Donald Trump’s phone records from the day of the 6 January Capitol insurrection could be among those requested by the congressional committee looking into the deadly attack, it was reported on Monday.
Related: Hurricane Ida: up to 2 million without power as New Orleans assesses damage
Continue reading...A coin toss could give me two completely different lives. But once I know the result there’s no going back
I’ve spent most of my life knowing I may have inherited a faulty gene that would cause Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative disease that can be fatal. My grandad had the disease, my mum has it, and I am yet to take the test to find out if I have it too. It’s a 50/50 chance of inheritance. Right now, I am happily ignorant of whether I carry the mutation or not. A coin toss could give me two completely different lives. Once I know the results, there’s no going back. So far, everyone who has been tested in my family has tested positive. It seems the odds are against me. I’m 27 years old, and I’m starting to think seriously about my future, whether that is moving overseas or contemplating having children. Whatever big decisions I am facing now, I can’t help but wonder, could this disease overshadow them? I explore this tension in a newly released short documentary, Fifty Percent.
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Continue reading...Senior officials at the World Health Organization have cited stagnating vaccination rates and low uptake in poorer countries as reasons so many Covid deaths are predicted.
'Last week, there was an 11% increase in the number of deaths in the region – one reliable projection is expecting 236,000 deaths in Europe, by 1 December,' WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said.
Kluge attributed the higher transmission to the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant, an 'exaggerated easing' of restrictions and measures, and a surge in summer travel.
While about half of people in Europe are fully vaccinated, vaccination uptake in the region has slowed, Kluge said.
Europe has registered about 1.3 million Covid deaths
Figure dwarfs 800 to 1,100 Afghans eligible for resettlement defence secretary said would be left behind
MPs are scrambling to rescue more than 7,000 constituents and family members trapped in Afghanistan, according to figures provided to the Guardian, dwarfing the only estimates provided by the government of the number left behind.
Scores of Labour MPs have been inundated with pleas for help from thousands of constituents whose relatives have been left stranded since the UK’s final emergency airlift left Kabul following the country’s rapid fall to the Taliban. Among them are children, disabled relatives and people who face persecution due to their work, all with potential eligibility to be resettled in Britain.
Continue reading...Up to 2 million people in and around New Orleans were without power after Hurricane Ida, a 150mph monster storm that was the most powerful ever to hit Louisiana. At least one person was killed, by a falling tree, but the governor, John Bel Edwards, warned that the death toll will probably rise
Continue reading...Travellers from Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia also affected by move
The EU has removed six countries, including the US, from a Covid “white list” of places whose tourists should be permitted entry without restrictions such as mandatory quarantine.
A majority of EU countries had reopened their borders to Americans in June, in the hope of salvaging the summer tourism season although most required a negative test ahead of travel. The move was not, however, reciprocated by the US.
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The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, is monitoring the latest updates on Afghanistan.
Responding to repeated questions about civilian casualties from a drone strike on Kabul on Sunday, the Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby said: “We are not in a position to dispute it right now, and ... we’re assessing, and we’re investigating.”
The US health department is preparing to launch an office focused on the climate crisis as a public health issue, something it outlined in a January executive order.
The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, said resources for the new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity are being assembled now. The WSJ reports:
The new office is likely to spur initiatives touching on many aspects of healthcare, according to people briefed on the planning and White House releases. It is expected to offer protections for populations most at risk—including the elderly, minorities, rural communities and children—and could eventually lead to policies compelling hospitals and other care facilities to reduce carbon emissions, the people said.
Continue reading...Islamic State claims responsibility for attacks in final hours of western evacuation of Afghanistan
US anti-missile defences have intercepted as many as five rockets targeting Kabul airport as key American diplomats flew out of the Aghan capital in the final hours of the western evacuation under the threat of further Islamic State attacks.
Officials told Reuters that core US diplomats had on Monday joined the 122,000 foreign nationals and Afghans to be evacuated since mid-August, although it was not clear whether the acting ambassador, Ross Wilson, was among them.
Continue reading...At least three people dead and trail of explosive booby traps left across Araçatuba in São Paulo state
Bank robbers armed with explosives and high-powered rifles have plunged a Brazilian city into terror early Monday, taking civilians hostage and even putting some on their cars while making their escape.
Video shared on social media showed a booming shootout and men dressed in black marching hostages down a street in Araçatuba, 320 miles from São Paulo and home to almost 200,000 people.
Continue reading...UN announcement marks ‘huge milestone for global health and our environment’
The era of leaded petrol is officially over, the UN has announced, eliminating a major threat to human and planetary health.
