Category Archives: World News

Carlos Menem, flamboyant former Argentine president dies, aged 90

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Menem delivered short-lived economic stability in the 1990s and was known for his tabloid personal life

The flamboyant Argentine ex-President Carlos Menem died on Sunday at age 90 after long-term health problems, the country’s current president, Alberto Fernandez, announced in a tweet.

Menem led a colourful personal life while he pushed Argentina to an economic boom, but his two-term 1989-1999 presidency crumbled under the weight of corruption scandals and he spent years plotting an unlikely comeback.

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India: activist arrested over protest ‘toolkit’ shared by Greta Thunberg

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Disha Ravi charged with sedition, accused editing document on how to support India’s farmers that was tweeted by Swedish climate activist

Indian police have charged a 22-year-old climate activist with sedition over accusations she edited and circulated a document tweeted by climate activist Greta Thunberg relating to India’s ongoing farmer protests.

Swedish climate activist Thunberg tweeted her backing this month for the farmers, who have been demonstrating since December against agricultural reforms they say will harm their livelihood but benefit large corporations. She shared a document which she said was a toolkit to create and spread awareness about the farmers’ complaints.

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Summer in Auckland felt like a fool’s paradise – we all knew it couldn’t last | Steve Braunias

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Reports of queues for inessential items have come in fast but we can still count ourselves lucky

The bananas were the first to go. “Look,” I said to my daughter. We stood and gazed at the supermarket shelves set aside for bananas. They’d been stripped bare less than an hour after the latest lockdown was announced. We sighed, and then went about stripping the shelves of nectarines. She asked, “Will six do?” I said, “No. Grab 10. You never know.”

Last night’s lockdown announcement took place at 7pm. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called an urgent press conference and emergency sirens wailed from mobile phones – they’d make a good ringtone – as New Zealanders were told to return to various states of lockdown. A family of three in South Auckland had tested positive for Covid-19. The city was put in lockdown level 3 at midnight, the rest of the country in the more relaxed level 2. It’s in place till Wednesday midnight and what happens after that is largely going to depend on whether more cases are tested positive in the community.

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Coronavirus live news: UK variant hits New Zealand; WHO envoy expects ‘some sort’ of vaccine passports

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Australia suspends quarantine-free travel with New Zealand; WHO envoy suggests vaccine passports may be needed for travel

France has scrapped a law banning workers to eat lunch at their desks in a bid to curb the spread of Covid-19, according to a decree published Sunday.

CNN reports:

The new rule temporarily overturns a longstanding law that protected what was once considered a sacrosanct part of the day, “la pause déjeuner” -- the lunch break.

Employers were previously forbidden to allow their workers “to have their meals in the workplace,” under the French labor code.

House sales in Spain tumbled 18% in 2020, the National Statistics Institute said on Monday, with tourist hotspots like the Balearic and Canary Islands hardest-hit.

Reuters reports:

A months-long home confinement last spring as well as restrictions on regional and global travel delivered hard blows to Spain’s real estate market, which had only recently begun to recover from a crash in 2008.

Around 415,000 houses were sold in 2020, the lowest number in four years, while property transactions fell to lows not seen since 2011, though pent-up demand drove a modest recuperation in the second half.
[...]
Regions blessed with beaches, plentiful natural space or a low population density like La Rioja, Galicia and Cantabria saw house sales soar between 37% and 28% in December compared with the same month in 2019, as buyers fled the cities seeking the green outdoors – and a lower infection risk.

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Catalonia election poll suggests separatists will retain majority

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Catalan Socialist party finishes first as secessionists win more than half the vote on turnout of only 53%

Catalan pro-independence parties have increased their parliamentary majority following a regional election in which the unionist Socialists took the largest share of the vote and the far-right Vox party outperformed its conservative rivals to win its first seats in the northeastern Spanish region.

Sunday’s election was overshadowed by the Covid pandemic and dominated by the continuing debate over independence that has shaped and divided Catalan politics for the past decade.

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Texas sees one of its coldest winters in decades as temperatures drop

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Greg Abbott, the governor, issued a disaster declaration for every county in the state as conditions continued to get colder

Texas is experiencing one of its coldest winter in decades , with temperatures expected to drop to as low as 11F (-12C) in Houston and 9F (-13C) San Antonio under a winter storm warning.

The governor, Greg Abbott, issued a disaster declaration for every county in the state on Friday, as conditions continued to get colder over the weekend.

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New Zealand’s Auckland Covid outbreak is UK variant, says Ardern

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Some 1.6 million Kiwis face bans on non-essential movement until Wednesday under strict new lockdown as Australia suspends travel bubble

Aucklanders are waking up on Monday to a new lockdown, hoping the short and sharp three-day restrictions ordered by Jacinda Ardern arrest the spread of Covid-19.

The prime minister said genomic testing had shown that the three community cases were the UK variant of Covid-19.

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Women form human chains in Russia in support of Navalny’s wife

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About 300 women gathered in Moscow holding a white ribbon in -13C temperatures

Several hundred women formed human chains in Moscow and St Petersburg on Sunday, using Valentine’s Day to express support for the wife of the jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and other political prisoners.

About 300 women gathered on Arbat Street in Moscow’s city centre holding a long white ribbon in temperatures of -13C (8F).

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Myanmar: tanks roll into cities as internet shut down

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Diplomats warn ‘the world is watching’ amid fears for fate of pro-democracy protesters

Myanmar’s internet has been cut overnight on Sunday, hours after armoured vehicles rolled into several cities, prompting fears for the fate of protesters and warnings by diplomats that “the world is watching”.

Armoured cars appeared on the streets of Yangon, Myitkyina and Sittwe on Sunday, live footage broadcast online by local media showed, in the heaviest show of force so far by the military since it staged a coup on 1 February.

