Kamala Harris spoke about democracy and its connection with women's equality in her debut address to the UN as US vice-president. 'This year, in considering the status of women, especially the participation of women in decision making, we must also consider the status of democracy,' Harris told the 65th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. 'It is a means to establish peace and shared prosperity. It should ensure every citizen, regardless of gender, has an equal voice'
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Boris Johnson says UK wants to work with China, though it poses ‘great challenges for an open society’ – live
Latest updates: PM says UK’s greatest ally will be US as he makes statement to MPs on defence review
- China major threat but UK will keep up trade links, says defence review
- Cap on Trident nuclear warhead stockpile to rise by more than 40%
- Pressure on Boris Johnson for inquiry into UK handling of pandemic
- Global coronavirus updates – live
In his Sky News interview Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, said the security and defence review said that the UK could use nuclear weapons to respond to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. That was a “big change” in policy, he said.
He was referring to this passage on page 77 of the document (pdf).
The UK will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968 (NPT). This assurance does not apply to any state in material breach of those non-proliferation obligations. However, we reserve the right to review this assurance if the future threat of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological capabilities, or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact, makes it necessary.
Here is the Scottish government’s summary of the latest plans for easing lockdown restrictions in Scotland. And here is a graphic summarising what it says.
Scotland’s indicative route out of lockdown. If we all stick with it and get the virus more under control as the vaccines do their work, there is hope for a much better summer on the horizon ☀️ pic.twitter.com/gTKHtJTNn5
Continue reading...Special brew: eco-friendly Peruvian coffee leaves others in the shade
The Mayni people are harvesting shade-grown coffee from under the canopy of mature trees, with huge benefits for wildlife and the community
Deep within the Peruvian cloud forests, a six-hour drive from the town of Satipo, the remote Mayni community is busy growing organic coffee beneath the canopy of the native forest in order to preserve the rich mosaic of life there.
Most of the forest is kept intact, with just a little undergrowth cleared to plant Coffea arabica trees. Dahlia Casancho, who is leading the Mayni in their eco-friendly coffee-growing endeavours, sees shade-grown coffee farming as a positive development for the community, who traditionally believe in a forest god and river god. “Nature is our home. Nature gives us water, feeds us and also allows us to grow our coffee,” she says. “That’s why we take great care of our forest and we want it to be sustainable so that our children can also enjoy it.
Continue reading...AstraZeneca jab: EU regulator ‘firmly convinced’ benefits outweigh risks
Agency says there are ‘no indications’ the vaccine causes blood clots, but the risk may be higher for some groups
The EU’s medicines regulator has said it remains “firmly convinced” the benefits of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine outweigh the risks, but isolated cases of blood clots “are a serious concern and need serious and detailed scientific evaluation”.
Emer Cooke, the head of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said there was no indication that the shot had caused any of the incidents, but the agency was investigating them thoroughly and would report it conclusions on Thursday.
Continue reading...UK defence policy review lacks clarity on China and Indo-Pacific
Analysis: focus shifts away from cooperation with the EU but fails to balance far east investment and security issues
Prof John Bew, the historian appointed by Boris Johnson to write the foreign and defence security review, has privately insisted the document should not be seen as an apology for Brexit or a turning away from Europe, the charge sometimes levelled by pro-EU critics such as the former national security adviser Lord Ricketts and Sir Simon Fraser, the former foreign office permanent secretary.
It is instead intended as a hard-headed look at the new collective security threats facing Britain, many of which, notably the rise of China, the spread of authoritarianism, the challenge of the climate crisis and the ubiquity of cyberwarfare, the UK would have faced in or out of the European Union.
Continue reading...Natural but deadly: huge gaps in US rules for wood-stove smoke exposed
The government spent millions subsidizing new wood heaters supposed to burn more cleanly. But an investigation has discovered critical flaws
Glenn Helkenn lives in a spruce forest, in a tiny log cabin he built himself on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska’s third largest city.
Continue reading...Lesotho sacks hundreds of striking nurses as doctors warn of dire shortages
The African state was already struggling to cope with TB, HIV and Covid before latest response to demands for equal pay
Lesotho has sacked hundreds of its nurses over the past few days in a row over pay. The small southern African country’s main hospital in the capital, Maseru, fired 345 nurses and nursing assistants, who have been on strike for the past month, with immediate effect.
The nurses went on strike to press the government-owned Queen Mamohato Memorial Hospital (QMMH) to give them the same salaries as their counterparts in other government and private institutions. Opened in 2011, QMMH is state-owned but run by the Tšepong Consortium, comprising five companies, namely Netcare Healthcare Group and Afri’nnai of South Africa, and Excel Health, Women Investment, and D10 Investments of Lesotho.
