Category Archives: World News

Japan to declare targeted state of emergency as Covid cases surge

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Yoshihide Suga under pressure to act after sharp rise in infections in Tokyo, only months before Olympics

Japan is hoping that a short blast of tough coronavirus measures will halt a recent surge in coronavirus cases, with the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, poised to announce a targeted state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka and two other prefectures, just three months before the Tokyo Olympics.

Suga has come under pressure to take action after a sharp rise in infections in the capital, and evidence that new variants of the virus are driving serious outbreaks in Osaka and the two neighbouring prefectures of Hyogo and Kyoto.

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Oxygen runs low during India’s Covid crisis – photo essay

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As a global record for new Covid cases is set in India, hospitals are running out of vital supplies

Hospitals in parts of India are using social media to beg for help finding oxygen and key equipment as the country’s second Covid-19 wave continues to build, breaking global records for the most infections detected in a single day.

Only two months ago, some in the vast country of more than 1.3billion people were celebrating what they thought was the end of Covid-19 after six successive months of falling caseloads. Most of the remaining restrictions on social life were removed and people again flocked to markets, cricket stadiums and religious festivals.

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Delhi hospitals issue SOS alerts over oxygen supplies as India’s Covid crisis mounts

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Staff posted emergency messages on social media as several hospitals in the capital exhausted oxygen supplies on Thursday night

Hospitals in Delhi issued SOS alerts on Friday morning, warning they had just a few hours supply of oxygen left, as another unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases overwhelmed health systems in major Indian cities.

Hospital staff posted emergency messages on social media throughout Thursday and Friday, saying they were unable to cope with demand and pleading for assistance from government.

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‘Damn! This is a Caravaggio!’: the inside story of an old master found in Spain

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Art dealer Giancarlo Ciaroni attempted to buy painting listed at €1,500 for €500,000 – but discovered bewildered owners already had two offers of €3m

It took all of six minutes for Massimo Pulini to realise that the small oil painting due to go under the hammer in Madrid earlier this month with a guide price of €1,500 (£1,300) could be worth millions.

At 9.48pm on 24 March, Pulini, a 63-year-old professor at the Bologna Fine Arts Academy, received an email request for an evaluation. Sent by an antiques dealer and friend of Pulini’s, it included a photo of a luminous oil painting of the scourged Christ.

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Rape victims in south Asia still face vaginal tests, report finds

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Unscientific ‘morality’ examination linked to low conviction rates and violates women’s rights, says Equality Now

Physical vaginal tests are still used to determine whether women and girls have been raped in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, according to a new report.

The practice remains widespread in all three countries and some courts refer to the test in judgments, despite it having no scientific basis and being banned in India.

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Oxford Malaria vaccine proves highly effective in Burkina Faso trial

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Vaccine developed by scientists at Jenner Institute, Oxford, shows up to 77% efficacy in trial over 12 months

A vaccine against malaria has been shown to be highly effective in trials in Africa, holding out the real possibility of slashing the death toll of a disease that kills 400,000 mostly small children every year.

The vaccine, developed by scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University, showed up to 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children in Burkina Faso over 12 months.

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The typhoon that hit my island didn’t make the news. This is what the climate crisis looks like

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Palau was hit by Typhoon Surigae last week, but even the typhoons that don’t claim lives or flatten cities are devastating for those who live through them

My adopted home country of Palau, in the northern Pacific, was hit by a typhoon last week. Thankfully no one died here, though it did lead to deaths in the Philippines.

The impact on Palau of Typhoon Surigae didn’t make headlines overseas and this might be the first you will have heard of it. Compared to other natural disasters and other cyclones or typhoons in the Pacific, it was a relatively “good” one. But it left me shaken, exhausted and our community rattled.

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Missing Indonesian submarine: rescuers find unidentified object as oxygen runs low

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Race to find missing navy vessel as authorities warn oxygen in KRI Nanggala-402 will run out within 24 hours

Indonesia’s president has ordered an all-out effort to find a missing submarine in a race against time to save the 53 crew, whose oxygen supply was only expected to last another 24 hours.

As the US military said on Thursday that it was joining the search, the Indonesian navy said its ships had found an unidentified object at a depth of 50-100 metres (165-330ft).

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New Zealand’s stance on China has deep implications for the Five Eyes alliance

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Analysis: Country has confirmed itself the weak link in the intelligence chain it joined with the US, UK, Canada and Australia

Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister from the centre-left Labour party, has offended devotees of the Anglosphere by indicating she is not prepared to take her country into the kind of trade war with China that Australia has found itself facing.

Asserting her country’s sovereignty has potentially deep implications for the “Five Eyes” alliance, the intelligence sharing partnership that emerged after the second world war and blossomed in the cold war. Indeed some say New Zealand has confirmed itself as the weak link in the intelligence chain that it joined with the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia.

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Asteroid’s 22m-year journey from source to Earth mapped in historic first

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Flight path of Kalahari’s six-tonne asteroid is first tracing of meteorite shedding rock to solar system origin

Astronomers have reconstructed the 22m-year-long voyage of an asteroid that hurtled through the solar system and exploded over Botswana, showering meteorites across the Kalahari desert.

