Category Archives: World News

Thailand starts Covid vaccine drive using jabs made by king’s firm

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Country aims to vaccinate 70% of people this year but experts express doubts amid supply concerns

Thailand has started its Covid vaccination campaign amid concerns over the supply of doses, which are mainly being produced locally by a royal-owned company that has no prior experience of making vaccines.

Thailand aims to vaccinate 70% of the population before the end of the year, and is relying primarily on AstraZeneca doses produced by Siam Bioscience, a company owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The company is also due to supply vaccines to eight other countries in the region.

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Body found in Norway of 15-month-old boy who died crossing Channel

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Artin, previously listed as missing, died alongside his Iranian-Kurdish relatives when boat sank last October

A body that was found on a Norwegian shore several months ago has been identified as that of a 15-month-old child named Artin, who died alongside his relatives as they tried to cross the Channel to start a new life in the UK last October, local police have said.

The body was found near Karmøy in south-west Norway on New Year’s Day – more than two months after the vessel carrying the Iranian Kurds Rasul Iran Nezhad, Shiva Mohammad Panahi and their three children sank.

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A victim of its own success: how Taiwan failed to plan for a major Covid outbreak

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Once a poster child for blocking coronavirus, Taiwan failed to fully prepare a pandemic response or vaccination rollout

While most of the world suffered through hundreds of millions of cases and millions of deaths from Covid-19, the 23.5 million people in Taiwan largely lived a normal life, thanks to a well-documented strong and early response that saw it go 250 days without a single local case. It lobbied for inclusion in the World Health Organization’s decision-making body off the back of its undeniable success and expertise under the slogan “Taiwan can help”.

But now the tables have turned and the island itself is in need of assistance, after an outbreak that started among airline staff in April spread across the island. The government appears to have been caught short by something it thought would never happen: the poster child for outbreak prevention had apparently failed to fully prepare an outbreak response.

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Coronavirus live news: tests of new antibody drug on mice show promise; Czech Republic to reopen border with EU

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India announces free jabs for over-18s; Norway to shorten vaccine interval

Brazil’s health ministry has reported 37,156 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 1,010 deaths, according to Reuters:

The South American country has now registered 16,984,218 cases since the pandemic began, while the death toll has risen to 474,414, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second-deadliest.

Portugal’s foreign minister has said that Spain’s decision to require a negative coronavirus test for people crossing the border must be “a mistake”, Reuters reported Lusa news agency saying on Monday:

Portugal had asked Spanish authorities for clarification on “what could only have been a mistake”, Portugal’s foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva said.

“We have asked Spanish authorities for clarification and await it being granted as quickly as possible, because if not we will need to adopt equivalent reciprocal measures,” Santos Silva said, adding that “the epidemiological situation in Spain is, at the moment, worse than what we are living in Portugal.”

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Boko Haram leader killed on direct orders of Islamic State

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Isis ordered death of Abubakar Shekau over concerns about indiscriminate targeting of ‘believers’

The death of the leader of the Nigerian militant Islamist group Boko Haram has been confirmed by a rival extremist faction that said it carried out the killing on the direct orders of Islamic State’s leadership thousands of miles away in the Middle East.

Abubakar Shekau, one of the most infamous leaders of Islamic militant groups anywhere in the world, died last month after detonating an explosive device while being pursued by fighters from the Islamic State West African Province (Iswap). The Iswap fighters had stormed the Sambisa forest, a swath of strategically important, dense forest in Nigeria’s north-east, which was Shekau’s base.

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The Nobel committee should resign over the atrocities in Tigray

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Members of the body that awarded the 2019 peace prize to Ethiopia’s premier, Abiy Ahmed, should all depart in protest

The war on Tigray in Ethiopia has been going on for months. Thousands of people have been killed and wounded, women and girls have been raped by military forces, and more than 2 million citizens have been forced out of their homes. Prime minister and Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed stated that a nation on its way to “prosperity” would experience a few “rough patches” that would create “blisters”. This is how he rationalised what is alleged to be a genocide.

Nobel committee members have individual responsibility for awarding the 2019 peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, accused of waging the war in Tigray. The members should thus collectively resign their honourable positions at the Nobel committee in protest and defiance.

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Dozens killed after two trains collide in Pakistan – video report

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Two express trains have collided in southern Pakistan, killing at least 38 passengers, as rescuers and villagers worked to pull the dead and injured from the wreckage. The incident occurred early on Monday when the Millat Express derailed and was hit by the Sir Syed Express train soon afterwards. Mobile phone footage from the site in Ghotki district showed mangled wreckage, with several railway carriages lying on their side. It is not clear what caused the derailment

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Ukraine’s football kit with map featuring Crimea causes outrage in Russia

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National team shirt features map of Ukraine that includes Russian-annexed Crimea

The head of the Ukrainian football association has caused outrage in Russia by unveiling a new national team shirt emblazoned with a map of Ukraine that includes Crimea.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and Moscow considers the peninsula part of Russia, but it is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.

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Pakistan train crash: dozens killed as express services collide

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At least 38 people killed and up to 20 passengers trapped in wreckage of derailed Millat Express

Two express trains have collided in southern Pakistan, killing at least 38 passengers, as rescuers and villagers worked to pull the dead and injured from the wreckage.

Up to 20 passengers were still trapped in the wreckage of the Millat Express train, said Umar Tufail, a police chief in Ghotki district in Sindh province, where the collision occurred before dawn.

