Category Archives: World News

Biden accuses Republican governors of ‘Neanderthal thinking’ over plans to reopen

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President said US ‘on the cusp’ of being able to change nature of Covid crisis but ‘the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking’

Joe Biden criticized Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi on Wednesday, calling their decisions to end state-wide mask mandates “a big mistake”.

The US president said the country was on the “cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease” with the distribution of vaccines and added: “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything’s fine.”

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The misogynist incel movement is spreading. Should it be classified as a terror threat?

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Violence linked to the ideology has killed as many as 50 people in the US and Canada and sparked debate among counterterrorism experts and police

As attacks linked to the misogynist “incel” movement mounted in recent years, authorities around the world have begun to treat the ideology as a more serious terrorism threat.

Since 2014, men who call themselves “involuntary celibates” and blame women for their own lack of sexual and social status have carried out mass killings in California, Florida, and Toronto.

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Moment 6.2-magnitude earthquake hits central Greece captured on CCTV – video

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A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck central Greece on Wednesday, sending people rushing from their homes. There were no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage. Footage from a CCTV camera in a shop in the city of Larissa showed clothing racks swaying as the quake struck. The quake struck close to Tyrnavos, a town about 140 miles north of Athens, the US Geological Survey said

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German doctors broach ‘taboo’ subject of Covid toll on minority groups

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Anecdotal evidence suggests Muslims over-represented in ICUs, but Germany has no official data

German doctors are reportedly concerned about the large proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds among coronavirus patients in intensive care, citing a lack of proper communication with Muslim communities in particular about the dangers of the disease.

Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, confirmed that the issue was discussed with senior medical consultants last month, though he stressed the meeting was informal.

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Coronavirus live news: Ukraine sees record levels of hospitalisations; explosion at Dutch testing centre

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Ukraine records 3,486 people hospitalised in the past day; Dutch police say explosion at a coronavirus testing location may have been intentional

A large British study researching potential early-stage Covid-19 treatments will begin testing colchicine, a cheap drug normally used to treat gout, and has expanded enrolment criteria for the trial, University of Oxford researchers said on Wednesday.

The anti-inflammatory drug is already being tested in a separate study conducted by the Recovery programme, which is the world’s largest randomised Covid-19 drugs trial.

Wales has reported a further 208 coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 204,196.

Public Health Wales also reported an additional 12 deaths, taking the total in the country since the beginning of the pandemic to 5,356.

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Edna O’Brien to receive France’s highest honour for the arts

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The 90-year-old Irish writer will be named commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on Sunday

Edna O’Brien is to receive France’s highest cultural distinction, and be named commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres this week.

Related: Edna O’Brien on turning 90: ‘I can’t pretend that I haven’t made mistakes’

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Hungary’s Fidesz party to leave European parliament centre-right group

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Rightwing party’s move comes after European People’s party changed its internal rules on excluding members

Hungary’s ruling rightwing Fidesz party has said it will leave the main centre-right political grouping in the European parliament after the European People’s party (EPP) voted to change its internal laws on excluding members.

The EPP’s 180 members, many of whom have campaigned for the expulsion of Fidesz, which they accuse of weakening Hungary’s democracy and curbing media and other freedoms, voted by 148 to 28 in favour of the new rules, with four abstentions.

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TikTok urged to take action over Myanmar death threat videos

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Videos posted to Chinese-owned site show men in military gear threatening to kill protesters

TikTok has been urged to take action over a flood of videos shared in Myanmar that feature men in military uniform threatening to kill anti-coup protesters, at times while brandishing weapons.

Myanmar’s police and army have been widely condemned for using lethal force against peaceful protesters who have held mass rallies over recent weeks calling for the return of democracy. More than 20 people have been killed since the military seized power on 1 February.

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How elimination versus suppression became Covid’s cold war | Laura Spinney

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Getting rid of the virus completely now seems an impossible project. But there are powerful arguments in its favour

A year ago, when the World Health Organization published a report showing that China had shut down a highly contagious virus in a city of 11 million people, epidemiologist Michael Baker assumed that the international body would advise the rest of the world to follow China’s example. When to his amazement it didn’t, he decided that New Zealand (population 5 million) should go its own way, and started lobbying the government to pursue an elimination strategy.

He found some unexpected allies in New Zealand’s billionaires who, hearing what he was proposing, got on the phone to cabinet ministers too. On 23 March, New Zealand shut down and seven weeks later, its citizens emerged into a virus-free country. Baker, who estimates that the move saved about 8,000 lives, later asked the billionaires why they backed him: “They said, ‘We didn’t get filthy rich by not being good at assessing and managing risk.’ They were in it for the long haul.”

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Nicolas Sarkozy attacks ‘shockingly unjust’ corruption conviction

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Ex-French president vows to take case to European court of human rights if appeal does not succeed

Days after his conviction for corruption and influence peddling, Nicolas Sarkozy has said he will take the battle to clear his name to the European court of human rights if he does not win on appeal.

