Category Archives: World News

Honduran state responsible for trans woman’s murder – court

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Landmark ruling orders state to pay reparations, protect trans people and legalise gender change

In a landmark ruling for transgender rights, the Honduras government has been found responsible for the 2009 murder of the trans woman and activist Vicky Hernández. The ruling, at the inter-American court of human rights, was published on the 12th anniversary of Hernández’s death, and marks the first time the highest regional human rights court has held a state accountable for failing to prevent, investigate and prosecute the death of a trans person.

The court has ordered Honduras, which has the world’s highest rate of murders of trans people, to pay reparations to Hernández’s family and implement a sweeping range of measures designed to protect trans people, including anti-discrimination training for security forces and state collection of data on violence against LGBTQ+ people.

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Spain backs bill allowing teenagers to change official gender without medical checks

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Equality minister says draft law marks ‘giant step forward for LGBTI rights, particularly trans people’

Spain’s government has approved a draft law that would allow anyone aged 14 and over to change their gender on official documents without the need for hormone treatment or a medical report, and which would also ban conversion practices and strengthen the rights of LGBTI people.

The proposed measures – which follow months of wrangling between the Spanish Socialist Worker’s party (PSOE) and its junior coalition partners in the far-left, anti-austerity Podemos party – would abolish existing legislation that requires people wishing to change their gender to obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and undergo hormone treatment.

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Ireland to delay indoor dining and only allow access to fully vaccinated

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No date agreed for planned reopening as health officials warn of risks of a Delta-driven new wave

Ireland has delayed the reopening of indoor hospitality and plans to limit indoor dining to people who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

The government announced the changes on Tuesday after health officials warned of a possible wave of infections and deaths driven by the Delta variant.

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China blasts Japanese minister’s ‘sinister’ remarks about Taiwan

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Beijing lodges diplomatic protest with Japan after defence minister calls island a ‘democratic country’

China and Japan are once again embroiled in a diplomatic row over Taiwan, in the latest example of Beijing’s extreme sensitivity over the status of the self-ruled island and Tokyo’s changing attitude towards Beijing.

Speaking to the US conservative thinktank Hudson Institute on Monday, Japan’s state minister of defence, Yasuhide Nakayama, spoke of a growing threat posed by Chinese and Russian collaboration, and said it was necessary to “wake up” to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and protect the island “as a democratic country”.

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Jacob Zuma sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court – video

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The former president of South Africa Jacob Zuma has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court after he failed to appear before a corruption inquiry earlier this year. The inquiry is examining allegations of high-level graft during Zuma’s period in power. Judge Sisi Khampepe said: 'I am left with no option but to commit Mr Zuma to imprisonment, with the hope that doing so sends an unequivocal message … the rule of law and the administration of justice prevails'

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Former South African president Jacob Zuma sentenced to 15 months in prison

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Zuma found to have been in contempt of court when he defied an order to appear at corruption inquiry

Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court after failing to appear before a corruption inquiry earlier this year.

Zuma, 79, who was the president for nearly nine years until 2018, was not present to hear the South African constitutional court deliver its ruling and sentence.

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Canada has lost its halo: we must confront our Indigenous genocide | Tara Sutton

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Hundreds of unmarked graves, and testimonies of countless horrors, belie our angelic self-image

It’s not often that Canadians have to apologise for their country. I’ve travelled the world reporting on conflict and human rights and am always greeted positively when I say I’m Canadian. “It is a beautiful country,” I am told. “Your country cares for its citizens.” In Canada, people make sympathetic noises when I retell whatever tragic story I have been working on. “We are so lucky to live in Canada,” they say.

Canadians like the idea of a “good” country full of “good” people. There’s even a name for it: “the angel complex”. Look at all the immigrants and refugees we welcome here, goes the doctrine – we’re not like those American racists, or those European xenophobes. Canada see itself as proudly multicultural, tolerant, peace-loving and polite. A beacon of light to the world.

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Former Peru dictator’s spymaster reappears in alleged plot to swing recount

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Vladimiro Montesinos secretly recorded apparently suggesting bribes be paid to secure election for Keiko Fujimori

He was known as the Peruvian Rasputin, the spymaster of one of the country’s most corrupt and brutal regimes.

Vladimiro Montesinos masterminded a network of political espionage, mining state coffers to control the military top brass, the courts, and the media, until he was brought down by one of his own videotapes, which showed him bribing politicians.

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Tigray rebels vow to drive out ‘enemies’ despite ceasefire declaration

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Celebrations on streets of Mekelle after soldiers and officials appointed by Ethiopian government flee city

Dissident leaders of Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray region have dismissed a government ceasefire declaration and vowed to drive out “enemies” from the region, after rebel fighters advanced on the Tigrayan capital.

In a dramatic development in the nearly eight-month-old conflict, which has been marked by large-scale atrocities, federal security forces and officials from the central government appointed interim administration fled Mekelle on Monday night. Residents took to the streets in jubilation, firing celebratory gunfire and fireworks into the sky.

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Brazil could have stopped 400,000 Covid deaths with better government response, expert says

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Epidemiologist behind study on scale of disaster says Jair Bolsonaro’s government is ‘entirely’ responsible

Brazil could have saved 400,000 lives if the country had implemented stricter social distancing measures and launched a vaccination programme earlier, according to an eminent epidemiologist who is leading the first study to quantify the scale of the country’s Covid disaster.

