Category Archives: World News

Belarusian activist stabs himself in court

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Stsiapan Latypau carried out unconscious after claiming he was pressured to plead guilty

A Belarusian opposition activist stabbed himself in the throat with a pen during a court hearing after claiming investigators had pressured him to plead guilty or face his family and friends being arrested.

Footage from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty showed Stsiapan Latypau, who has organised protests against the country’s authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, lying inside a defendant’s cage as witnesses screamed in a courtroom in Minsk.

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Amazon US customers have one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

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Critics raise transparency fears over plan to turn all smart home devices into ‘mesh network’

Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network, as part of the company’s plan to fix connection problems for its smart home devices.

The proposal, called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company’s devices being used as a springboard to build city-wide “mesh networks” that help simplify the process of setting up new devices, keep them online even if they’re out of range of home wifi, and extend the range of tracking devices such as those made by Tile.

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Mexico accuses Zara and Anthropologie of cultural appropriation

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Ministry of culture claims Zara used a pattern distinctive to the indigenous Mixteca community

Mexico has accused the international fashion brands Zara, Anthropologie and Patowl of cultural appropriation, claiming they used patterns from indigenous groups in their designs without any benefit to the communities.

The culture ministry said in a statement that it had sent letters signed by the culture minister, Alejandra Frausto, to the three companies, asking each for a “public explanation on what basis it could privatise collective property”.

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Human challenge: the people volunteering to be infected with Covid

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Amid claims PM wanted to be infected with Covid on TV, volunteers tell of taking part in a human challenge trial

If Dominic Cummings is to be believed, Boris Johnson was so sceptical that Covid-19 was a threat early last year that he was willing to inject himself with the virus that causes the disease on television. But there are actual volunteers – young and healthy people – who elected to be infected with the virus, all in the name of science.

These volunteers lined up to participate in “human challenge trials”, which have long been successfully employed to develop vaccines for diseases from typhoid to cholera.

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Ugandan minister speaks from hospital bed after assassination attempt – video

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Gunmen fired bullets at a car carrying Katumba Wamala in an attempted assassination on Tuesday, wounding the former army commander and killing his daughter and driver. Speaking from his hospital bed, the government minister said: 'I have survived … the bad guys have done it, but God has given me a second chance. I will pull through.'

There have been several unsolved assassinations and mysterious deaths of high-profile officials in the east African country in recent years that have fuelled speculation about perpetrators and their motivations


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UK ranked last in Europe for bathing water quality in 2020

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European Environment Agency judges only 110 British coastal and inland sites to be excellent

Swimmers in the UK hoping to enjoy waters certified clean and healthy this summer have been let down again. Only 110 coastal and inland sites were judged excellent in the latest bathing water quality data from Europe’s environmental watchdog.

Most of the UK’s bathing sites were not classified in 2020, however, because Covid-19 restrictions prevented sampling. This meant that out of 640 sites, 457 received no verdict in the rankings, compiled annually by the European Environment Agency and published on Tuesday.

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Biden corporate tax plan could earn EU and UK billions, study shows

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EU forecast to reap extra €50bn per year with UK expected to gain €200m from BP alone

A proposal to be tabled by the US president, Joe Biden, at the upcoming G7 meeting for a 15% global corporate tax rate could reap the EU €50bn (£43bn) a year, and earn the UK nearly €200m extra alone from the British multinational BP, according to research.

Should the tax rate be set higher at 25%, the lowest current rate within the seven largest world economies, the EU would earn nearly €170bn extra a year – more than 50% of current corporate tax revenue and 12% of total health spending in the bloc.

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Peru has world’s worst per capita Covid toll after death data revised

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Updated figures give country a per capita death toll of 500 per 100,000 people – double that of Brazil

Peru has almost tripled its official Covid-19 death toll to 180,764, after a government review, making it the country with the highest death rate per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Peru has been among the hardest hit Latin American countries during the pandemic, with its hospitals overcrowded and demand for oxygen outstripping availability.

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Migrant guards in Qatar ‘still paid under £1 an hour’ ahead of World Cup

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Promises of better working conditions ring hollow for tens of thousands of security guards, who say they still work long hours for low pay

Every day at 5pm, Samuel boards the company bus that takes him to his night shift as a guard at a luxury high-rise tower near Qatar’s capital, Doha. When his shift ends 12 hours later, he says he will have earned £9, just 75p an hour.

Samuel, who is from Uganda, says he almost never has a day off. “You have to tell lies, like ‘you are sick, you’re not feeling good’, so that you get a day off,” he says.

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Rise of armed civilian groups in Myanmar fuels fears of civil war

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Dozens of grassroots people’s defence forces have emerged to take on brutal military

Myanmar is on the verge of a new civil war, a spokesperson for the country’s parallel government has warned, as communities increasingly take up arms to protect themselves from a relentless campaign of military violence.

Conflict has raged for decades in Myanmar’s borderlands, where myriad ethnic armed groups are fighting with the military for greater autonomy. Since February’s coup, however, dozens of new, grassroots people’s defence forces have emerged to oppose the junta, with battles occurring in areas of the country that were previously peaceful.

