Category Archives: World News

Freedom and fairness: Covid vaccine passport plans cause global unease

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Schemes are in development from Sweden to China, but there are fears around transmission and social unrest

It is the question being asked with increasing urgency around the world, at least in countries where the vaccine is already available: how much freedom to live life as it was before the pandemic should be granted to those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19?

Its impacts range from the speed at which economies can open, to when grandparents and grandchildren can hug again, but it is causing growing unease among decision-makers who warn there is a danger of dividing societies already under huge strain due to pandemic restraints.

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‘It feels like a placebo’: Mexico’s vaccine program sees disastrous launch

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Pace for vaccinations has slowed as government website to register crashes repeatedly and Covid death toll is third highest

Rodolfo spent hour after aggravating hour trying to register his elderly mother for a Covid-19 vaccination through a Mexican government website, only for the system to crash repeatedly.

“I spent three days fighting with the website,” he said. “My mom would have been unable to do it without me.”

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Helicopters search for three climbers missing in K2 winter attempt

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Ali Sadpara of Pakistan, John Snorri of Iceland, and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile lost contact with base camp

An aerial search to find three experienced climbers who lost contact with base camp during a winter ascent of K2, the world’s second highest mountain, will resume on Monday morning officials have said.

celebrated Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara and his two companions, John Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile lost contact with base camp late Friday and were reported missing on Saturday after their support team stopped receiving reports from them during their ascent.

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Argentina: human rights outrage at province’s ‘abusive’ quarantine

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Formosa has the country’s lowest Covid death rate – but critics say that has been achieved by ‘flagrant, grave’ rights violations

The Argentinian province with the lowest Covid death rate in the country has been accused by human rights groups of forcibly quarantining thousands of people under inhuman conditions to achieve that result.

Related: Argentina legalizing abortion will spur reform in Latin America, minister says

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Myanmar: tens of thousands march against military coup for second day

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Large demonstrations across country despite junta blocking internet access and restricting phone lines

Demonstrators in Myanmar have vowed to continue their protests until their elected leaders are released and democracy returns, as tens of thousands of people poured on to the streets of towns and cities across the country for a second day.

Large crowds gathered in the main city of Yangon and elsewhere, condemning the military for ousting the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup.

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Outrage over French girl’s rape case sparks demand for law to protect minors

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Campaigners call for the introduction of an age of consent as 20 firefighters face charges

Protests will take place across France on Sunday in support of a woman allegedly raped by 20 firefighters when she was between 13 and 15 years old. Her case is being examined in the country’s highest court this week and campaigners hope it will lead to an age of sexual consent being enshrined in law as it is in the rest of the European Union.

Julie* says she was raped by Parisian firefighters over a period of two years, having been groomed by Pierre, a firefighter who had assisted her during a severe anxiety seizure when she was 13 in early 2008. Three of the accused have admitted they had sex with her but say it was consensual. In a journal written shortly afterwards Julie says she was “terrified and paralysed with fear” at the time.

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150 feared dead as glacier crashes into dam in northern India

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Floods force evacuation of villages and witnesses report avalanche creating wall of dust, rock and water

As many as 150 people were feared dead in northern India after a Himalayan glacier broke and crashed into a dam early on Sunday, with floods forcing the evacuation of villages downstream.

“The actual number has not been confirmed yet,” but 100 to 150 people were feared dead, Om Prakash, the chief secretary of Uttarakhand state where the incident occurred, said.

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Poet, pioneer… can family finally honour legacy of Franco victim?

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DNA tests will confirm if exhumed body is Republican heroine, María Domínguez Remón, who overcame poverty to become the first female mayor

The hair that the clips and comb once held in place, probably in a bun, is long gone, as are the feet that filled the sandals, and the clothes to which the two buttons belong.

All that survives of the middle-aged woman who was murdered in 1936 and exhumed from the cemetery of the small Aragonese town of Fuendejalón last weekend is her skeleton, its split skull punched through by a bullet.

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The crucial differences in Trump’s second impeachment trial

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In some ways the trial will be a replay of last year’s – but Trump is the first to be tried by the Senate after leaving office, and it will likely be ‘dramatic’

It might be tempting to call it the trial of the century but it is just as likely to invoke a sense of deja vu. This week Donald Trump faces an impeachment trial in the US Senate. Yes, another one.

Trump stands accused of inciting an insurrection when he urged supporters to “fight” his election defeat before they stormed the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January, clashed with police and left five people dead.

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Coronavirus live: ‘We had clear focus on being quick but no blank cheque,’ says UK ex-vaccine chief of rollout success

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Kate Bingham says ‘the UK had a very strategic approach … to secure vaccines quickly. The European approach … was more about making sure you got the best value for money’

Venetians have celebrated a very different carnival this year, without the usual crowds of tourists, Reuters reported.

“It’s totally surreal,” said 47-year-old carnival-goer Chiara Ragazzon, an office worker. “What hits me most is the silence. You’ve always been able to hear music during the carnival, people having fun. But Venice in the fog - it’s still a magical place.”

Ragazzon and her husband had ventured into Venice from their home around 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.

