Category Archives: World News

South Korea says consensual sex act between male soldiers ‘bordered on rape’

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Activists decry discrimination as court finds men guilty of indecency and hands down a six-month suspended sentence

A South Korean military court has been accused of discriminating against sexual minorities after it found two male soldiers guilty of indecency for engaging in consensual oral sex.

The ruling, which took place in March but emerged last week, found the soldiers’ actions “bordered on rape” and handed them a six-month suspended prison sentence by applying the controversial article 92-6 of the Military Criminal Act. This punishes “anal sex and other indecent acts” between military personnel with up to two years in prison.

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The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in Britain’s bedrooms

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A recent survey suggested a shockingly high proportion of women have been sexually assaulted by a partner as they slept. Now more and more are speaking out

Niamh Ní Dhomhnaill had been with her partner for almost a year when she discovered that he’d been raping her while she slept. At the time, she was 25, and a language teacher in a Dublin secondary school. Her partner, Magnus Meyer Hustveit, was Norwegian. The couple had moved in together within a few months of meeting, but things were tense. It wasn’t a happy relationship.

On that particular night, Ní Dhomhnaill had been out with Hustveit and other friends, but left early, alone, because she felt unwell. “I’d only drunk water but I’d gone to bed and was out for the count,” she says. “I didn’t hear Magnus come back, which is unusual because I’d always been a light sleeper.”

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Nicaragua rounds up president’s critics in sweeping pre-election crackdown

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Arrests of opposition figures, including revered former guerrillas, represent ‘last gamble of a dictator’s family’

Nicaragua’s Sandinista rulers have launched an unprecedented crackdown on the country’s opposition, arresting a string of prominent critics of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, in an apparent attempt to crush any serious challenge in November’s elections.

Six opposition figures were arrested at the weekend, including revered former guerrillas who fought alongside Ortega during the campaign to topple the dictator Anastasio Somoza and went on to serve in the first Sandinista government.

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Eradicating polio is finally within reach. Why is the UK taking its foot off the pedal? | Anne Wafula Strike

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Instead of cutting the aid budget – including 95% from the plan to stamp out the disease – Britain should take a global lead

Despite the Covid pandemic, there have been just two recorded cases of wild polio in 2021 – in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two remaining hiding places for the disease. But eradication is not guaranteed. Polio is virulent and spreads quickly. Even one case poses a threat to unvaccinated children everywhere, which is why a new strategy launched last week by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) outlines a plan to utilise this small window of opportunity for the world to end polio for good.

A 99.9% fall in polio cases globally in recent decades is thanks in large part to the GPEI and its supporters. The British government’s recent announcement that it will slash its contributions to the GPEI by more than 95% has been a body blow. The funding cut amounts to almost a quarter of the annual World Health Organization polio eradication budget.

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Brazil records 2,468 new Covid deaths – as it happened

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This blog is closed. Follow the latest updates on the pandemic from around the world:

This blog is closed. Follow the latest updates on the pandemic from around the world:

Bars at full capacity. No masks for vaccinated Disneyland goers. Fans sitting side-by-side at Giants and Dodgers games.

California rolled back its major public health restrictions on Tuesday, 15 months after it became the first state in the US to shut down to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Related: Goodbye masks, hello full bars: California lifts Covid rules in ‘grand reopening’

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Blood brother: the Kashmiri man who is India’s biggest donor

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The ‘blood man’ of conflict-racked Kashmir has donated 174 pints of blood since 1980 but feels ‘crushed’ by his poverty

Shabir Hussain Khan was taking an afternoon nap when he heard a commotion outside his house. A friend had been injured in a football match and had lost a lot of blood. Khan, who did not have any transport, rushed to the hospital by foot to donate some. It was 4 July 1980. Yesterday the man known locally as the “blood man of Kashmir” donated his 174th pint of his blood to strangers at the public hospital close to his Srinagar home.

“Blood is not something you can buy in the market,” says Khan, who has an O-negative blood group. “In those days blood donation was not common, nor were blood banks. The way blood is available readily now, it was not like that before. Also there was no connectivity at that time. We only had radios and two or three landline phones in the entire locality.”

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Vaccines and oxygen run out as third wave of Covid hits Uganda

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Vaccine thefts reported and hospitals unable to admit patients as cases leap 2,800% in a month

Uganda has all but run out of Covid-19 vaccines and oxygen as the country grapples with another wave of the pandemic.

Both private and public medical facilities in the capital, Kampala and in towns across the country – including regional hubs in Entebbe, Jinja, Soroti, Gulu and Masaka – have reported running out or having acute shortages of AstraZeneca vaccines and oxygen. Hospitals report they are no longer able to admit patients to intensive care.

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China prepares to send astronauts to new space station

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Crew reportedly getting ready to blast off this week to the Tiangong on China’s longest crewed space mission to date

The first crew for China’s new space station has reportedly begun final preparations to blast off this week.

The mission is China’s first crewed spaceflight in nearly five years, and a matter of prestige for the government as it prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of the ruling Communist party on 1 July with a propaganda blitz.

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‘Miniature Pompeii’ found beneath former cinema in Verona

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Ancient Roman building with ‘magnificent frescoed walls’ appears to have been survived a fire

An ancient Roman building has been found during excavations at a former cinema in the northern Italian city of Verona in what has been described as a “miniature Pompeii”.

The discovery was made during excavations in the basement of Astra cinema, which is undergoing renovation after lying abandoned for more than 20 years.

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One in five people in parts of EU pay bribes for healthcare, survey finds

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Corruption report says third of EU residents used personal connections to access care during Covid crisis

Almost a third of residents in the EU relied on personal connections to access healthcare during the Covid crisis, and around one in five in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Lithuania paid a bribe for such services, a report on corruption has found.

