Category Archives: World News

Joe Biden meets Nato leaders and Turkish president Erdoğan – US politics live

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As expected, the newly released Nato summit communique indicates that leaders view China’s rising power as a security threat.

“China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security. We are concerned by those coercive policies which stand in contrast to the fundamental values enshrined in the Washington Treaty,” the Nato document says.

Related: Nato summit: leaders to agree that China presents security risk

As Joe Biden prepares for his meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Brussels, Kamala Harris has just arrived in South Carolina for an event to promote coronavirus vaccinations.

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Coronavirus live news: Indonesia fears peak in July with hospitals filling; Thailand vaccine supplies disrupted

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Hospitals in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta already at 75% capacity; Bangkok cancels vaccine appointments; India reports lowest cases since March

Africa will get priority treatment for the Group of Seven’s pledged 870 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, a senior World Health Organization adviser said on Monday.

“You will see that Africa is one of the most vulnerable, under-served (areas), so the priority would be for doses to go... to the African continent writ large. Those numbers will be sorted out the coming weeks,” Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO adviser and coordinator of the ACT (Access to Covid-19 Tools) Accelerator, told an online news briefing from Geneva.

Italy reported 36 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday against 26 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 907 from 1,390.

Italy has registered 127,038 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.25 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with Covid – not including those in intensive care – stood at 3,465 on Monday, down from 3,542 a day earlier.

There were 11 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 20 on Sunday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 536 from a previous 565.

Some 79,524 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 134,136, the health ministry said.

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Expect China to be furious at being cast as a threat to the west

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Analysis: Beijing may well seek to undermine Nato unity in response to being accused of posing a systemic challenge to western values

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was established on 4 April 1949, its mission was to counterbalance armies from the Soviet Union that were stationed in central and eastern Europe after the conclusion of the second world war.

After Emmanuel Macron, the current leader of one of its founding members, France, called it “brain-dead” in 2019, some analysts said the alliance will have to look for a new unifying mission to keep itself relevant in the new age of great power competition between the United States and China.

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Canada: suspect faces terrorism charges after Muslim family killed with truck

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  • Four murder charges against Nathaniel Veltman upgraded
  • Three generations died in incident in London, Ontario

Prosecutors in Canada have laid terrorism charges against a man accused of deliberately running over a Muslim family in London, Ontario, killing four members from three generations.

The prosecution said on Monday that Nathaniel Veltman’s four counts of first-degree murder constitute an act of terrorism and prosecutors have upgraded those charges under Canada’s criminal code. Police allege the incident was a planned and premeditated attack targeting Muslims.

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Mexico: bone fragments of 17 victims found at suspected serial killer’s house

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Investigators have found 3,787 fragments as items in house from people who disappeared suggest killings may go back years

Investigators digging under the house of a suspected serial killer on the outskirts of Mexico City have found 3,787 bone fragments so far, apparently belonging to 17 different victims.

Prosecutors in the state of Mexico, which borders Mexico City, suggested the grisly finds may not end there. In excavations carried out since 17 May, authorities have dug up the floors of the house where the suspect lived. They now plan to extend the search to the soil beneath several other rooms he rented out on the same property.

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Delta variant of Covid spreading rapidly and detected in 74 countries

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Concerns over impact on poorer countries, while richer governments try different containment measures

The Delta variant of Covid-19, first identified in India, has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly amid fears that it is poised to become the dominant strain worldwide.

With outbreaks of the main Delta strain and several of its sub-lineages confirmed in China, the US, Africa, Scandinavia and the Pacific, concern increasingly is focusing on how it appears to be more transmissible as well as causing more serious illness.

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The Viewing Booth review – seeing is believing in the Israel-Palestine conflict

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Volunteers respond to politically polarised film footage from Israel and the Palestinian territories in this critical look at interpretation

Even though he tries to maintain a cool, scientific demeanour, Israeli director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz finally lets slip a twinge of despair at the end of this interesting geopolitical Rorschach test. Alexandrowicz sits studiously behind a monitor as he invites a succession of volunteers to enter an adjacent booth. There, they have a choice of 40 clips to watch, snippets of life in Israel, while he asks them to share their thoughts on what they see. Half of the clips are from rightwing Israeli sources; the other half are from B’Tselem, an Israeli human-rights organisation that aims to document abuses of power in Palestinian territories.

Alexandrowicz quickly zeroes in on the pensive Maia, a Jewish American who supports Israel, but brings an insistent scepticism to everything she watches. He is the director of pro-Palestine documentaries such as The Inner Tour (2001) and The Law in These Parts (2011) – and believes her to be his ideal audience: a possible convert.

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Germans told to be patient as chemists start Covid vaccine pass scheme

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Website crashes and queues form outside pharmacies as certificates become available for travel

Fully vaccinated Germans have been urged not to storm the country’s pharmacies in the rush to obtain a Covid digital vaccination pass made available in thousands of stores on Monday.

The “Digitale Impfpass” or digital vaccination pass, is the official document to be used as part of the the European Union vaccine certificate scheme to facilitate travel across the bloc, which the European parliament agreed last month.

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New Israeli government is just as bad as the last, says Palestinian PM

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Mohammad Shtayyeh condemns Naftali Bennett’s announcements in support of Israeli settlements

Benjamin Netanyahu’s ousting closes one of the “worst periods” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but the new government headed by a settler advocate, Naftali Bennett, is just as bad as the last, the Palestinian prime minister has said.

“We do not see this new government as any less bad than the previous one, and we condemn the announcements of the new prime minister Naftali Bennett in support of Israeli settlements,” Mohammad Shtayyeh said, referring to hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis who have taken land in the occupied West Bank.

