Category Archives: World News

Liquid gold: beekeepers defying Yemen war to produce the best honey

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Despite the dangers, more Yemenis are turning to the sector as an alternative means of income

According to the Qur’an a lone sidr tree, or jujube, marks the highest boundary of heaven. On earth, amid the harshness of the Yemeni desert, the sweetness of sidr honey is cherished as a symbol of perseverance.

Yemen has long been renowned for producing some of the best honey in the world, often compared to Mānuka honey from New Zealand. Some of the highest quality, and purest, comes from bees fed exclusively on the flowers of the sidr, producing a pale coloured honey with a fiery, almost bitter aftertaste.

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Israelis vote in fourth national election in two years

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Netanyahu’s Likud party is ahead in polls, but predictions are unreliable as many voters remain undecided

Israelis are voting in their fourth national election in two years, the result of an unprecedented political deadlock that has seen the country’s longest-serving leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, face off against multiple rivals.

This time round, the prime minister is hoping that voters will credit him for a world-beating coronavirus vaccination campaign that has seen Israel reopen shops, bar and restaurants while simultaneously pushing down infection rates.

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Scathing report lambasts Canada police for handling of Indigenous man’s killing

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  • Police told Colten Boushie’s grieving mother to ‘get over it’
  • Officers accused of discrimination in 2016 case

Police in Canada told a grieving Indigenous mother to “get over it” after delivering news that her son had been killed, according to a scathing watchdog report that accused officers of discrimination and inflaming racial tensions during their investigation.

Colten Boushie, 22, was shot and killed in August 2016 after he and four friends drove on to a farm looking for help with their flat tyre. Nearly two years later, an all-white jury found Gerald Stanley, 56, not guilty of second-degree murder amid racial tensions in the Canadian prairies and deficiencies in the justice system.

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I had a narrow escape from Fred West. Knowing you’re prey is an ever-present fear for women | Sally J Morgan

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Young women quickly come to realise that our world is a very different place from that of our male friends

Creatures that are hunted need survival strategies. I watched a video clip of a cat seeing off a black bear. Despite the ridiculous size difference, the cat flies at the bear – all ferocity and flashing claws. Small animals turn fear into rage, and sometimes – only sometimes – rage saves them.

These thoughts come to me in the quiet garden of my Wellington home. Sexual assaults have increased in this city by 50% over the past five years. In the news, I read about an appalling killing in London. Women protesting, holding vigils and being beaten by the police as “activists”.

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More than 1,000 arrests as Miami Beach pushes spring-break curfew into April

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  • Police condemned for use of ‘pepper balls’ to break up crowds
  • Spring-break curfew in place between Thursdays and Sundays

Miami Beach officials have extended a curfew and state of emergency into April, in response to large spring-break crowds of partygoers who have celebrated in the area’s bars and beaches despite the coronavirus.

Related: Relaxing US Covid rules could cause 'another avoidable surge', warns CDC director – live

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Can the UK avoid a third wave of Covid?

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Analysis: as lockdown restrictions ease, the country now faces a race between vaccination and infection

Britain’s latest lockdown has dramatically reduced cases of coronavirus, and the number of people being admitted to hospital and dying from the disease. What the country faces now is essentially a race between vaccination and infection: can we protect people faster than the virus spreads as restrictions are eased?

This was always going to be a balancing act. The UK vaccination strategy of prioritising the most vulnerable people and moving down the age groups is intended to save lives first and slow transmission second. This means that as the country unlocks, infections are likely to rise, primarily in younger people who have more social contacts and have not yet been vaccinated. Hospitalisations and deaths are expected to rise too, though not as sharply: even though vaccine coverage has been high in vulnerable groups and older people, not everyone has the vaccine and it will not protect all those who do.

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US and Canada follow EU and UK to sanction Chinese officials over Xinjiang

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It is the first time for three decades UK or EU has punished China for human rights abuses

Britain and the EU have taken joint action with the US and Canada to impose parallel sanctions on a senior Chinese officials involved in the mass internment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province in the first such western action against Beijing since Joe Biden took office.

The move also marked the first time for three decades the UK or the EU had punished China for human rights abuses, and both will now be working hard to contain the potential political and economic fallout. China hit back immediately, blacklisting MEPs, European diplomats and thinktanks.

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Saudi Arabia proposes ceasefire to Yemen’s Houthi rebels to end war

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Moves aimed at ending six-year war include partial lifting of blockade on Sana’a airport and some sea ports

Saudi Arabia has offered Yemen’s Houthi rebels a nationwide ceasefire in a series of proposals aimed at ending the brutal six-year war in the country, including the partial lifting of the blockade on Sana’a international airport and some seaports.

Riyadh also said it would support a UN humanitarian corridor in the oil rich city of Marib, which has been under months of bombardment by the Houthis.

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Turkish economy in turmoil following sacking of central bank head

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Lira plunged by 15% on Monday after Erdoğan replaced governor with party loyalist

Turkey’s economy has been thrown into renewed turmoil after the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, sacked the head of the country’s central bank days after raising interest rates to tackle soaring inflation.

The Turkish lira plunged by almost 15% on Monday, while the Istanbul stock exchange shed a 10th of its value after the president shocked global investors by replacing Naci Ağbal with a party loyalist.

