Coronavirus coordinator defends move at event: ‘You’re protected if you’re vaccinated. You’re not protected if you’re not’
Americans marked their nation’s 245th birthday on Sunday with fireworks, hotdogs, marching bands and a sense of great relief, after the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of nearly all celebrations last year.
Related: Delta variant will cause US Covid surges, Fauci says, as poll reveals vaccine resistance
Continue reading...Media reports say Xavier Bettel is undergoing tests as a precaution; Israel seeking new deal after talks with UK collapse
Russia has recorded a record daily number of Covid-19 infections after deaths hit at a record-high for five days in a row this week.
Vladimir Putin has for now refrained from calling another lockdown, but the 25,142 infections reported on Sunday were the biggest figure since 2 January, AFP reports.
France’s health minister has warned “our country is in a race against time” as he said a fourth wave of Covid-19 could arrive by the end of the month.
In a tweet on Sunday Olivier Véran urged people to get vaccinated as he warned of a worrying rise in cases caused by spread of the Delta variant, Reuters reports.
Continue reading...Deadly blaze that killed four people and forced evacuation of 10 villages is now close to being under control
Authorities in Cyprus have said a deadly forest fire that was the worst to hit the island in decades was close to being brought under control after water bombing by Greek and Israeli aircraft.
Fanned by strong winds, the fire broke out on Saturday afternoon and swept through the southern foothills of the Troodos mountain range as the country grappled with a blistering heatwave.
Continue reading...Militants’ advance continues as Britain nears end of its two-decade deployment to country
The Taliban’s rapid advance through northern Afghanistan continued on Sunday with more than a dozen districts falling to the militants, as Britain entered the final days of its two-decade deployment to Afghanistan.
More than 300 members of the Afghan security forces fled across the border into Tajikistan to escape the militants, and Badakhshan and Takhar provinces are now largely under Taliban control, beyond the respective regional capitals.
Continue reading...James Duddridge made the slip-up in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.
Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991.
'Today the United Kingdom mourns Dr Kaunda’s passing alongside his family, the people of Zimbabwe and indeed the wider world,' said Duddridge. The slip prompted anger on social media, with some seeing evidence of enduring colonial-era attitudes among British officials towards African countries
Continue reading...Cuba evacuated 70,000 people in its southern region on Sunday, amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands and killing at least three people.
Related: Miami condo collapse: death toll at 24 as search pauses for demolition
Continue reading...Irish foreign minister hits out at Brexit minister over provocative article on Northern Ireland protocol
The EU fears that Boris Johnson wants to “dismantle” the Northern Ireland protocol, the Irish foreign minister has said, as relations between Brussels and London deteriorated again after remarks by the Brexit minister David Frost in the past 24 hours.
Simon Coveney told RTÉ on Sunday that EU leaders feared the worst after what he felt was a provocative article written by Lord Frost and the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, in the Irish Times on Saturday.
Continue reading...Slip by James Duddridge at funeral of liberation leader derided as evidence of enduring colonial attitudes
James Duddridge, the UK’s minister for Africa, appeared to confuse Zimbabwe with Zambia in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.
Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991. He was respected across the continent as one of a generation of Africans who fought to free their nations from colonial rule.
Continue reading...Call for withdrawal of Eritrean forces from war-torn region and restoration of rebel government
Rebels in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region have accepted a ceasefire “in principle” but posed strict conditions for it to be formalised.
Notable among those conditions was the withdrawal from the region of Eritrean forces as well as fighters from the neighbouring Ethiopian region of Amhara, who have been supporting the Ethiopian army during the eight-month long conflict.
Continue reading...Vatican says pontiff will undergo operation for diverticular stenosis of the colon
Pope Francis has been admitted to a hospital in Rome for scheduled surgery on his large intestine, the Vatican has said. The news came just three hours after the pope had cheerfully greeted the public in St Peter’s Square and told them he would visit Hungary and Slovakia in September.
