Category Archives: World News

A silent decimation: South America’s losing battle against Covid

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Strained and underfunded health systems, economics and misinformation have all led to a surge in deaths

The cold, tired and desperate relatives camped outside the Barrio Obrero general hospital in Asunción don’t need charts or datasets to confirm what they can see with their own eyes.

As Paraguay records the world’s highest daily proportion of Covid deaths, the huddled families wait for news of their loved ones – and for the sudden requests for medicine and supplies that the country’s chronically underfunded health system cannot provide.

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EU ‘has blood on its hands’, say activists calling for border agency’s abolition

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Coalition of rights groups demanding Frontex be defunded claim EU policies have ‘killed over 40,555 people since 1993’

Activists, captains of rescue ships and about 80 human rights organisations across the world have launched an international campaign calling for the European border agency to be defunded and dismantled.

In an open letter sent last week to the European Commission, the Council of the EU and the European parliament, the campaign coalition highlighted the “illegal and inhumane practices” of the EU border agency, Frontex, which is accused of having promoted and enforced violent policies against migrants.

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Budapest Pride goes ahead in solidarity against Hungary’s anti-LBGTQ+ laws

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As oppressive legislation passed by Viktor Orbán’s government, activists plan procession to ‘show LGBT people they are not alone’

For the second year in a row, Covid has succeeded in doing what many had once thought impossible: toning down Pride celebrations. From Berlin to Brighton, Toronto to San Francisco, parades have been cancelled or put online, floats forgotten and parties swapped for quieter, often more reflective events.

But in Budapest, where LGBTQ+ activists are engaged in a near-existential fight against the rightwing government of Viktor Orbán, the stakes were too high for Pride to take a back seat.

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Hongkongers queue to buy Apple Daily copies after editor-in-chief arrested

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Public outpouring of support for tabloid after raid on offices by national security police

Hongkongers queued at city news stands before dawn on Friday to buy the latest edition of the Apple Daily newspaper, a day after national security police arrested its editor-in-chief and four other directors.

On Thursday morning hundreds of officers from the Hong Kong police national security department raided the homes of the employees, including editor-in-chef Ryan Law, and the Apple Daily newsroom for the second time in less than a year. It froze millions of dollars in company assets.

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Joe Biden signs bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday – as it happened

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A Republican congressman “ran as quickly as he could, like a coward” when a police officer injured in the attack on Congress on 6 January saw him and tried to shake his hand, the officer said.

“I was very cordial,” Michael Fanone told CNN on Wednesday of his interaction with Andrew Clyde, in a Capitol elevator earlier that day.

Related: Officer injured in Capitol attack says Republican ran from him ‘like a coward’

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Israel launches new airstrikes on Gaza in response to incendiary balloons

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Military says it is prepared for all scenarios including ‘resumption of hostilities’

Israel has launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip for a second time since a shaky ceasefire ended last month’s 11-day war.

The strikes late on Thursday came after activists mobilised by Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers launched incendiary balloons into Israel for a third day running. The balloons are basic devices intended to set fire to farmland and bush surrounding the Gaza enclave.

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Two journalists killed in Mexico, meaning three dead so far this year

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Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera shot dead Thursday, and Enrique Garcia killed Wednesday, apparently during work as ride-hail driver

Prosecutors in southern Mexico said reporter Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera was shot to death Thursday, and another journalist was killed just west of Mexico City, bring to three the number killed so far this year in the country. Two other reporters have disappeared.

The prosecutor’s office in the southern state of Oaxaca said Sánchez Cabrera was riding a motorcycle with another person on a rural road when gunmen opened fire on them.

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Greek husband confesses to murder of British woman

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Babis Anagnostopoulos had claimed robbers killed Caroline Crouch, 20, who was found dead next to her baby

The husband of a young British woman supposedly killed during a robbery at their Greek home and whose body was found next to her baby has confessed to the crime, police said on Thursday.

