A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Kenya to France
Continue reading...Category Archives: World News
Study finds Covid-19 pandemic worsened mental health around the world
Estimated 76m extra cases of anxiety and 53m extra cases of depression during pandemic, say researchers
Cases of anxiety and depression around the world increased dramatically in 2020, researchers have found, with an estimated 76m extra cases of anxiety and 53m extra cases of major depressive disorder than would have been expected had Covid not struck.
The study is the latest to suggest the pandemic has taken a serious toll on mental health, and that women and young people are more likely to be affected than men or older people.
Continue reading...Germany investigates possible ‘sonic weapon attack’ against US embassy staff
Police have been investigating possible cases of ‘Havana Syndrome’ associated with the diplomatic mission since August
German police are investigating an “alleged sonic weapon attack” against staff of the US embassy in Berlin, in the latest in a growing number of incidents of “Havana syndrome” around the world.
The police statement, which said the investigation had been under way since August, was issued on Friday in response to a report in Der Spiegel, which said the inquiry into at least two cases had been opened on the basis of evidence handed over by the US embassy.
Continue reading...Mexico police intercept 652 Central American migrants in three cargo trucks
Discovery is one of biggest of US-bound migrants, with 90% Guatemalans and nearly 200 unaccompanied minors
Police in northern Mexico have discovered more than 600 Central American migrants hiding in three long cargo trucks headed to the United States, in one of the biggest roundups of US-bound migrants by Mexican authorities in years.
Video released by police showed officers prying off a lock from a truck’s rear door late on Thursday, and opening it to find migrants in heavy coats and hoods huddled close together on the floor, nearly all of them wearing face masks.
Continue reading...Saudi aide accused of directing Khashoggi murder edges back to power
Saud al-Qahtani, aide to Mohammed bin Salman, hailed as patriot on pro-government social media
Three years after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi royal court adviser accused of directing the murder is being quietly reintroduced by pro-government influencers as a patriotic figure who has served his country well.
Social media accounts that back the Saudi leadership have in recent months been posting tributes to Saud al-Qahtani, a chief aide to crown prince and Saudi Arabia’s effective leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in a move that is seen as marking his gradual return to the seat of Saudi power. Qahtani vanished from public view in the aftermath of the gruesome killing in Istanbul that shocked the world and almost derailed his boss’s path to the throne.
Continue reading...Zimbabwean who cleared Falklands mines urges rethink on 75% cut to clearance programmes
Cuthbert Mutukwa fears disastrous consequences for home country if UK cuts go ahead as it nears ‘mine-free’ status
A Zimbabwean man who helped clear hundreds of landmines from the Falkland Islands has urged Britain not to go ahead with cuts that would see the government pull funding from his home country just as it nears “mine-free” status.
Cuthbert Mutukwa, 42, left his family in Zimbabwe to work for two years de-mining the Falkland Islands, the British overseas territory that was peppered with about 13,000 mines by Argentinian forces during the 1982 war.
Continue reading...Trump’s Washington DC hotel lost $74m during presidency, documents reveal – live
- Documents contradict Trump’s claims hotel made tens of millions
- US adds 194,000 September jobs, a month of disappointing growth
- Debt ceiling measure heads to the House as partisan tensions flare
- Senate Republicans sow disinformation after $480bn debt ceiling deal
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Steve Bannon has informed the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol that he will not be cooperating with their subpoena to provide related documents.
This comes after Politico reported yesterday that Donald Trump has directed Bannon and three other former aides - former social media czar Dan Scavino, former defense department official Kash Patel and former chief of staff Mark Meadows - to ignore the subpoena, likely because he will attempt to block their testimony in court.
