Category Archives: World News

Tibet monks jailed with no apparent evidence of wrongdoing, says HRW

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Four men were jailed for up to 20 years after violent raid on monastery in 2019, says Human Rights Watch

Four Tibetan monks were sentenced to up to 20 years jail in secret trials with no apparent evidence of criminal wrongdoing after a violent raid on a monastery in 2019, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, which calls for their release.

The raid, details of which the rights organisation says have come to light for the first time, was sparked by police obtaining a phone, accidentally left at a cafe, containing WeChat messages to people in Nepal and evidence of a donation to an earthquake relief effort.

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Crackdown on ‘vaccine sommeliers’ as Covid pandemic grips Brazil

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Although four vaccines are available, some shots are deemed by some more desirable than others

Cities across Brazil are clamping down on “vaccine sommeliers” who seek to cherrypick their Covid shots despite the devastating epidemic still gripping Latin America’s largest nation.

More than half a million Brazilians have lost their lives to an outbreak the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, stands accused of ruinously mishandling. Yet some citizens have shown themselves to be perplexingly selective about which brand of vaccine they receive.

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‘I didn’t eat for days’: hunger stalks Venezuelan refugees

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Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns

A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.

The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.

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Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure

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Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander

US forces plunged their main operating base in Afghanistan into darkness and abandoned it to looters when they slipped away in the middle of the night after two decades at the site without notifying their Afghan allies.

The furtive departure from Bagram airbase, which is vital to the security of Kabul and holds about 5,000 mostly Taliban prisoners, infuriated the Afghans. Many saw it as emblematic of a withdrawal they say is being carried out entirely to fit an American political schedule, with no heed for the collapsing security situation on the ground.

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‘More than a game’: Euros delirium in Denmark despite UK travel setback

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Nation with Hans Christian Andersen-inspired football song is hoping for fairytale win against England

People dancing on buses is not something you see every day in Denmark. Rule-abiding Danes tend to keep their celebrations low-key – but not this summer.

Football fans brought traffic to a standstill in Aarhus after Denmark beat the Czech Republic in the Euro 2020 quarter-finals and even scaled public transport to broadcast their euphoria and belt out another round of Re-sepp-ten – first a hit for Denmark’s national team at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. The anthem’s crowd-sourced lyrics are laden with Hans Christian Andersen imagery and feel particularly apt this year.

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Israeli PM suffers setback in vote on Arab citizenship rights law

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Parliament fails to renew law barring Arab citizens from extending citizenship rights to spouses

The Israeli parliament has voted down an extension to controversial legislation that bars Arab Israelis from extending residency or citizenship rights to Palestinian spouses, in an early blow to the country’s new coalition government.

After a marathon all-night voting session that ended on Tuesday morning, the Knesset decided not to renew the law in a 59-59 vote. The outcome is widely seen as a stinging defeat for the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who failed to unite the coalition’s disparate ideological wings in what he reportedly himself referred to as a “referendum” on the new government.

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French authorities accused of ‘grave negligence’ over Notre Dame lead dust

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Workers and residents exposed to dangerous levels of toxic dust in wake of 2019 fire, lawyers claim

French and Paris authorities are facing further legal action over worrying lead levels around Notre Dame Cathedral in the wake of the devastating fire two years ago.

Lawyers for a branch of one of the country’s most powerful unions, which has joined forced with a health association and local residents, will submit a legal case on Tuesday for “endangering life … by persons unknown”.

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Climate crisis causing male dragonflies to lose wing ‘bling’, study finds

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Black patterns used to attract mates can cause the insects to overheat in hotter climates

Male dragonflies are losing the “bling” wing decorations that they use to entice the females as climates get hotter, according to new research.

The results have led to the scientists calling for more work on whether this disparate evolution might lead to females no longer recognising males of their own species in the long run.

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Priti Patel to reveal proposals for offshore centres for asylum seekers

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Borders bill will allow for charges against migrants ‘knowingly’ arriving in UK without permission

Ministers are to reveal proposals for a suite of new laws paving the way for offshore centres for asylum seekers and criminal charges for migrants “knowingly” arriving in the UK without permission.

The nationality and borders bill, formerly known as the sovereign borders bill, has been described by the Home Office as containing “the most radical changes to the broken asylum system in decades” making it harder for those who enter illegally to stay in the UK.

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Mammoth journey ahead as elephants leave Kent zoo for the Kenyan savannah

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All but one of the herd of 13 were born in captivity, but conservationists hope they can be ‘rewilded’


A herd of elephants born and raised in a Kent zoo are about to get on a plane to travel almost 4,500 miles (7,000km) to Kenya, in order to reintroduce them to the wild in a first-of-its kind operation.