Continue reading...Mass funerals held as Myanmar coup death toll revised up to 149
Hundreds of mourners gather in townships across Yangon after dozens of people were killed in recent days
At least 149 people have been killed in Myanmar since the 1 February coup, including five in custody, a UN human rights official has said, as mass funerals were held for dozens of those shot dead by security forces in recent days.
The revised estimate of the death toll follows the bloodiest day in the six weeks since the military’s takeover, with 74 protesters killed on Sunday followed by 20 people the next day.
Continue reading...French MPs approve ‘non-consent’ law to protect children from sexual abuse
Draft legislation says a child under 15 cannot be considered to have willingly engaged in a sexual act
French MPs have unanimously approved a long-awaited draft law to protect children from rape and sexual abuse.
The legislation, drawn up after a series of scandals involving high-profile figures, establishes an age of “non-consent” at 15 under which a child cannot be considered to have willingly engaged in a sexual act. In cases of incest, the age has been set at 18.
Continue reading...Isis-linked militants beheading children in Mozambique, says aid group
Islamist insurgents targeting victims as young as 11, according to Save the Children
Children as young as 11 are being beheaded in Mozambique as part of an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands and forced many more from their homes, a UK-based aid group has said.
Save the Children said it had spoken to displaced families who described “horrifying scenes” of murder, including mothers whose young sons were killed. In one case, the woman hid, helpless, with her three other children as her 12-year-old was murdered nearby.
Continue reading...Dead Sea scroll fragments and ‘world’s oldest basket’ found in desert cave
Six-millennia-old skeleton of child also unearthed during dig in Judean Desert by Israeli archeologists
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed two dozen Dead Sea scroll fragments from a remote cave in the Judean Desert, the first discovery of such Jewish religious texts in more than half a century.
“For the first time in approximately 60 years, archaeological excavations have uncovered fragments of a biblical scroll,” the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement.
Continue reading...‘We forget our troubles’: crystal meth use rises during lockdown in Zimbabwe
Harare’s drug dealers say business is booming as more young people, some at school, use mutoriro
Inside a tiny room in Kuwadzana, a township in Harare, Solomon Sigauke* and his friends talk animatedly about football and listen to loud music. The misty vapour from the crystal meth fills the room as they take turns on a fluorescent pipe.
Sigauke, 25, has no cigarette lighter so he is improvises, holding a burning candle while his friend Kudzo puffs the smoke from the burning substance, known locally as mutoriro. .
Continue reading...FBI facing allegation that its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh was ‘fake’
A Democratic senator has asked attorney general Merrick Garland to facilitate ‘proper oversight’ into concerns on the investigation
The FBI is facing new scrutiny for its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justice, after a lawmaker suggested that the investigation may have been “fake”.
Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator and former prosecutor who serves on the judiciary committee, is calling on the newly-confirmed attorney general, Merrick Garland, to help facilitate “proper oversight” by the Senate into questions about how thoroughly the FBI investigated Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.
Continue reading...‘Music is my life’: ban on schoolgirls singing in Afghanistan met with protest
Government appears to backtrack on decree after women take to social media to sing in defiance under #IAmMySong hashtag
Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education appears to be backtracking on a decision to impose a nationwide singing ban on schoolgirls.
In a letter to school boards last week, which was leaked to the media, Kabul’s Education Department said girls aged 12 and above would no longer be able to sing at public events, unless the events were attended solely by women. The letter also stipulated that girls couldn’t be trained by a male music teacher.
Continue reading...Coronavirus live news: ‘no indication’ AstraZeneca vaccine has caused blood clots, says Europe health authority
European Medicines Agency says number of blood clots in vaccinated people ‘seems not to be higher than that seen in the general population’
- AstraZeneca jab: EU regulator ‘firmly convinced’ benefits outweigh risks
- Chaos in Germany and Italy after suspension of Oxford vaccine
- France seeks swift safety verdict on AstraZeneca vaccine
- Which European states have paused AstraZeneca jabs?
- Pressure on Boris Johnson for inquiry into UK handling of pandemic
Russia’s Covid vaccines have proven effective against new variants of the coronavirus in trials, a scientist with Moscow’s consumer regulator has said, after the agency reported its first cases of a variant first detected in South Africa (see 10.02am).
Reuters has the story:
In fact, trials have already been done in Russia and we can say with confidence that the [Sputnik V and EpiVacCoriona] vaccines registered in Russia also work against new strains,” Alexander Gorelov, deputy head of research at Rospotrebnadzor’s Institute of Epidemiology, said on state television.
