Category Archives: World News

Biden signs healthcare order to undo Trump ‘damage’ as US detects two South Africa Covid variant cases – live

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In addition to rescinding the ‘global gag rule’ on Thursday, Joe Biden ordered funding restored to the UN population fund, UNFPA, which Trump stopped.

UNFPA said the US decision to restore funding will have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly coming as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.

Related: Joe Biden axes 'global gag rule' but health groups call on him to go further

It was a big day for the country’s first second gentleman, or as he is also known, the SGOTUS (yes).

Today, Kamala Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, tweeted that the title “second gentleman” has been officially recognized by Merriam Webster’s dictionary and wrote: “I might be the first, but I won’t be the last.”

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Joe Biden axes ‘global gag rule’ but health groups call on him to go further

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President’s move to end ‘abortion ban’ on overseas funding hailed – now aid groups want apology for harmful Trump policies

Health groups around the world are celebrating the end of a harmful policy banning US funding for overseas aid organisations that facilitate or promote abortion, which was scrapped by the US president, Joe Biden, in a presidential memorandum on Thursday.

Reproductive rights advocates are urging the new administration to now go further and permanently repeal the Mexico City policy – known as the “global gag rule” – to prevent it being reinstated by a future Republican president. The policy has been blamed for contributing to thousands of maternal deaths in the developing world over the past four years.

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EU could block millions of Covid vaccine doses from entering UK

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European commission says new mechanism will give national regulators power to refuse exports

Millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine could be blocked from entering Britain from the EU within days after Brussels said it had to respond to shortages emerging in member states.

Following reports of a lack of doses across the bloc, the European commission announced plans to give national regulators the power to reject export requests. The development raises concerns over the continued flow of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, for which the UK has a 40m-dose order, from its plant in Belgium.

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WHO team exits Wuhan quarantine to start Covid fact-finding mission

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Mission is politically charged as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged missteps in outbreak response

An international team of World Health Organization experts has emerged from quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan, to begin much-delayed fieldwork into the origins of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

The fact-finding mission has been beset by controversy after the WHO accused China of dragging its heels over arrangements. The team arrived more than a year after doctors in the city first raised the alarm about a mystery new illness spreading among their patients.

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US House members ask for more security amid fears they’re targets

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Letter sent to Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy asks if Congress members can use personal allowances for additional security

Pervasive fear among some members of Congress that they will be the targets of further politically motivated violence following the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol has led more than 30 of them write a letter to House leaders.

The group sent the letter to the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, asking for more support over security concerns.

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‘Keep me in handcuffs’: Navalny denounces criminal proceedings

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Kremlin critic will remain in jail until parole hearing next week where he could be sent to penal colony

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has denounced the criminal proceedings against him, telling a Russian court via a video link from jail that while it had the power now to “keep me in handcuffs … that situation is not going to continue for ever”.

As a Moscow appeal hearing has rejected calls to release him from jail and investigators charged Navalny’s top aides in a series of inquiries meant to disrupt the protest movement that has arisen in his support, he told the court he believed the proceedings were part of a campaign to intimidate the opposition.

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Remnants of mosque from earliest decades of Islam found in Israel

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Archaeologists say foundations excavated in Tiberias are of a mosque built in about AD670

Archaeologists in Israel say they have discovered the remnants of an early mosque believed to date to the earliest decades of Islam during an excavation in the northern city of Tiberias.

The foundations of the mosque, excavated just south of the Sea of Galilee by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, point to its construction roughly a generation after the death of the prophet Muhammad, making it one of the earliest Muslim houses of worship to be studied by archaeologists.

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Germany to push on with Covid travel ban plan as EU tries to coordinate rules

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Berlin planning to ban travel from UK, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa to stop spread of variants

Germany is planning a near-total ban on travellers from Britain, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa as European governments increasingly move to bar entry from countries where more contagious Covid-19 variants are rampant.

Berlin’s initiative came as EU interior ministers met to discuss a more coordinated approach to international travel restrictions.

