Government announces re-opening of high schools for boys but makes no mention of girls
The Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to re-open only for boys.
Girls were not mentioned in Friday’s announcement, which means boys will be back at their desks next week after a one-month hiatus, while their sisters will still be stuck at home.
Continue reading...Traffic-light system replaced, with foreign countries now listed as either ‘red’ or OK for travel
Half-term holiday bookings are expected to surge after ministers unveiled a simplification of Covid foreign travel rules, replacing the traffic-light system with a single red list and bringing in a laxer regime for tests.
But while MPs and some travel groups welcomed the new system, airlines voiced anger that fully vaccinated travellers returning to England will still have to take a test after they return, even if this will be changed to a cheaper lateral flow version.
Continue reading...Canada already shares intelligence with Australia, the UK, the US and New Zealand but was not included in Aukus pact
Justin Trudeau is facing harsh criticism from political rivals after Canada was excluded from a new international defence pact, days before the country votes in a federal election.
Australia, the United Kingdom and the United State on Wednesday announced a new intelligence sharing agreement meant to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Continue reading...Major commitment with deadline of 2030 is big advance towards reaching 1.5C goal set out in Paris agreement
The US and the EU made a joint pledge on Friday to cut global methane emissions by almost a third in the next decade, in what climate experts hailed as one of the most significant steps yet towards fulfilling the Paris climate agreement.
The pledge came as the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned of a “high risk of failure” at the vital UN climate talks, Cop26, set for Glasgow this November.
Continue reading...PM will hope signing of this week’s Aukus deal will help the allies move on from the chaos of Kabul
Boris Johnson will fly to New York this weekend for his first foreign trip since the Covid pandemic, hoping to cement his relationship with the US president, Joe Biden, after a rocky summer marred by the chaotic Kabul airlift.
Two years ago, when Johnson made his first foreign trip as prime minister to the Biarritz G7 summit, the hope was that Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for the man he called “Britain Trump” would help smooth the way for a rapid post-Brexit trade deal with the US.
Continue reading...Dutch people born in 2001 are not as tall as previous generation – is it genetics, migration or nutrition?
From brutal conflicts to periods of prosperity, pandemics to triumphs for equality, human history is full of highs and lows. But such fluctuations don’t just affect society: the human body can also be a sign of the times.
Studies have shown that our height is not just a matter of genetics but is also influenced by the environment we live in, with key factors including our nutrition and experience of sickness, such as diarrhoea.
Continue reading...The deal has upset China, but it also binds the US into European security, in a world where Nato may be less relevant
France is furious. Theresa May is worried. The announcement of the new Australia-UK-US alliance (Aukus) and the ditching of a previous French-Australian submarine deal has led France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to term the pact “a stab in the back”, while the former British prime minister is concerned about Britain being dragged into a war over the future of Taiwan.
Oddly enough, Beijing’s reaction has been rather muted. Yes, it has accused the west of a “cold war mentality”, and Xi Jinping has warned foreigners not to interfere in the region, but its warning that China would “closely monitor the situation” was close to a “cut and paste” outrage.
Continue reading...Brazil’s president claims he has not received a Covid-19 vaccine – but his immunization records have been locked away for 100 years
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has signaled that he will snub New York City vaccination rules when he travels to next week’s UN general assembly claiming not to have received a Covid jab.
Bolsonaro is the only G20 leader who publicly claims not to have been vaccinated against a disease that has killed nearly 600,000 Brazilians, although the decision to place a 100-year secrecy order on his immunization records means many citizens doubt that claim.
Continue reading...Exclusive: privacy concerns ‘must not delay use of neuralMatch algorithm to protect victims of abuse’
Child protection experts from across the world have called on Apple to implement new scanning technologies urgently to detect images of child abuse.
In August, Apple announced plans to use a tool called neuralMatch to scan photos being uploaded to iCloud online storage and compare them to a database of known images of child abuse.
Continue reading...Royal’s legal team believed to be contesting service of notice of Virginia Giuffre’s civil sexual assault action
The Duke of York’s lawyers have one week to challenge a decision that he can be formally notified by the UK courts of the US civil sex assault case against him, the high court in London has said.
The high court on Wednesday accepted a request by lawyers for Virginia Roberts Giuffre to formally contact him if necessary about her legal proceedings launched in New York.
Continue reading...With rural areas of the country left to suffer, aid workers fear funds are drying up as global compassion fatigue sets in
David Nazaire, a 45-year-old coffee farmer from Beaumont, a small village in rural southern Haiti, was getting ready to harvest when an earthquake struck his home and livelihood. Much of the farming infrastructure – as well as nearby homes, schools and churches – was damaged or completely destroyed. A month later, he and thousands of rural Haitians – those most severely affected by the tremor – are still waiting for relief, and are not expecting it to arrive soon.