Gorelov gave no details on trials that had tested vaccines against variants first discovered abroad. Researchers conducting trials under the review ordered by Putin said on 27 February that results were looking strong when volunteers were re-vaccinated with Sputnik V against new mutations of the virus.
Public health experts in the US have called for access to vaccines to be widened to better cater for Latino migrants – among the groups hardest hit by Covid-19.
Zackary Berger and Kathleen Page, both associate professors at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Alicia Fernández, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, write:
Current vaccine priority algorithms are inequitable, particularly those that focus on age. Almost 90% of deaths among whites have been in people over 65, but, as CDC data clearly indicate, among Latinos and African Americans more than one-third of those dying of Covid-19 have been younger than 65. And although shared living spaces have undoubtedly fueled the rapid transmission of Covid-19 in immigrant communities, living in a crowded house does not qualify people for the vaccine.
As for essential workers, it’s one thing for a hospital employee to prove they are a healthcare worker, but another thing entirely for a day laborer getting paid in cash to show proof of occupation. Finally, while people all over the country are struggling with poorly designed websites and busy call centers, these approaches are particularly insurmountable for low-income Latino workers who lack the digital skills, language capabilities and time to overcome these barriers.
Continue reading...Brazil set to lose its third health minister amid pandemic as Covid death toll rises
Eduardo Pazuello expected to depart after 10 months as coronavirus fatalities near 280,000
The Brazilian health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, is set to be sacked after an inglorious 10-month tenure during which more than 260,000 Brazilians have been killed by a coronavirus outbreak that his government stands accused of catastrophically mismanaging.
Related: 'Covid is taking over': Brazil plunges into deadliest chapter of its epidemic
Continue reading...Deb Haaland confirmed as first Indigenous US cabinet secretary
Interior secretary from New Mexico will be responsible for US’s land, seas and national resources
Deb Haaland has been confirmed as the secretary of the interior, making her the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in US history.
The 60-year-old from New Mexico will be responsible for the country’s land, seas and natural resources, as well as overseeing tribal affairs.
Continue reading...Allen v Farrow review – a one-note pick over the bones of old investigations
The HBO series arrives on Sky in the UK, but fails to dig deep and do more than regurgitate Mia and Dylan Farrow’s allegations against Woody Allen
Eight months after his relationship with not-quite-stepdaughter Soon-Yi was revealed in 1992, Woody Allen was accused of sexually abusing Dylan Farrow, his younger daughter with his partner Mia Farrow, when she was seven. Allen strongly denied all the allegations, as he has continued to do over the nearly 30 years since. But they fell on fertile soil. How could a man who could start an affair with his partner’s daughter not be capable of just about anything else, the argument went? A welter of publicity followed, claims (that no mother, especially one as devoted as Farrow, could possibly make such a thing up), counterclaims (that in fact she had done so, that Dylan was coached – which she denies, and that it was all an act of vengeance for the Soon-Yi affair), along with gossip and hearsay proliferated.
Dylan and her brother Ronan Farrow began speaking about the matter publicly themselves in 2014. This has disinterred old battle lines and occasioned new accounts from people who were close to the family at the time and from Moses, another of the Farrow children, which contradict either things they said at the time or the saintly mother narrative that seemed the most natural one. Meanwhile, doctors examined Dylan at the time and found no evidence to support Farrow’s contention, and Allen was investigated by the Yale New Haven hospital’s child sexual abuse clinic and the New York State’s social services department, who reached similar conclusions.
Continue reading...‘I’m not scared, just tired’: Icelanders lose sleep over earthquake tremors
Scientists call it an unprecedented seismic event – but residents dread an imminent volcanic eruption
Icelanders are yearning for some undisturbed shut-eye after tremors from tens of thousands of earthquakes have rattled their sleep for weeks in what scientists call an unprecedented seismic event, which might well end in a spectacular volcanic eruption.
“At the moment we’re feeling it constantly. It’s like you’re walking over a fragile suspension bridge,” said Rannveig Gudmundsdottir, a lifelong resident in the town of Grindavik.
Continue reading...Pandemic forcing girls in south-east Asia and Pacific out of school and into marriage – study
Female children are seen as an economic burden, and tough times are setting back progress by a generation, gender equality charity says
Thousands of adolescent girls across south-east Asia and the Pacific are being forced to leave school and get married instead as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a charity has warned, saying “a generation of girls could be lost”.
A new report by Plan International Australia highlighted the importance of secondary education for girls, and detailed the increased risk and long-term impacts of child, early and forced marriage in the region.
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