Covid rips through rural India’s threadbare healthcare system

The pandemic overwhelming the big cities is reaching areas of Bihar where there is one doctor for 40,000 people

In the small rural village of Kathail, in the east of India’s poorest state, Bihar, access to healthcare has always been scarce. But when 34-year-old Umakant Singh fell sick with a cough and fever last week, his brother Mantu Singh did all he could to find help.

For four days Mantu rushed around, collecting the limited medicines he could find for his younger brother and nursing him at home. But he knew what these symptoms meant: Covid-19 had reached their village.

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George Floyd death: four ex-police officers indicted on civil rights charges

  • Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J Kueng and Tou Thao charged
  • Quartet accused of violating Floyd’s constitutional rights

A federal grand jury has indicted the four former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s arrest and murder, accusing them of violating the Black man’s constitutional rights as he was restrained face-down on the pavement and gasping for air, according to indictments unsealed on Friday.

The three-count indictment on civil rights charges names Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J Kueng and Tou Thao.

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Hopes for Yemen peace deal fade as ‘obscene’ Marib death toll rises

UN fears ceasefire talks have stalled after rebel leaders came close to accepting deal before rejecting it

The UN fears that hopes for a ceasefire in Yemen are effectively stalled until either the Houthi rebels choose to end their military offensive or decide the mounting death toll running into tens of thousands is unacceptable. The Houthis are currently driving towards the capture of the strategic and oil-rich governorate of Marib.

Extensive talks in April and May, including direct discussions between the Houthi leadership and Saudis in Oman, ended with the Houthis – also known as Ansar Allah – coming close to accepting a ceasefire deal before ultimately rejecting the offer.

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Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed critically injured in bomb blast

Police treating attack in capital Male that wounded four others including British national as act of terrorism

The former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed has been left in a critical condition following an assassination attempt that also wounded four others, including a British national.

Police said they were treating the bomb blast, which occurred at about 8.30pm local time on Thursday evening, as an act of terrorism.

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‘They can’t take it any more’: pandemic and poverty brew violent storm in Colombia

Demonstrations that began with a general strike on 28 April quickly descended into violence, with as many as 37 protesters killed across the country

Yina Reyes, a 39-year-old nurse from the downtrodden neighbourhood of Siloé in the Colombian city of Cali, knows only too well what Covid-19 can do to a person – and to a community. Her mother was hospitalized with the disease, and came close to death.

As a home care nurse, she has seen patients get sick and neighbours die. In the early days of the pandemic, her husband lost his job as a chauffeur, leaving her to provide for their daughter and his parents, who share their home.

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Dough to go: Rome’s first pizza vending machine gets mixed reviews

Mr Go Pizza booth offers 24/7 pizzas, kneaded by a machine and served with cutlery

Massimo Bucolo bravely dared to go where nobody else had gone before in order to take a slice of Italy’s competitive pizza market: a 24-hour vending machine that dishes out freshly baked pizza in three minutes.

Located in a booth on Via Catania, close to Piazza Bologna in Rome, Mr Go Pizza offers up four varieties, including the classic margherita invented in Naples in 1889, each costing between €4.50 and €6. Customers can watch through a small glass window as the vending machine kneads and tops the dough.

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Fox News made me do it: Capitol attack suspect pulls ‘Foxitis’ defense

Anthony Antonio, who faces five charges over role in January riot, ‘started believing what was being fed to him’, lawyer says

The lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is floating a unique defense: Fox News made him do it.

Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the rightwing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing on Thursday.

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‘We’re piggy in the middle’: Brexit has made life impossible, say Jersey fishers

Their families have been fishing here for decades but despite promises of frictionless trade, the market for their fish is disappearing

Steph Noel, who has been fishing the waters off Jersey for almost four decades, could not see the point of chugging out to sea in his 8.5-metre boat, Belle Bird, this weekend.

“There’s no value in it for me,” he said. “It’ll cost me in bait and diesel but even if I have a good day there’s no market there for what I bring back.”

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James Packer’s ties with Israeli PM and spy chief became ‘national risk’ – report

Australian tycoon was obsessed with Israel’s elite, once kissing feet of an ex-president, local media reports

James Packer’s entanglement with Israel’s elite, including a close personal relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu and the now Mossad chief, was considered a “national risk”, according to an Israeli report, quoting testimony from witnesses in Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

The Australian casino mogul, 53, developed an obsession with the Jewish state over the past few years, once kissing the feet of the former president Shimon Peres when he came for a dinner, according to “a person who was close” to Peres. He also considering converting to Judaism, Haaretz newspaper reported.

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Libyan coastguard boat that shot Italian fisher was provided by Rome

Italian government supplied vessel to help Tripoli control flow of migrants in Mediterranean

An Italian fisher wounded when his trawler was machined-gunned by the Libyan coastguard was fired on from a boat supplied by Italy’s government to help Tripoli control the flow of migrants.

Libyan authorities, who say the coastguard vessel fired warning shots into the air, said three Italian fishing vessels had entered Libyan territorial waters without authorisation before the incident on Thursday, the latest episode in a territorial dispute involving crews from the Sicilian port of Mazara del Vallo who fish for red prawns off the Libyan coast.

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Revealed: 46m displaced people excluded from Covid jab programmes

WHO review finds many national vaccination plans exclude asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and IDPs

Tens of millions of asylum seekers, migrants, refugees and internally displaced people around the world have been excluded from national Covid-19 vaccination programmes, according to World Health Organization research seen by the Guardian.