The herd of 13, which includes three calves, were all but one born at Howletts Wild Animal Park, a private zoo near Canterbury. The mammoth mission to “rewild” the elephants is being carried out by the Aspinall Foundation, the Kenya Wildlife Service and Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

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Tropical Storm Elsa to make landfall in Cuba after 180,000 evacuated

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Florida governor declares state of emergency in 15 counties, including site of collapsed condo

Tropical Storm Elsa was expected to make landfall in Cuba on Monday afternoon, after 180,000 people were evacuated from southern regions amid fears of heavy flooding.

Elsa is expected to bring tropical storm conditions to Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including Miami-Dade county, where the partially-collapsed Champlain Towers condominium was demolished with explosives on Sunday night.

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Chinese-owned firm acquires UK’s largest semiconductor manufacturer

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Tory MP Tom Tugendhat raises concerns about deal in light of global computer chip shortage

The UK’s largest producer of semiconductors has been acquired by the Chinese-owned manufacturer Nexperia, prompting a senior Tory MP to call for the government to review the sale to a foreign owner during an increasingly severe global shortage of computer chips.

Nexperia, a Dutch firm owned by China’s Wingtech, said on Monday that it had taken full control of Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), the UK’s largest producer of silicon chips, which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles.

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Prosecutors examine claims Covid spread in Italy before official confirmation

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New evidence ‘could change the timeline of the pandemic in Italy’, say lawyers for victims’ families

Italian prosecutors are examining fresh evidence that suggests coronavirus was spreading in the country weeks before the first case of local transmission was officially detected as criminal investigations continue into continental Europe’s deadliest outbreak.

Lawyers representing the families of Covid-19 victims say the medical records of a man in his 50s who was admitted to a hospital with bilateral pneumonia at the end of January 2020 in Bergamo, the Lombardy province severely hit during the first wave of the pandemic, “could change the timeline of the pandemic in Italy”.

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Attackers kidnap 140 pupils from Nigerian boarding school

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Gunmen overpowered security staff at Bethel Baptist high school in Kaduna state

Gunmen have kidnapped 140 children from a boarding school in north-western Nigeria, a school official has said, in the latest in a wave of mass abductions targeting schoolchildren and students.

Heavily armed criminal gangs in north-west and central Nigeria often attack villages to loot, steal cattle and abduct people for ransom, but since the start of the year have increasingly targeted schools and colleges.

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Raffaella Carrà, Italian entertainment icon, dies aged 78

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Star of music, TV and film who had UK Top 10 hit in 1978 with Do It, Do It Again had been suffering an undisclosed illness

Raffaella Carrà, the pop singer and actor who was an entertainment icon in her native Italy, has died aged 78.

Her long-term partner, Sergio Iapino, announced her death, saying: “Raffaella has left us. She has gone to a better world, where her humanity, her unmistakable laugh and her extraordinary talent will shine forever.” He said she had been battling an unnamed illness for some time.

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Corruption allegations increase pressure on Bolsonaro

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Reports claim Brazilian president, already accused of mishandling Covid, was involved in embezzlement scheme

The Brazilian president has come under further pressure after being personally implicated in an alleged corruption racket involving the supposed misappropriation of his workforce’s wages.

Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who admires Donald Trump, took office in January 2019 vowing to “forever free the fatherland from the yoke of corruption”.

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Shampanskoye: French champagne industry in a fizz over Russian law

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Non-Russian producers now required to mark their bottles as sparkling wine

If anything is guaranteed to get French wine producers in a fizz, it is the suggestion that champagne can be made anywhere outside the Champagne region in France.

As a protected appellation, the term is jealously guarded and legally defended. As the Champagne committee’s website clearly states: “Champagne only comes from Champagne.”

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‘Eye of fire’ after underwater gas leak in Gulf of Mexico – video

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An underwater gas leak caused a whirling vortex of fire to spew out of the ocean surface west of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula on 3 July. The fire began in an underwater pipeline connected to a platform owned by the state oil company Pemex. The fire took more than five hours to put out and no injuries were reported

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Capitol attack: what Pelosi’s select committee is likely to investigate

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The body created by the speaker will have a broad mandate to examine the facts, circumstances and causes of the Capitol attack

Nancy Pelosi’s creation of a House select committee to investigate the 6 January insurrection reopens the possibility of a comprehensive inquiry into myriad security failures and the causes of the deadly attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.

Related: Nancy Pelosi signals hard line on formation of 6 January select committee

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