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We are running out of time to reach deal to save natural world, says UN talks chair

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Warning comes amid fears of further delays to Kunming summit, which aims to agree on curbing destruction of ecosystems

The world is running out of time to reach an ambitious deal to stem the destruction of the natural world, the co-chair of negotiations for a crucial UN wildlife summit has warned, amid fears of a third delay to the talks.

Negotiators are scheduled to meet in Kunming, China, in October for Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, to reach a hoped-for Paris-style agreement on preventing wildlife extinctions and the human-driven destruction of the planet’s ecosystems.

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Children are ‘vulnerable host’ for Covid as cases recede, US expert warns

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  • Cases plummet but children under 12 not yet eligible for shots
  • Mississippi governor defends low state vaccination rate

A US public health expert has warned that though cases of Covid-19 are at their lowest rates for months and much of the country is returning to normal life, young Americans are still “a vulnerable host” for the coronavirus.

Related: Post-lockdown summer: Americans out for fun and with money to spend

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Climate crisis to shrink G7 economies twice as much as Covid-19, says research

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G7 countries will lose $5tn a year by 2050 if temperatures rise by 2.6C

The economies of rich countries will shrink by twice as much as they did in the Covid-19 crisis if they fail to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions, according to research.

The G7 countries – the world’s biggest industrialised economies – will lose 8.5% of GDP a year, or nearly $5tn wiped off their economies, within 30 years if temperatures rise by 2.6C, as they are likely to on the basis of government pledges and policies around the world, according to research from Oxfam and the Swiss Re Institute.

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The pig whisperer: the Dutch farmer who wants to end factory farming

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A unique ‘pig toilet’ and a diet of organic leftovers are part of former vet Kees Scheepens’ plans to put animal welfare and sustainability first

“Oma, hoi! Hier! Hallooo,” Dr Kees Scheepens, a Dutch farmer known as the “pig whisperer”, is calling his two oldest pigs for some apricot snacks.

Oma or “granny”, a seven-year-old sow, lives with a Berkshire boar called Borough, who’s nine, off a quiet lane in the town of Oirschot, in the south of the Netherlands, on a farm called Hemelrijken – Dutch for “the realms of heaven”.

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Police in Malaysia use drones to detect high temperatures amid Covid surge

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Police have also warned they will use drones to enforce travel restrictions, as Malaysia endures near total lockdown

Police in Malaysia are using drones to detect people with high temperatures in public spaces as part of Covid prevention measures, according to local media.

The drones, which can detect people’s temperatures as high as 20m above ground, emit a red light to alert the authorities if someone has a high reading, Bernama, Malaysia’s state news agency, reported.

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Spat at, abused, attacked: healthcare staff face rising violence during Covid

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Data shows increased danger for those on the frontline in the pandemic, with misinformation, scarce vaccines and fragile health systems blamed

Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.

Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.

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‘They stormed the ICU and beat the doctor’: health workers under attack

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From Brazil to Myanmar, five doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients share their experiences

Since the pandemic began, healthcare workers have been venerated for treating patients with Covid-19, but they have also been attacked for doing their job.

Five doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients, some of whom asked to be kept anonymous, recount their experiences.

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Shackled skeleton identified as rare evidence of slavery in Roman Britain

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‘Internationally significant’ discovery of male with burial chains in Rutland is first of its kind

His ankles secured with heavy, locked iron fetters, the enslaved man appears to have been thrown in a ditch – a final act of indignity in death.

Now the discovery of the shackled male skeleton by workers in Rutland – thought to have been aged in his late 20s or early 30s – has been identified as rare and important evidence of slavery in Roman Britain and “an internationally significant find”.

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Public opinion supports action on inequality. Jacinda Ardern has no more excuses | Max Rashbrooke and Peter Skilling

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New Zealanders increasingly believe you need money and connections to get ahead in life

Jacinda Ardern can take heart: in the last decade, public attitudes have swung sharply against New Zealand’s persistently high levels of economic inequality. Space has opened up for her to pursue the egalitarian agenda she cherishes – although, conversely, her excuses for not acting have sharply diminished.

Public opinion surveys from the two decades after 1990 showed a consistent trend: decreasing concern over economic inequality, and decreasing support for government action to tackle it, especially through taxes. The pro-market ideas of New Zealand’s 1980s reforms seemed invulnerable.

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‘Hero of Auschwitz’ David Dushman, last surviving liberator of death camp, dies aged 98

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Red Army soldier David Dushman used his T-34 Soviet tank to mow down the electric fence of the Nazi death camp

David Dushman, the last surviving soldier who took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1945, has died at the age of 98.

He died in a Munich clinic on Friday night, the city’s Jewish IKG cultural community said on Sunday, describing him as a liberating “hero of Auschwitz”.

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Plans to build Papua New Guinea’s first casino trigger fears over social problems

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Critics say PNG does not have adequate governance or welfare systems to deal with problems casino may bring

Plans to build Papua New Guinea’s first casino in Port Moresby have sparked criticism from transparency advocates and experts who say the country’s industry regulator has undermined its independence with the deal and fear it could worsen social problems.

The agreement to build the US$43m venue was signed on 28 May by Paga Hill Development Corporation and the National Gaming Control Board (NGCB), drawing immediate condemnation from Transparency International.

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