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Bangladesh: ‘massive’ fire in Rohingya refugee camps forces 20,000 to flee

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  • 1 million who fled Myanmar live in camps in Cox’s Bazar
  • No reports of deaths or injuries so far

At least 20,000 Rohingya have fled a huge blaze engulfing shanty homes at refugee camps in south-eastern Bangladesh, officials said on Monday, in the third fire to hit the settlements in four days.

Nearly 1 million of the Muslim minority from Myanmar live in cramped and squalid conditions at the camps in the Cox’s Bazar district, with many fleeing a military crackdown in their homeland in 2017.

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Italians urged to boycott Amazon to support day of strikes

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About 40,000 logistical workers hold national walkout over working conditions

Italian consumers were urged by unions to refrain from buying from Amazon for the day on Monday as about 40,000 of the online shopping giant’s logistical workers held a national strike over working conditions.

It is the first walkout in Italy to affect Amazon’s entire supply chain and involves warehouse and logistical hub workers as well as drivers provided by third-party services.

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Kenyan police officers to go on trial accused of British aristocrat’s murder

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Alexander Monson, son of Lord Monson, died in 2012 after allegedly being beaten in a police cell

Four Kenyan police officers will stand trial for murder after a judge ruled they had a case to answer in the death of the British aristocrat Alexander Monson, who died in 2012 a day after allegedly being beaten in a police cell.

The ruling, handed down by a high court judge in Mombasa, follows a years-long legal battle by his family after the 28-year-old died after he was arrested outside a nightclub at the Diani beach resort on suspicion of smoking cannabis.

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UFO report details ‘difficult to explain’ sightings, says US ex-intelligence director

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US military pilots and satellites have recorded ‘a lot more’ UFO sightings than have been made public, John Ratcliffe says

US military pilots and satellites have recorded “a lot more” sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, than have been made public, Donald Trump’s former intelligence director John Ratcliffe said.

Related: The truth is out there … perhaps: CIA releases thousands of UFO files

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UK considers Covid traffic light system for international travel

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Countries could be rated red, green and amber based on vaccine passport arrangements

A traffic light system is being considered by ministers for when international travel restarts, which could rate countries green, amber and red depending on the state of vaccine passport agreements.

The Guardian has been told the scheme could come into operation from August, with hotel quarantining continuing until at least 21 June for UK nationals and residents returning to England from countries with high prevalence of coronavirus variants of concern.

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Girl, two, dies after being rescued from migrant boat in Canaries

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Toddler from Mali has died in hospital after being resuscitated on a dock last week

A two-year-old girl from Mali who was rescued from a migrant boat and resuscitated on a dock in the Canary Islands last week has died in hospital, becoming the latest victim of the perilous Atlantic route from Africa to Europe.

The girl was one of 52 people travelling on a boat that had left the city of Dakhla in Western Sahara bound for the Spanish archipelago.

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Covid ‘may leave 12 million children unable to read’

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UN finds pandemic is widening education inequality with millions of girls unlikely to return to school

More than half of all children who turn 10 this year will reach their milestone birthday without being able to read a simple sentence, according to a new analysis of UN data.

Of those 70 million 10-year-olds, 11.5 million of them could be unable to read as a direct result of the impact on education of the Covid pandemic.

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Covid: AstraZeneca vaccine 79% effective with no increased blood clot risk – US trial

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Study of over 32,000 people included review of risks of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca was 79% effective in preventing symptomatic illness in a large trial in the US, Chile and Peru, the company said on Monday, paving the way for it to apply for US approval.

The vaccine was 100% effective against severe or critical disease and hospitalisation and was safe, the drugmaker said on Monday, releasing results of the late-stage human trial study of more than 32,000 volunteers across all age groups.

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De Klerk seeks accountability. What about his own?

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Apartheid-era South African president calls for justice for female victims of violence in Guardian article but some say his own record needs scrutiny

South Africans don’t give much thought to FW de Klerk these days. Like Mikhail Gorbachev, his fellow Nobel peace laureate, the last apartheid president is more highly regarded outside his own country than in it.

But some South Africans were taken aback to see De Klerk putting himself forward in a Guardian article on 10 March as an advocate of protecting women from violence and asserting that “holding perpetrators accountable, irrespective of how long ago the crime was committed, is essential to stamping out impunity and preventing future atrocities”.

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‘We monitor its every breath’: inside Mount Etna’s war room

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In the city of Catania, at the foot of the volcano, scientists are trying to explain its recent unusual behaviour

When his phone rang at 3.22am last Wednesday, 50-year-old Giuseppe Salerno, the head of volcanologists at Catania’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), was already up after a thundering rumble had awoken many of the city’s inhabitants. The call came from the headquarters of the INGV where, a few seconds before that disturbance, seismic waves on one of the 40 monitors in the operations room seemed to jump off the screen. For the 14th time in less than a month, Mount Etna had sent another reminder that it is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

Etna, 3,300 (10,800ft) metres above sea level, has been in explosive form in recent weeks, spewing incandescent magma and a copious shower of ash that has reached as far as Catania. Since 16 February, with fastidious precision, every 48 hours the volcano has put on a firework display with lava fountains reaching as high as 2,000 metres.

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Australia floods: NSW inundated with torrential rain – in pictures

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Three weather systems are colliding to cause extreme rainfall and flooding across New South Wales, with intense rainfall likely to continue until late on Tuesday.

The state’s mid-north coast is facing a once-in-a-century flood and residents are bracing for the worst.

Some areas of the northern NSW coast have had more than 70cm of rain since last Thursday.

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