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Canadian couple who got vaccine meant for Indigenous people may face jail time

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Rodney and Ekaterina Baker were served with court notice, said Yukon community services minister

A millionaire Canadian couple who secretly travelled to a remote community to receive a coronavirus vaccine meant for vulnerable and elderly Indigenous residents may now face jail sentences for breaking public health rules.

Casino executive Rodney Baker and his wife, Ekaterina Baker, an actor, were widely condemned after it emerged that they had chartered a plane to a remote community in the Yukon territory, where they posed as local motel employees to receive the vaccine.

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GameStop shares plunge after ban by Robinhood app

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Meteoric rise fizzles out after small investors are barred from trading in groups that had soared in value

Small investors mounting an assault on Wall Street speculators suffered a setback on Thursday as trading platforms banned them from buying more shares in GameStop, spawning conspiracy theories, political intervention and at least one lawsuit.

Amateur trading app Robinhood stopped users from investing any further in GameStop – a US chain of video games stores – and seven other companies on Thursday, after an extraordinary rise in their value, spurred by users of the chat forum website Reddit, that cost some hedge funds billions of dollars.

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Refugee rights ‘under attack’ at Europe’s borders, UN warns

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Agency says violent pushback policies are continuing despite number of arrivals falling by nearly a quarter last year

The right to asylum is coming under increasing attack at Europe’s borders, the UN’s refugee body is warning.

UNHCR says it is alarmed by mounting expulsions and pushbacks of refugees and asylum-seekers and is calling for states to urgently investigate and halt increasing violence against people at Europe’s land and sea borders.

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Here in Europe’s poorest country we have no vaccine to argue over

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Nobody in Moldova has received a Covid jab yet – and our neglected healthcare system is unable to cope

“I am happy to work on the frontline and to see the Canadian medical system function so well,” Alecu Mătrăgună wrote in a Facebook post, “but I am sad that I was vaccinated before my mother, who works in the medical system in Moldova.” Mătrăgună is a Moldovan sonographer living in Montreal. His mother is 61 and a paediatrician with more than 30 years’ service under her belt. Yet, he told me, she has no idea when the Covid-19 vaccine might become available for her and for more than 53,300 other healthcare staff in Europe’s poorest country.

I had a similar reaction to Mătrăgună’s about my family in Moldova when I saw a sign at my local London pharmacy as long ago as early December, announcing that the vaccine was on its way. At the time, my grandmother had just recovered and my father was still battling with the effects of the virus.

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Mining giant Glencore faces human rights complaint over toxic spill in Chad

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Dozens of villagers, including children, claim they suffered severe burns and sickness after contact with contaminated water

The UK government has accepted a human rights complaint against mining and commodities giant Glencore regarding a toxic wastewater spill in Chad, where dozens of villagers – among them children – claim they suffered severe burns, skin lesions and sickness after contact with contaminated water.

The complaint, brought by three human rights groups on behalf of affected communities, alleges environmental abuses and social engagement failures by the FTSE-100 company in relation to two spillages, the wastewater spill and an alleged oil spill, both in 2018.

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Italy ‘failed to protect life’ in 2013 drowning of 200 people, rules UN

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Authorities had duty under international law to respond immediately to calls from boat that came under fire and capsized

Italy failed in its duty to protect human life by delaying a rescue mission for a sinking boat in the Mediterranean, the UN Human Rights Committee found on Wednesday.

More than 200 people who had been on board drowned on 11 October 2013 after repeated requests for help were ignored, according to a ruling by the committee on a case brought by Syrian and Palestinian survivors who lost their relatives.

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Coronavirus live news: Novavax says vaccine is effective against UK variant; Paris hospitals to suspend jabs next week

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French health authority says only enough doses left for second shots from 2 February; Brazil’s president rows back after criticism over patchy rollout

Turkey will receive the remaining portion of a second consignment of 10 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech by Friday morning, health minister Fahrettin Koca said, Reuters reports.

