Canadians voice suspicions over palm oil, raising questions over transparency in a powerful industry
It began with an innocent question on Twitter: was butter in Canada becoming more difficult to spread?
“My butter just seemed harder. It was during a very hot period and I noticed it wasn’t behaving right,” said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University who posted the tweet. “But I thought I was the only one experiencing this.”
Continue reading...President Biden to call King Salman as his administration prepare to release intelligence report expected to implicate crown prince
Joe Biden is expected to call Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, as his administration prepares to release a declassified intelligence report that many experts expect will name the royal’s son and heir as complicit in the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Biden’s call to the 85-year-old ruler would take place “soon” and that the declassified report on Khashoggi’s murder was being readied for release. Biden is insisting that he speak only to the king.
Continue reading...Covax has delivered its first Covid-19 vaccine doses to Ghana as part of a programme to ensure equitable distribution to poorer countries. Anne-Claire Dufay, of Unicef, said it was ‘an historic moment’.
Covax aims to distribute enough vaccines over the next six months to inoculate 3% of the population of 145 countries and tens of millions more by the end of the year
Rightly, a digital platform for conservatives, goes down awkwardly in Qatari-funded news organisation
Al Jazeera’s surprise decision to launch a digital platform for conservatives in the US has left many within the Qatar-based news organisation dumbfounded and confused, staff have told the Guardian.
The network has announced the launch of Rightly, a platform that will host programmes and produce online content aimed at “audiences currently underrepresented in today’s media environment”, in this case right-of-centre Americans.
Continue reading...Rights group says pyramid-like scheme is directly linked to North’s nuclear and missile programmes
North Korea has been enslaving political prisoners, including children, in coal production to help boost exports and earn foreign currency as part of a system directly linked to its nuclear and missile programmes, a South Korea-based human rights group has said.
The Seoul-based Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) released a study analysing an intricate connection between North Korea’s exploitation of its citizens, the production of goods for export, and its weapons programmes.
Continue reading...Sylvie Bermann, former French ambassador, puts PM’s handling of pandemic alongside Donald Trump’s
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.
She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.
Continue reading...Scène de rue à Montmartre has been part of same French family’s private collection for more than a century
A major Paris work by Vincent van Gogh that has been part of the same French family’s private collection for more than a century is to go on public display for the first time since it was painted in the spring of 1887.
Scène de rue à Montmartre is part of a very rare series depicting the celebrated Moulin de la Galette, on the hilltop overlooking the capital, painted during the two years the Dutch artist spent sharing an apartment with his brother Theo on rue Lepic.
Continue reading...A senior adviser to Democrat Joe Biden in his campaign for president believed “Covid is the best thing that ever happened to him”, a new book reports.
Related: Ruling on Trump tax records could be costliest defeat of his losing streak
Continue reading...Eyad al-Gharib found guilty of aiding and abetting a crime against humanity
A court in Germany has found a former Syrian regime official guilty of being an accomplice to crimes against humanity, in a historic first victory for efforts worldwide to bring legal accountability for atrocities committed in Syria’s long war.
Eyad al-Gharib, a 44-year-old former colonel in the Syrian intelligence service, carried out orders in one of Bashar al-Assad’s notorious prisons.
Continue reading...Temporary decision by Green mayor of Lyon to take meat off menu met by protests
A decision by the Green mayor of Lyon, seen by many as the country’s culinary capital, to temporarily take meat off the menu in school canteens during the coronavirus pandemic has sparked a major political row in France.
Government ministers have accused the mayor, Grégory Doucet, of “ideological” and “elitist” behaviour after the measure, which is also being studied by several other cities including Paris, came into force in Lyon’s schools on Monday.
Continue reading...Doses land in Accra as part of scheme seeking to offset ‘vaccine nationalism’
Covax has delivered its first Covid-19 vaccine doses in a milestone for the ambitious programme that seeks to offset “vaccine nationalism” by wealthy countries and ensure poor ones do not wait years to start inoculating people.
An aircraft carrying 600,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine landed in Accra, the capital of Ghana, on Wednesday, where jabs will be administered to frontline health workers on Tuesday. Vaccine doses will arrive on Friday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and will be given from Monday.
Continue reading...Villages in southern Afghanistan have become frontline of conflict as peace talks stall and uncertainty surrounds US withdrawal
The people who lived in Spairwan village spent two days huddled in their homes, besieged by fighting, before the Taliban came and told them all to leave the area. Qayoom and his family were among 10,000 families pushed out of their homes as government and Taliban forces battled for territory in southern Afghanistan last month.
