Category Archives: World News

Covid-status certificate scheme could be unlawful discrimination, says EHRC

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Exclusive: Equalities watchdog tells government documents could create ‘two-tier society’

Covid-status certificates being considered by ministers to help open up society could amount to unlawful indirect discrimination, the government’s independent equalities watchdog has advised.

As ministers decide whether the documents should be introduced as passports to certain events later this year, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has told the Cabinet Office they risk creating a “two-tier society”.

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Court tells Uber to reinstate five UK drivers sacked by automated process

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Ruling in Amsterdam overturns company’s decision to exclude operators for alleged sharing of account details

Uber has been ordered to reinstate five British drivers who were struck off from its ride-hailing app by robot technology.

The five drivers, backed by the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) and the campaign group Worker Info Exchange, argued that they had been wrongly accused of fraudulent activity based on mistaken information from Uber’s technology, and that the company had failed to provide the drivers with proper evidence to support the allegations.

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Ukraine still outgunned as Russia prepares for larger conflict

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Analysis: Ukraine’s military is in better shape than at outbreak of war in 2014, but still no match for Russia’s larger force

Russia’s unexplained buildup along Ukraine’s border set alarm bells ringing in the west last month as military analysts noted unusual flourishes – such as new field hospitals, long-distance shipments of armour and artillery and last-minute railcar bookings – that did not feel like a normal exercise.

Whether it is merely an attention-grabbing feint or a prelude to an escalation will depend on the Kremlin’s will. But through the buildup, Russia has already signalled that if a larger war does take place, it is prepared to deliver a hammer blow to its neighbour.

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‘Terrible days ahead’: Afghan women fear the return of the Taliban

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After 20 years of liberty, female education is once again threatened by hardline Islamists

Outside a college from which their mothers were banned, the women waited for friends finishing exams they fear will be some of the last they can take. “The Americans are leaving,” said Basireh Heydari, a Herat University student. “We have terrible days ahead with the Taliban. I’m worried they won’t let me leave the house, let alone what I’m doing now.”

The Biden administration’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by 11 September will bring an end to the US’s longest war. With Nato allies such as Germany already announcing on Wednesday that they will follow Washington’s lead and exit the country, Afghans fear an intensification of fighting between the national government and the Taliban, who were ousted by the US-led intervention two decades ago.

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Denmark strips Syrian refugees of residency permits and says it is safe to go home

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Government denies renewal of temporary residency status from about 189 Syrians

Denmark has become the first European nation to revoke the residency permits of Syrian refugees, insisting that some parts of the war-torn country are safe to return to.

At least 189 Syrians have had applications for renewal of temporary residency status denied since last summer, a move the Danish authorities said was justified because of a report that found the security situation in some parts of Syria had “improved significantly”.

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France, Germany and UK raise concern over Iran’s nuclear plans

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Three European countries say there is no ‘credible civilian need’ for enriching uranium to 60%

France, Germany and the UK have warned that Iran took a dangerous step towards the production of a nuclear weapon by enriching uranium to levels for which there is no “credible civilian need”.

Tehran, which claims its nuclear ambitions are limited to creating energy, announced this week it was boosting its levels of uranium enrichment to 60%, just short of weapons-grade purity. The 2015 nuclear deal only allows enrichment to a purity level of 3.67%.

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Bernie Madoff, financier behind largest Ponzi scheme in history, dies in prison

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  • Fraudster sentenced to 150 years in jail dies from natural causes
  • New York financier ran scheme that cheated investors of billions

Bernard Madoff, the one-time Wall Street titan who orchestrated one of the largest frauds in history, has died in prison aged 82.

Madoff, known as Bernie, was a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange, and was regarded for years as an investment sage. But unbeknown to his thousands of victims, he was running a Ponzi scheme that wiped out at least $17.5bn in savings.

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Coronavirus live news: Greece to end quarantine from some countries next week; France stops all flights from Brazil over variant fears

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Greece to end quarantine for EU and five other countries including the UK; French PM says P.1 variant is partly to blame for fuelling third wave in France; UK study to examine if vaccines can be safely mixed

The Danish Health Authority confirmed on Wednesday it would halt entirely the use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in its inoculation programme.

“The Danish Health Authority has decided to continue the vaccination against COVID-19 without the vaccine from AstraZeneca,” it said in a statement.

The suspension of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine could delay efforts to vaccinate most people in the EU by over two months to December, scientific information and analytics company Airfinity forecast on Wednesday.

“If the EU can’t use the J&J vaccine indefinitely it could push the timeline for vaccinating 75% of the population back into December,” London-based Airfinity said in a forecast update provided to Reuters.

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‘We cannot drink oil’: campaigners condemn east African pipeline

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Activists say the ‘heart of Africa’ line shipping crude from Uganda to Tanzania is unnecessary and poses a huge environmental risk

Activists have accused French and Chinese oil firms of ignoring huge environmental risks after the signing of accords on the controversial construction of a £2.5bn oil pipeline.

Uganda, Tanzania and the oil companies Total and CNOOC signed three key agreements on Sunday that pave the way for construction to start on the planned east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP). But on Tuesday a letter signed by 38 civil society organisations across both east African countries said the parties had failed to address environmental concerns over the pipeline and had steamrollered over court and parliamentary processes.

