Category Archives: World News

Dante’s descendant seeks to overturn poet’s 1302 corruption conviction

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Seven centuries after the poet was found guilty in Florence, Sperello di Serego Alighieri has begun a campaign to clear his ancestor’s name

The reputation of Dante Alighieri needs little burnishing: his Divine Comedy, tracing the poet’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is widely regarded as one of the greatest works ever written. But more than 700 years after Dante was accused of corruption and condemned to be burned to death, his descendant is looking to clear his name.

Sperello di Serego Alighieri, an astrophysicist, and the law professor Alessandro Traversi are working to see if Dante’s 1302 sentencing for corruption in political office can be reversed.

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Uganda opposition leader Bobi Wine calls on court to nullify election result

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Party lawyer accuses re-elected president Yoweri Museveni of being an ‘agent of violence’

The Ugandan opposition leader and presidential challenger Bobi Wine has filed a petition at the country’s highest court to challenge the re-election of Yoweri Museveni in last month’s polls.

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, wants the supreme court in the capital, Kampala, to nullify the victory of Museveni in the 14 January poll.

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Blue whales threatened by ship collisions in busy Patagonia waters

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Endangered giants face potentially fatal encounters with the 1,000 daily fishing vessels moving through main feeding area off Chile, scientists warn

The largest mammal ever to live on the Earth, the blue whale, is under threat from boat collisions as one of its main feeding grounds in Chilean Patagonia is overrun with vessels, a new study has revealed.

The endangered whales must contend with up to 1,000 boats moving daily through an important feeding area in the eastern South Pacific, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature.

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Taiwan waives Covid quarantine fine for man who was kidnapped

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Authorities revoke £2,600 penalty after it emerges debt collectors had abducted him from self-isolation

A Taiwanese man penalised for breaching Covid quarantine regulations has had his fine revoked after it emerged he had been kidnapped by debt collectors.

The man, whose surname is Chen, returned from Hong Kong in late October and began his 14 days of mandatory home quarantine at a friend’s home in Nantou county. The next day, however, men identified as debt collectors arrived at the house and mistook Chen for his friend, who owed them money.

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Grubs up! Mealworms are on the menu – but are we ready for them?

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The mealworm market is expected to boom after the EU ruled them safe to eat. Insects are a popular food in most countries, so can Europeans get over the yuck factor?

It’s a bit … well, mealy. Dry (because it’s been dried), a little crunchy, not strongly flavoured, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Salt would probably help, or chilli, lime – something, anything, to spice it up a bit. And definitely a beer, if I was going to consume much more, to help wash it down.

I’m eating mealworms. Dried yellow mealworms, the larvae of the beetle Tenebrio molitor. Why? Because they are nutritious, made up mainly of protein, fat and fibre. Because there are potentially environmental and economic benefits, as they require less feed and produce less waste and carbon dioxide than other sources of animal protein. And because Efsa, the EU food safety agency, has just declared them safe to eat.

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Hong Kong migration agents report rush of inquiries for UK visas

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High level of interest in scheme launched on Sunday comes despite fears applications will be monitored

Migration agents in Hong Kong say they have had a rush of inquiries from people seeking to access the new visa scheme launched by the UK government on Sunday, despite fears their applications will be monitored.

Britain’s Home Office is expecting about 300,000 people to exercise a newly offered right to move to Britain and eventually seek citizenship in the next five years. The scheme was announced in July in response to the worsening security situation in Hong Kong, as the Chinese government tightens its control over the city with a draconian national security law.

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‘Police searched my baby’s nappy’: migrant families on the perilous Balkan route

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‘The game’ of crossing the Croatian-Bosnian border with children often results in degrading treatment and violent pushbacks, refugees say

An Afghan girl pulls her baby sister along in a pram through the mud and snow. Saman is six and baby Darya is 10 months old. They and their family have been pushed back into Bosnia 11 times by the Croatian police, who stripped Darya bare to check if the parents had hidden mobile phones or money in her nappy.

“They searched her as though she were an adult. I could not believe my eyes,” says Darya’s mother, Maryam, 40, limping through the mud and clinging to a stick.

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‘I document America’s strange beauty’: the photography of My Name Is Earl’s Jason Lee

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He played a redemption-seeking redneck on TV, but lately the actor has found solace off-screen, travelling with his camera. He talks about slackers, the Mallrats sequel and breezing into one-horse towns

Jason Lee knew he was in trouble when he stepped on the set. The year was 1992, Sonic Youth were at their peak and he was starring as a doomed skateboarder in their latest video. As a music obsessed, pro skateboarder with acting aspirations, he felt he had a point to prove. To add more pressure, it was for the song 100% – the band’s classic ode to a murdered Black Flag roadie – and the video was being co-directed by one of his skateboarding friends (some guy called Spike Jonze).

“I was really trying my hardest to focus,” says Lee. “I was like pretending to be Robert De Niro on the set, really trying to get into it and make it count and make it real and believable.”

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Estonia’s first female prime minister vows to tackle climate crisis

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Kaja Kallas, 43, took power on Tuesday after the previous coalition collapsed due to a corruption scandal

Estonia’s first female prime minister has promised to implement changes in both style and substance in the governance of the Baltic nation, as she takes charge after two years in which a far-right party was in the ruling coalition.

Kaja Kallas, a 43-year-old lawyer and head of Estonia’s Reform party, was sworn into office on Tuesday.

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Ten years after the Arab spring, Yemen has little hope left

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Racked by war, cholera and now coronavirus, the country faces the world’s worst famine in decades

Ten years after the rage and hope of the Arab spring filled the public spaces of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital has become a curiously quiet place.

