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
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
Continue reading...Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia
Continue reading...Coronavirus live news: Australian minister likens vaccines race to Hunger Games; Indonesia says ‘no vaccine, no entry’
New South Wales health minister makes frank assessment of sluggish rollout; from 6 July foreigners and nationals entering Indonesia must be vaccinated
- Johnson to confirm 19 July end to Covid rules despite warnings
- ‘Coronabikes’: nasal swabs on wheels test Germans’ love of order
- Luxembourg prime minister admitted to hospital with Covid
- UK coronavirus updates – live
- See all our coronavirus coverage
If you missed it yesterday, US president Joe Biden, speaking at a White House party marking the Fourth of July, urged Americans to get vaccinated to stave off a rise in cases of the coronavirus Delta variant, describing it as the patriotic thing to do.
“Think back to where this nation was a year ago,” the president said in a speech on the theme of “Independence Day and independence from Covid-19”.
Andrew Sparrow has launched his UK live blog for the day with this opening:
In September last year, announcing his winter economy plan, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, gave a speech saying the country had to start getting back to normal because it could not live with restrictions forever. “We must learn to live with it [coronavirus] and live without fear,” he said. With its implied refusal to defer to the ‘health and safety’ science lobby, its worldly realism about risk and its focus on the interests of the economy, the speech delighted Conservative MPs.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be premature. There were two more lockdowns to come. But this afternoon Boris Johnson is essentially going to resurrect Sunak’s message from last autumn when he explains what the government wants to happen in England from 19 July, the date set for the final lifting of restrictions.
Continue reading...I thought HIV meant death but it led me to fight to save millions of lives | Vuyiseka Dubula
Twenty years ago in South Africa people were dying unable to access expensive antiretrovirals. The creation of the Global Fund was gamechanging
In 2001, at the age of 22 – when I thought my life had just begun – I was diagnosed with HIV. At that time, the diagnosis felt like a death sentence. Every day, I waited for my hour to die.
However, after two months of waiting, death didn’t come.
Continue reading...Getting vaccinated is patriotic, says Joe Biden on Fourth of July – video
Speaking at a White House party marking the Fourth of July, Joe Biden urged Americans to get vaccinated to stave off a rise in cases of the coronavirus Delta variant. 'Think back to where this nation was a year ago,' the president said in a speech on the theme of 'Independence Day and independence from Covid-19'. The Biden administration has missed its aim of having 70% of adult Americans with at least one shot by the holiday weekend
Continue reading...Captured Ethiopian government soldiers reach Tigray capital – in pictures
Since the interim government of Ethiopia’s Tigray region fled after rebel fighters advanced into Mekelle, a ‘unilateral ceasefire’ has been announced. More than 7,000 captive Ethiopian soldiers walked from Abdi Eshir for four days
Continue reading...Miami condo search resumes after explosives bring down building
Rescuers hope demolition will give them access to underground garage of Surfside building where victims may be buried
Rescuers were given the all-clear to resume work looking for victims at a collapsed South Florida condo building after demolition crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the building’s remains in a plume of dust.
Miami-Dade County’s mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, said the demolition went “exactly as planned” at about 10.30pm on Sunday.
Continue reading...Hong Kong police say mourning officer’s attacker is like backing terrorism
Authorities called assailant a ‘lone wolf’ domestic terrorist who had been politically radicalised
Police in Hong Kong have told citizens that mourning the death of a man who stabbed a police officer last week is “no different to supporting terrorism”, as the case was taken over by the national security department.
The comments followed the stabbing of an officer in the back on Thursday night by a 50-year-old man at Causeway Bay. Police said the man then took his own life. The 28-year-old officer sustained a punctured lung in the attack and remains in hospital in a critical condition, according to local media.
Continue reading...‘I had designed it a little too small’: Abraham Poincheval on spending a week inside a sculpture of himself
He’s lived within a boulder, hatched a nest of hen’s eggs, and now plans to encase himself in a beehive. Is this France’s most extreme performance artist –and how does he go to the toilet?
Last month, in a smart gallery in Paris, the back of a sculpture was removed and a man was lifted out. He looked around, disoriented, as his body slowly unfurled. A doctor rushed to his side and, after inspecting him, announced he was in good health. The crowd cheered. He’d been in there for seven days.
Abraham Poincheval, possibly France’s most extreme performance artist, specialises in surreal feats of endurance, often in tight spots. He has lived inside a rock for seven days, and a stuffed bear for 13. For this latest work, Hartung, he decided to look at a painting by abstract artist Hans Hartung for seven days straight. He even built a special contraption for it: an aluminium shell of a man sitting on a block, looking down a large square funnel.
Continue reading...‘I can’t give up on my leg’: the Gaza protesters resisting amputation at all costs
Despite chronic pain and deadly infections, Palestinians wounded in protests three years ago still hope to recover without surgery
Sitting on his hospital bed, with external fixators screwed into his right leg, Mohammed al-Mughari has been in pain and on medication since he was shot in the leg more than three years ago.
He lives with a chronic bone infection – from bacteria now resistant to most antibiotics. Doctors, including in Jordan and Egypt where he sought treatment previously, have all recommended that an amputation could end his long-term suffering, but he has steadfastly refused.
