Category Archives: World News

Last public statue of Spanish dictator Franco is removed

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Monument in north Africa commemorates the fascist leader’s earlier role in the Rif war of the 1920s

The last public statue in Spain of the former dictator Francisco Franco has been removed from the city gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city on the north-west African coast.

Without much fanfare, a group of workmen took down the statue on Tuesday, using a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away at the brick platform on which the statue stood, before lifting it off by a chain around its neck and carting it away in bubblewrap on a pickup truck.

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US Capitol rioters ‘came prepared for war’, Senate hears in testimony

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First congressional hearing on attack comes day after Merrick Garland said he would expand investigation into 6 January assault

Testifying on Tuesday in the first congressional hearing on the US Capitol attack, the chief of Capitol police who resigned over the riot said the pro-Trump mob which stormed the building “came prepared for war”.

Related: Ruling on Trump tax records could be costliest defeat of his losing streak

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Coronaangst ridden? Overzoomed? Covid inspires 1,200 new German words

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Linguist who compiled list of words says they help tell story of life during pandemic

From coronamüde (tired of Covid-19) to Coronafrisur (corona hairstyle), a German project is documenting the huge number of new words coined in the last year as the language races to keep up with lives radically changed by the pandemic.

The list, compiled by the Leibniz Institute for the German Language, an organisation that documents German language in the past and present, already comprises more than 1,200 new German words – many more than the 200 seen in an average year.

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Mount Etna illuminates night sky with 1,500-metre lava fountain

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Europe’s most active volcano produces one of most striking eruptions in decades

Mount Etna’s spectacular eruptions reached a peak on Monday when the volcano’s lava fountains soared to 1,500 metres – a display described by one expert as “one of the most striking in the last few decades”.

Europe’s most active volcano has been on explosive form in recent weeks, spewing incandescent magma and a copious shower of ash, reaching as far as Catania.

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Coronavirus live news: Fauci says political divide added to ‘stunning’ US deaths; Italy ‘misled’ WHO

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Syria approves Sputnik vaccine; UK government eyes return to normal by end of June; Fauci says political divide contributed to ‘stunning’ US deaths

Here are some of the key development in the last few hours.

The Philippines will let thousands of its healthcare workers, mostly nurses, take up jobs in Britain and Germany if the two countries agree to donate much-needed coronavirus vaccines, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Reuters reports that the Philippines, which has among Asia’s highest number of coronavirus cases, has relaxed a ban on deploying its healthcare workers overseas, but still limits the number of medical professionals leaving the country to 5,000 a year.

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Hong Kong plans to make politicians swear oath of loyalty to Beijing

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All election participants will have to swear allegiance or face five-year ban under bill to be tabled next month

Hong Kong’s government has announced electoral changes requiring office-holders to pledge and maintain an oath of loyalty to Hong Kong and Beijing, or face disqualification and a five-year ban on running for reelection.

A bill to “ensure patriots govern Hong Kong” has been endorsed by the chief executive council and will be tabled in March, the secretary for constitutional and mainland affairs, Erick Tsang, told a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

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Nigeria survey suggests 23% of Lagos residents had Covid last year

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Study suggests infection rates have been much higher across the country than previously thought

More than one in five people living in the state of Lagos in Nigeria had Covid-19 antibodies at the end of October, according to a study that suggests that infection rates were much higher across the country than previously thought.

Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control (NDCD) and Institute for Medical Research collected blood samples from over 10,000 individuals living in a representative sample of households in four states in September and October.

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Colombia’s ‘capital of horror’ despairs amid new wave of gang violence

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President urged to act as rival gangs use death and intimidation in their brutal turf war for control of Buenaventura

Clenching a fist, Tatiana Angulo talked about the killings of her neighbours’ two teenage sons.

“They got mixed up in it,” said Angulo, 34, who runs a peace theatre group, reenacting the stories of local victims. “We used to be able to hang out and have a laugh on the street corners, but now that’s where the killings happen.”

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China did ‘little’ to hunt for Covid origins in early months, says WHO document

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Exclusive: summary from visit last year reveals Chinese officials offered scant details

Chinese officials did “little” in terms of epidemiological investigations into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan in the first eight months after the outbreak, according to an internal World Health Organization document seen by the Guardian.

The internal WHO travel report summary, dated 10 August 2020, also said the team who met Chinese counterparts as part of a mission to help find the origins of the virus received scant new information at that time, and were not given any documents or written data during extensive discussions with Chinese officials.

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My Brother’s Keeper: a former Guantánamo detainee, his guard and their unlikely friendship – video

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Mohamedou Ould Salahi and one of his former guards, Steve Wood, reunite in Mauritania 13 years after last seeing each other, rekindling an unlikely relationship that profoundly changed their lives.

