Category Archives: World News

‘A tsunami of cases’: desperation as Covid second wave batters India

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Doctors speak of a new variant of the virus that appears to be spreading faster than ever before

Dr K Senthil had feared it was coming.

He had feared it as he saw the reckless crush of hundreds of people taking part in large wedding parties over the past months, feared it as he saw the maskless faces of shoppers at the market, feared it as he witnessed thousands come together for political rallies in the ongoing elections in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where he is the president of the state medical council.

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Minnesota officer who killed Daunte Wright resigns along with police chief

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Police chief had said that officer Kim Potter meant to fire her Taser but fired her service weapon by mistake, killing the 20-year-old

Kim Potter, the white Minnesota police officer who fatally shot the Black resident Daunte Wright during a traffic stop, and her chief of police, Tim Gannon, resigned on Tuesday.

Their resignations come after two nights of protests in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center over Sunday’s killing of Wright, who was unarmed when he was pulled over for a traffic violation on Sunday.

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Coronavirus live news: Johnson & Johnson to ‘proactively delay’ vaccine rollout in Europe over blood clot reports

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Move to delay vaccine deployment in Europe comes after six blood clot cases detected among Johnson & Johnson jab recipients in US

South Africa has temporarily suspended the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, its health minister said on Tuesday, after US federal health agencies recommended pausing its use because of rare cases of blood clots.

Health minister Zweli Mkhize told reporters:

I had urgent consultations with our scientists, who advised that we cannot take the decision by the FDA lightly. Based on their advice, we have determined to voluntarily suspend our rollout until the causal relationship between the development of clots and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is sufficiently interrogated.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Tuesday it was reviewing cases of rare blood clots in women who had taken Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine after US federal health authorities recommended pausing the use of the shot.

In a statement to Reuters, the EMA said it was “currently not clear whether there is a causal association between vaccination” and the conditions.

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Biden to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by September 11

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  • Biden expected to make formal announcement on Wednesday
  • About 800,000 troops have served at least once in Afghanistan

Joe Biden will withdraw all the remaining US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, a senior administration official has confirmed.

Related: Secretary of state Blinken hits out at China over Taiwan and Covid

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Iran to boost uranium enrichment levels in wake of Israeli attack

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Tehran responds as foreign minister accuses Israel of ‘bad gamble’ in targeting Natanz nuclear plant

Iran is to boost its levels of uranium enrichment to 60%, just short of weapons grade purity, in response to Israel’s attack on the Natanz nuclear facility, the country’s deputy foreign minister has announced.

Seyed Abbas Araghchi broke the news as he arrived in Vienna for the start of talks this week on how to revive the 2015 nuclear deal and bring back both the US and Iran into compliance.

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Burkina Faso ex-president Compaoré to face trial over Thomas Sankara murder

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Exile is to be tried in absentia alongside 13 others for complicity in murder

The exiled former president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, is to be tried in absentia for the murder of Thomas Sankara, one of Africa’s most revered post-independence leaders who was killed in a 1987 coup.

Sankara, a Marxist, pan-African leader, was murdered after four years in power and succeeded by his former friend Compaoré, who has repeatedly denied involvement. Compaoré went on to become one of Africa’s longest serving leaders, governing Burkina Faso for 27 years.

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St Vincent water supply running low as volcano explosions continue

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Heavy ash contaminates water supplies while volcanologists say activity could continue for weeks

Leaders of volcano-racked St Vincent have warned that water is running short as heavy ash contaminates supplies, amid estimates that the eastern Caribbean island will need hundreds of millions of dollars to recover from the eruption of La Soufrière.

Between 16,000 and 20,000 people have been evacuated from the island’s northern region, where the exploding volcano is located, with more than 3,000 of them staying at more than 80 government shelters.

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Biden urges Russia to de-escalate Ukraine tensions in call with Putin

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US president proposed a summit between the two leaders amid growing concern over Russian military buildup on Ukraine border

In a phone call with Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden has called on Russia to de-escalate tensions with Ukraine and proposed a summit between the two leaders amid growing concern over a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border.

The president emphasized the United States’s unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and expressed concern about Russia’s military buildup, the White House said.

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Ousted Myanmar ambassador says his relatives ‘forced into hiding’

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Exclusive: Kyaw Zwar Minn says he feels unsafe at London residence and family at home fear reprisals

Myanmar’s ousted ambassador to the UK has said that friends and relatives at home have been forced into hiding after the country’s military regime removed him from office for declaring his loyalty to the deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

In his first major interview after he was unceremoniously locked out of the embassy by his deputy last week, Kyaw Zwar Minn said he no longer felt safe at his north London residence and had contacted the police after members of his former staff delivered a letter ordering him to move out by Thursday.

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US decision to pause J&J jabs is another blow to global Covid fight

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Analysis: rare side-effects mean that confidence in both the Johnson & Johnson and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines is now shaken

The call in the US for a pause in the use of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine is another blow to hopes of vaccinating the whole world as fast as possible.

Health agencies recommended that US states pause use of the jab while investigations take place into six cases of women who have experienced rare blood clotting events combined with low platelets in the days following vaccination.

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Libya releases man described as one of world’s most wanted human traffickers

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Abd al-Rahman Milad, AKA Bija, is accused by UN of being directly involved in sinking migrant boats

Libyan authorities have released a man described as one of the world’s most wanted human traffickers, who was placed under sanctions by the UN security council for being directly involved in the sinking of migrant boats.