Traders and customers alike shuffle through the streets of the old city, ground down by the repression of the Houthi rebel occupation and the economic hardship caused by the Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition blockade.

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Jared Kushner nominated for Nobel peace prize

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Kushner and his deputy Avi Berkowitz join Greta Thunberg and Alexei Navalny on the nominations list

Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for their role in negotiating four normalisation deals between Israel and Arab nations known as the “Abraham Accords”.

Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, and Berkowitz, who was the Middle East envoy, were key figures in negotiating deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

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New Zealand climate commission proposals will need a revolution in policy | Robert McLachlan

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Changes called for will require rapid and sweeping regulation in all areas of society from transport to forestry

The New Zealand Climate Change Commission has released their first package of advice for public consultation. The advice covers the first three carbon budgets (out to 2035) and provides a detailed plan on how to achieve them.

As many aspects of the country’s climate policies have been criticised as weak – from the “split gas” approach in which not all gases need to reach net zero emissions by 2050, to an over-reliance on commercial forestry, to a past failure to cut emissions and future projections that miss targets – the commission’s first major report has been keenly anticipated on all sides.

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Jacinda Ardern faces Waitangi Day reckoning with Māori as progress stalls

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Three years after the prime minister asked Māori to hold her to account, many are disillusioned with her government

In an oft-repeated story New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has recalled how growing up in the small, largely Māori town of Murupara, she would see children going to school hungry, and with no shoes on their feet.

It was these scenes of entrenched inequality and poverty, often along racial lines, that drove a teenage Ardern into the Labour party, where she has dedicated herself to combating child poverty.

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Coronavirus live news: EU wants 70% of adults vaccinated by end of summer; Israel extends Covid lockdown

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EU aims to vaccinate 70% of adults by the end of summer; WHO mission at ground-zero Wuhan market; Israel extends lockdown as Covid variants offset vaccination drive

A World Health Organization team has visited the Huanan food market in Wuhan as part of its fieldwork in a politically sensitive mission to investigate the origins of the pandemic, AFP reports.

Their visit is being tightly controlled, and the WHO has already lowered expectations of pinpointing the source of the virus, which is known to have infected more than 102 million people so far with over 2.2 million deaths.

AstraZeneca will increase its coronavirus vaccine deliveries to the EU by 30%, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday as the bloc sought to claw back time lost rolling out the jabs, AFP reports.

The British-Swedish company had announced last week that it could deliver only a quarter of the doses originally promised to the bloc for the first quarter of the year because of problems at one of its European factories.

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Coronavirus live news: UK variant behind ‘half of new Dutch cases’; concern at Italy reopening

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Dutch minister’s comments come as country says primary schools still to reopen next week; experts say easing could cause spike in cases

Elderly people in Poland will not be given the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab, the vaccination minister said on Monday, adding that the final call will be made following advice from medical experts.

Europe’s medicines regulator approved AstraZeneca/Oxford University’s jab for over-18s on Friday, but said there were not yet enough results for people over 55 to determine how effective the vaccine will be.

“If we are talking about the decision of the medical council, we expect it in the coming days or possibly hours, but it is clear that elderly people will not be vaccinated with this shot,” Michal Dworczyk, the prime minister’s top aide, who has been put in charge of vaccinations, told a news conference. “We are waiting for a clear recommendation from the medical council and then... we will take a decision,” he added.

South Africa's first batch of lifesaving #COVID19 #Vaccine doses have officially touched ground! #IChooseVaccination #VaccineRolloutSA #WeChooseVaccination pic.twitter.com/V8ztEmdSKo

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Myanmar army takes power in coup as Aung San Suu Kyi detained

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Military has previously threatened to ‘take action’ over alleged fraud in a November election

Myanmar’s military has taken power in a coup and declared a state of emergency, hours after detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior figures from the ruling party.

Phone and mobile internet services in the city of Yangon were down on Monday morning and military trucks, one carrying barbed-wire barriers, were parked outside City Hall. The state-run MRTV network said it had been unable to broadcast. Banks were closed across the nation.

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‘That hurricane is coming’: expert warns US to brace for virulent Covid strain

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Leading infectious disease expert predicts that deadlier British strain will become dominant this spring

A leading infectious disease expert predicted on Sunday that the deadlier British variant of Covid-19 will become the dominant strain of the virus in the US and could hit the country like a hurricane.

The worrying forecast came as the total of confirmed infections in the US passed the 26m mark, with the death toll advancing steadily towards the grim milestone of half a million after on Sunday surpassing the total of 440,000, by far the highest in the world according to data gathered by the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus research center.

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Biden presidency ‘may herald new start for Saudi-Iranian relations’

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Existing quiet cooperation has been under way for months, say authors of Guardian comment article

An opportunity for a new beginning between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been presented by Joe Biden’s presidency, two leading Saudi and Iranians close to their diplomatic leaderships are proposing in an article in the Guardian today.

The article is co-written by Abdulaziz Sager, the Saudi Arabian chairman and founder of the Gulf Research Center, and Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat and now a nuclear specialist based at Princeton University.

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Alexei Navalny protests: Moscow in lockdown as police detain thousands

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Riot police and national guard troops close central metro stations and block off streets

Police have paralysed the centres of Russia’s largest cities, including Moscow, as the Kremlin sought to beat back rallies in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the country’s most significant protests in a decade.

Supporters of the Kremlin critic took to the streets to protest against his jailing, despite the biting cold and threat of arrest. At least 4,700 people, including Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, were detained as the rallies across the country entered a second week.

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