More than 12 million people in the UK have now received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to government data up to and including 6 February.

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Face off: the extraordinary power struggle between Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny

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He’s been poisoned and jailed... but not silenced. Now Navalny poses the greatest threat to the president’s 21-year rule

Alexei Navalny was in defiant mood last Tuesday, as he waited for his inevitable sentence. He made a heart gesture for his wife, Yulia, who was sitting at the back of Moscow’s city courtroom. Navalny smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t be sad! Everything is going to be all right,” he yelled at her. She waved back. Meanwhile, a state prosecutor droned on.

Last week’s sham trial was the latest episode in an epic stand-off between two men for a nation’s future. One is the man in the dock, Russia’s foremost opposition leader, and now a global figure, likened by some to Nelson Mandela. The other is the country’s president of two decades, a former KGB colonel who appears determined to stay in power and to smash a popular revolt against him.

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MPs urge British Olympians to boycott 2022 Beijing Winter Games

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Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and Labour MP Chris Bryant urge officials and athletes to protest against oppression of Uighur communities

Senior political figures have called for British athletes to boycott next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing in response to widespread human rights abuses in China.

Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Labour MP Chris Bryant, a member of the foreign affairs select committee and a former junior foreign minister, said the government and the British Olympic Association should act.

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Farmers block roads across India in protest over agriculture law

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Protesters use tractors, lorries and boulders to create blockades and press for repeal of legislation

Thousands of farmers blockaded main roads across India for several hours on Saturday to press their demand for the repeal of new agricultural laws that have led to months of major protests.

The protesters used tractors, lorries and boulders to blockade the roads. They carried banners and flags denouncing the laws, which they say will leave them poorer and at the mercy of corporations.

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New Zealand men are still stuck in roles that risk harm to themselves and others | John Daniell and Glenn McConnell

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‘Don’t be a dick’ was one useful motto we came across in our podcast examination of how to be a modern man

In a Wellington cafe, one of New Zealand’s most respected academics talked about the disconnect between his feelings and the way he knew he was supposed to be: “I could not understand why anyone would see putting your head between two other men’s buttocks as being the high point of New Zealand culture. I was staggered by it. But I never said that, of course – I just buried those thoughts.”

Jock Phillips would go on to become the national historian, but as a boy growing up in the 1960s he knew the wisdom of keeping his cranium down in a land where rugby was next to a religion.

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Somalia leaders fail to reach deal on elections

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Deadline to choose new president likely to be missed after negotiations collapse

Somalia’s leaders have failed to break a deadlock over the country’s elections, with no clear path to a vote just days before the government’s mandate expires.

The fragile country is likely to miss the 8 February deadline for choosing a new president after days of negotiations between the central government and federal states collapsed on Friday.

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Two New York Times journalists leave paper over different controversies

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Staff memo said Donald McNeil, reporter who used racist slur on student trip, and Andy Mills, Caliphate podcast producer, departed

Two New York Times journalists have left the paper over separate controversies involving racist and sexist behavior, including its high-profile Covid-19 reporter Donald McNeil, following disclosures about his use of a racist slur while on a company-sponsored student trip.

The departures of McNeil and audio journalist, Andy Mills, a co-creator of the Daily podcast and a producer and co-host of the now partially retracted Caliphate podcast, come amid a wider reckoning across over racism and abusive behavior within American newsrooms.

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Congress is ‘better poised than ever’ to pass paid family leave bill, lawmakers say

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Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Rosa DeLauro first introduced the Family Act in 2013, but it has failed to gain sufficient support

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has said US Congress is in a “unique moment” and “better poised than ever” to pass a paid family and medical leave bill that would make the benefit permanently accessible to all American workers for the first time, as she and congresswoman Rosa DeLauro reintroduced the legislation on Friday.

Currently, the US is the only industrialised nation in the world not to have a national paid family and medical leave policy.

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Canadian museum’s ancient carving is one I made earlier, says local artist

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A stone figure found on a beach was probably by a Lekwungen people artefact, the Royal British Columbia Museum said, but Ray Boudreau begged to differ

Early one morning last summer, walkers on a beach in western Canada spotted an oblong stone figure resting on the sand.

Weighing nearly 100kg, it bore a face with exaggerated features – a bulging eye, contorted nose and lips – and was covered in a thin layer of seaweed and algae.

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Thousands march in protest against Myanmar military coup – video

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Thousands of people took to the streets of Yangon on Saturday to denounce this week’s military coup and demand the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's ousted leader. Myanmar’s junta has tried to silence dissent by temporarily blocking Facebook and extended the social media crackdown to Twitter and Instagram on Saturday in the face of the growing protest movement

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Myanmar: tens of thousands protest against coup despite internet blackout

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Demonstrators in standoff with police amid demands for release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Myanmar on Saturday in the first major demonstration since the military seized power, despite a nationwide internet blackout imposed to stifle dissent.

In the main city Yangon, protesters chanted “down with the military dictatorship” and carried images of the ousted leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint, whose party won a landslide election in November. The military detained both in raids early on Monday morning and they have not been seen in public since.

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