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Polish activists embrace ‘equality jogging’ at Pride parades

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Campaigners stage ‘solidarity workouts’ in protest against homophobic attacks

Polish activists are set to embrace “equality jogging” at this summer’s Pride parades following the success of exercise sessions under rainbow flags in public spaces across the country as a show of defiance following a homophobic attack on members of an LGBTQ+ sports club.

Two people were hospitalised last month when members of the Homokomando club were attacked while exercising by a gang of 30 masked men in Gdansk.

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Harrods stops selling Ganesha handbag after backlash from Hindus

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US label Judith Leiber’s depiction of the god on £6,340 leather clutch criticised as ‘demeaning’

Harrods has stopped selling a luxury handbag after the accessory caused offence among the Hindu community.

The bag, from the New York label Judith Leiber favoured by Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez, sculptures the Hindu god Ganesha into a leather clutch. Many Hindus saw the image of the god on a handbag as demeaning and commodifying their religion. They believe in non-violence against animals, so the use of leather is considered insensitive, especially in this context.

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Mexico’s vow to tighten border fails to deter US-bound migrants

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As the Biden administration enlists its neighbours in attempts to slow the flow of people, families seeking a future free from hunger and violence journey on

Groups of men, women and children stepped off small boats and on to Mexican soil without showing their documents to anyone.

Drivers quickly bundled them into taxis which sped past an immigration office to a nearby crossroad, where the travelers climbed into a vans for the next leg of their journey toward the US border.

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‘Marry your rapist’ laws in 20 countries still allow perpetrators to escape justice

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Critical UN report says the legislation is ‘deeply wrong’, subjugates women and shifts the burden of guilt on to the victim

Twenty countries still allow rapists to marry their victims to escape criminal prosecution, according to the UN’s annual state of world population report.

Russia, Thailand and Venezuela are among the countries that allow men to have rape convictions overturned if they marry the women or girls they have assaulted.

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Ballparks, stadiums and race tracks: US mass vaccination sites – in pictures

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As the US entered the latest phase of the fight against the pandemic, photographer Filip Wolak felt it was important to capture the unprecedented efforts that the healthcare communities put into place to help mitigate the virus’s lasting effects.

This photo project attempts to capture the largest vaccination sites across the country. Some of the sites pictured were documented in their early stages when the vaccination supply was still limited – Wolak hopes to return to them again.

The photographs were taken from a small airplane, overflying the locations at a high altitude. This point of view allowed Wolak to capture the magnitude of these efforts. In some of the cases, multiple images were combined into one, which allowed a wider reach without degradation of details

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Japanese regulator bans restart at nuclear plant over safety breaches

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Fukushima plant operator Tepco suffers blow to plans to resume at its only operable atomic facility

The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has been prevented from restarting its only operable atomic facility after a series of safety breaches, dealing a significant blow to Japanese attempts to resume nuclear power generation.

Japan’s nuclear regulator is to issue a “corrective action order” on Wednesday that would ban Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) from transporting new uranium fuel to its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata prefecture or loading fuel rods into its reactors.

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Neglected tropical diseases are the landmines of global health | Albert Picado and John H Amuasi

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They are 20 disparate diseases that, like mines, unduly affect the world’s poorest people. Now there’s a plan to eradicate them by 2030

In January the World Health Organization launched a new strategy for eradicating neglected tropical diseases, boldly setting targets to eliminate 20 of them by 2030.

But what are neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)? There is no easy answer. The concept was first proposed in the early 2000s to bring to light a group of diseases that disproportionately affect poor people yet, despite their collective impact, do not attract as much attention as diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria or tuberculosis.

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Damned either way, Biden opts out of Afghanistan as US tires of ‘forever wars’

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Analysis: Despite warnings not enough has been done to stablise the country, the president has decided to set aside the rule ‘if you break it, you fix it’

Joe Biden has decided that 20 years is enough for America’s longest war, and has ordered the remaining troops out no matter what happens between now and September.

Biden’s withdrawal is one area of continuity with his predecessor, although unlike Donald Trump, this administration consulted the Afghans, US allies and its own agencies before announcing the decision. But both presidents were responding to a national weariness of “forever wars”.

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‘Worrying picture’: Journalists in Europe face increasing risk, press freedom group warns

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Reporters Without Borders speaks of pressures on press freedom after murder of Giorgos Karaivaz in Athens last week

The murder of a high-profile Greek journalist last week marks the fourth killing of a reporter in Europe in the past five years and has underlined growing concerns about a steady decline of press freedoms in several EU member states.

Related: Greek crime journalist shot dead in Athens in ‘execution-style’ murder

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Will we need a Covid pass to get into the pub?

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The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has announced plans for a domestic Covid-status certificate. We look to Israel, where a similar scheme has been introduced, and discuss how it might work here

Last week, Boris Johnson set out plans for a domestic vaccine passport system to help the country emerge from lockdown.

To see how it might work, Anushka Asthana talks to the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Oliver Holmes, about life in Israel, where the government introduced a similar scheme in February.

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