Category Archives: World News

France limits outdoor gatherings to six as Covid infections rise

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More areas of the country get mobility restrictions while Hungary and Poland face crises

Concern is mounting among health experts that France is not doing enough to curb a rise in coronavirus infections, particularly among younger people, as a third wave fuelled by the B117 variant first detected in the UK accelerates across Europe.

Announcing 45,000 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the French health minister, Olivier Véran, on Thursday banned outdoor gatherings of more than six people and added three more départements, including the area around Lyon, to 16 already placed under tougher mobility restrictions.

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Cruise ships to be kept away from St Mark’s Square in Venice

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Italian government announces ‘temporary’ move to force ships to dock at industrial port instead

Cruise ships will no longer sail past St Mark’s Square in Venice and will be made to dock at the lagoon city’s industrial port, the Italian government has said.

The ministers for infrastructure, culture, tourism and the environment jointly took the decision “to protect a cultural and historical heritage that belongs not only to Italy but to the entire world”, a statement said on Thursday.

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Toronto: fare-beating beaver wandering in station disrupts morning commute

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‘Rascal’ or ‘Nickel’ who ended up in station after straying from a nearby marsh was captured and released safely

Lost and confused passengers are a common sight on the Toronto metro system, but a puzzled, fare-evading beaver wandering a subway station is probably a first for the city.

An underground station in Canada’s largest city was shut down on Thursday after a beaver unwittingly ended up on its terrazzo tile floors after straying from a nearby marsh.

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‘Dimming the sun’: $100m geoengineering research programme proposed

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All options to fight climate crisis must be explored, says national academy, but critics fear side-effects

The US should establish a multimillion-dollar research programme on solar geoengineering, according to the country’s national science academy.

In a report it recommends funding of $100m (£73m) to $200m over five years to better understand the feasibility of interventions to dim the sun, the risk of harmful unintended consequences and how such technology could be governed in an ethical way.

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Saudi accused of threat to Khashoggi UN investigator is human rights chief

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Awwad al-Awwad, former aide of crown prince, denies threatening to ‘take care of’ Agnès Callamard

The Saudi official who is alleged to have twice issued threats against the independent UN investigator Agnès Callamard is the head of the kingdom’s human rights commission, and formerly served as an aide to the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Awwad al-Awwad is alleged by a person familiar with the matter to have twice threatened to “take care of” Callamard at a January 2020 meeting with senior human rights officials in Geneva.

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EU leaders push back against bloc’s plans to halt Covid vaccine export

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More sceptical member states hope ‘stick will never be used’ amid concerns over supply chain

EU leaders are likely to shy away from supporting the use of new powers to block Covid vaccine shipments to countries such as the UK with better jab coverage than the bloc, according to a draft statement ahead of a meeting of EU leaders today.

The European commission has increased its scope for blocking vaccine exports but disquiet among capitals is set to be reflected in a muted statement at the end of the virtual summit on Thursday evening.

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Suez canal: Dutch and Japanese teams brought in to help free ship

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Salvage teams from Netherlands and Japan called in to help refloat Ever Given, which is blocking canal

Salvage teams from the Netherlands and Japan have been enlisted to redraw plans to free a giant container ship blocking the Suez canal, as fears grew that the operation could take weeks.

Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corp, which leased the vessel, said the Dutch firm Smit Salvage and Japan’s Nippon Salvage had been appointed by the ship’s owner and would work alongside its captain and the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) on a plan to refloat the ship and let traffic resume on one of the world’s key trade routes.

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‘The Yanomami could disappear’ – photographer Claudia Andujar on a people under threat in Brazil

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Andujar lived with the tribe and fights for them. A timely show of her images comes to London soon


It is more than 50 years since Claudia Andujar began photographing the Yanomami, the people of the Amazon rainforest near Brazil’s border with Venezuela. Now 89, she is using her archive to increase their visibility, at a time when their survival is under renewed threat.

“The question of indigenous people should be more respected, more widely known. This is very important as it’s the only way the present [Brazilian] government will come to recognise their rights as human beings to occupy their land,” says Andujar, speaking from São Paulo. “This government isn’t interested in their rights.”

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New Zealand brings in bereavement leave for miscarriages and stillbirths

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Legislation allowing three days’ leave applies to parents, their partners, and parents planning to have a child through adoption or surrogacy

New Zealand’s parliament has voted unanimously to give mothers and their partners three days of bereavement leave after a miscarriage or stillbirth.

Labour MP Ginny Andersen, who presented the bill, said it would allow parents to come to terms with their loss without being forced to use up their sick leave entitlements. “The grief that comes with miscarriage is not a sickness; it is a loss,” she said. “That loss takes time – time to recover physically and time to recover mentally; time to recover with a partner”.

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‘Just write STOP’: the teenager helping Polish women flee abuse

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Schoolgirl’s fake cosmetics site helps hundreds of women as domestic violence rises during Covid

In April 2020, weeks after Poland went into its first Covid-19 lockdown, Krysia Paszko, a 17-year-old high school pupil, watched a TV report about Europe’s surge in domestic violence cases, which had increased by up to 60% on 2019, according to the World Health Organization. Poland’s largest women’s rights centre, Centrum Praw Kobiet (CPK), had reported a 50% increase in calls to its domestic violence hotline in March.