The brief statement from the Holy See’s press office did not say exactly when the surgery would be performed at the Gemelli Polyclinic, a Catholic teaching hospital, only that there would be a medical update when the surgery was complete. However, sources indicated that the surgery would be carried out later on Sunday.
Continue reading...Analysis: Washington did not learn the lessons of Vietnam and more death and suffering are inevitable
The US war in Afghanistan was not supposed to be another Vietnam. “I don’t do quagmires,” said Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the original US invasion, who died last week. In the end the former US defence secretary did two quagmires, airily assuming Afghanistan was “won” in the spring of 2003 when he sent American troops to fight in Iraq.
US combat troops were in Vietnam for eight years, but they have been in Afghanistan for 20. It has been America’s longest war by far.
Continue reading...At least 50 injured people pulled from burning wreckage of C-130 Hercules after it crashed when it missed runway
At least 45 people were killed and more than 50 injured when a Philippine military aircraft carrying troops crashed and burst into flames after missing the runway in the south of the country, officials said.
Three of those who died were on the ground.
Continue reading...The dance that depends on what Covid prevents – close physical intimacy – is not only a cultural passion but also now a threatened source of income for many workers. Photographer Anita Pouchard Serra, with support from the National Geographic Society, has been documenting how dancers are surviving the crisis
In a pretty little plaza next to a railway track, there is proof that not even a pandemic can keep us apart.
Five couples lean in, cheek to cheek, marking steps that mirror the circuitous route of life. If there is a map, it rises out of a portable speaker, and the melancholic poetry of a tango.
Continue reading...Biden rolls out fresh policy proposals to try to counter rising crime as Democrats look to bat away Republican attacks
Rising crime rates in the US and efforts from the White House and in Congress to pass sweeping police reform legislation have thrust crime policy into the center of the national political debate.
In early mayoral, congressional and senatorial campaigns, attacks are flying back and forth over whether candidates are tough on crime or want to defund the police, often using blunt language that masks the nuances of a complicated issue.
Continue reading...After hundreds of unmarked graves were found at Canada’s former Catholic-run residential schools, churches in First Nations territories have been destroyed by suspected arson
For more than a century, the clapboard church set amid rolling hills in western Canada has been a spiritual home to the Upper Similkameen Indian Band.
To build St Anne’s, residents of Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve #2 travelled 40 miles to the closest town, hauling lumber back to their community by horse and wagon.
Continue reading...Storm kills one person in St Lucia and a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman in the Dominican Republic
Cuba prepared to evacuate people along the island’s southern region on Sunday amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.
The government on Sunday opened shelters and moved to protect sugarcane and cocoa crops ahead of the storm, whose next target was Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County where the high-rise condominium building collapsed last week.
Continue reading...As the west departs, the Taliban are resurgent. They say they have changed – but misogyny and brutality still mark their rule
The public flogging in Obe district, captured on video that quickly went viral this spring, was a mistake, a local Taliban judge admitted. Commanders were angry.
As the footage spread between urban Afghans, who shared it on their smartphones, it revived memories of darker times when the militants ruled the country, and an outpouring of revulsion.
Continue reading...Astronauts dock at the Tiangong station where they will remain for three months as Beijing presses on with extraterrestrial ambitions
Astronauts at China’s new space station conducted their first spacewalk Sunday, state media reported, as Beijing presses on with its extraterrestrial ambitions.
It was only the second time the country’s astronauts have stepped out of their craft while in space.
Continue reading...Fireworks, a Trump impersonator and undying belief in the former president at his second rally after leaving office
Their trust in Trump remains unshaken.
Supporters of Donald Trump, the former US president, gathered in their thousands at a rain-soaked rally in Florida on Saturday unmoved by criminal charges against his business.
Continue reading...Six people on board a private plane were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, the identities of the other four people are not known
All six people on board a private plane, including two American missionaries, were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, southwest of capital Port-au-Prince, according to media reports and a missionary group.
The plane went down on Friday evening en route from an airport in Port-au-Prince to the southern coastal city of Jacmel, typically a short flight, reported the Miami Herald, citing a statement by the National Civil Aviation Office (NCAO). Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
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