Category Archives: World News

Police warn of ‘all-out war’ as tribal violence in Papua New Guinea kills 19

Posted on by

High-powered weapons, as well as a hand grenade, were used in fighting near Kainantu Town in Eastern Highlands province

Police are warning a “all-out war” could erupt in Eastern Highlands province in Papua New Guinea, after 19 people were killed in tribal violence late last week.

High-powered weapons, as well as a hand grenade, were used in fighting on Thursday and Friday near Kainantu Town in the east of the country, causing 19 deaths, with many more people unaccounted for, and properties destroyed.

Continue reading...

Ardern tells New Zealand border staff: get Covid vaccine now or be redeployed

Posted on by

Prime minister’s comments come after border worker diagnosed last week said to have missed two vaccine appointments

Border workers have until the end of April to be vaccinated before being moved to lower risk roles, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said after a third worker from Auckland’s Grand Millenium managed isolation facility tested positive for Covid-19.

“We want everyone to be vaccinated on our frontline,” she told TVNZ’s Breakfast on Monday.

Continue reading...

Covid live: UK nears 40m total coronavirus vaccine doses; Iran records its highest daily death toll this year

Posted on by

UK has now given 32.12 million people a first dose of the vaccine and 7.47 million a second dose; Iran reports 258 further Covid-19 deaths

Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, vowed on Sunday to push the Biden administration for more Covid-19 vaccines as her state experiences a worrying spike in cases.

Joe Biden has said Washington will give Michigan more federal resources to support vaccinations and testing, but not additional vaccines.

Related: Michigan governor vows to push Biden for more vaccines as Covid cases surge

China’s top disease control official has admitted that the efficacy of the country’s domestically produced vaccines is low as it emerged the authorities are considering mixing them to try to offer greater protection against coronavirus.

The rare admission of weakness on the part of Beijing’s pandemic approach came from the director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, who said Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates”.

Related: Top Beijing official admits efficacy of China’s Covid vaccines is low

Continue reading...

Whitmer won’t go ‘punch for punch’ with Republican who called her a witch

Posted on by
  • Governor and others ‘ready for burning at stake’, GOP chair said
  • Democrat laments ‘layer of misogyny’ towards female leaders

Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, will not “go punch for punch” with Republican leaders in the state who have attacked her in misogynistic terms, one going so far as to call Whitmer and two other leading Democrats “three witches” set to be “burned at the stake”.

Related: ‘Dumb son of a bitch’: Trump attacks McConnell in Republican donors speech

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Sunday the US is concerned about China’s aggressive actions against Taiwan and warned it would be a “serious mistake” for anyone to try to change the status quo in the western Pacific by force.

Related: Chaos Under Heaven: Trump as raging bull in a China policy shop

Continue reading...

St Vincent hit by power cuts after another ‘explosive event’

Posted on by

Caribbean island blanketed in ash following biggest eruption since 1979, which has forced thousands to flee

A second “explosive event” has been reported by authorities in Saint Vincent, leaving residents of the area around La Soufrière volcano facing power cuts and water outages.

Locals described loud rumbling, lightning and heavy ashfall as conditions deteriorated on the Caribbean island, after the volcano first erupted on Friday, forcing thousands to evacuate, though some remained in their homes.

Continue reading...

Israel appears to confirm it carried out cyberattack on Iran nuclear facility

Posted on by

Shutdown happened hours after Natanz reactor’s new centrifuges were started

Israel appeared to confirm claims that it was behind a cyber-attack on Iran’s main nuclear facility on Sunday, which Tehran’s nuclear energy chief described as an act of terrorism that warranted a response against its perpetrators.

The apparent attack took place hours after officials at the Natanz reactor restarted spinning advanced centrifuges that could speed up the production of enriched uranium, in what had been billed as a pivotal moment in the country’s nuclear programme.

Continue reading...

Ukrainian soldier reportedly killed in artillery fire from Russia-backed troops

Posted on by

Attacks have intensified in recent weeks as Kremlin assembles troops along border

The Ukrainian military said a soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in artillery fire from Russia-backed separatist rebels, as hostilities rose sharply in the east of the country.

As of the reported attack on Sunday, Ukraine says 27 soldiers have been killed in the east this year, more than half the number who died in all of 2020. Attacks have intensified in recent weeks and Russia has built up troops along the Ukraine border.

Continue reading...

Streets coated with ash after Caribbean volcano eruption – video

Posted on by

Video from Georgetown, a community several kilometres away from La Soufrière volcano on the Caribbean island of St Vincent, shows buildings blanketed in a layer of ash after the volcano spectacularly erupted after decades of inactivity.

The eruption of La Soufrière on Friday caused dark clouds of ash to blow about 10km into the air, prompting an evacuation request from the government. Assessing the thick ash covering parts of St Vincent, the disaster response team predicted things may not return to normal for a 'very long time'


Continue reading...

‘Accident’ at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility – video

Posted on by

Iran announced on Saturday that it had started up advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, in breach of its undertakings under a 2015 nuclear deal and days after the start of talks on rescuing the accord. The following day a spokesperson for Iran’s civilian nuclear programme said an 'accident' had happened at the facility's electrical distribution grid. Behrouz Kamalvandi says the reason for the loss in power is unknown and will be investigated but there were no injuries and no contamination

Continue reading...

