President transferred to São Paulo to determine if procedure necessary after surgeon diagnoses him with bowel obstruction
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, may be forced to undergo emergency surgery after he was rushed to hospital in the early hours of Wednesday complaining of abdominal pain.
Related: Haiti authorities seek three more people after killing of president
Continue reading...Historically musicians steered clear of addressing political topics that risk reprisals at home but Sunday’s explosion changed that
High-profile Cuban musicians from salsa band Los Van Van and jazz pianist Chucho Valdés to pop star Leoni Torres have offered rare public support to protesters and criticized Communist authorities’ handling of the worst unrest in decades.
Thousands of Cubans joined rare protests nationwide on Sunday over shortages, Covid-19 and political rights. The government blamed US-financed “counter-revolutionaries” exploiting economic hardship caused by US sanctions.
Continue reading...European court of justice had demanded suspension of Polish reforms that could lift judges’ immunity
Poland’s top court has ruled that measures imposed by the European court of justice against the country’s controversial judicial reforms are unconstitutional, in a decision that could have far-reaching implications for the bloc’s legal order.
Judge Stanislaw Piotrowicz said on Wednesday that Poland’s constitutional court had reached a majority verdict that EU measures regarding the “system, principles and procedures” of Polish courts were “not in line” with the Polish constitution.
Continue reading...Militants say they have made what could be their most significant advance in a nationwide offensive
The Taliban have claimed to have seized control of a crucial border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan, as their forces continue to rapidly advance in the wake of US troops pulling out, fuelling fears of the conflict spilling into Pakistan.
In one of their most strategic gains yet, on Tuesday night Taliban forces descended on the district of Spin Boldak in Afghanistan, just a few miles from the Pakistan border, and attacked several posts of Afghan troops, who reportedly surrendered immediately.
Continue reading...Cutting emissions more urgent than ever, say scientists, with forest producing more than a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year
The Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it is able to absorb, scientists have confirmed for the first time.
The emissions amount to a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to a study. The giant forest had previously been a carbon sink, absorbing the emissions driving the climate crisis, but is now causing its acceleration, researchers said.
Continue reading...Officials warn citizens not to take law into own hands to protect homes and business from protests
Senior officials in South Africa have appealed to ordinary citizens not to take the law into their own hands as vigilante groups form following days of unchecked looting and violent protests across a swath of the country.
Though thousands of soldiers have joined police on the streets, law enforcement agencies still appear unable to stem ongoing attacks by crowds on warehouses, supermarkets, shopping malls, clinics and factories.
Continue reading...Nation settles one of its most vexed questions as survey finds large majority of Spaniards prefer tortilla de patatas with onion
In a rare moment of national unity unseen since a certain British chef recklessly floated the idea of adding chorizo to paella, Spain has come together at last to settle one of its most ancient, vexed and divisive questions.
No longer will tempers flare at bar counters nor arguments rive friends, families and neighbours gathered together at table. Chefs, critics and home-cooks can put aside their opinions – and their spatulas – safe in the knowledge that yes, an overwhelming majority of Spaniards really do prefer their tortilla de patatas with onion.
Continue reading...Unrest in South Africa triggered by the jailing of the former president Jacob Zuma has intensified, despite the deployment of thousands of soldiers on to the streets to reinforce struggling police. There has been widespread looting and shopping centres have been set alight. In one tense scene in Durban, a mother dropped her toddler from a burning building to a group of people below, who caught the child. The wave of violence has also hit South Africa’s faltering Covid vaccination rollout, which has been halted amid safety concerns
Continue reading...Ryûsuke Hamaguchi reaches a new grandeur with this engrossing adaptation about a theatre director grappling with Chekhov and his wife’s infidelity
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s mysterious and beautiful new film is inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same name – and that title, like Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, is designed to tease us with the shiny wistfulness of a Beatles lyric. Hamaguchi’s previous pictures Asako I and II and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy were about the enigma of identity, the theatrical role play involved in all social interaction and erotic rapture of intimacy. Drive My Car is about all this and more; where once Hamaguchi’s film-making language had seemed to me at the level of jeu d’esprit, now it ascends to something with passion and even a kind of grandeur. It is a film about the link between confession, creativity and sexuality and the unending mystery of other people’s lives and secrets.
Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a successful actor and theatre director who specialises in experimental multilingual productions with surtitles – he is currently working in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and is preparing to play the lead in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He has a complex relationship with his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a successful writer and TV dramatist who has a habit of murmuring aloud ideas for erotic short stories, trance-like, while she is astride Yûsuke having sex, including a potent vignette about a teenage girl who breaks into the house of the boy with whom she is obsessed.
