Category Archives: World News

China bans BBC World News in retaliation for UK licence blow

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China has been critical of BBC reports on Xinjiang, while Ofcom recently revoked CGTN licence

BBC World News has been banned from airing in China, a week after Beijing threatened to retaliate for the recent revocation of the British broadcasting licence for China’s state-owned CGTN.

In a statement published at midnight Beijing time on Friday, China’s National Radio and Television Administration said BBC World News’s coverage of China had violated requirements that news reporting be true and impartial and undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity.

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Saudi Arabia: Loujain al-Hathloul release sparks calls for ‘real justice’

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Sisters of women’s rights activist step up pressure on Saudi leaders a day after her release from prison

The sisters of the women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul have stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia’s leaders after her release from prison, demanding “real justice” and insisting the human rights campaigner will fight a year travel ban.

One day after Hathloul’s release from custody – widely billed as a peace offering from Riyadh to the administration of the new US president, Joe Biden – Lina al-Hathloul said her sister would take legal action in the kingdom to overturn restrictions imposed on her as part of her probation.

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Saudi Arabia’s release of Loujain al-Hathloul an overture to Biden

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Analysis: Mohammed bin Salman views the move as an attempt to engage the new US administration

As Loujain al-Hathloul marked her first day outside prison in nearly three years, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, was bracing for a reaction from Washington to what amounts to a peace offering on his part.

Prince Mohammed views the decision to release the women’s rights activist as an attempt to belatedly engage the new administration, whose strident tone on human rights issues in its early weeks of office has all but conditioned a working relationship with Riyadh on righting the wrongs of the Trump years.

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At least 331 human rights defenders were murdered in 2020, report finds

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Two-thirds of those killed worked to protect environmental, land and indigenous peoples’ rights, while those providing Covid relief also faced reprisals

At least 331 human rights defenders promoting social, environmental, racial and gender justice in 25 countries were murdered in 2020, with scores more beaten, detained and criminalised because of their work, analysis has found.

Latin America, the most dangerous continent in the world in which to protect environmental, land and human rights, accounted for more than three-quarters of all the murders of human rights defenders in 2020. In Colombia, where activists are routinely targeted by armed groups despite a 2016 peace deal, 177 such deaths were recorded, more than half of the global total. The Philippines was the second deadliest country with 25 murders, followed by Honduras, Mexico, Afghanistan, Brazil and Guatemala.

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Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump party

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Breakaway group would run on ‘principled conservatism’ platform, say those involved in discussions

Dozens of former Republican officials who view the party as unwilling to stand up to Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine US democracy are in talks to form a centre-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions have said.

The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved told Reuters.

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Undercover footage at French pig farm shows ‘abusive’ conditions

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The unit, which supplies the Herta brand, had been cleared by French state vets and claimed to be addressing concerns

French veterinary officials have been accused of publishing “falsely reassuring” inspection findings after undercover footage at a farm appeared to show pigs in conditions that continued to breach regulations following allegations of abuse in December.

The farm is a supplier for the Herta brand of frankfurter, part-owned by Nestlé, which is sold by most major UK supermarkets.

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‘It’s as if there’s no Covid’: Nepal defies pandemic amid a broken economy

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Cases appear low and sports venues are packed, but protests are on the rise as jobs are lost and personal debt soars

Traffic jams and soaring pollution levels are back. Political leaders are organising mass rallies, far more focused on fighting each other than any virus. If poorer Nepalis are struggling with the dire economic fallout from Covid-19, on the surface, at least, it appears daily life in the capital, Kathmandu, is back to normal.

“It’s as if nothing has happened. The nightclubs are crowded. Schools and colleges are reopening. Sports venues are full. It doesn’t seem like there is any Covid,” says Sameer Mani Dixit, a public health specialist. “It defies logic.”