Rare European vultures being poisoned by livestock drug

Posted on by

Diclofenac was approved in Spain and Italy despite being banned in Asia after it had wiped out millions of birds

A recently approved veterinary drug has been confirmed as the cause of death of a vulture in Spain. Conservationists say the incident could be the tip of an iceberg, and warn that the drug could wipe out many of Europe’s vultures as well as harming related species, including golden eagles.

The anti-inflammatory agent diclofenac has already been banned in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh after it was found to kill vultures that ate the carcasses of cattle treated with the drug. Tens of millions of vultures are believed to have died in this way with some species declining by a staggering 99.9% in parts of south Asia.

Continue reading...

Britain risks damaging reputation by keeping Julian Assange in jail, says partner

Posted on by

Stella Moris says continued detention of WikiLeaks founder is compromising UK’s global standing

Britain would be on stronger ground campaigning against authoritarian regimes if it pressed the Biden administration to drop its call to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges, Stella Moris, Assange’s partner, has told the Guardian.

Moris – who has two children with Assange – is trying to broaden the campaign of support for him by pointing to the global damage caused to the UK’s reputation by keeping him in jail for so long.

Continue reading...

Colombia’s cartels target Europe with cocaine, corruption and torture

Posted on by

Armed Belgian police raids have lifted the lid on a sinister new front in the drugs war

At 5am on a chilly Tuesday morning last month, 1,600 police officers and balaclava-wearing special forces, bristling with arms and battering rams, were ordered into action around the Belgian port city of Antwerp.

More than 200 addresses were raided in what was the largest police operation ever conducted in the country and potentially one of the most significant moves yet against the increasingly powerful narco-gangs of western Europe.

Continue reading...

Indonesia earthquake: at least seven dead on Java island

Posted on by

Quake hit offshore near city of Malang with country already reeling from cyclone disaster

At least seven people were killed after a 6.0 magnitude quake struck off the coast of Indonesia’s main Java island on Saturday, as the country reels from a cyclone disaster.

The afternoon quake hit offshore about 45 kilometres south-west of Malang city in East Java, damaging hundreds of homes as well as schools, government offices and mosques across the region.

Continue reading...

Nasa preparing to attempt first controlled flight on another world

Posted on by

The Ingenuity helicopter, which arrived on the red planet in February, is expected to take to the skies on Wednesday

Nasa is gearing up to attempt the first controlled flight on another planet next week, with the tiny Ingenuity helicopter on Mars.

The helicopter is expected to take to the skies next week, with Wednesday being the earliest time scheduled.

Continue reading...

Ghislaine Maxwell: prosecutors defend new indictment as July trial looms

Posted on by
  • Defense complains of ‘gamesmanship’ and may seek trial delay
  • Arraignment on new charges due in New York this month

Prosecutors in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell have defended a late expansion of charges against her, saying it became necessary because a woman spoke after the Briton’s arrest about abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s.

Related: Ghislaine Maxwell faces new charges, including sex trafficking of a minor

Continue reading...

St Vincent volcano: heavy ashfall clouds evacuation efforts on Caribbean island

Posted on by
  • Friday explosion sent plume more than 33,000ft
  • Antigua and Guyana ready to take evacuees or ship supplies

Extremely heavy ashfall rained down on parts of the Caribbean island of St Vincent on Saturday and a strong sulfur smell enveloped communities, a day after a powerful explosion at La Soufriere volcano uprooted the lives of thousands who evacuated under government orders.

Related: Caribbean volcanoes rumble to life as scientists study activity not seen in years

Continue reading...

France and Germany’s Covid vaccination programmes pick up speed

Posted on by

As daily inoculations hit record figures, warning comes of new delays

Vaccine rollouts in France and Germany have finally begun to pick up speed, after a slow start and problems with supplies and bureaucracy.

France continues to struggle to contain a third Covid-19 wave, but announced it had hit its 10 million inoculations target a week earlier than expected, while Germany doubled the number of vaccinations, administering a record 720,000 doses on Thursday after the rollout was extended to family doctors.

Continue reading...

Doctors under fire as Myanmar military targets efforts to aid injured protesters

Posted on by

Medics tell of attacks on staff and ambulances to stop treatment of patients and punish those who took part in national strike

Htet Htet Win and her husband were late returning home on Sunday night. It was past the junta-imposed 8pm curfew when their motorbike passed through the streets of eastern Mandalay. The security forces reportedly shouted for them to stop, and then opened fire when they did not do so. Her husband was hit but managed to get away. She was knocked to the ground.

A grainy photograph, taken by an onlooker, shows her lying face down on the concrete, her arms reaching above her head, her purple top and bottoms marked with dark patches.

Continue reading...

Coronavirus live news: India’s cases surging as deadly second wave spreads, Iran imposes 10-day lockdown

Posted on by

India records 145,384 new Covid-19 cases and 794 deaths, the highest number of fatalities in more than five months; lockdown ordered in Iran

The British Retail Consortium estimated that lockdowns in 2020 cost non-essential retail £22bn in lost sales. So with non-essential shops allowed to open again on Monday after nearly four months, retailers have concocted plans to make real-life shopping trips a pastime once again.

Lauren Cochrane looks at how different shops are adapting:

Related: Lockdowns have cost £22bn in lost sales, say British retailers

According to a tally compiled by AFP, at least 2,917,316 people have died from Covid-19 worldwide since the virus first emerged in December 2019.

The US is the worst-affected country with 561,074 deaths, followed by Brazil at 348,718, Mexico with 207,020, India with 168,436 and Britain with 127,040.

Continue reading...