It is the first time scientists have traced showering space rock to its source – in this case Vesta, one of largest bodies in the asteroid belt that circles the sun between Jupiter and Mars.

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More than 100 asylum seekers feared dead after shipwreck off Libya

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Dozens of bodies have been spotted near a capsized vessel which had about 130 people on board

At least 120 asylum seekers are feared dead after their rubber boat capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya while they were attempting to reach Europe, charities and the UN migration agency say.

Dozens of bodies were spotted near a capsized vessel on Thursday, which had about 130 people on board, a rescue charity said.

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Greta Thunberg in climate call to young people: ‘No limits to what we can accomplish’ – live

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John Kerry dismissed a question on whether he was concerned about Republican opposition to Joe Biden’s climate proposals.

The president’s special envoy for climate noted that many policies can be implemented through executive orders, combined with cooperation from the private sector.

John Kerry, Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate, said Donald Trump’s policies “destroyed” America’s credibility on the world stage when it comes to addressing climate change.

The former secretary of state noted that today, which is Earth Day, marks five years since he signed the Paris climate agreement in New York, with his granddaughter on his knee.

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Coronavirus live: EU asks states to support legal action against AstraZeneca; UK finds 55 more cases of Indian variant

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Some member states raise concerns over wisdom of action, saying it could undermine confidence in vaccine; further cases of B.1.617 found in Britain

Canada’s government, under pressure to suspend flights from India and Brazil over fears about the spread of the coronavirus, could make an announcement on the matter shortly, a senior medical official said on Thursday.

The prime minister Justin Trudeau said earlier this week that officials were studying the example of the UK, which is obliging travellers who have been in India in the past 10 days to spend 10 days in quarantine.

Here is a quick recap of all the main Covid updates from around the world:

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UK MPs declare China is committing genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang

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Vote does not compel government to act but marks further decline in relations with China

British MPs voted to declare that China is committing genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province.

The motion passed on Thursday does not compel the government to act but is likely to mark a further decline in relations with China.

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UK south-Asian diaspora despairs as India joins Covid red list

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With travel from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh banned, some UK families are stuck abroad, while others cannot visit frail relatives

For the past 17 months, Saurav Dutt has had to watch from afar as relatives were lost to Covid, ancestral homes were damaged by a typhoon, and the mental toll of isolation, grief and illness led elders to question their very existence.

He had flights booked for May, but with cases soaring and India on the UK’s travel red list from 23 April, that is no longer an option. “It’s a very worrying time,” Dutt said. “You would think there are a million ways to help from over here, but we’re handcuffed. To deal with these things we need to be there.”

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High court to hear legal battle over UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia

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Campaign Against Arms Trade claims UK-made weapons have been used in airstrikes in Yemen that breach humanitarian law

Anti-arms trade campaigners have been given permission to challenge in the high court the UK government’s decision to resume the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the war in Yemen.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) won leave to seek a judicial review of a decision taken by international trade secretary, Liz Truss, last summer, which was followed by £1.4bn worth of arms exports soon after.

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European MPs targeted by deepfake video calls imitating Russian opposition

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Politicians from the UK, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania tricked by fake meetings with opposition figures

A series of senior European MPs have been approached in recent days by individuals who appear to be using deepfake filters to imitate Russian opposition figures during video calls.

Those tricked include Rihards Kols, who chairs the foreign affairs committee of Latvia’s parliament, as well as MPs from Estonia and Lithuania. Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, has also said he was targeted.

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EU asks states to back legal action against AstraZeneca

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Commission move causes concern about bringing case against key supplier of Covid vaccines

EU capitals have been asked by the European commission to back legal action against AstraZeneca by the end of the week over an alleged breach of its contractual obligations to supply member states with its Covid vaccine.

At a meeting with commission officials on Wednesday, diplomats from some member states raised concerns about the wisdom of the move, warning against rushing into a decision that might further undermine confidence in the vaccine.

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‘No country immune’ from UK’s aid cuts, says Raab

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Foreign secretary denies that aid organisations are scared to speak out or people are going hungry

The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has told MPs that “no country is immune” from the impending aid cuts, but failed to clarify when specific plans would be made public.

Speaking after the release of the first details of the £4bn cuts to international aid, which have been widely criticised as “draconian” and opaque, the minister confirmed “no stand-alone” impact assessment had been carried out in individual countries but that “we identify risks we see across the board”.

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Sharon Matola obituary

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The founder of Belize Zoo and a champion of native species including the tapir and the scarlet macaw

In 1983, after a wildlife film-making project she was working on fell apart, Sharon Matola found herself in Belize, Central America, with a menagerie of homeless native creatures. She scrounged some land, wrote a sign on a piece of wood, and the Belize Zoo was open for business. Suddenly, she became “the zoo lady”, responsible for housing, feeding, cleaning and maintaining the health of the 20 animals.

The “office cat” was a jaguar, and there was a baby tapir in the bedroom on several occasions. It looked chaotic, but Matola, who has died aged 66 of a heart attack, was scrupulous about animal husbandry and determined that Belizeans would have a chance to learn about their tiny nation’s biodiversity.

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