Qayoom found his new home was to be a couple of large sheets propped up over cold, bare earth, a shelter among many others in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) on the outskirts of Kandahar city. But the shelter barely checks the icy blasts of bitter winter winds.
Continue reading...After Italy’s government loosened Covid-19 restrictions in much of the country – including Lazio, the region that contains Rome and Vatican City – newly reopened museums are offering local visitors the opportunity to enjoy artworks undisturbed by the usual crowds of international tourists
Continue reading...Survivors of Islamic State brutality are pushed further into the margins as the pandemic causes the world to turn inward
Staring at the same four walls day after day, unable to find work, reunite with relatives, or send your children to school. The Covid pandemic has rendered this bleak picture a reality for many people across the globe. Yet for many who have survived or are living through conflict, these hardships are hardly novel.
For the Yazidi ethnic minority in Iraq, Islamic State’s 2014 genocide created adversity long before the pandemic ever did. For more than six years, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis have been in camps for internally displaced people (IDP) staring at the same four walls of their tents. They are unable to find work because Isis razed their farms and businesses. They cannot reunite with relatives still in Isis captivity or attend the burials of family members whose bodies remain in mass graves.
Continue reading...Civil rights groups say situation ‘getting worse on a daily basis’ as UN human rights chief expresses alarm over deepening impunity
Sri Lanka could descend swiftly back into violence and human rights abuses unless decisive international action is taken, the UN high commissioner for human rights and civil rights groups warned.
In a speech to the human rights council on Wednesday, Michelle Bachelet is expected to issue a stark warning that the Sri Lankan government has “closed the door” on ending impunity for past abuses and is facing a return to state repression of civil society and a militarisation of public institutions.
Continue reading...EU leaders to discuss certificates for people who had Covid jabs; Swiss plan to open shops, museums and libraries and allow 15 people to gather outdoors
The French government has ordered a weekend lockdown in the Dunkirk area to arrest an “alarming” rise in Covid-19 cases, signalling extra curbs might also be needed elsewhere as daily cases nationwide hit their highest since November.
Unlike some of its neighbours, France has resisted a new national lockdown to control more contagious coronavirus variants, hoping a curfew in place since 15 December can contain the pandemic. But it reported 31,519 new infections on Wednesday, up from 25,018 a week ago and the most since mid-November.
We have shown in regions such as Moselle and Alpes-Maritimes that, when the situation requires it, we can act quickly.
The US vice president Kamala Harris has urged Black Americans to get the coronavirus vaccine, as studies show Blacks and Hispanics are lagging in Covid vaccinations.
In excerpts from an MSNBC interview on Wednesday, Harris said:
Let’s not let Covid get us. Let’s get the vaccine instead, right? Let’s not let this thing get us.
We know black people are disproportionately likely to contract the virus and die from it. We know when you look at who the frontline workers are, who is the most at risk disproportionately, we are talking about people of colour.
Continue reading...Embarrassment for South Korea’s military after guards fail to heed alarms despite man being picked up by five sets of CCTV cameras
South Korea’s military is facing criticism over security lapses along the country’s heavily armed border with North Korea after a man was able to cross into the South despite being spotted multiple times by surveillance cameras.
The man, wearing a wetsuit and flippers, reportedly swam to South Korea in the early hours of 16 February, but evaded capture for more than six hours, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Continue reading...Studios report surge in requests for tattoos of the deposed civilian leader – and some are using their profits to support protesters
In the last three weeks, Ye, 37, has inked more images of Aung San Suu Kyi than throughout his 19 years of tattooing.
“We love and respect her because she has sacrificed so much for us,” he says, showing a photo of his latest artwork – a lifelike rendering of the deposed Myanmar leader, complete with jasmine flowers, on a woman’s back.
Continue reading...Expected shortfall of 90m doses could hit the EU’s ability to meet its target of vaccinating 70% of adults by summer
AstraZeneca has told the European Union it expects to deliver less than half the Covid-19 vaccines it was contracted to supply in the second quarter, an EU official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Contacted by Reuters, AstraZeneca did not deny what the official said, but a statement late in the day said the company was striving to increase productivity to deliver the promised 180m doses.
Continue reading...In letter to Tehran, human rights advocate outlines six-month investigation into disaster
Many high level Iranian officials should be charged for the shooting down of a Ukrainian commercial airliner in January 2020, a UN human rights expert has said, describing the killing of the 176 people aboard as a “profound and serious indictment” of the country’s civil and military authorities.
Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, delivered a 45-page letter to the Iranian government which was made public on Tuesday, outlining her findings from a six-month investigation into the disaster, and complaining about the lack of Iranian cooperation, which has left many of her questions unanswered.
Continue reading...