, sometimes beaten and hooded, for some relatives it is the last news they have of those detained.

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The men who built Qatar’s World Cup dream deserve some of David Beckham’s pay packet | Pete Pattisson

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The ex-England star’s deal for his ambassador role is in marked contrast to the wages of the host nation’s migrant workers

I doubt Nirmala Pakrin knows who David Beckham is, but she knows about Qatar.

Her husband, Rupchandra Rumba, a 24-year-old from Nepal, died in 2019, gasping for breath in a squalid camp for labourers on the outskirts of Doha, while working for a contractor on one of the new World Cup stadiums.

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France to use ‘language of force’ in post-Brexit fishing rights row

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Comments from French EU affairs minister come as British trawler is detained in France amid dispute

France will “now use the language of force” in an escalation of a row over post-Brexit fishing rights, France’s EU affairs minister has said, as French maritime police seized a British trawler found in its territorial waters without a licence.

One vessel was stopped off Le Havre in the early hours of Thursday morning, then rerouted to the quay and “handed over to the judicial authority”, while a second was given a verbal warning.

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Call for action on TB as deaths rise for first time in decade

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Tuberculosis campaigners tell G20 leaders $1bn is needed annually for vaccine research to reverse decades of underfunding

A group of tuberculosis survivors are calling for more funding and action to find new vaccines, after the numbers dying of the infection rose for the first time in 10 years.

In 2020, 1.5 million were killed by TB and 10 million infected, according to the World Health Organization. Campaigners want world leaders to invest $1bn (£730m) every year into vaccine research, spurred on by the momentum from the Covid jab development.

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‘We can’t live like this’: climate shocks rain down on Honduras’s poorest

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Rural communities like Chapagua that have done least to stoke the climate crisis barely have time to recover from one disaster before another hits

It was around dusk on the third consecutive day of heavy rain when the River Aguán burst its banks and muddy waters surged through the rural community of Chapagua in north-east Honduras, sweeping away crops, motorbikes and livestock.

Most inhabitants fled to higher ground after the category 4 Hurricane Eta made landfall in early November 2020, but fisherman Rosendo García stayed behind, hoping to safeguard the family’s home and animals. After a ravine on the opposite side of the village also flooded, there was no way out.

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