Category Archives: World News

Solar eclipse 2021: spectacle to be visible across UK and Ireland

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Skygazers – with appropriate eye protection – will be able to see much of sun being obscured from 10.08am

Views of a partial solar eclipse will be “somewhat fleeting” across certain parts of the UK due to cloudy skies, forecasters have said.

But those in central and south-east England will have clear spells to witness the spectacle, according to the Met Office. On Thursday morning, skygazers will be able to see nearly a third of the sun being blocked out by the moon in what is known as an annular eclipse.

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World’s biggest meat producer JBS pays $11m cybercrime ransom

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Brazil-based giant paid ransom in bitcoin after ransomware attack shut down operations across world

JBS, the world’s biggest meat processor, has paid an $11m (£7.8m) ransom after a cyber attack shut down operations, including abattoirs in the US, Australia and Canada.

While most of its operations have been restored, the Brazilian-headquartered company said it hoped the payment would head off any further complications including data theft.

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Polish government faces court action over failure to tackle climate crisis

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Five citizens accuse government of failing to protect them from impacts of global heating

Five Polish citizens are taking their government to court over its failure to protect them from the impacts of the climate crisis.

They say the state has breached their rights to life, health and family life by delaying action to cut national carbon emissions and propping up the coal industry.

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Voluntourism: new book explores how volunteer trips harm rather than help

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‘Don’t do as we did,’ says Pippa Biddle, who highlights colonial structure of industry where unqualified Western tourists pay to volunteer abroad

Seven years ago, Pippa Biddle wrote a blog post about volunteering abroad. She recounted her struggles speaking Spanish to children living with HIV in the Dominican Republic and how local people in Tanzania would spend all night redoing the construction work she and her classmates had done poorly.

“Taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign,” Biddle wrote. “It’s detrimental.”

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G7 leaders in the UK: what are their agendas?

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Joe Biden wants alternative to Chinese belt and road offer while Japanese PM’s interests are more domestic

Leaders of the world’s seven leading industrialised nations will meet in Cornwall this weekend to agree a communique on how to redraw the world post-Covid, but also to pursue their own agendas and try to forge new personal relations after nearly 18 months apart.

1. Joe Biden has restored order, calm and direction to US international alliances, but now has to show what he will do with that goodwill.

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‘Father of African cinema’ Ousmane Sembène at work – in pictures

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A look back at the career of Senegal-born film director Ousmane Sembène as his 1968 film Mandabi is released in the UK for the first time

•Mandabi is released on 11 June in cinemas, and on 28 June on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital platforms.

•Peter Bradshaw on Mandabi: classic about colonialism resonates today

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Child labour worldwide increases for first time in 20 years

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UN warns that coronavirus crisis threatens to push millions more children into work

Child labour has risen for the first time in two decades and the coronavirus crisis threatens to push millions more youngsters towards the same fate, Unicef has said.

In a joint report, the International Labour Organization and the UN children’s agency say the number in child labour stood at 160 million at the start of 2020 – an increase of 8.4 million in four years.

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Acropolis now: Greeks outraged at concreting of ancient site

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Installation of new pathway and lift has been criticised by archaeologists and called ‘a scandal’

When seen through the eyes of Manolis Korres, the architect who has long presided over the restoration of the Parthenon, the Acropolis needs no improvement at all.

In the face of such architectural mastery, he thinks of himself more as a maestro of order, making a monument that has survived explosions, fire, looting and earthquakes more understandable to the public.

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‘Get to work’: US defence chief tells Pentagon to sharpen China focus

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Lloyd Austin says directive is about ensuring that dealing with the threat from Beijing remains a priority

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has directed the Pentagon to sharpen its focus on China, which the United States has tagged as its top strategic rival.

“Now, it is up to the department to get to work,” Austin said on Wednesday after issuing an internal directive to the Pentagon bureaucracy.

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‘Claims could run into billions’: the interests at stake if Olympics in Japan were cancelled

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IOC officials have avoided any mention of the commercial forces driving the Tokyo Games towards their 23 July opening date

The least divisive statement in the saga surrounding Tokyo 2020 – assuming, as many people now do, that it will happen in just over 40 days’ time – is that it will be an Olympics like no other.

Overseas fans have been banned; athletes will spend what for many will be the pinnacle of their career sealed off from the outside world; GPS-tracked journalists hoping to escape their hotel rooms for a late-night fix of ramen risk being put on the next flight home.