Learning from the report that France had implemented a scheme in pharmacies that women could use to report domestic violence using the codewords “Mask 19”, Paszko had an idea. With help from a graphic designer friend, she created a Facebook page for a fictitious cosmetics company.

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Covid curfew and clock change threaten to call time on Spain’s drive-in cinemas

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Country’s oldest autocine is calling for exemption from 10pm rule so it can survive summer’s later sunsets

At 7.30 on Friday evening, Godzilla and King Kong are scheduled to converge on a large lot in eastern Spain to trade blows and bellows, rip fistfuls of fur and scales off each other and generally wreak CGI havoc for an appreciative, car-bound audience.

Their titanic sparring, however, could be short-lived. This weekend, the wading reptilian metaphor for atomic warfare and the conflicted, skyscraper-bothering ape could find themselves cowed by the setting sun, the changing of the clocks and the local coronavirus curfew.

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Nike and H&M face backlash in China over Xinjiang statements

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Chinese social media condemns statements by the companies as celebrities cancel contracts with brands

Anger with Nike has erupted on Chinese social media after the company issued a statement saying it was “concerned about reports of forced labour” in China’s Xinjiang province, and that it would not source textiles from the region.

The backlash over the Nike statement was among the highest trending topics on China’s Twitter-like social media Weibo on Thursday.

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Suez canal drama – and a tiny bulldozer – inspire wave of memes

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Big ship getting stuck in a too-narrow waterway has spawned invocations of poetry, the pandemic and Austin Powers

It is the David and Goliath story of our times: one of biggest container ships in the world got stuck in the Suez canal, blocking a route through which 12% of the world’s trade passes – and sent to rescue it was a very small bulldozer.

2 guys and a bulldozer on site to dislodge a ship stuck in the Suez Canal. pic.twitter.com/APAIU7sCv6

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Singapore blogger ordered to pay nearly US$100,000 damages to PM for Facebook post

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Blogger argued he had ‘merely shared’ an article without changing content or adding comments

The Singapore high court has ordered a blogger to pay S$133,000 (US$98,825) in damages in a defamation case to the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

Lee sued Leong Sze Hian, a financial adviser, after he shared on Facebook an online news article .

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‘Unless you’re wealthy, don’t come back’: dismay over new rules for returning to NZ

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Charge of $3,100 will have to be paid if a returnee leaves again within six months, instead of the previous three months

New Zealanders overseas have reacted with despair to news that the government has doubled the time returning citizens are required to stay to avoid paying a $3,100 quarantine fee.

The changes, announced on Wednesday, mean people coming home from overseas will need to stay six months, rather than the previous three, to be exempt from the fee – a move the government has said will help make the managed isolation system “more financially sustainable”.

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AstraZeneca plant investigated by Italian police at EU’s request

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Investigation is fresh sign of breakdown in relations between Brussels and Anglo-Swedish vaccine supplier

An AstraZeneca plant has come under investigation by the Italian police at the request of Brussels in a sign of the breakdown in relations between the Anglo-Swedish vaccine supplier and the EU.

Officers were sent into the facility in the town Anagni, east of Rome, on Saturday evening after the European commission contacted the Italian government with concerns.

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Coronavirus live news: India pauses AstraZeneca vaccine exports; Belgium, Iceland and France tighten restrictions

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No exports were made on Thursday; Belgium imposes fresh lockdown; Iceland imposes three-week shutdown; France locks down more areas

AstraZeneca has dismissed as “inaccurate” a report in the Italian press that 29m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine found in factory near Rome were destined for the UK.

La Stampa reported on Wednesday that the doses – almost twice the amount the EU has so far received from AstraZeneca – were found “hidden” in the factory following a search by Italian police on Saturday at the request of the European commission, and that they were probably destined for the UK.

Related: AstraZeneca dismisses claim 29m vaccine doses in Italy were bound for UK

Luxembourg has announced a partial reopening of its hospitality industry, with cafés and restaurants able to serve customers again in outdoor areas from 7 April.

The European country’s venues have been closed since the end of November.

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Elderly Asian woman who fought attacker donates nearly $1m from GoFundMe

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Fundraiser was created to cover Xiao Zhen Xie’s medical expenses after she was punched in San Francisco

An elderly Asian woman who received nearly $1m on GoFundMe after she fought back against someone randomly attacking her is planning to donate all of the money to her community to fight racism, her family has announced.

The violent incident against Xiao Zhen Xie was one of many recent attacks against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in America. Stop AAPI Hate tracked nearly 3,800 discriminatory incidents that occured against this community from 19 March 2020 to 28 February 2021.

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Alexei Navalny says health has sharply deteriorated in jail

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Russian opposition leader’s aide says Navalny also blocked from meeting lawyers

Alexei Navalny has complained of a “sharp deterioration” in his health in prison and has been blocked from meeting lawyers, a senior aide to the Russian opposition leader has said.

Navalny has reported “serious back pain” and numbness in one of his legs that has left him unable to stand on it, Leonid Volkov said on Wednesday.

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Germany eases citizenship rules for descendants of Nazi victims

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Measure helps close legal loopholes that led to many victims’ descendants having applications rejected

The German government has agreed a draft law to naturalise some descendants of Nazi victims who were previously denied citizenship.

Described by Berlin as a symbolic step, the measure helps close legal loopholes that had led to many victims’ descendants having their citizenship application rejected.

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