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Covid-19 variants to be given Greek alphabet names to avoid stigma

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WHO unveils new names for variants of concern to replace ones linked to where they were discovered

Coronavirus variants are to be named after letters of the Greek alphabet instead of their place of first discovery, the World Health Organization has announced, in a move to avoid stigma.

The WHO has named four variants of concern, known to the public as the UK/Kent (B.1.1.7), South Africa (B.1.351), Brazil (P.1) and India (B.1.617.2) variants. They will now be given the letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta respectively, to reflect their order of detection, with any new variants following the pattern down the Greek alphabet.

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From a forest in Papua New Guinea to a floor in Sydney: how China is getting rich off Pacific timber

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China is the major buyer of wood from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

An illegally logged tree, felled in the diminishing forests of Papua New Guinea, may well end up becoming floorboards in a Sydney living room, or a bookcase in a home in Seattle.

Illegal logging contributes between 15% and 30% of the global wood trade, according to Interpol. China is a major buyer of the world’s illegal timber, according to environmental groups, especially from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging.

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Senior figures attack ‘obstruction’ of ICC’s Palestine investigation

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Exclusive: Open letter signed by dozens of European ex-officials calls for end to ‘unwarranted public criticism’ of inquiry into alleged war crimes

More than 50 former foreign ministers, prime ministers and senior international officials, including two British Conservative former ministers, have signed an open letter condemning political interference in efforts by the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine.

The letter follows moves by the Trump administration to sanction court officials – orders that have since been reversed by the Biden administration – and is also seen as a rebuke of Boris Johnson, the British prime minister.

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Overconfident of spotting fake news? If so, you may be more likely to fall victim

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Study suggests people who are most sure of their ability to discern fact from fiction are less likely to do so

Are you a purveyor of fake news? People who are most confident about their ability to discern between fact and fiction are also the most likely to fall victim to misinformation, a US study suggests.

Although Americans believe the confusion caused by false news is all-pervasive, relatively few indicate having seen or shared it, something the researchers suggested shows that many may not only have a hard time identifying false news but are not aware of their own deficiencies at doing so.

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Britons face one-month deadline to retain rights in four EU countries

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Tens of thousands have yet to apply for post-Brexit residence in countries with 30 June cut-off date

Tens of thousands of British nationals in four EU member states have yet to apply for post-Brexit residence, meaning they risk losing the right to live and work there unless they file their demands within 30 days.

UK citizens living in France, Malta, Luxembourg and Latvia have until 30 June to apply to secure their post-Brexit rights. The Netherlands did have the same deadline, but on Monday extended it to 1 October.

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‘Democracy itself is in peril’: Biden delivers Memorial Day speech – video

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Joe Biden warned in a speech commemorating the US's war dead on Memorial Day that American democracy was 'in peril' and called for empathy among his fellow citizens.

Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, the president, joined by the first lady, Jill Biden, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband, paid tribute to America’s war dead

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‘Too much of a burden’: Chinese couples react to three-child policy

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China has announced that couples will be permitted to have up to three children. What do couples think of the policy change?

Jia Shicong is a 31-year-old education project manager. She is married to Hu Xuancheng, also 31, an engineer. They have a baby girl who is one year and seven months old. They live in Xi’an, in central China

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Human-induced global heating ‘causes over a third of heat deaths’

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Between 1991 and 2018, human activity contributed to 37% of all heat-related deaths in locations studied

More than a third of all heat-related deaths around the world between 1991 and 2018 can be attributed to human-induced global heating, research has found.

Climate breakdown has a range of effects ranging from wildfires to extreme weather. As the temperatures rise, more intense and frequent heatwaves disproportionately affect elderly people and those with underlying chronic conditions such as asthma, making them more vulnerable to disease and premature death.

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Man in Black at 50: Johnny Cash’s empathy is needed more than ever

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The country star is not always remembered for his politics, but his about-face to withdraw support for Nixon and the Vietnam war may be his finest moment

“I speak my mind in a lot of these songs,” Johnny Cash wrote in the liner notes to the album Man in Black, released 50 years ago today. He might be better known now for the outlaw songs of his youth or the reckonings with death in his final recordings, but Cash used his 1971 album to set out his less-discussed political vision: long on feeling and empathy, and short on ideology and partisanship. The United States seemed hopelessly polarised, and Cash confronted that division head-on, demanding more of his fellow citizens and Christians amid the apparently endless war in Vietnam.

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Covid: France enforces tighter restrictions on travel from UK

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Rules on non-essential journeys toughened amid concerns over spread of India variant from Britain

France has begun restricting non-essential travel from the UK due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus variant first identified in India.

The regulations were announced last week but came into force from Monday when entry to France from Britain is permitted only for EU nationals, French residents or people travelling for “compelling reasons”. The rules apply to all air, car, ferry and train passengers, and to people who have been vaccinated.

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