Continue reading...The Saudi takeover of Newcastle United is a symptom of England’s political failures | David Goldblatt
We shouldn’t single out football fans: the country has long since made its peace with the power of capital, whatever its origins
Football, no longer merely the national game, is England’s political theatre. The way in which the spasm of fan protest stopped the European Super League in its tracks in April, and which the prime minister erroneously claimed as his own victory, spoke to both a residual – if often dormant – public sense of justice and communitarianism, and the shamelessness of our snake-skinned political conversation. The open conflict between the England men’s team, the Conservative government and a section of the England fanbase over taking the knee at Euro 2020 was a battle over who gets to define the terms of our debate over structural racism. Now, the long anticipated sale of Newcastle United to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund points to England’s practically and morally diminished place in the world, and the roads that have taken us there.
The crown prince of Saudi Arabia is not the first politician to take an interest in Newcastle United. In the early 1990s, Tony Blair, then leader of the opposition, was busy burnishing his local credentials by declaring his fidelity to the team, decrying Andy Cole’s transfer to Manchester United in the Sun, and playing keepy-uppy with Kevin Keegan. Like Blair, Newcastle United were the coming thing. After four decades without a trophy, but now under the new ownership of Sir John Hall, both a Thatcherite property developer and an advocate for regional government and regeneration in the north-east, Keegan’s Newcastle were challenging for the Premiership title and playing fabulous football to raging full houses. In 1996 Alan Shearer arrived, on a then recored transfer fee, and declared to a delirious crowd that he was still “the son of a sheet-metal worker”. One could have been forgiven for thinking that, after the hammer blows of 17 years of Thatcherism, there was hope for an English working class and regional revival.
David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football and The Game of Our Lives
Continue reading...Brussels vows swift response to Poland’s ruling against EU law
Ursula von der Leyen says European Commission will decide on next steps to take
The head of the European Commission has vowed a swift response to a ruling from Poland’s top court rejecting the supremacy of EU law, which has thrown relations between Brussels and Warsaw into a crisis.
Ursula von der Leyen said she was deeply concerned by Thursday’s ruling of the Polish constitutional tribunal, which concluded that basic principles of EU law were incompatible with Poland’s constitution. “I have instructed the commission’s services to analyse it thoroughly and swiftly. On this basis, we will decide on next steps,” she said in her first public statement on the matter.
Continue reading...Moment Maria Ressa learns of Nobel peace prize win during Zoom call – video
Maria Ressa, the journalist and founder of the Philippine news organisation Rappler, said she was 'speechless' after learning of her Nobel peace prize win while participating in a panel discussion on journalism in south-east Asia.
Ressa could be seen answering a call from the Norwegian Nobel committee informing her of her win on the event's live video feed. Reacting with visible shock, she briefly left the panel to continue the call.
'It's a recognition of how we're going to win the battle for truth,' she said, after returning to the discussion. 'We hold the line.'
- Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov win Nobel peace prize
- Nobel peace prize 2021: journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov win
Shia mosque bombing kills dozens in Afghan city of Kunduz
Large number of worshippers killed or wounded in blast during Friday prayers
At least 100 worshippers have been killed or injured in a suicide bombing that targeted a packed Shia mosque in Afghanistan during Friday prayers.
The blast took place in Kunduz, the capital city of Kunduz province in the north-east of the country. There was speculation that the attack was carried out by Islamic State (IS), which has a long history of attacking Afghanistan’s Shia minority.
Continue reading...EU could lift ban on UK sausages to sweeten Northern Ireland deal
Brussels to offer substantial package of proposals to improve post-Brexit arrangements
The EU will seek to sweeten its package of proposals over the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland by lifting a prohibition on sausages made in Britain.
The EU’s Brexit commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, will table four papers on Wednesday as to how the Northern Ireland protocol can be improved.
Continue reading...Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov win Nobel peace prize
Filipina and Russian given 2021 award as organisers warn of threat to independent media worldwide
Campaigning journalists from the Philippines and Russia have won the 2021 Nobel peace prize as the Norwegian committee recognised the vital importance of an independent media to democracy and warned it was increasingly under assault.