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‘It is so much bigger than Trayvon’: how bereaved mother Sybrina Fulton fought back

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She had a joyful life before the killing of her teenage son, Trayvon Martin, in 2012. Since then, she has been determined to change laws and minds – as an activist, an author and by running for office

Few people have acquired such a high-public profile as reluctantly as Sybrina Fulton. Before February 2012, she was content to be an anonymous Floridian, working for the Miami housing department and raising her two sons with her ex-husband, Tracy Martin. Then one of her sons, 17-year-old Trayvon, was shot and killed.

Trayvon had been walking to his father’s fiancee’s house one evening, unarmed, minding his own business; an armed neighbourhood watch coordinator named George Zimmerman decided the teenager was acting suspiciously. Zimmerman called the police, and, against their advice, decided to follow Trayvon. Moments later, after a violent encounter, Trayvon was shot dead. Zimmerman claimed he had acted in self-defence. At the trial, five months later, he was found not guilty of second-degree murder.

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Greek students at the barricades in dispute over education bill

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Government accused of taking law and order agenda to new heights with plans for campus police force

Before the sun had risen over Thessaloniki on Wednesday, Stergios Grigoriou and his fellow students had surrounded the Greek metropolis’s main university site and barricaded every entrance to it.

The act of defiance was not a one-off. In a country where protest politics reign large, students are on a mission: to overturn a bill that, in the name of bringing order to unruly universities, foresees the creation of disciplinary councils and a special campus police force. “Our demand is simple. The educational bill has to be withdrawn,” said Grigoriou. “It’s a repressive law that far from serving our needs only serves the fake needs of a conservative few.”

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Biden policies the same as Trumpism, says Iran’s only presidential candidate

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Hossein Dehghan criticises continuing sanctions by US and says Tehran’s approach to nuclear issue will change

The only declared candidate in Iran’s presidential elections this June has accused Joe Biden of continuing Donald Trump’s international policies, and warned that Tehran is preparing retaliatory measures to force the US to change its diplomatic trajectory.

In an interview with the Guardian, Hossein Dehghan, a military adviser to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Washington was not in a position to set preconditions for Iran’s return to the 2015 nuclear deal and called for guarantees that the US will not leave the agreement again.

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Tokyo 2020 Olympics president expected to resign over sexist comments

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Yoshiro Mori had insisted for days he would not quit but Japanese media say he will step down amid a growing tide of anger over his remarks

The president of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organising committee, Yoshiro Mori, is expected to resign after derogatory comments he made about women caused an international uproar less than six months before the Games are due to open.

Mori, who has led the organising committee since 2014, will step down after insisting for days that he would not resign, the Fuji News Network reported on Thursday.

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Biden raises Taiwan and human rights with Xi Jinping in first phone call

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The conversation came hours after the US president announced a new Pentagon taskforce on China

Joe Biden has affirmed the US’s tough line on China’s human rights abuses and regional expansionism in his first phone call with president Xi Jinping since taking office.

Xi defended China’s policies as matters of sovereignty, but told the US leader confrontation would be “a disaster”, and called for the two sides to re-establish the means to avoid misjudgments, according to state media.

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Clubhouse app: what is it and how do you get an invite to the audio app Elon Musk uses?

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The exclusive invitation-only social networking app is a hybrid of conference calls, talkback radio and Houseparty

Part talkback radio, part conference call, part Houseparty, Clubhouse is a social networking app based on audio-chat. Users can listen in to conversations, interviews and discussions between interesting people on various topics – it is just like tuning in to a podcast but live and with an added layer of exclusivity.

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Biden orders sanctions on Myanmar generals as key Aung San Suu Kyi aide detained

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US prevents generals from accessing $1bn in government funds as Kyaw Tint Swe held amid new wave of arrests

US President Joe Biden has approved an executive order for new sanctions on those responsible for the military coup in Myanmar, as the army detained another key aide to civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Fresh protests took place on Thursday following days of demonstrations in major cities and towns inside Myanmar calling for the military to cede power following its 1 February coup.

