Category Archives: World News

White House says Republicans increased offer on Biden infrastructure deal by $50bn – as it happened

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That’s all from me today. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest stories:

At least 10 US states have siphoned millions of dollars from federal block grants, meant to provide aid to their neediest families, to pay for the operations of ideological anti-abortion clinics.

These overwhelmingly Republican-led states used money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Tanf), better known as welfare or direct cash aid, to fund the activities of anti-abortion clinics associated with the evangelical right. The clinics work to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.

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Microsoft blocks Bing from showing image results for Tiananmen ‘tank man’

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Company blames ‘human error’ after users in US, Germany, Singapore and France reported no results shown on the crackdown’s anniversary

Microsoft has blamed human error after its search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square – on the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown.

Users reported that no results were shown for the search query in countries including the US, Germany, Singapore, France and Switzerland, according to Reuters and Vice News.

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Belarusian opposition say journalist Raman Pratasevich forced to confess on TV – video

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The Belarusian opposition on Friday said that detained activist and journalist Raman Pratasevich was coerced to appear in a video broadcast on state TV.

The 26-year-old was interviewed on Thursday night on the state-controlled ONT channel where he appeared in distress.

The AP was also unable to verify the conditions under which the interview was filmed, or the veracity of what Pratasevich said  as well as the origin of marks on his wrists

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G7 aims to reach historic deal on corporate tax abuse this weekend

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Talks hosted by Rishi Sunak believed to be very close to agreement in principle on global reforms

The G7 group of wealthy nations is close to a historic agreement to radically reshape international tax rules by using a global minimum rate of corporation tax to prevent abuse of the system by multinationals.

Finance ministers from the world’s biggest western economies were negotiating details late on Friday with the aim of reaching a landmark deal early on Saturday as part of talks being held in London.

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Hancock says UK is the ‘vaccine priority’ – video

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Vaccinating children in the UK  against Covid-19 will take priority over donating doses to other countries around the world, Britain's health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on Friday 4 June.

Hancock was speaking after health ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) rich countries met at the University of Oxford, where AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine was invented, and which comes before a leaders' meeting next week

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New Zealand’s prison penpals: ‘I had to look at the good things I see in him’

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Experts say writing to people on the outside can help prisoners build purpose – but it goes both ways in what can be a difficult relationship

For the first time since 82-year-old Jan Skilling was a young girl, she has time to spare.

Widowed at 40 and responsible for a nest of kids, grandkids, and now “more great-grandkids than I care to count”, Skilling has spent any spare hour since she can remember looking after everyone but herself. So, in 2017, with retirement from her teaching career looming, she knew it was time for a change.

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Iran’s supreme leader says rejected election candidates were ‘wronged’

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei concedes that some candidates disqualified from 18 June vote were unfairly treated

Iran’s supreme leader has said that some candidates rejected from this month’s presidential election had been “wronged” and unfairly smeared, but the country’s powerful Guardian Council said the decision to ban them would not be reversed.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on Iran’s affairs, last month endorsed the watchdog’s rejection of several prominent candidates – including former parliament speaker Ali Larijani – for the 18 June vote.

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Nigeria suspends Twitter after president’s tweet was deleted

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Information minister blames use of platform for ‘activities capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence’

Nigeria’s government has announced an indefinite suspension of Twitter in the country, two days after the social media company removed a post from president Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.

The information minister, Lai Mohammed, said the government had acted because of “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.

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UN experts urge Canada and Vatican to hold swift mass graves investigation

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Nine experts call for ‘full-fledged investigations’ after discovery of remains of 215 Indigenous children at former residential school

UN human rights experts have urged the Canadian government and the Vatican to hold swift and thorough investigations into the discovery of unmarked graves at a former residential school in British Columbia.

The unmarked graves of up to 215 Indigenous children were discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential Schools last week, using ground-penetrating radar.

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UK strikes trade deal with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein

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Digital documents to be used to cut post-Brexit paperwork under agreement hailed by Liz Truss as ‘massive boost’

A trade deal struck with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein with provisions for digital paperwork to cut down the time and costs of post-Brexit border bureaucracy has been championed by the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, as a “major boost”.

After months of difficult talks, the comprehensive trade deal was hailed by both the UK and Norwegian governments as being pioneering in its scope and measures, with tariff-free trade in industrial goods secured.

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German cardinal offers to resign over sexual abuse ‘catastrophe’

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Reinhard Marx tells pope he wants to share responsibility for church’s failure to deal with abuse by clergy

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of Germany’s most senior Catholics, has offered his resignation to the pope over the “catastrophe” of sexual abuse by clerics and other church members.

Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising and a prominent liberal, said in a letter to Pope Francis that he wanted to share responsibility for the abuse that had taken place over decades and the failure of the church to deal with it.

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EU bans Belarus planes from its airspace over activist arrest

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Move follows forced landing of Ryanair flight and detention of Raman Pratasevich last month

The EU has banned Belarusian carriers from its airspace and airports over the forced landing of Ryanair flight FR4978 and arrest of the opposition activist and journalist Raman Pratasevich.