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Nato summit: leaders to agree that China presents security risk

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Communique will be first time alliance will have asserted it needs to respond to China’s growing power

Nato leaders are expected to agree that China presents a security risk at their annual summit in Brussels, the first time that the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance will have asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing power.

Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, promised ahead of a meeting that will be attended by Joe Biden that China “will feature in the communique in a more robust way than we’ve ever seen before”.

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UK and EU try to settle standoff over Northern Ireland Brexit checks

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Brexit minister and EU Commission official to meet this week as tensions remain high

The Brexit minister Lord Frost and the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, are expected to meet virtually this week to try to break the deadlock over Brexit checks in Northern Ireland.

But as the countdown begins to a 30 June ban on the sale of chilled meats, including sausages, from Great Britain in Northern Irish supermarkets, tensions between the EU and Boris Johnson’s government remain heightened.

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French nuclear firm trying to fix ‘performance issue’ at China plant

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EDF subsidiary reportedly warned of ‘imminent radiological threat’ at Taishan nuclear power plant

A French nuclear company has said it is working to resolve a “performance issue” at a plant it part-owns in China’s southern Guangdong province after an earlier report of a potential leak there.

Framatome, a subsidiary of the energy giant EDF, told Agence France-Presse news agency that it was “supporting resolution of a performance issue” at the plant. “According to the data available, the plant is operating within the safety parameters,” it said, adding that an extraordinary meeting of the power plant’s board had been called “to present all the data and the necessary decisions”.

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Giulio Regeni’s last messages before his death in Egypt counter spy claims

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Facebook messages from the Italian student killed in Cairo in 2016 show his concerns about studying in the country

The Facebook messages written by the Cambridge student Giulio Regeni in the weeks leading up to his murder give the lie to any notion he was a spy or political agitator.

Even before he left England, Regeni was concerned about the risks he might face doing his thesis on trade unions in Egypt, a sensitive subject in the country.

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Home Office condemned for forcing migrants on bail to wear GPS tags

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Round-the-clock tracking condemned as ‘Trojan horse’ giving government vast surveillance powers that violate human rights

More than 40 human rights organisations have condemned the Home Office’s introduction of 24-hour GPS monitoring of people on immigration bail in an expansion of surveillance powers that has involved no consultation process.

The new policy marks a shift from using radio frequency monitors (which alert authorities if the wearer leaves an assigned area) to round-the-clock GPS trackers (which can track a person’s every move), while also giving the Home Office new powers to collect, store and access this data indefinitely via a private contractor.

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UK aid cuts to Bangladesh NGO a ‘gut punch’, says charity head

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Withdrawal from long-term partnership catastrophic, says Brac, affecting women and girls’ education and those in extreme poverty

The UK government’s funding cuts to the world’s largest international non-governmental organisation are a “gut punch” after a successful 10-year £450m partnership, according to a director.

Asif Saleh, executive director of Brac Bangladesh, said the cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of girls without an education, millions of women and girls without access to family planning and hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty without support.

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‘I’m sacrificing myself’: agony of Kabul’s secret sex workers

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Decades of war and grinding poverty have forced more Afghans into risky double lives to survive

When Zainab met her first client almost two years ago, she was drunk, drugged-up, and had passed out by the time he started raping her. She had never touched alcohol before, but was told she’d be better off unconscious. Terrified, she reluctantly agreed.

The man was gone when the then 18-year-old woke up; her body in pain, her thoughts filled with regret.

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Israeli elections: Raucous scenes in Knesset as Benjamin Netanyahu ousted from office – video

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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 12-year hold on power has ended as parliament voted on a new government of improbable allies. The schism was evident at a raucous session of the legislature ahead of the vote. Netanyahu loyalists, shouting ‘shame’ and ‘liar’, frequently interrupted the man set to replace him, nationalist Naftali Bennett, as he spelled out the new coalition's policies. During his last speech as prime minister, a combative Netanyahu vowed to return: ‘We will be back, soon’ he said multiple times 

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Scott Morrison inks G7 deals with Japan and Germany to develop lower-emissions technology

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PM resists pressure to commit Australia to 2050 climate deadline as he talks up hydrogen, LNG and carbon capture and storage

Scott Morrison has inked deals with Japan and Germany to develop technology to help reach “a net zero emissions future” – but continues to resist international pressure to formally commit Australia to a firm 2050 deadline.

With the climate crisis taking centre stage on the final day of the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, the prime minister stuck to his preferred approach of focusing on technologies such as hydrogen, rather than signing up to more ambitious medium- and long-term emission reduction commitments.

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Biden says US-Russia relations at low point but ‘we’re not looking for conflict’

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Speaking at G7, president addresses autocracy and democracy, climate crisis and Donald Trump’s legacy

Joe Biden agreed on Sunday with Vladimir Putin’s latest assessment that US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years but insisted that while the two countries may have fundamental disagreements, “we are not looking for conflict”.

The US president also addressed the issues of autocracy versus democracy, the climate crisis, future pandemics and problems caused by his predecessor Donald Trump, while holding a press conference to mark the end of the G7 summit in the English county of Cornwall.

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Why the world’s most fertile fishing ground is facing a ‘unique and dire’ threat

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China’s Pacific fishing fleet has grown by 500% since 2012 and is taking huge quantities of tuna

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

Since long before the steel-hulled fishing boats from foreign countries arrived in the South Pacific its people have had their own systems for sharing the ocean’s catches.

In the New Zealand colony of Tokelau, in the middle of the region, the 1,400 people living on its three atolls practise a system called inati, which ensures every household gets fish.

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