Officials confirm deaths during Friday protests marking a month of demonstrations
Four people have died in Colombia as tens of thousands of protesters marked a month of demonstrations across the country, while talks between the government and the national strike committee were stalled.
Related: Colombia politician tells protesters hurt by police to ‘stop crying over one eye’
Continue reading...Common travel area with Britain will not be restored due to concerns over India variant
Ireland will adopt the European Union’s Covid-19 certificate to help citizens move more freely across the bloc and allow the resumption of international travel from mid-July.
The country’s government said it will broadly apply the same approach to arrivals from elsewhere including Britain and the US.
Continue reading...Known for its beaches, surf breaks and social influencers, the holiday town on Australia’s east coast has recently earned a more sinister distinction
In Byron Bay, a coastal town at the easternmost point of mainland Australia, there are rainbow lorikeets everywhere. They fly between postcard palm trees: small blurs of yellow, red, orange, blue and green against a backdrop of cloudless skies.
It is almost too much – the colourful birds, the warm weather, the rolling hills, and of course, the Hollywood stars. Chris Hemsworth, Zac Efron and Matt Damon own property close to the town. Byron’s social media influencers – the murfers or “mum surfers”, in particular – are world famous, thanks to a profile in Vanity Fair. So potent are its charms that 2.2 million tourists visit Byron shire each year.
Continue reading...Newsreader confuses Bill Shakespeare, 81, ‘the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine’ with ‘one of the most important writers in the English language’
In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.
The gaffe of, well, Shakespearean proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer vaccine.
Continue reading...Analysis: one of America’s two major parties now falls outside the democratic mainstream but are Democrats taking the existential threat seriously?
The question now is not so much whether the Republican party can be saved any time in the foreseeable future. It is what Joe Biden and the Democrats should do when faced with a party determined to subvert democracy through any means necessary, including violence.
On Friday Republicans in the Senate torpedoed an effort to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January, deploying the procedural move known as the filibuster to stop it even being debated.
Continue reading...A mass grave containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children has been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in the interior of southern British Columbia.
The grim discovery at the former school near the town of Kamloops was announced late on Thursday by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc people after the site was examined by a team using ground-penetrating radar.
Continue reading...Prime minister says system will be up and running before 1 July deadline and in time for tourist season
The Greek government has unveiled the first EU Covid passport, described by the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as a “fast lane to facilitate travel”, after a successful dry run of the technology.
At a launch in Athens, Mitsotakis, who had led calls for a way to open up Europe in time for the summer tourism season, said the system would be up and running in Greece before a deadline set by Brussels for 1 July.
Continue reading...Homeland security chief Alejandro Mayorkas says ‘any passport that we provide for vaccinations … [must be] accessible to all’
The Biden administration is taking “a very close look” at the possibility of vaccine passports for travel into and out of the United States, the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Friday.
The Transportation Security Administration, which safeguards the nation’s transportation systems, is housed under Mayorkas’s department.
Continue reading...Viewers say scenes featuring Lady Gaga, boyband BTS and Justin Bieber are missing from Chinese version
For many Chinese millennials, the US sitcom Friends was a window to the American way of life. Teachers would use the show to help students learn English. Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai have Friends-themed Central Perk cafes. So when news that the original cast were to hold a reunion special nearly 20 years after the show was first introduced into China, diehard fans were excited, and some of China’s biggest online streaming platforms bought the rights to broadcast the show.
But eagle-eyed viewers complained on Thursday that some of the much-talked-about scenes in the original 104-minute runtime were missing.
Continue reading...Trade unions say they have lost control of protests over pay as employers cite impact of Covid for restraint
A woman has died after being shot during violent clashes between factory workers and police in Lesotho as trade unions say they have lost control over angry protests over pay.
Demonstrations spilled over into violence in what is the second week of industrial action, with looting and damage to several businesses in the capital Maseru.
Continue reading...Move is part of groundbreaking effort to name 30,000 murdered by regime after 1976 coup
The Argentinian government has sent hundreds of DNA testing kits to its consulates around the world in a groundbreaking effort to put names to unidentified victims murdered in the “Dirty War” waged by the brutal military dictatorship four decades ago.
Last month, the Argentinian authorities, in collaboration with the National Commission for the Right to Identity, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo movement and investigators from the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), launched its international Right to Identity campaign, committed to putting a name to every woman, man and child killed by the military junta in Argentina in the 1970s and early 80s.
Continue reading...World’s poorest nations saddled with ‘imprisoning’ debt, hampering responses to the pandemic, say activists protesting HSBC meeting
Activists at a demonstration outside the annual general meeting of HSBC in London have demanded the bank and other financial giants provide debt relief to African countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
In an attempt to highlight the role of private creditors in the debt crises of the world’s poorest countries, campaigners with “drop the debt” banners gathered outside HSBC’s AGM at the Southbank Centre.