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Democrats defend decision not to call witnesses as tactic under scrutiny

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‘We needed more senators with spines,’ said Stacey Plaskett after vote to convict fell short of two-thirds majority needed

Democrats defended their prosecution of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Sunday and hinted at the possibility of criminal charges, after failing to convince enough senators the former president was guilty of inciting the deadly Capitol attack.

Related: Boris Johnson calls Trump impeachment over Capitol attack 'kerfuffle'

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Trump triumphant – but senior Republicans still see battles ahead

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Former president celebrates second impeachment acquittal as supporters and moderates prepare to contest party direction

Donald Trump emerged from his second impeachment trial almost completely politically intact. But amid widespread laments (or celebrations, depending on the affiliation of the speaker) about the former president’s grip on the Republican party, some prominent voices suggested a changing of the guard may still be due.

Related: Mitch McConnell's impeachment speech was just a hostage video | Lloyd Green

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Our understanding of Covid and the vaccines is constantly evolving. That’s a good thing | Abby Bloom

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There will continue to be plenty more data gaps because the Covid-19 strain simply behaves like all influenzas and mutates continuously

By the time you read this it will be out of date.

Why? Because every day we receive new data that causes us to rethink and rewrite our response to Covid-19, notably vaccine programs. This is good. I will explain.

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Tens of thousands protest in Myanmar nine days after coup – video

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Tens of thousands of people took part a ninth day of anti-coup demonstrations on Sunday. Students marched through the centre of Yangon, the country's biggest city, carrying placards demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in detention since Myanmar’s military overthrew the elected government on 1 February

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Open sesame: Alibaba’s push into Europe a mixed blessing for Liège

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Apart from the pollution, there are concerns the Chinese firm’s new airport hub may not revive the fortunes of the Belgian region

Braving an ominously grey sky, Ine Brants, 33, perches precariously at the top of a stepladder at Liège airport’s perimeter fence. “Ah, the green queen,” she says, raising the long lens of her camera to Challenge Airlines’ green-liveried jumbo jet as it flies into view. “You can get a 747 rush hour here. It has definitely got busier since coronavirus.”

Brants’ lens is capturing the Alibaba effect. Quietly over the last three years, Liège, Belgium’s third largest city, has been transformed into a launchpad for the Chinese e-commerce group’s push into the European marketplace, a dynamic boosted by the coronavirus pandemic. It is a cause for celebration for some and worry for others.

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WHO investigator claims China refused to hand over key Covid information

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Australian infection expert, part of a team visiting Wuhan, says they were provided only with a summary of data

There is growing controversy over a World Health Organization investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic after one of its members said China had refused to hand over key data, and the US national security adviser said he had “deep concerns” about the initial findings.

An international delegation travelled to the Chinese city of Wuhan last month, as part of efforts to understand how the outbreak began. Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious disease expert who was part of the team, said they had requested raw patient data but were only given a summary.

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Life savers: the amazing story of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine

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A year ago, two scientists began work on the response to a new virus. Now, as their vaccine is being given to millions, they tell of their incredible 12 months

Exactly a year ago, Oxford University scientists launched a joint enterprise that is set to have a profound impact on the health of our planet. On 11 February, research teams led by Professor Andy Pollard and Professor Sarah Gilbert – both based at the Oxford Vaccine Centre – decided to combine their talents to develop and manufacture a vaccine that could protect people from the deadly new coronavirus that was beginning to spread across the world.

A year later that vaccine is being administered to millions across Britain and other nations and was last week given resounding backing by the World Health Organization. The head of the WHO’s department of immunisation, vaccines and biologicals, Professor Kate O’Brien, described the jab as “efficacious” and “an important vaccine for the world”.

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‘We cannot hope for anything good’: Myanmar coup sparks despair for Rohingya

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While Aung San Suu Kyi defended a genocidal campaign against the Muslim minority, refugees fear military rule will end dreams of a return home

For the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar, news of the fall of Aung San Suu Kyi after the military coup was bittersweet.

After all, no community had felt more betrayed by Myanmar’s civilian leader. When she came to power in 2015, the belief was that she would overturn decades of persecution and finally bring about peace and citizenship, following in the footsteps of her father, Gen Aung San.

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Trump’s acquittal shows paltry punch of impeachment process

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Critics say the impeachment process no longer presents a threat or deterrent to bad behavior by the most powerful figure in the land

Former president Donald Trump has repeatedly been called “Teflon Don” during his presidency – a moniker used for the late mob boss John Gotti to describe how consequences for his bad actions apparently don’t stick to him.

Related: Senate Republicans stand by their man and Trump wins his second acquittal | David Smith's sketch

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China hits back after US expresses ‘deep concerns’ over WHO Covid-19 report

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  • Biden administration requests data from early days of outbreak
  • China’s Washington embassy rejects accusations of interference

China has fired back at the US over allegations from the White House that Beijing withheld some information about the coronavirus outbreak from World Health Organization investigators.

The White House on Saturday called on China to make data from the earliest days of the Covid-19 outbreak available, saying it had “deep concerns” about the way the findings of the WHO’s Covid-19 report were communicated.

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‘We took a huge risk’: the Indian firm making more Covid jabs than anyone

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Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, on vaccines, regulation and what comes next

Adar Poonawalla, 40, is the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India (SII), the Pune-based, family-owned vaccine manufacturer that is producing more Covid-19 vaccines by dose than any other in the world. For now it’s the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine rolling off its production lines, but SII has signed contracts with three other developers – Novavax, Codagenix and SpyBiotech – all of which have candidates in the works.

Did you ever imagine you would be making vaccines for a global pandemic?

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