“The earthquake didn’t destroy our crops, but it did take everything else,” Nazaire says, outside a neighbour’s house, now a pile of rubble beneath plastic roof tiles supported by the remnants of concrete walls. “We were just getting ready to harvest, but that’s lost now.”
Continue reading...Australia and US pledge stronger ties, EU calls for trade deal and Johnson refuses to rule out getting involved in a conflict involving the island
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to resist “interference from external forces” as Taiwan welcomed support from major allies after a US-Australia ministerial forum pledged stronger ties with the island and the European parliament called for a bilateral trade deal.
Speaking at a meeting of the heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tajikistan via video link, Xi urged members of the grouping to “absolutely resist external forces to interfere [in] countries in our region at any excuse, and hold the future of our countries’ development and progress firmly in our own hands”.
Continue reading...Navalny’s supporters say companies deleted tactical voting app from stores after pressure from Kremlin
Supporters of the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have accused Google and Apple of capitulating to Kremlin pressure after the two tech companies deleted his tactical voting app from their online stores.
Both companies had come under significant pressure from Russian regulators in the days before the courntry’s parliamentary elections to block access to Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative, which tries to channel opposition votes toward the strongest opponents of the ruling party, United Russia.
Continue reading...She explored her gender and sexuality in the 20s, defied segregation in the 40s and inspired Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, a film is bringing her trailblazing achievements to light
It seems inconceivable that someone like Pauli Murray could have slipped through the cracks of US history. A lawyer, activist, scholar, poet and priest, Murray led a trailblazing life that altered the course of history. She was at the forefront of the battles for racial and gender equality, but often so far out in front that her contributions went unrecognised.
In 1940, 15 years before Rosa Parks, Murray was jailed for refusing to move to the back of a bus in the Jim Crow south. In 1943, she campaigned successfully to desegregate her local diner, 17 years before the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. Her work paved the way for the landmark supreme court ruling Brown v Board of Education in 1954 – which de-segregated US schools – to the extent that Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP civil rights group, called Murray’s book States’ Laws on Race and Color “the bible for civil rights lawyers”.
Continue reading...Photographer Tommy Trenchard documents students whose stories of transformation at the Hogwarts of South Africa are more than just fairytales
To fans of JK Rowling’s books, the story may sound somewhat familiar: a young boy living in difficult circumstances is enrolled in a mysterious school far from home, where his life is changed for ever by the transformative power of magic.
Anele Dyasi’s story is no fairytale, though, and the school in question is not Hogwarts, but the College of Magic in Cape Town, a unique institution that has been training some of the continent’s most skilled illusionists since the 1980s.
Continue reading...Evacuation of employees, not contractors, ‘splitting hairs’, says HRW, warning of days left to save lives
Afghan employees who worked as contractors on UK aid projects fear for their lives after not being granted resettlement in Britain.
The Guardian has been in contact with four families who said they had been targeted by the Taliban because they worked for the UK government, and have now been forced into hiding.
Continue reading...Fikile Ntshangase was involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine when she was shot dead in her home. Her daughter Malungelo Kakaza tells her story to Rachel Humphreys
In October last year, Fikile Ntshangase, 65, was at her home in Ophondweni in South Africa when three men burst in and she was shot dead. The murder was witnessed by her 13-year-old grandson. No one has so far been charged with any part in the crime.
Ntshangase’s daughter Malungelo Kakaza tells Rachel Humphreys that her mother had been involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele, close to Hluhluwe–Imfolozi park, the oldest nature reserve in Africa. She campaigned as part of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation.
Continue reading...Nuclear submarine deal with Australia draws criticism from allies and China amid fears of conflict
Britain and the US are battling to contain an international backlash over a nuclear submarine pact struck with Australia amid concerns that the alliance could provoke China and prompt conflict in the Pacific.
Boris Johnson told MPs that the Aukus defence agreement was “not intended to be adversarial” to China. But Beijing accused the three countries of adopting a “cold war mentality” and warned they would harm their own interests unless it was dropped.
Continue reading...Residents of Shoal Lake 40 can drink from taps thanks to a new water treatment facility but dozens of communities lack access
Residents of a First Nations community in Canada, who were deprived of clean drinking water for nearly a quarter of a century, can now drink from their taps after a water treatment facility became fully operational earlier this week.
Shoal Lake 40, a community on the Manitoba-Ontario border, has been under drinking water advisory since 1997.
Continue reading...Armin Laschet and Olaf Scholz face their toughest grilling of campaign at the hands of two 11-year-olds
When Germany elects a new government on 26 September the average voter age may be over 50, but a week and a half before polling day it is children who are asking the hard questions of the candidates who want to fill Angela Merkel’s shoes.
Armin Laschet, of the outgoing chancellor’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Olaf Scholz, of the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD), were both left shifting in their seats in what has been hailed as their toughest grilling of the campaign trail – at the hands of two 11-year-olds.
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