Bootleg Fire, largest wildfire in US and one of at least 70 wildfires, torches more dry forest landscape in Oregon
The largest wildfire in the US torched more dry forest landscape in Oregon on Sunday, one of dozens of major blazes burning across the west as critically dangerous fire weather loomed in the coming days.
The destructive Bootleg Fire just north of the California border grew to more than 476 sq miles (1,210 sq km), an area about the size of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Analysis: making fully vaccinated travellers returning from places with lower infection rates quarantine, while the virus runs wild here, is difficult to comprehend
Boris Johnson’s pendulum swing from “freedom day” to unlocking with “extreme caution” relayed a shift in the government’s thinking – that the relaxation of almost all restrictions at this stage comes with significant risk. The move to make fully vaccinated people returning from France continue to quarantine – because of the risk of the Beta variant – appears to be another sign of panic setting in.
Delta, the dominant variant in the UK, is far more transmissible than the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa. But the danger of Beta has long been its ability to thwart any vaccine shield, particularly the AstraZeneca jab. Beta actually preceded Delta – it was first recorded in the UK in December but never quite took off. In South Africa, it has dominated. It also accounts for about one in 10 new infections in France, but that data includes the French territories of Réunion and Mayotte, where the variant is almost dominant.
Continue reading...Cases are soaring in many countries, and the social and political effects are becoming clearer
“At the root of every pandemic is an encounter between a disease-causing microorganism and a human being … It is a social phenomenon as much as it is a biological one,” writes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, arguing that Spanish flu “pushed India closer to independence, South Africa closer to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war”.
It will be a long time before we, or our descendants, can fully assess Covid’s impact. But its social and political effects are emerging more clearly. It has played a role in extraordinary turmoil in places from Colombia to Cuba to South Africa, exacerbating poverty and frustration. The unrest is rooted in longstanding social and economic problems. In South Africa, where 10,000 troops have now been deployed, it is the furious response to the jailing of the divisive former president Jacob Zuma, who faces a slew of corruption charges; authorities suspect his followers of orchestrating the violence. But Covid’s erosion of social and economic wellbeing and trust in leaders has surely contributed.
Continue reading...Health systems overwhelmed as Delta variant sweeps across south-east Asia
Indonesia has reported more daily Covid-19 infections than India and Brazil as the Delta strain sweeps across south-east Asia, placing intense pressure on health systems.
Most countries in the region are experiencing their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began, fuelled by the emergence of more aggressive variants and a lack of vaccines.
Continue reading...British prime minister and chancellor U-turn as Sunak says ‘I recognise that even the sense that the rules aren’t the same for everyone is wrong’
Following the announcement of stricter social distancing measures being introduced in Vietnam’s capital city, the country’s health ministry has confirmed that daily Covid cases have reached a record high.
The country reported 5,926 cases on Sunday, according to Reuters, as the country battles its worst outbreak so far. Vietnam has reported 53,830 cases overall, with 254 deaths.
Tony Blair has called on ministers to drop the requirement for people who are fully vaccinated to self-isolate if they come into contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, PA Media reports.
The former prime minister said the current system was “not rational” and he understood why people were deleting the NHS Covid app from their mobile phones.
We’re at risk of moving in two contradictory directions.
On the one hand we’re going to open everything up, free restriction altogether, and on the other hand we’ve still got this pinging track and trace system where people have got to go into complete isolation if they’re pinged in circumstances where probably the vast majority of those people do not need to do so.
I don’t want the prime minister of the country to be in isolation at the moment, I need him at his desk doing his job.
He’s double-vaccinated, he’s actually had Covid, he’s testing and presumably the tests are coming back negative. The point is to do this for everyone.
Continue reading...As I dance, it doesn’t feel like a night out – it feels like a homecoming
In 2018, upon her return from a trip to China, my roommate gifted me a pack of black surgical masks. Affixed to the plastic packaging was an explanatory note: RAVE MASKS :)
I knew the look – the masks were purely aesthetic for certain ravers; dressed and masked in serious black, drifting past me at warehouse parties in New York, where I live. But it was a hard look to live up to, and my rave outfits leaned more toward sweaty efficiency, anyway.
Continue reading...CDU leader Armin Laschet caught laughing on camera as president delivered solemn address
More flash-floods have devastated towns in Austria, Bavaria and eastern Germany, as the frontrunner to replace the chancellor, Angela Merkel, was forced to apologise after seeming to make light of a catastrophic situation that has claimed the lives of more than 150 people.
The Alpine district of Berchtesgadener Land declared a state of emergency on Saturday evening after heavy rainfall led to flooded streets and landslides, leaving at least one person dead.
Continue reading...Two South African footballers have become the first athletes in the Olympic Village to test positive for Covid-19, raising fears that the virus may force a growing number of competitors out of the Tokyo Games when they begin on Friday.
Related: Tokyo 2020: guide to the venues for the delayed Olympic Games
Continue reading...Military build-up continues ‘like never before’ on both sides of 2,100-mile border despite high-level talks
It was described as a dialogue, the first high-level meeting in months between the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers to address the ongoing border aggressions that have pushed the two nuclear-armed countries to the brink of war.
But those hoping Wednesday’s meeting would help break a year-long stalemate during which 200,000 troops have built up on both sides of the Himalayan frontier were to be left unsatisfied.