Across the EU’s 27 member states, nearly two-thirds (62%) of the 40,000 respondents in a survey conducted by Transparency International said corruption in their government was a major problem and three-quarters (76%) said it had been stagnating or getting worse.

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No sign of thaw between Russia and US ahead of Geneva summit

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Analysts say event will be ‘boring’ as both sides attempt a reboot following catastrophic meeting between Trump and Putin in 2017

On the 24-hour Russian state news channel, Thursday began as any other might: with a segment about the ageing president of the United States battling back cicadas and then giving a “confused” speech about his upcoming summit in Geneva with Vladimir Putin.

“I’ll let [Putin] know what I want him to know,’” said Biden after a cutaway shot of him swatting his neck before boarding Air Force One this week.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene apologises for comparing Covid-19 masks to Holocaust – video

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Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene apologised for comparing Covid-19 mask requirements and vaccinations to the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. ‘I have made a mistake and it’s really bothered me for a couple of weeks now, and so I definitely want to own it,’ Taylor Greene said. Her apology on Monday came amid calls from some Democrats to censure her for the Holocaust remarks. Her comments had also been denounced by Republican congressional leaders

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What’s behind the mass protests in Colombia?

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A demonstration against tax rises has morphed into a mass movement against the government, says Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá

An attempt by the Colombian government to introduce sweeping tax changes in response to the coronavirus crisis was met earlier this year by angry protests. Thousands of people flooded on to the streets throughout the country for four consecutive days. It was enough to prompt President Iván Duque to withdraw his tax plans, but by then it was too late to stop the protests.

Ever since, more and more Colombians have been coming out to protest. Joe Parkin Daniels, who has been reporting on the demonstrations for the Guardian for weeks, tells Rachel Humphreys that they now encompass people from all sections of Colombian society, with a multitude of causes. One thing ever present is a fury at the growing inequality that has been exacerbated by the Covid crisis. As police have cracked down hard on the protesters, more than 50 people have died, with no end to the protests in sight.

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Biden says Putin a ‘worthy adversary’ ahead of talks – video

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Joe Biden said meeting with Vladimir Putin would be ‘critical’ and that he would offer to cooperate on areas of common interest if the Kremlin so choses. Biden warned that if Russia chose not to cooperate in areas like cybersecurity ‘then we will respond’. The US president also characterised Putin as ‘bright’, ‘tough’ and ‘a worthy adversary’. When questioned by reporters, Biden said the potential death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, now jailed in Russia, would be a tragedy and would hurt Russian relations with the rest of the world and with the United States. The two men are meeting in Geneva on 16 June for the first time as presidents

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Joe Biden meets Nato leaders and Turkish president Erdoğan – US politics live

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As expected, the newly released Nato summit communique indicates that leaders view China’s rising power as a security threat.

“China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security. We are concerned by those coercive policies which stand in contrast to the fundamental values enshrined in the Washington Treaty,” the Nato document says.

Related: Nato summit: leaders to agree that China presents security risk

As Joe Biden prepares for his meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Brussels, Kamala Harris has just arrived in South Carolina for an event to promote coronavirus vaccinations.

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Coronavirus live news: Indonesia fears peak in July with hospitals filling; Thailand vaccine supplies disrupted

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Hospitals in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta already at 75% capacity; Bangkok cancels vaccine appointments; India reports lowest cases since March

Africa will get priority treatment for the Group of Seven’s pledged 870 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, a senior World Health Organization adviser said on Monday.

“You will see that Africa is one of the most vulnerable, under-served (areas), so the priority would be for doses to go... to the African continent writ large. Those numbers will be sorted out the coming weeks,” Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO adviser and coordinator of the ACT (Access to Covid-19 Tools) Accelerator, told an online news briefing from Geneva.

Italy reported 36 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday against 26 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 907 from 1,390.

Italy has registered 127,038 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.25 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with Covid – not including those in intensive care – stood at 3,465 on Monday, down from 3,542 a day earlier.

There were 11 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 20 on Sunday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 536 from a previous 565.

Some 79,524 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 134,136, the health ministry said.

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Expect China to be furious at being cast as a threat to the west

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Analysis: Beijing may well seek to undermine Nato unity in response to being accused of posing a systemic challenge to western values

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was established on 4 April 1949, its mission was to counterbalance armies from the Soviet Union that were stationed in central and eastern Europe after the conclusion of the second world war.

After Emmanuel Macron, the current leader of one of its founding members, France, called it “brain-dead” in 2019, some analysts said the alliance will have to look for a new unifying mission to keep itself relevant in the new age of great power competition between the United States and China.

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Canada: suspect faces terrorism charges after Muslim family killed with truck

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  • Four murder charges against Nathaniel Veltman upgraded
  • Three generations died in incident in London, Ontario

Prosecutors in Canada have laid terrorism charges against a man accused of deliberately running over a Muslim family in London, Ontario, killing four members from three generations.

The prosecution said on Monday that Nathaniel Veltman’s four counts of first-degree murder constitute an act of terrorism and prosecutors have upgraded those charges under Canada’s criminal code. Police allege the incident was a planned and premeditated attack targeting Muslims.

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Mexico: bone fragments of 17 victims found at suspected serial killer’s house

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Investigators have found 3,787 fragments as items in house from people who disappeared suggest killings may go back years

Investigators digging under the house of a suspected serial killer on the outskirts of Mexico City have found 3,787 bone fragments so far, apparently belonging to 17 different victims.

Prosecutors in the state of Mexico, which borders Mexico City, suggested the grisly finds may not end there. In excavations carried out since 17 May, authorities have dug up the floors of the house where the suspect lived. They now plan to extend the search to the soil beneath several other rooms he rented out on the same property.

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