Continue reading...Doctors’ pleas receive little sympathy from government as critics say President Amlo favoring teachers – for political reasons
Ana Sofía is radiologist at a state-run hospital in the Mexican city of Monterrey, not far from the Texas border. Her work often brings her into close contact with patients, but says she was denied a coronavirus vaccination as her superiors did not consider her to be a frontline worker.
In despair, she attended a rural vaccination event for the elderly and asked for a leftover dose of the Sinovac jab – but she was again rebuffed, this time by political operatives who told her: “Wait your turn.”
Continue reading...Greece and Spain to take part in tourism boost ahead of planned EU-wide launch on 1 July; southern hemisphere winter risks further virus spread
A royal academy chaired by Princess Chulabhorn, the youngest sibling of Thailand’s king, has said it would import 1 million doses of Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine next month, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorised its use.
The announcement in the official Royal Gazette surprised some members of the government, which had until now insisted on being the sole importer of Covid-19 vaccines.
Greece has said it is ready to use a Covid-19 travel certificate before its EU-wide launch on 1 July to attract foreign travellers and save its tourism sector from a second summer lost to the coronavirus.
The free certificate will take the form of a QR code on a smartphone or paper, letting authorities determine the status of a visitor based on records in their home EU country.
Continue reading...Twenty-one competitors died in the freezing Chinese mountains, raising major questions about safety in the sport
At the starting line of the Gansu ultramarathon, it was cold but the sun was shining. One competitor struggled to warm up, even after jogging a quick 2km, and noticed some of the elite competitors were wearing shorts and shivering. In nearby towns, the temperature was reportedly already dropping and winds increasing, but the 172 runners didn’t know that.
In a widely shared account of the horror that followed, published online, the anonymous runner described the conditions that led to the death of 21 competitors and the admission of eight others to hospital, and sparked major questions about the safety of the increasingly popular endurance sport in China.
Continue reading...Microsoft says group targeted more than 15o American and foreign organisations using USAid account
The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted phishing assault on US and foreign government agencies and thinktanks this week using an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), Microsoft has said.
The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, the Microsoft vice-president Tom Burt wrote in a blog post late on Thursday.
Continue reading...Journalists and activists targeted in most wide-reaching crackdown since days of Soviet Union
Church bells rang in the city of Byarozawka as hundreds of mourners laid Vitold Ashurak to rest. They draped the white-red-white flag favoured by the Belarusian opposition over his body, as local police kept a wary eye on the funeral.
Sentenced to five years in prison after last year’s mass demonstrations against Alexander Lukashenko, the 50-year-old protest leader survived less than one. When Ashurak’s body was returned to his family, his head was entirely covered in bandages – only his mouth was visible, a family friend said.
Continue reading...The young star of Peter Murimi’s intimate documentary is as poor, religious and conservative as his peers – and fearful of a violent backlash, he says
Samuel Asilikwa grew up in rural Kenya. There was a strict template for masculinity, informed by centuries of tradition – and intolerance. In a new documentary about his life, we see his father, a pastor, question Asilikwa about why he is yet to find a wife. We then watch as he relocates to Nairobi in search of work and adventure. He finds community, friendship and intense romance with a man called Alex.
Peter Murimi’s film I Am Samuel, shot verité-style over the course of five years, is at its most powerful contrasting city and countryside. Kenya’s farmland, clay roads, shrubbery and corn fields are evidence of a still, yet cyclical, pattern of life compared with the infinite noise and claustrophobia of Nairobi. But it is also a film about a shifting political landscape, where “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” is punishable by 14 years’ imprisonment.
Continue reading...Activists were shot and beaten at demonstration to stop property giant Bahria Town building on indigenous land they say was taken with force
Muhammad Anwar was not aware of any danger when he took the day off work to join his friends at a demonstration on a construction site of a powerful real estate company.
When Anwar, 35, reached the west bank of Langeji river, near Karachi, earlier this month, he saw the bulldozers levelling land next to Bahria Town, a luxury gated development.
Continue reading...Warnings of brain drain from developing world as Covid adds to numbers of nurses leaving profession
Health ministers around the world are being urged to sign off on plans to create 6m more nursing jobs by 2030, amid warnings that Covid-19 has exacerbated a global shortage and could spark a “brain drain” from the developing world.
Delegates meeting virtually this week at the World Health Assembly, the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, are expected to adopt a resolution calling on countries to transform the nursing profession through more investment, support and training.
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