Babis Anagnostopoulos, a 32-year-old pilot, was taken by police helicopter to Athens on Thursday from the island of Alonissos, where he was attending a memorial service for his wife, Caroline Crouch. He confessed several hours later, the police said in a tweet.

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Françoise Hardy, ‘close to the end’ of her life, argues for assisted suicide

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The French singer says radiation has left her in immense pain, and fears a natural death would bring ‘even more physical suffering’

Françoise Hardy, the French pop songwriter who found fame in the 60s yé-yé movement, has said she feels “close to the end” of her life in a new interview.

Hardy, 77, told Femme Actuelle that in 2018 she was diagnosed with a tumour in her ear. It followed her diagnosis with lymphatic cancer in the mid-2000s, and a hospitalisation in 2015 that led to her being placed in an induced coma. Her life was saved when doctors administered a novel form of radiation.

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Trudeau is no feminist, says Green party leader as she battles party revolt

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Canada’s first black party leader denounces ‘sexist’ and ‘racist’ efforts to oust her after Green MP defected to Trudeau’s Liberals

Justin Trudeau is “no ally and no feminist”, the head of Canada’s Green party has alleged, as she denounced a “sexist” and “racist” campaign to oust her as party leader ahead of a looming federal election.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Annamie Paul said efforts to remove her were being led by a handful of Green party veterans “who are on their way out” and didn’t reflect the majority who elected her as leader in October.

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‘Something’s going on’: UFOs threaten national security, US politicians warn

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Some members of Congress were given advanced details about Pentagon report, which is scheduled to be released before 25 June

A group of senior American politicians have warned that UFOs pose “national security concerns” after getting a confidential briefing on a highly anticipated report on unidentified aerial phenomena that is set to be released later this month.

Some members of Congress were given advanced details about the contents of the Pentagon report, which is scheduled to be released before 25 June, and several said they are deeply worried about the findings.

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Netherlands offers free pickled herring as Covid jab incentive

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Country becomes the latest to encourage uptake by offering a traditional early-summer delicacy

After Russia offered cars, Washington state spliffs, Indonesia live chickens and Hong Kong the chance of a £1.2m apartment, the latest country to reward people who show up for their Covid shots is the Netherlands – with soused herring.

Early batches of Hollandse nieuwe, or new-season Dutch herring, a traditional delicacy consumed to the tune of 75m a year, are being distributed to vaccination centres around the country as an encouragement for people to get their jabs.

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‘Worst of times’: Hong Kong media defiant amid police crackdown

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Apple Daily hits back after executives arrested in second raid on pro-democracy paper’s newsroom

Apple Daily’s journalism has ruffled feathers since its establishment in 1995. A populist Hong Kong tabloid owned by Jimmy Lai, a pro-Trump media mogul and now jailed activist, the paper is fond of sensational crime stories, celebrity gossip, and investigations into government scandals and corruption. It’s a vocal supporter of the pro-democracy movement, a thorn in the side of police, and has become a symbol of resistance against Hong Kong’s crackdown.

Hong Kong’s police commissioner has accused it of creating hatred. Pro-Beijing media have called for it to be shut down. Lai has said the paper is on the right side of history.

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Hong Kong Apple Daily raid targeted ‘conspiracy’, claims security chief – video

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Hong Kong's security chief, John Lee, accused the five Apple Daily directors arrested on Thursday of using 'journalistic work as a tool to endanger national security'. 

Lee said the five were arrested on suspicion of collusion with foreign countries or external elements to invite sanctions or other hostile activities. In a significant escalation in the government’s moves to rein in the Hong Kong press, Apple Daily's newsroom and offices were searched and HK$18m (US $2.3m) in assets frozen

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‘Disability is possibility’: a mission to bust myths in India – photo essay

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The photographer Vicky Roy has been travelling around the country documenting people with disabilities. The project, Everyone is Good at Something, hopes to tell their stories and challenge the stigma they face

  • Photographs by Vicky Roy

When he isn’t working on the farm or making things out of jute, Gobinda Majumdar likes to walk to a tea stall near his home in Assam to buy sweets for his nieces. All this he explains with tactile signing, the only means of communication for the 37-year-old, who cannot speak and has no hearing or sight.