The gaps mean that a scattered group numbering at least 46 million people, about the size of the population of Spain, may struggle to get vaccinated even if a global shortage of doses eases.

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‘A scene out of the middle ages’: Dead refugee found surrounded by rats at Greek camp

Chios case highlights deplorable conditions on islands despite EU allocating millions of euros to improve facilities, aid workers say

At a desolate refugee camp on the Greek island of Chios earlier this week, a young man died alone in a tent. By the time the guards arrived on the scene, about 12 hours after the Somali refugee’s death, the body was surrounded by rodents.

Asylum seekers who had initially alerted staff spoke in horror at seeing rats and mice swarming about.

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‘A dirty business’: how one drug is turning Syria into a narco-state

Manufacture of Captagon is a growth industry so big it is starting to rival GDP of flatlining economy

In the summer of 2015 a businessman in the Syrian province of Latakia was approached by a powerful security chief, seeking a favour. The official wanted the merchant, an importer of medical supplies, to source large amounts of a drug called fenethylline from abroad. The regime, he said, would readily buy the lot.

After an internet search, the merchant made a decision. He left his home that same week, first sending his wife and children to exile, then following after, scrounging what he could from his businesses for a new start. “I know what they were asking me to do,” he said from his new home in Paris. “They wanted the main ingredient for Captagon. And that drug is a dirty business.”

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Mozambique insurgency: 20,000 still trapped near gas plant six weeks after attack

People fleeing militant violence near Total’s Afungi project in Cabo Delgado have been blocked by government forces

More than 20,000 Mozambicans have been trapped near a huge natural gas project in the country’s Cabo Delgado province, more than a month since it was abandoned after a militant attack.

People camped at the gates of French energy company Total’s Afungi site have had been unable to escape, despite fears of imminent violence, and have limited food because the Mozambican government has blocked humanitarian access.

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Cuba during the pandemic – photo essay

Photographer Leysis Quesada Vera describes life during the pandemic in Havana’s Los Sitios neighbourhood. Her work is supported and produced by the Magnum Foundation, with a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Magnum Foundation is a nonprofit organisation that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography. Through grant making and mentorship, Magnum Foundation supports a global network of social justice and human rights-focused photographers and experiments with new models for storytelling

Los Sitios lies to the south of Centro, the careworn barrio that gives Havana its coarse voice and whose northern limit is the Malecon, the famous corniche set against the Florida Straits.

The photographer Leysis Quesada Vera describes Los Sitios – her neighbourhood – as home to “people who work with tourists but not in the hotels. They sell cigars, probably illegally, clean the houses where tourists stay, sell souvenirs.”

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New Zealand man threatened with prosecution over penis pothole drawings

Geoff Upson says he has drawn about 100 penises around potholes in a bid to force his local council to fix them

A New Zealand man who began drawing very large penises around the potholes in his home city of Auckland in 2018 in the hopes of attracting the attention of his local council has been threatened with police action.

In a video, road safety campaigner Geoff Upson made after the most recent addition to his oeuvre, saying: “I’m about sick of calling Auckland transport.”

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Florida ‘moving in wrong direction’ with voting restrictions, White House says – as it happened

Mike Jordan reports for the Guardian:

Idaho’s governor, Brad Little, has a bill signed into law that aims to restrict critical race theory from being taught as a subject in schools and universities.

The bill, H377, prevents teachers from “indoctrinating” students into belief systems that claim that members of any race, sex, religion, ethnicity or national origin are inferior or superior to other groups. Signed into law last week, H377 also makes it illegal to make students “affirm, adopt or adhere to” beliefs that members of these groups are today responsible for past actions of the groups to which they claim to belong.

Related: Idaho governor signs bill to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools

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Where is New Zealand’s ‘values-based’ foreign policy when it comes to the Uyghurs? | Guled Mire

Other small nations also feel vulnerable to Chinese aggression but it hasn’t stopped them speaking out over the Uyghur genocide

After the Christchurch terror attacks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern donned a hijab as she comforted the relatives of the 51 Muslims who were killed simply for practising their faith. The image spread across the world and she was lavished with international praise.

Yet her apparent turning away from the active erasure of China’s Uyghur Muslim minority population may undo that reputation. On Wednesday, New Zealand’s parliament backed away from calling what is happening in Xinjiang a “genocide,” opting instead for the watered-down language of “human rights breaches”.

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Italian fisher wounded after Libyan coastguard reportedly shot at boat

Navy rescues man, who was injured in one arm, after coastguard fired on his boat off the coast of Misrata in Sicily

Italy’s navy has rescued an Italian fisher who was wounded after the Libyan coastguard reportedly fired on his boat.

Salvatore Quinci, mayor of the fishing port of Mazaro del Vallo in south-western Sicily, said members of the coastguard shot at the fisherman’s boat off the coast of Misrata, the Italian news agency Agi reported.

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US-Germany rift as Berlin opposes plan to ditch Covid vaccine patents

  • Germany says waiver would inhibit private sector research
  • Opposition to Biden plan threatens to deadlock WTO talks

The US and Germany are at odds on the issue of waivers for patents on Covid-19 vaccines, as Berlin argued that a waiver would not increase production and would inhibit future private sector research.

The disagreement is the first major rift between the two economic powers since Joe Biden took office, and threatens to deadlock discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and sour relations within the G7 group of major industrialised democracies.

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