Continue reading...Thousands of troops march in a Paris parade, warplanes roar overhead and traditional parties take place around the country as France celebrates its national day after last year’s events were scaled back because of the pandemic
Continue reading...Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee president, has said a “safe and secure” Tokyo Olympics will be a show of global solidarity during the pandemic – on the same day as infections in the host city reached their highest level for almost six months.
The discovery of a coronavirus cluster at a hotel where dozens of Brazilian team members are staying has increased concerns about infections spreading over the summer.
Continue reading...Criminalisation disproportionately affects indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian women and exacerbates inequality, says Human Rights Watch
Gladys, an indigenous woman from rural Ecuador, went to hospital after injecting poison into her stomach to end her pregnancy. Doctors went straight to the police, and she was sentenced to two months in jail for having an abortion with consent.
Elsewhere in the South American country, a 20-year-old Afro-Ecuadorian woman went to hospital after a fall, and found out she was pregnant and miscarrying. She was swiftly arrested and spent four months awaiting trial, where she was cleared.
Continue reading...Online retailer strikes deal with Kuwait’s Alshaya Group to launch in franchise stores and online
The online fashion retailer Boohoo has struck a deal with Kuwait’s Alshaya Group to sell its brands in franchised Debenhams stores and online in the Middle East.
Alshaya, which already holds the franchise to operate Debenhams stores in the region, will have exclusive rights to operate its shops and websites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman and Qatar.
Continue reading...More than 60 urban farms have sprouted across space-starved Hong Kong since 2015 – on decommissioned helipads, shopping mall rooftops and public terraces – thanks to initiatives such as Rooftop Republic
Continue reading...Outbreak could not have come at a worse time, after military coup caused hospitals to collapse and threw vaccination campaign into chaos
Khin Nwe Soe* went in a taxi, from factory to factory across Myanmar’s main city of Yangon, desperately searching for oxygen tanks for her 21-year-old son. A home test had shown he had Covid-19. He was in pain, able only to lie down, and his oxygen levels had dropped as low as 90%.
“She tried very hard, queuing at every place she could find, because her child needed it,” said Aye Myat Noe*, her daughter, who lives abroad but had called oxygen suppliers to help her mother. “She has a lot of health issues too, including diabetes and heart problems. She is very scared herself … She was seriously risking her life to find oxygen.”
Continue reading...Cuban special forces have begun a widespread crackdown on anti-government protests. The historic demonstrations were sparked over food shortages, high prices and other grievances against the government. Meanwhile, rallies have been held in several US cities, with hundreds of people waving Cuban flags and calling for change on the Communist-run island
Some of the UK’s best-loved illustrators, including Axel Scheffler, Debi Gliori and Jackie Morris, have created artworks telling the stories of children in rural Nepal who struggle to get an education. The pictures are being raffled by the charity United World Schools, which has opened schools in the country.
All photographs by Navesh Chitrakar for UWS
*All girls’ names have been changed
Continue reading...As scorching temperatures spread, the search for ways to protect against heat stress is becoming ever more urgent
William Martínez, who as a child worked on a sugarcane plantation in rural Nicaragua, learned the hard way what many in the US and Canada are now realising: that rising temperatures are costing lives and livelihoods.
Martínez, along with fellow villagers in La Isla, found himself getting sicker as he worked long, gruelling days in the fields under the beating Nicaraguan sun two decades ago. Workers at the nearby mill, which supplies molasses to alcohol companies, began to suffer kidney failure, and would be forced out of the workforce and into expensive and time-consuming dialysis. His father and uncles, addled with the same affliction, had died when Martínez was a boy, forcing him to join the workforce.
Continue reading...Desperation grows for those unable to access subsidised food, as worst hunger in two decades reported
When India’s devastating second wave of Covid-19 struck in April, Nazia Habib Khan’s second marriage abruptly came to an end after a year of beatings and abuse. The 28-year-old daughter of migrants from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh returned to live with her mother, brothers and a sister-in-law in Mumbai.
Their 40 sq metre (400 sq ft) home in Kurla East stands huddled among the 800 or so brick, tin sheet and tarpaulin houses of Qureshi Nagar, the entire shanty town trembling when a train roars past on a nearby railway line.
Continue reading...Police have fired tear gas to disperse relatives of victims of last year's Beirut port blast who were protesting outside the home of the caretaker interior minister over his refusal to let the lead investigator question Lebanon's security chief. Nearly a year after the explosion, which killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and devastated swathes of the capital, many Lebanese are furious that no senior officials have been held to account.
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