The former French president described a Paris court’s verdict on Monday and the three-year prison sentence he was given (two years suspended) as “profoundly and shockingly unjust”.

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Brazil’s Covid outbreak is global threat that opens door to lethal variants – scientist

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Duke University neuroscientist urges international community to challenge Brazilian government over its failure to contain

Brazil’s rampant coronavirus outbreak has become a global threat that risks spawning new and even more lethal variants, one of the South American country’s top scientists has warned as it suffered its deadliest day of the pandemic.

Speaking to the Guardian, Miguel Nicolelis, a Duke University neuroscientist who is tracking the crisis, urged the international community to challenge the Brazilian government over its failure to contain an epidemic that has killed more than a quarter of a million Brazilians – about 10% of the global total.

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What’s in a vaccine and what does it do to your body?

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There are all sorts of different vaccines but many of them share specific types of ingredients. Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to Prof Adam Finn to find out what is in most conventional vaccines, as well as what's going on in our bodies when we take them – and why the Covid jabs work differently

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Galician noir: how a rainy corner of Spain spawned a new TV genre

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Spanish dramas such as Money Heist have been taking the world by storm in recent years. But why are film-makers now flooding to the country’s north-west to make their shows?

Rosa Vargas’s arrival in a small town in north-western Spain to investigate the disappearance of a young girl marked an unlikely milestone. Vargas is the fictional police detective in O sabor das margaridas (Bitter Daisies), which, in 2019 became the first series in Galician, a language spoken by fewer than 2.5 million people, to be broadcast by Netflix. The series became one of the top 10 most-watched non-English language shows in the UK and Ireland just a month after its international release.

A decade after Nordic noir captured the attention of international TV audiences, a TV genre some are calling “Galician noir” is emerging from the rainy corner of Spain. HBO made its debut in the Galician language last year with a Spanish-Portuguese miniseries Auga seca (Dry Water), a murder mystery set in the port city of Vigo, and was soon followed by the Galician-produced police thriller La unidad (The Unit) on the Spanish subscription platform Movistar+. More recently, El desorden que dejas (The Mess You Leave Behind), based on a novel by the screenwriter Carlos Montero, premiered on Netflix in December.

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Chinese labour schemes aimed to cut Uighur population density – report

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Accidental publication adds to growing body of evidence of Beijing’s efforts to persecute minority

Chinese labour programmes in Xinjiang are designed at least partly to reduce the population density of the Uighur ethnic minority group, according to a study accidentally published online.

The Chinese report, by academics of Nankai University, was taken down in mid-2020, but a copy was archived by the academic Dr Adrian Zenz. It adds to the growing body of evidence of Beijing’s concerted efforts to persecute Uighurs in what human rights experts and some governments have labelled cultural genocide.

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‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power

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Ojok Okello is transforming his destroyed village into a green town where social enterprises responsibly harness the shea tree

The village of Okere Mom-Kok was in ruins by the end of more than a decade of war in northern Uganda.

Now, just outside Ojok Okello’s living-room door, final-year pupils at the early childhood centre are noisily breaking for recess and a market is clattering into life, as is the local craft brewery, as what has become Okere City begins a new day.

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Civilian deaths in conflict plummeted during pandemic, report finds

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The number of civilians reported killed in explosions nearly halved in 2020 to the lowest level in a decade

The number of civilian casualties in conflicts around the world plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic, a new report shows.

Last year, an average of 10 civilians a day were reported killed by explosive weapons, compared with 18 in 2019, according to analysis by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based charity.

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Smile for the camera: dark side of China’s emotion-recognition tech

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Xi Jinping wants ‘positive energy’ but critics say the surveillance tools’ racial bias and monitoring for anger or sadness should be banned

“Ordinary people here in China aren’t happy about this technology but they have no choice. If the police say there have to be cameras in a community, people will just have to live with it. There’s always that demand and we’re here to fulfil it.”

So says Chen Wei at Taigusys, a company specialising in emotion recognition technology, the latest evolution in the broader world of surveillance systems that play a part in nearly every aspect of Chinese society.

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‘Two sessions’: China expected to unveil new controls on Hong Kong

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Delegates descend on capital for week of pomp and pageantry including unveiling of 14th five-year plan

China is expected to unveil new political controls on Hong Kong at this week’s meeting of its rubber-stamp parliament, which is also likely to showcase President Xi Jinping’s further consolidation of power.

Beijing plans to ensure only “patriots” – Communist party loyalists – can run Hong Kong, according to a speech by a top Chinese official ahead of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC).

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Neera Tanden withdraws from nomination to direct budget office – live

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Tanden’s letter to Biden requesting her withdrawal said:

Dear President Biden,

I am writing to you to withdraw my nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. It has been an honor of a lifetime to be considered for this role and for the faith placed in me.

The withdrawal marks the first cabinet nominee by Biden to fail to get confirmation.

“I have accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Biden said in a statement. “I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration. She will bring valuable perspective and insight to our work.”

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