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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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 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...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...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...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...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.
Continue reading...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.
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