Continue reading...Reporting on Israel: ‘Thirty years on, we are still covering the same old enmities’
The Guardian’s outgoing Jerusalem correspondent Oliver Holmes talks to predecessor Ian Black about how much – and how little – the job has changed over the years
It was the end of the 1980s and the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Ian Black, was talking shop with his competitor at the Sunday Times, the late Marie Colvin. “We were discussing when there might be a Palestinian state,” Black recalls of their conversation in Jerusalem. “We thought maybe it would happen in two or three years.”
Israel and the Palestinian territories were deep into the first intifada, an uprising against the occupation that lasted from 1987 until the early 90s. It was a period in which violence spiked, but also a time of nascent hope that the lengthy military grip over Palestinian life might finally end.
Continue reading...Pop-up ‘coronabikes’ test German love of order
Mobile Covid testing units offering results in 15 minutes are among a host of rapid tests that play a crucial role in keeping rates down
Parked outside an espresso bar on Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz junction, Maximilian Fritzsch’s mobile coronavirus testing unit aims for similar speed of service as an on-the-go shot of caffeine. Working from the back of a cargo e-bike, staff in lab coats take a quick swab from the nostrils of stressed commuters, who usually receive the result in their inboxes within 15 minutes.
“It is a bit physically intrusive”, said office worker Luisa Larsen, 42, as she impatiently checked her smartphone for the test result. “But then again it’s free, and it feels like the responsible thing to do.”
Continue reading...New Zealand experiences hottest June on record despite polar blast
Average temperatures for the month were 2C higher than normal, with 24 separate locations hitting their own records
New Zealand has experienced its hottest June since records began more than 110 years ago, according to official climate data.
Despite a polar blast that swept up the country last week, figures from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s (NIWA) show the average temperature for June was 2C warmer than usual, with twenty-four locations around the country hitting their own record highs.
Continue reading...Feel Good’s Mae Martin: ‘If you put a teenage girl in any industry, people will take advantage’
The non-binary comedian’s hit TV show draws heavily on an often troubled life. They talk about addiction at 14, the loving parents who kicked them out, the older men who abused their trust – and the happiness they eventually found
At the beginning of the pandemic Mae Martin’s first TV series, Feel Good, was broadcast on Channel 4 to great acclaim. Just recently, the second series came out on Netflix to even greater acclaim. While most of us have disappeared in lockdown, Martin has become a star.
Feel Good is a disarmingly autobiographical love story. It tells the story of a character called Mae struggling with relationships, addiction, identity and life on the comedy circuit. Mae is attracted to men and women, but to women more, particularly women who identify as straight. The first series focuses on Mae’s relationship with Georgina, a teacher who had previously only slept with men and is reluctant to admit to her super-straight, super-posh friends that she and Mae are living together. Mae is a mix of streetwise and naive – reckless, precocious, promiscuous, self-absorbed and a bag of nerves.
Continue reading...Number of missing in Japan landslide climbs to more than 100
Number rose after officials in Atami checked residential registers rather than relying on reports of missing people following mudslide
Officials in Japan have dramatically raised their estimate of the number of people still missing after a mudslide ripped through a seaside town at the weekend.
Reports said three people had died in the disaster, which occurred after days of torrential rain in Atami, a famous hot spring resort about 60 miles (90 km) south-west of Tokyo.
Continue reading...Partially collapsed Florida condo fully demolished in late-night controlled explosion – video
The partially collapsed Miami-area condo has been demolished. Demolition crews set off explosives to bring down the damaged remaining portion of a collapsed South Florida condo where no one has so far been found alive. The demolition Sunday night was key to resuming the search for victims of the 24 June collapse, with the approaching Hurricane Elsa storm adding urgency to the project. So far, rescuers have recovered the remains of 24 people, with 121 still missing.
Continue reading...Azerbaijan says ‘mud volcano’ caused Caspian Sea explosion
Caspian Sea has high concentration of mud volcanoes, which spew both mud and flammable gas
A strong explosion has shaken the Caspian Sea area where Azerbaijan has extensive offshore oil and gas fields.
The cause of the blast, which caused a column of fire to rise into the sky late on Sunday, was not immediately determined, but the state oil company Socar said preliminary information indicated it was a mud volcano. Socar said none of its platforms were damaged in the explosion.
Continue reading...Defiant Jacob Zuma compares South African judges to apartheid rulers
Former president rails against jail sentence as armed supporters mass outside his home
South Africa’s ex-president Jacob Zuma has lashed out at the judges who this week gave him a 15-month jail term for absconding from a corruption inquiry, comparing them to the white minority apartheid rulers he once fought.
Zuma spoke at his home in Nklandla, in a rural part of Kwazulu Natal province, where hundreds of his supporters, some of them armed, were gathered to prevent his arrest.
Continue reading...Ever Given, the ship that blocked the Suez canal, to be released after settlement agreed
The Suez Canal Authority has held the Ever Given and its crew in a lake between two stretches of the waterway since it was dislodged on 29 March
The owners and insurers of the Ever Given container ship that blocked the Suez Canal in March have announced that a formal settlement had been agreed in a compensation dispute, and the canal authority said the vessel would be allowed to sail on 7 July.
The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) has held the giant ship and its crew in a lake between two stretches of the waterway since it was dislodged on 29 March, amid a dispute over a demand for compensation by the SCA.
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