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Trump impeachment: Senate to hear prosecution arguments against former president – live

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Prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia, have reportedly launched a criminal investigation of Donald Trump’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, about the presidential election.

The New York Times reports:

On Wednesday, Fani Willis, the recently elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, sent a letter to numerous officials in state government, including Mr. Raffensperger, requesting that they preserve documents related to Mr. Trump’s call, according to a state official with knowledge of the letter. The letter explicitly stated that the request was part of a criminal investigation, said the official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The inquiry makes Georgia the second state after New York where Mr. Trump faces a criminal investigation. And it comes in a jurisdiction where potential jurors are unlikely to be hospitable to the former president; Fulton County encompasses most of Atlanta and overwhelmingly supported President Biden in the November election.
The Fulton County investigation comes on the heels of a decision Monday by Mr. Raffensperger’s office to open an administrative inquiry.

Related: 'I just want 11,780 votes': Trump pressed Georgia to overturn Biden victory

House impeachment managers are preparing to introduce new visual evidence during their presentation on Wednesday, as the trial begins in earnest following a vote to move forward with the proceedings.

The Democratic managers will lay out their case for why Donald Trump should be impeached, arguing that the former president committed “the most heinous constitutional crime possible” according to a senior aide on the impeachment manager’s team.

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US Coast Guard rescues three Cubans stranded on desert island for 33 days

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  • Two men and a woman swam to Anguilla Cay after boat capsized
  • Unclear if Cubans were trying to reach United States

The US Coast Guard rescued three Cuban nationals stranded on a desert island for roughly five weeks, after officers saw the group waving a makeshift flag to gain their attention.

The group, including two men and a woman, had been living on an uninhabited Bahamian island, Anguilla Cay, for 33 days after their boat capsized.

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Oscars release first shortlists for 2021 Academy Awards

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Boys State, MLK/FBI and Crip Camp among contenders as categories announced include best documentary and best international film

Shortlists for nine Oscar categories have been unveiled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), an intermediate stage in the thinning-out of films that have qualified for consideration for the Academy Awards. The categories include best documentary, best international film and best song, as well as best live action and documentary shorts.

The rules for each voting process vary, but in most categories a preliminary vote from industry specialists in each field is employed to create the shortlist and then the final five nominations, with the full membership of the Academy invited to vote on the winner.

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Indonesia plane crash: Sriwijaya Air jet throttle may have been faulty, says report

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Automatic throttle may have caused Sriwijaya Air jet pilots to lose control of Boeing 737-500

A malfunctioning automatic throttle may have caused the pilots of a Sriwijaya Air jet to lose control, leading to the Boeing 737-500’s plunge into the Java Sea last month, Indonesian investigators have said.

National transportation safety committee investigators said on Wednesday they were still struggling to understand why the jet nosedived into the water minutes after taking off from Jakarta on 9 January, killing all 62 people on board.

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Climate action could save ‘millions of lives’ through clean air, diet and exercise

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Meeting Paris goals would bring health benefits aside from tackling global heating, research says

Thousands of lives lost to air pollution, inactivity and unhealthy diets could be saved each year if the UK takes the action needed to tackle climate change, researchers have said.

Across the world, millions of lives could be saved if countries raise ambitions on cutting emissions to limit global heating to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, as they have committed to in the global Paris climate accord.

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Ursula von der Leyen admits failings in EU Covid vaccine rollout

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European commission leader says bloc late to authorise jabs and ‘not where it wants to be’

The EU is “not where it wants to be” with its coronavirus immunisation programme, Ursula von der Leyen has conceded, as she faced MEPs in the European parliament amid mounting criticism of the bloc’s slow deployment of vaccines.

“We were late to authorise,” the European commission president said. “We were too optimistic when it came to massive production, and perhaps too confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time. We need to ask ourselves why that is the case.”

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