Mohamedou was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay for 14 years. During his incarceration he was subjected to torture and solitary confinement, but never charged with a crime. His memoir, Guantánamo Diary, became an international bestseller and was adapted into the film, The Mauritanian, starring Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster.

My Brother's Keeper is BAFTA longlisted for British Short Film 2021.

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Reporting on WTO’s first female head ‘sexist and racist’, say African UN leaders

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Coverage of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala criticised by group who say such attitudes ‘discourage women from taking on leadership positions’

Senior African leaders at the UN have criticised the “sexist and racist” language used in coverage of the appointment of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the new president of the World Trade Organization.

Okonjo-Iweala, a graduate of Harvard University, was confirmed as the new head of the WTO last week, making her the first woman and the first African to lead the organisation.

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Thousands of UK language students left in limbo as Brexit hits travel plans

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Universities say they have received inadequate guidance on red tape and costs for academic years abroad

Thousands of UK students hoping to spend the year abroad are caught in limbo after facing major disruption to their travel plans due to post-Brexit red tape and costs, in respect of which universities say they received inadequate guidance from the government.

Coordinators of academic years abroad who spoke to the Guardian said there had been limited information from the Foreign Office ahead of Brexit on the onerous requirements that the shift in their status would incur in EU countries.

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‘A lifetime sentence’: children of the gulag fight to return from exile

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Millions of Soviet citizens were sent to vast network of prison camps under Stalin. Now their descendants seek recompense

Alisa Meissner is paying to this day for the Soviet Union’s decision to exile her whole family from Moscow for their German heritage.

She still lives in a town just 30 miles from the gulag village where her family were sent in the 1940s after the outbreak of the second world war. And despite the rehabilitation of her exiled family, the denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the collapse of the Soviet Union, she has never been able to leave.

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Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup

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Guardian analysis indicates shocking figure likely to be an underestimate, as preparations for 2022 tournament continue

More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal.

The findings, compiled from government sources, mean an average of 12 migrant workers from these five south Asian nations have died each week since the night in December 2010 when the streets of Doha were filled with ecstatic crowds celebrating Qatar’s victory.

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Global freshwater fish populations at risk of extinction, study finds

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World’s Forgotten Fishes report lists pollution, overfishing and climate change as dangers

Freshwater fish are under threat, with as many as a third of global populations in danger of extinction, according to an assessment.

Populations of migratory freshwater fish have plummeted by 76% since 1970, and large fish – those weighing more than 30kg – have been all but wiped out in most rivers. The global population of megafish down by 94%, and 16 freshwater fish species were declared extinct last year.

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Fears for Rohingya stranded at sea for 10 days, as engines fail and eight die

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UN calls for boat to be rescued, saying ‘immediate action’ needed to ‘prevent further tragedy’

The United Nations refugee agency has called for the immediate rescue of a group of Rohingya refugees adrift in their boat in the Andaman Sea without food or water, many of them ill and suffering from extreme dehydration.

The UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) said it did not know the exact location of the vessel and understood that some passengers had died. The boat had left southern Bangladesh about 10 days ago and experienced engine failure, it said.

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Emma Coronel, wife of El Chapo, arrested on drug trafficking charges

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Joint US-Mexican citizen has also been charged with conspiring to help arrange her husband’s escape from prison in 2015

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexico’s most notorious cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has been arrested in Virginia on drug trafficking charges.

In a statement released on Monday, the US justice department said that Coronel, 31 – who is a joint US-Mexican citizen – was arrested at Dulles international airport and was scheduled to make her initial appearance in federal court on Tuesday via video conference.

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America’s half a million Covid deaths a stark reminder of challenges for Biden

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Analysis: the president has ambitious plans to halt a public health crisis his predecessor wrongly claimed would simply disappear

Exactly one year after the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in the United States, Joe Biden was sworn in as president, inheriting the worst public health disaster since the flu pandemic of 1918. In the days that followed, Biden pledged a “full-scale, wartime” effort to combat the virus, even as he braced a disease-weary nation for its darkest chapter yet.

“Things are going to continue to get worse before they get better,” Biden said at the time, offering a dire forecast. The national death toll, he warned, could exceed half a million by the end of February.

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Nasa releases video of Perseverance rover landing on Mars

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Space agency also reveals audio recorded by Perseverance on surface of red planet

Nasa has unveiled a first-of-its-kind video of its car-sized rover Perseverance making its sensational landing on Mars, and released the first audio recorded on the surface of the red planet.

The American space agency shared the footage on Monday, days after the spacecraft made its dramatic descent to the Martian surface.

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Spanish police rescue migrants hidden in waste containers – video

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Spanish authorities have rescued several people who had been hiding in recycling containers in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the tip of Morocco, where each year thousands of migrants attempt to reach the Spanish mainland from northern Africa. Footage released by Spain’s Guardia Civil shows individuals partially buried in a container of glass bottles and another inside a bag of toxic ash

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