Born deaf, Majumdar then went blind at the age of two after contracting rubella. Life has its challenges but he hopes to find a wife. “My younger brother is married so why not me?” he told the photographer Vicky Roy, who visited him in Kamrup district as part of a project to share stories of people with disabilities in rural India.

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Hong Kong police arrest editor of Apple Daily newspaper – video

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Ryan Law, the editor-in-chief of Apple Daily, has been arrested along with four other directors of the pro-democracy newspaper on suspicion of collusion with a foreign country or 'external elements' to endanger national security. The newspaper's owner, Jimmy Lai, is serving a jail sentence on charges relating to pro-democracy protests in 2019

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How do we learn to live with Covid in the UK?

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Analysis: Lockdown extension brings questions on when and how UK can draw a line under social distancing

The Commons vote to delay step four of England’s roadmap out of lockdown has focused attention on when and how the country can draw a line under social distancing and, in the words of the prime minister, “learn to live with the virus”.

While the surge in cases in Blackburn – one of the original Delta variant hotspots – may have peaked for now, Public Health England expects recent rises in the north-west to be mirrored across the UK. What that means for hospitals and lives will become clearer in the next four weeks.

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Coronavirus live news: Tokyo plans to lift emergency before Olympics; Germany’s CureVac jab shows 47% efficacy

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CureVac fails in pivotal trial; Japan plans to lift Tokyo’s virus emergency on 20 June, one month before games

German biotech CureVac NV said on Wednesday its Covid-19 vaccine was only 47% effective in a late-stage trial, missing the study’s main goal and throwing in doubt the potential delivery of hundreds of millions of doses to the European Union, Reuters reports.

The disappointing efficacy of the shot known as CVnCoV emerged from an interim analysis based on 134 Covid-19 cases in the study with about 40,000 volunteers in Europe and Latin America.

The stakes for CureVac and prospective buyers of its vaccine in Europe had risen after age limits were imposed on the use of the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines due to a link to extremely rare but potentially fatal clotting disorders.

CureVac’s shot was also expected to help in low and middle-income countries that have lagged far behind richer nations in the global immunisation drive.

As CureVac’s only major supply deals, the European Union in November secured up to 405 million doses of the vaccine, of which 180 million are optional. That was followed by a memorandum of understanding with Germany for another 20 million doses.

CureVac’s US traded shares fell 50.6% to $46.81 in after-hours trading following publication of the data.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Japan plans to lift Tokyo’s virus emergency on June 20, a month before the Olympics, the government announced Thursday as reports said only 10,000 spectators would be allowed at Games events.

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‘Even more attractive’: New Zealand capital Wellington to ban cars from ‘Golden Mile’

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Of 2,000 public submissions, a decisive majority were in favour of the plan to get rid of cars from major streets

The main thoroughfare in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, is set to become car-free by 2023, after local authorities opted for the most ambitious reform option available to them.

Pavements in Wellington’s “Golden Mile” will grow in size by up to 75%, cyclists and pedestrians will be prioritised and two bus lanes – one in each direction – will allow continued public transport. It is expected to cost between NZ$52m and NZ$79m.

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Bodies of 20 suspected illegal miners found near abandoned South Africa goldmine

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Remains were discovered near disused mine shafts in the South African financial capital

Police in South Africa have discovered the bodies of 20 suspected illegal miners near an abandoned goldmine shaft south-west of Johannesburg.

Police said in a statement they were investigating the cause of the deaths, adding that the men’s bodies “were found wrapped in white plastic bags” and bore “severe body burns”.

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