Continue reading...Thousands took to the streets last week in unprecedented protests. Our writer meets some of those trying to force change
There’s a man from the government playing love songs in the park. Orlando Fuentes has a table, an awning against the hard Caribbean sun, and a sound system from which floats Silvio Rodríguez’s Cita con Ángeles. A woman says that she can’t listen, that it’s a beautiful song ruined by being played at too many government rallies.
After 16 months of pandemic and a week of unprecedented protests, the Cuban government wants to soothe the anger. Music is being played in parks across the country.
Continue reading...Officials say rising Beta variant figures are from Réunion island
The government was embroiled in a rancorous diplomatic standoff with France on Saturday night after its surprise decision to continue imposing a 10-day quarantine on fully vaccinated people returning from the country.
French officials seemed baffled by the move, suspecting UK ministers may have based it on rising cases on the French island of Reunion – nearly 6,000 miles from Paris.
Continue reading...We imagined a gleeful summer of pandemic relief. Instead, new anxieties have replaced old ones
We were promised a Hot Vax Summer.
The term – a riff on Hot Girl Summer, the hit 2019 summer single – emerged this spring as predictive shorthand for the (perhaps literally) orgiastic welcome of a post-vaccine reality. But, as might be expected of a phenomenon named for the last great summer anthem of a world before Covid-19, Hot Vax Summer connoted more than a gleeful exchange of fluids. It came to signal a best-case scenario for a time of transition. Pure celebration and best lives lived. In simplest terms, relief.
Continue reading...Varosha, once a chic resort, is being rebuilt in the latest move of Turkey’s power play in the eastern Mediterranean
“Do you want to ride or walk?” asks Seyki Mindik. The municipal employee points under the fierce July sun towards the multicoloured bicycles stacked within view of the police barrier at the entrance to Varosha. “There is so much to see. Tourists love it here.”
Not so long ago the very notion of the eastern Mediterranean’s most famous ghost town being resurrected as a 21st-century theme park would have been unthinkable. For more than four decades there has been almost no movement among ruins of war left to rot with the passage of time.
Continue reading...‘It feels qualitatively different this time.” There are few people I know in South Africa who don’t think this about the carnage now engulfing the nation. Violence was institutionalised during the years of apartheid. In the post-apartheid years, it has rarely been far from the surface – police violence, gangster violence, the violence of protest. What is being exposed now, however, is just how far the social contract that has held the nation together since the end of apartheid has eroded.
Many aspects of the disorder are peculiar to South Africa. There are also themes with wider resonance. Events in the country demonstrate in a particularly acute fashion a phenomenon we are witnessing in different ways and in degrees of severity across the globe: the old order breaking down, with little to fill the void but sectarian movements or identity politics.
Continue reading...General Sir Nick Carter has been arranging meetings with contacts in Kabul and Pakistan to try to prevent a descent into civil war
Britain’s top general, Sir Nick Carter, has been using his personal connections with Afghan and Pakistan leaders in a behind-the-scenes effort to stop Afghanistan sliding into full-blown civil war, and help bolster stalling US-brokered peace talks in Qatar.
At the weekend a senior Afghan delegation arrived in Doha to try to restart the virtually dormant negotiations, after months which have seen the Taliban sweep across much of rural Afghanistan, although they still do not hold any cities.
Continue reading...Julia Ducournau’s serial killer film Titane scoops top award, while best actor and actress go to Caleb Landry Jones and Renate Reinsve
The Palme d’Or, the most prestigious of cinema festival prizes, has gone to Titane, an unconventional and violent film directed by the 37-year-old French director Julia Ducournau.
Continue reading...Bootleg is now the largest US forest fire at 281,208 acres and just 22% contained as ‘excessive heat’ forecast
At least 70 large wildfires are burning across the US west and nearby states – engulfing more than 1m acres in flames – as fears mount that shifting conditions can worsen an already dire situation. Significant areas of these states are in the grips of drought conditions that are considered “extreme” and “exceptional” – the most severe categories.
Related: Heat exhaustion, apocalyptic scenes: what it’s like fighting the US’s biggest wildfire
Continue reading...CCDH finds ‘disinformation dozen’ have combined following of 59 million people across multiple social media platforms
The vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories originated from just 12 people, a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) cited by the White House this week found.
Related: ‘They’re killing people’: Biden slams Facebook for Covid disinformation
Continue reading...Attacks by supporters of jailed former president ‘are bid for pardon or to unseat government’
South African authorities fear a new wave of attacks aimed at undermining the economy, investment and the rule of law as networks loyal to former president Jacob Zuma seek to force his return to power.
Investigators believe the unrest last week, which killed more than 200 and caused massive damage across a swath of the country, was deliberately provoked as part of a broader strategy by political opponents to force president Cyril Ramaphosa to pardon Zuma or even step down.
Continue reading...Inauguration follows election dismissed by US, UK and other countries as ‘neither free nor fair’
President Bashar al-Assad took the oath of office for a fourth term in war-ravaged Syria on Saturday, after officially winning 95% of the vote in an election dismissed abroad.
It was the second presidential poll since the start of a decade-long civil war that has killed almost half a million people and battered the country’s infrastructure.
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