Maria Ressa, the chief executive and cofounder of Rappler, and Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, were named as this year’s laureates by Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
Continue reading...French far right’s new face: the meteoric rise of Éric Zemmour
The controversial TV pundit recently overtook Marine Le Pen in presidential election opinion polls
He has been convicted for inciting racial hatred, attacked by historians for claiming the Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain saved French Jews rather than aiding their deportation to death camps, and was this week described by the French justice minister as a dangerous racist and Holocaust denier.
But Éric Zemmour, a far-right French TV pundit, is rising so fast in opinion polls for president that one survey this week found he could make the final round of the April election and take 45% of the vote against the centrist Emmanuel Macron.
Continue reading...Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa: ‘A world without facts means a world without truth’ – video
Maria Ressa, the journalist and founder of the Philippine news organisation Rappler, said 'we are fighting for facts' after she was announced the joint-winner of the 2021 Nobel peace prize with the Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov. 'This shows that the Nobel peace prize committee realised that a world without facts means a world without truth and trust,' she said.
Ressa, a former CNN bureau chief, founded Rappler in 2012. She and her organisation have faced threats of closure and arrest after publishing critical coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs. Ressa was named a Time Person of the Year in 2018 for her work on press freedom.
Continue reading...Squid Game lays bare South Korea’s real-life personal debt crisis
Household debt is now equivalent to over 100% of GDP and has gone hand in hand with a dramatically widening income gap
After midnight, when the crowds of revellers have gone, Choi Young-soo* crouches in a shabby alleyway in Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam district. This is the only time that the 35-year-old, a part-time food delivery rider, dare leave his tiny room at a cheap hostel he shares with about 30 other people.
The rooms, he says, are “only slightly bigger than coffins”.
Continue reading...Thai restaurant makes waves as customers flock for flood dining – video
Riverside restaurant owner Titiporn Jutimanon was convinced a bout of flooding in Thailand could be the end of a business already struggling from the pandemic. But with the rising tide of the Chao Phraya River this week came an unexpected opportunity. Instead of closing for the floods, Titiporn’s eatery is making waves in Thailand, staying open for customers who are revelling in shin-deep dining, and the thrill of avoiding the rush of water set off as boats go by
Continue reading...Could the global Covid death toll be millions higher than thought?
A data scientist and economics student joined forces in search of the real pandemic death toll – and the results are startling
For the past 18 months, hunkered down in his Tel Aviv apartment, Ariel Karlinsky has scoured the web for data that could help him calculate the true death toll of Covid-19.
Continue reading...Manila’s newly homeless tell of survival in lockdown – photo essay
As Covid hit, thousands of Filipinos were left trapped in the capital without work. Many ended up on the street and are still waiting to rebuild their lives
Like so many others before her, Michelle Sicat, a 28-year-old single mother from the province of Nueva Ecija, had come to Metro Manila to get a job to support her family. She left her daughter with her parents so she could work as a shop assistant in one of the city’s busiest commercial districts. Sicat’s sacrifice was one that many Filipinos from rural areas have to make.
Despite missing home, Sicat was happy to have a job. But then the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The Philippine government placed the entire island of Luzon – where the Metro Manila region is located – under the strictest level of lockdown. The restrictions forced most businesses to close. Most people were ordered to stay at home.
For many living on the streets, there is no shelter from the elements
Continue reading...‘It was a nice break from everything’: two men rescued after 29 days lost at sea
Surviving on oranges they’d packed, coconuts from the sea and rainwater they collected, they floated about 400km in the Solomon Sea before being rescued
Two men from Solomon Islands who spent 29 days lost at sea after their GPS tracker stopped working have been rescued off the coast of Papua New Guinea – 400 kilometres away from where their journey began.
Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni set out from Mono Island, in Western province, Solomon Islands, on the morning of the 3 September in a small, single 60 horsepower motorboat.
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