The coastguard commander Abd al-Rahman Milad, known by his alias Bija, is suspected of being part of a criminal network operating in Zawiyah in north-west Libya. He was arrested last October but was freed on Sunday after the military attorney general of Tripoli dropped charges against him “for lack of evidence”.

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‘Super app’ Grab to go public in record $40bn Spac merger

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Singapore-headquartered firm offers one-stop shopstyle service, including ride hailing, banking and food delivery

South-east Asian “super app” Grab, which offers services from ride hailing and food delivery to online banking, is to float in the US in a record deal with a so-called Spac investment company that values the business at almost $40bn (£29bn).

Singapore-headquartered Grab, which intends to list on Nasdaq in the US, has struck a $39.5bn merger deal with US-based Altimeter Growth Corp. It is by far the biggest deal to date involving a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) – a so-called “blank cheque” shell company that raises money first and seeks businesses to buy later – which has become the latest trend in global finance over the last year.

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Daunte Wright’s brother speaks out at vigil as police use teargas against protesters – video report

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Dallas Bryant, the brother of the 20-year-old Black man who was shot dead by police in the suburbs of Minneapolis on Sunday, says he could never understand Wright's fear of being pulled over by police because he is white. 

He also questioned the validity of the explanation by police that the officer who shot Daunte accidentally shot him because she confused her Taser electrical weapon for her gun.

Police clashed with protesters for a second night. Law enforcement agencies used teargas and other methods to disperse hundreds of people who had gathered outside police headquarters

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Facebook knew of Honduran president’s manipulation campaign – and let it continue for 11 months

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Juan Orlando Hernández falsely inflated his posts’ popularity for nearly a year after the company was informed about it

Facebook allowed the president of Honduras to artificially inflate the appearance of popularity on his posts for nearly a year after the company was first alerted to the activity.

The astroturfing – the digital equivalent of a bussed-in crowd – was just one facet of a broader online disinformation effort that the administration has used to attack critics and undermine social movements, Honduran activists and scholars say.

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‘We will lose more doctors’: Sudan’s health workers plead for Covid jabs

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Country has struggled to get vaccines to frontline medical staff, while Covid toll remains under-reported

More than 200 Sudanese doctors, nurses and medical workers have died from Covid-19, according to sources close to the health ministry – more than three times the official figure.

Like other countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan has struggled to obtain vaccines and distribute them to frontline medical staff. Many of the doctors who have died were senior consultants in their 50s and 60s or older, and so were in high-risk categories.

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Purple revolution: India’s farmers turn to lavender to beat drought

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Faced with climate change, farmers in Jammu and Kashmir are switching from maize to essential oils

It’s late June and the field is glowing with fragrant purple as the women in their flowing shalwar kameez arrive with scythes to harvest the lavender. In the 30-odd villages on the hilly slopes of Jammu’s Doda district, more than 200 farmers have shifted from maize to lavender production, starting a “purple revolution” in the region.

The village of Lehrote had a moment of agricultural fame this year when a 43-year-old farmer, Bharat Bhushan, won a prestigious award for innovative farming from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, one of several institutions across the country looking to find ways of coping with the climate crisis and its devastating impact on farming. Lavender, a drought-resistant crop, can be grown on poor soil and likes lots of sun but needs little water.

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African health workers left without Covid jabs as paltry supplies dwindle

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Fear of third wave and new variants as sub-Saharan vaccine distribution is dogged by supply disruption

Millions of healthcare workers in sub-Saharan Africa continue to risk their lives to fight Covid-19 as authorities across the continent struggle to obtain and distribute vaccines to frontline medical staff.

Though hundreds of millions of people in western nations are now protected from the virus, doctors, nurses and others on the frontline of the fight against Covid in Africa will have to wait months, or even years, for a vaccine.

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Police kill student who fired at them at Tennessee high school, authorities say

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Officer wounded after confrontation in Knoxville high school bathroom

A student at a Tennessee high school has been shot and killed by police after opening fire on officers responding to reports of a gunman on campus, authorities said on Monday.

David B Rausch, the director of the Tennessee bureau of investigation, said at a news conference that police found the student in a bathroom at Austin-East magnet high school in Knoxville, a city about 180 miles (290km) east of Nashville. They ordered him out, but he wouldn’t comply, and that is when he reportedly opened fire, Rausch said. Police fired back.

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‘A lack of political courage’: New Zealand’s drug reform efforts flounder

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From the outside, the country seems like a likely candidate for progressive drug laws but internally, change is proving hard to bring

After New Zealand’s referendum to legalise cannabis failed, social service agencies across the country are seeking a new path to decriminalisation of drug use, but obstacles are plenty.

On Monday, a broad coalition of social service, advocacy and health organisations released an open letter calling on prime minister Jacinda Ardern to repeal and replace the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 “to ensure drug use is treated as a health and social issue”. Signatories include the New Zealand Medical Association, Public Health Association, Auckland and Wellington City Missions, Mental Health Foundation, and the Māori Law Society, along with 20 others.

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Fukushima: Japan announces it will dump contaminated water into sea

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Environmental groups condemn plan to release more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water from the destroyed nuclear station in two years’ time

Japan is to release more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, the government has said, a decision that is likely to anger neighbouring countries and local fishers.

Official confirmation of the move, which came more than a decade after the nuclear disaster, will also deal another blow to the fishing industry in Fukushima, which has opposed the measure for years.

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