Such policies would have prevented 80% of the half a million Covid deaths registered in one of the hardest-hit countries in the world, said Pedro Hallal, a professor at the Federal University of Pelotas.

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Greece accused of refugee ‘pushback’ after family avoid being forced off island

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Story of Palestinians who hid on Samos to escape deportation to Turkey appears to be ‘proof’ that pushbacks continue, claim rights groups

On 26 April Dimitris Choulis, an immigration lawyer based on the Greek island of Samos, opened his office door to find a family of four on his doorstep. Aisha*, 31, and her three children, all from Palestine.

“She said ‘pushback,’” said Choulis, “and I understood what had happened.” These were the only people left on the island out of a group of asylum seekers who had arrived from Turkey a few days before.

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‘You can’t cancel Pride’: the fight for LGBTQ+ rights amid the pandemic

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Lockdown hit LGBTQ+ communities hard but even as Pride events are called off there is hope and a promise that the parades will return

This month, for the second year in a row, there was no Pride parade in San Francisco, arguably the city most laden with history and symbolism for the LGBTQ+ community.

It is a decision Fred Lopez, who took over as executive director of San Francisco Pride at the beginning of last year describes as “heartbreaking”.

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Obama says Trump violated ‘core tenet’ of democracy with election ‘hooey’ – as it happened

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– Maanvi Singh and Vivian Ho

As the United States has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, according to a new nationwide analysis from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

More than 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, the researchers found, even though explicit racial discrimination in housing has been outlawed for half a century. The levels of residential segregation appeared highest not in the American south, but in parts of the north-east and midwest: the most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.

Related: ‘Where you live determines everything’: why segregation is growing in the US

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Coastguard seizes half a tonne of cocaine floating off Algeria coast

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Fishermen alerted authorities to ‘suspicious’ items floating in the sea

The Algerian coastguard has seized almost half a tonne of cocaine after fishers alerted authorities to “suspicious” items floating off the north-west coast.

The coastguard fished out 490kg (1,080 pounds) of cocaine split up into 442 packages from the water six nautical miles (11 kilometres) off Oran’s Cap Carbon on Saturday evening, a defence ministry statement said on Monday.

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Mexico supreme court strikes down laws that ban use of recreational marijuana

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Adults will be able to apply for permits to grow and consume cannabis after decision that moves country toward legalisation

Mexico’s supreme court has struck down laws prohibiting the use of recreational marijuana, moving the country toward cannabis legalisation even as the country’s congress drags its feet on a legalisation bill.

In an 8-3 decision on Monday, the court ruled that sections of the country’s general health law prohibiting personal consumption and home cultivation of marijuana were unconstitutional.

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Miami condo collapse: death toll rises to 11 as rescue teams continue search

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  • More than 150 unaccounted for as officials urge people to hope
  • White House says Biden wants federal inquiry into collapse

The death toll from a building collapse in the Miami suburb of Surfside rose to 11 on Monday, as rescue operations continued into a fifth day.

Officials urged people to maintain hope survivors might be found in the wreckage of the collapsed condo building. A further 150 people who may have been in the building remained unaccounted for, the mayor of Miami-Dade, Daniella Levine Cava, said on Monday evening.

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Greek police recover two stolen paintings by Picasso and Mondrian

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Works by 20th-century masters found nearly a decade after audacious heist at Athens gallery

A Picasso gifted to the Greek people by the artist in honour of their resistance to Nazi rule has been found in a gorge after a builder admitted to stealing the masterpiece and two other artworks in an audacious heist from the National Gallery in Athens nearly a decade ago.

For nine years, Head of a Woman had lain hidden in the home of the self-described art lover alongside Stammer Windmill, a work by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, also stolen during the overnight raid on 9 January 2012.

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Interim government of Tigray flees as rebels seize capital

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Spokesperson for Tigray People’s Liberation Front says Mekelle is ‘under our control’

The interim government of Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray region has fled as rebel fighters advanced into the region’s capital and the national government announced a “unilateral ceasefire”.

Witnesses said federal soldiers and police were also abandoning Mekelle late on Monday, and fireworks and celebratory gunfire could be heard as Tigrayan fighters took the city’s airport and other key positions.

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Mixing Covid vaccines offers strong immune protection – study

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Oxford researchers say having AstraZeneca then Pfizer jabs is almost as potent as two shots of Pfizer

Having different Covid vaccines for first and second shots produces a strong immune response to the virus, according to research that will help improve the resilience of vaccine programmes around the world.

Scientists in Oxford looked at the impact of a mix-and-match approach to vaccinations where people were given either the standard two shots of Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, or a combination of the two.

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UK and Brussels near deal on Covid passports to boost holiday hopes

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Talks progressing on recognition of status certificates, while German calls for caution failing to win support

Hopes have been raised of summer holidays in Europe for fully vaccinated Britons as a deal with Brussels on Covid passports neared completion and Germany failed to convince popular destinations to pull an “emergency brake” on UK visitors.

Restrictions on travel are tightening across the continent for tourists coming from the UK who have not had two jabs, owing to concerns over the highly transmissible Delta variant now dominant in Britain.

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