UN experts have called the use of the fuel, which began in 1922, a “catastrophe for the environment and public health”. By the 1970s, nearly all petrol produced around the world contained lead. Now the last country to use it, Algeria, has finally stopped selling it in petrol stations.
Continue reading...Analysis: forging an acceptable agreement with new Afghan regime will require careful diplomacy
The history of war is littered with losing parties struggling to accept the terms or even the fact of their defeat. At the end of the first world war, Germany’s then chancellor Philipp Scheidemann announced: “May the hand wither that binds us in such shackles.”
Some of the demands by the US and its allies on how the Taliban must behave now contain similar self-denial. It is as if the US remains in control of Kabul, as orders are issued on future Taliban actions ranging from the release of refugees to the future makeup of the government, its counter-terrorism policies and the place of women in society.
Continue reading...US should work with international community to help Afghanistan run government functions, Wang Yi says
China’s top diplomat has urged the international community to engage with Afghanistan’s new Taliban government and “guide it actively”, in a phone call with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
Wang Yi, Chinese state councillor and foreign minister, also said that Washington should work with the international community to help the new regime run governmental functions normally, according to a statement. He added that the US’s “hasty withdrawal” could allow terrorist groups to “regroup and come back stronger”.
Continue reading...Experts say combustible materials were used in 20-storey building that went up in flames with no loss of life
The mayor of Milan has compared a fire that ripped through a 20-storey residential building on Sunday to the Grenfell Tower blaze in London that killed 72 people four years ago.
The fire, which started on the upper floors of the tower on the southern outskirts of the capital of the Lombardy region, spread to the rest of the building owing to what experts described as the “chimney effect”, which turned the building into a torch.
Continue reading...A million households without power as governor says system of levees overhauled after Hurricane Katrina will face ‘most severe test’
One person has died as Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US, knocked out power to all of New Orleans, reversed the flow of the Mississippi River and blew roofs off buildings across Louisiana.
Related: Hurricane Ida live updates: first death in Louisiana as New Orleans loses power
Continue reading...Western G7 powers are meeting Turkey, Qatar and Nato in Doha to discuss how Kabul airport could be reopened
Talks are due in Doha and New York to try to reach an international consensus on the conditions for recognising the Taliban government in Afghanistan. There are signs of tensions between superpowers after Russia called on the US to release Afghan central bank reserves that Washington blocked after the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul earlier this month.
“If our western colleagues are actually worried about the fate of the Afghan people, then we must not create additional problems for them by freezing gold and foreign exchange reserves,” said the Kremlin’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov.
Continue reading...Cal Fire chief warns of ‘fire activity that we have never seen before’ as fleeing residents clog roads
Thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate the tourist town of South Lake Tahoe as the raging Caldor fire draws closer, prompting chaotic scenes and clogged roads as residents rush to leave the area.
Monday’s fresh evacuation orders, unheard of in the city, came a day after communities several miles south of the lake were abruptly ordered to evacuate as the wildfire raged nearby.
Continue reading...Encounter unlikely to have banished CDU nerves after snap poll suggests SPD’s Olaf Scholz retains lead
The three politicians battling it out for the top job in German politics have clashed in a TV debate during which the leader of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats failed to regain lost momentum and ceded the role of continuity candidate to his centre-left rival.
Polls published before the first of three televised debates suggested the race to lead Germany into the post-Merkel era was more wide open than ever, with Olaf Scholz’s SPD in a narrow lead over Armin Laschet’s CDU and Annalena Baerbock’s Green party following closely in third place.
Continue reading...Health body previously stated that boosters in Europe are unnecessary and will increase vaccine inequality
A booster jab of Covid-19 vaccine for vulnerable people is not a luxury but a good way to protect them, the World Health Organization has said, as surging infection rates and a pan-European vaccination slowdown produced a “deeply worrying” situation.
“A third dose of vaccine is not a luxury booster taken away from someone who is still waiting for a first jab,” Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said on Monday. “It’s basically a way to keep the most vulnerable safe.”
Continue reading...Under-18s will be allowed to play online games for one hour on Fridays, weekends and holidays
China has ordered its online gaming companies to further reduce the services they provide to young gamers, in a move intended to curb what the authorities described as “youth video game addiction”.
Under the new rule, young gamers are only allowed to spend an hour playing online games on Fridays, weekends and holidays, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Continue reading...For those aboard a recent whale watching cruise off Cape Cod, the decomposing carcass of a year-old humpback calf floating in the waters of the Stellwagen Bank national marine sanctuary made for a heartbreaking sight.
Related: Experience: I was attacked by two sharks at once
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