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G7 leaders will call for fresh WHO inquiry into Covid origins, leaked communique suggests

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Statement indicates leaders will also commit to delivering 1bn vaccine doses and plans to tackle forced labour

Leaders at the G7 summit will call for a new, transparent investigation by the World Health Organization into the origins of the coronavirus, according to a leaked draft communique for the meeting.

The call was initiated by Joe Biden’s administration and follows the US president’s decision to expand the American investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with one intelligence agency leaning towards the theory that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory.

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Uproar after Argentina president says ‘Brazilians came from the jungle’

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Misjudged comments to prime minister of Spain sought to play up the South American country’s ties with Europe

Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández, has triggered a Twitter storm and a regional race debate with misjudged comments to visiting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain that sought to play up the South American country’s ties with Europe.

“The Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came from the jungle, but we Argentines came from the ships. And they were ships that came from Europe,” Fernández said, referring to the many European migrants who arrived in the country. He later apologized for the comments and said his country’s diversity was something to be proud of.

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Joe Biden arrives in UK as domestic agenda hits a Republican wall – live

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Democratic Florida Representative Val Demings has announced she is running for Senate, challenging Republican Marco Rubio for his seat.

I'm running for U.S. Senate because I will never tire of standing up for what is right. Never tire of serving Florida. Never tire of doing good.

Join my campaign today: https://t.co/rHVPBuSzKU pic.twitter.com/HuWB80Mrxh

https://t.co/kPlysL0aZd pic.twitter.com/06iEZMpmfS

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Russian court outlaws Alexei Navalny’s organisation

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Court has in effect liquidated the opposition politician’s movement by classifying it as ‘extremist’

A Russian court has outlawed opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s nationwide political organisation on the grounds it is “extremist”, in a landmark step forward for Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on political dissent.

The highly anticipated court decision in effect liquidates Navalny’s non-violent opposition movement and bars his allies from running for office for years, as the Kremlin seeks to erase the jailed opposition leader from Russian political life.

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Texas Republican asks: can we fix the moon’s orbit to fight climate change?

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‘I’d have to follow up with you on that one,’ says forestry official Jennifer Eberlien to bizarre question from Louie Gohmert

The Texas Republican congressman Louie Gohmert has asked a senior US government official if changing the moon’s orbit around the Earth, or the Earth’s orbit around the sun, might be a solution for climate change.

Bizarrely, the question was not posed to anyone from Nasa or even the Pentagon. Instead it was asked of a senior forestry service official during a House natural resources committee hearing on Tuesday.

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Kamala Harris suffers bumpy baptism over immigration on first foreign trip

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Vice-president’s ‘get tough’ stance on corruption overshadowed by backlash over ‘do not come’ message to migrants

Kamala Harris has returned to the US from her first foreign trip and big test since becoming vice-president – and taking over the hot-potato issue of immigration – battered by criticism over her harsh “Do not come” message to desperate migrants and her testy ambivalence over visiting the US-Mexico border.

Harris arrived back on US soil from a three-day trip to Guatemala and Mexico just as Joe Biden flew out to the UK on Wednesday on his first overseas venture since winning the White House.

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China the spectre at the feast as Biden aims to rally democracies on Europe trip

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The US president has become convinced that Beijing is the main adversary in a global battle of governance systems

The unifying theme behind Joe Biden’s European tour this week is a country which will not be at any of the meetings and may not even be mentioned in the final communiques: China.

Before setting out on his first foreign trip as president, Biden has made clear that the competition between the world’s democracies and its authoritarian regimes – mostly importantly Beijing – is the defining global challenge of the age, with victory anything but guaranteed for the US and its allies.

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Multiple sightings of missile launcher before MH17 shot down, court told

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Four men on trial in absentia in the Netherlands over downing of flight with 298 onboard over Ukraine

Multiple witnesses saw an anti-aircraft missile launcher that had secretly crossed into eastern Ukraine from Russia in the hours before it shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a trial in the Netherlands has heard.

The Buk system crossed the border in darkness in the early hours of 17 July 2014. It was then loaded on to a trailer and taken to the rebel-held city of Donetsk, the court heard on Wednesday, before it headed east towards the town of Snizhne.

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German health minister facing calls to resign over mask furore

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Jens Spahn’s ministry is accused of planning to distribute substandard Covid masks to vulnerable people

Germany’s health minister is facing calls to resign over accusations his ministry planned to distribute face masks considered inadequate protection against Covid-19 to socially and physically vulnerable people.

Jens Spahn was the subject of a fierce debate in the German parliament, the Bundestag, on Wednesday afternoon, in which he was accused of putting the desire to be seen to be acting to tackle the pandemic ahead of safety concerns.

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