EU ambassadors agreed during a meeting on Friday to require member states to deny the country’s carriers landing and taking off rights and forbid them from overflying the territory of the 27 member states from Saturday.

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US government report finds no evidence UFOs were alien – but doesn’t rule it out

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Officials cannot explain strange movements in skies that baffle the US military and scientific establishment, New York Times reports

US intelligence authorities have not found any evidence that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) seen by navy pilots in recent years were otherworldly alien spacecraft– but apparently did not rule it out, either.

Officials cannot explain the strange movements in the skies that continue to baffle the US military and scientific establishment, the New York Times has reported, based on information from senior administration officials who were briefed on the outcome of a much-awaited government assessment about these phenomena.

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Belize gripped by arrest of Ashcroft son’s partner over officer’s death

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Discontent simmers over police handling of investigation as Canadian Jasmine Hartin awaits bail hearing

A late-night stroll in the moonlight, then a sudden and fatal gunshot. What exactly happened between the socialite partner of the son of a billionaire Tory donor and a senior police officer in the early hours of last Friday in the resort of Mata Rocks has gripped the small Caribbean nation of Belize and turned into an international drama. It is now a major test for the country’s legal and criminal system.

This week a 32-year-old Canadian woman, Jasmine Hartin, was accused of the negligent manslaughter of a local police superintendent, Henry Jemmott. The case has attracted attention because Hartin is the partner of Andrew Ashcroft, son of Michael Ashcroft, the Conservative party donor and Belize’s most influential resident. Lord Ashcroft is a former Tory party deputy chairman, a one-time member of the House of Lords, and a billionaire.

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What do you think of it so far? Voters rate Amlo’s Mexico ‘transformation’

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President Andrés Manuel López Obrador remains popular but midterm elections may reflect judgments of his handling of the pandemic and endemic violence

Nearly three years have passed since Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico and, before a sea of euphoric supporters, promised: “I will not fail you. You will not be disappointed.”

Related: ‘Huge incentives to kill’: Mexico crime groups target election candidates

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Uefa and UK discuss easing restrictions for Euro 2020; Putin blames money for EU delay of Sputnik V approval

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UK currently has the strictest entry requirements of any host country; Russian president spoke as Serbia starts to produce vaccine

Here are some of the key developments over the past few hours:

A quarter of elderly black people in the UK have not been vaccinated, recent figures show, despite signs that hesitancy is improving generally.

Nearly six months after the government kicked off the country’s most ambitious vaccination campaign, almost one in four black people over the age of 70 were not vaccinated as of 26 May, compared with 97% of white people of the same age.

Related: One in four elderly black people in the UK still not vaccinated

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‘Unchain your wife’: the Orthodox women shining a light on ‘get’ refusal

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Orthodox Jewish men give their wives a ‘get’ as the couple is divorcing, which seals the divorce according to religious law

On Route 59 in Monsey, New York, an Orthodox Jewish enclave in upstate New York, there is a large billboard that says in big block letters: “Dovid Wasserman. Give your wife a get!”

A “get” is a document Orthodox Jewish men give their wives as the couple is divorcing; it seals the divorce according to religious law, meaning that the husband decides if and when the divorce is final. Without it, the woman cannot move on with her life.

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‘This isn’t ideological’: reluctant ‘green hero’ behind Exxon coup

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Tiny hedge fund Engine No 1 says a strong climate strategy simply makes good business sense

The activist hedge fund behind ExxonMobil’s boardroom coup last week has claimed another seat from the oil giant’s board, to take the number of new directors who will push for climate action from within the company to three.

The result of last week’s shareholder vote has installed the hedge fund, named Engine No 1 after a San Francisco fire station, as a reluctant hero of the climate movement.

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‘Running dry’: Zimbabweans turned away for vaccinations after shortages

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As staff sit idle in treatment centres, anger focuses on government failures to secure supplies as fears of a third wave increase

Hundreds of people are being turned away from vaccination centres in Zimbabwe as the country’s supplies of China’s Sinovac vaccine appear to have run out, triggering panic that the government is failing to acquire new stocks.

While the government said that it had taken delivery of more medicines in recent weeks, centres in Harare have not had any stocks for nearly a week and there is growing anger at the failure to communicate acute vaccine shortages, which are being reported around the country.

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Amazônia: life and death in the Brazilian rainforest

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The 10th edition of the Carmignac photojournalism award was dedicated to the Amazon and the issues related to its deforestation. Photojournalist Tommaso Protti, accompanied by journalist Sam Cowie, travelled thousands of miles across the Brazilian Amazon. From the eastern region of Maranhão to the western region of Rondônia, through the states of Pará and Amazonas, they portrayed modern-day life in the Brazilian Amazon, where social and humanitarian crises overlap with destruction of the rainforest.

As I sat in my hotel room in Marabá, a city in the Amazon state of Pará, Jornal Nacional – Brazil’s flagship news programme – transmitted images of the country’s newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro. “The Indigenous in their reservations are like animals in a zoo,” he said. It was November 2018.

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