Turkey received 6.5 million doses of the second consignment on Monday, following an initial consignment of 3 million doses nearly a month ago. It has so far vaccinated nearly 1.7 million people, mostly health workers and elderly people, according to health ministry data.

The first portion of the 10 million dose second consignment of inactive vaccine had arrived at the weekend. As of this morning (Friday), the second portion will have arrived in our country. Vaccines consignments will continue in accordance with the procurement programme,” Koca said on Twitter.

The UK’s prime minister has given his reaction to the Novavax vaccine trial.

Good news that the @Novavax vaccine has proved effective in UK trials. Thank you to all the volunteers who made these results possible.

Our medicines regulator will now assess the vaccine, which will be made in Teesside. If approved, we have 60m doses on order.

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Witness claims seeing Giulio Regeni in Cairo police station before death

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Man also alleges hearing Egyptian security officials discuss tampering with Italian student’s mobile phone

A man who claims to have witnessed the arrest of Giulio Regeni has told the Guardian how he heard and saw the Cambridge PhD student inside a police station in Cairo before he was found dead by a roadside.

The witness, who is regarded as credible by investigators in Rome, said the security officials alleged to have detained the Italian behaved as if they were above the law. “Those people that took Giulio were different,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of [Egypt’s] National Security Agency.”

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US takes aim at China territorial claims as Biden vows to back Japan

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US president smooths over Trump-era complaints to deepen Japan security alliance as new secretary of state rejects Beijing’s South China Sea claims

Joe Biden has vowed to strengthen the US’s alliance with Japan to counter growing Chinese military activity in the volatile Asia-Pacific region, including a commitment to defend the Senkakus, a group of islands in the East China sea administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.

The US president and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed during a phone call that their countries’ security alliance was “the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

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Why Brazilians are having to take the Covid crisis into their own hands – podcast

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Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, looks at the surge of infections in the Brazilian state of Amazonas that has left many hospitals without the most basic supplies and has prompted yet more protests against Bolsonaro

Rachel Humphreys talks to the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, about the Covid crisis in Brazil. A surge in infections linked to a new and seemingly more contagious variant has overwhelmed hospitals in Amazonas state, leaving many without the most basic supplies. Circumstances were so bleak that oxygen tankers were rushed over the border from Venezuela, the economically collapsed nation next door, with its leader, Nicolás Maduro, decrying what he called “Jair Bolsonaro’s public health disaster”.

Tom tells Rachel about the way the public have reacted to Bolsonaro and his government’s handling of this latest wave of infections. Inoculation began last Sunday, weeks after other Latin American countries such as Chile and Mexico. But Brazil, which has 212 million citizens, has so far secured only 6m doses of China’s CoronaVac shot and 2m of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.

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Thai police arrest 89 foreigners for Covid breach at Koh Phangan party

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Citizens from US, Britain, Switzerland and Denmark face charges for attending event police say was illegal under emergency laws

Police have raided a party at a bar on a popular resort island in southern Thailand and arrested 89 foreigners for violating coronavirus regulations.

The Tuesday night raid on the Three Sixty Bar on Koh Phangan also netted 22 Thais, including one identified as the bar’s owner and another who sold drinks there, said police Col Suparerk Pankosol, superintendent of the provincial immigration office.

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All countries should pursue a Covid-19 elimination strategy: here are 16 reasons why | Michael Baker and Martin McKee

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Countries trying to eliminate the virus have been far more successful and economically better off than those that have tried to suppress it

The past year of Covid-19 has taught us that it is the behaviour of governments, more than the behaviour of the virus or individuals, that shapes countries’ experience of the crisis. Talking about pandemic waves has given the virus far too much agency: until quite recently the apparent waves of infection were driven by government action and inaction. It is only now with the emergence of more infectious variants that it might be appropriate to talk about a true second wave.

As governments draw up their battle plans for year two, we might expect them to base their strategies on the wealth of data about what works best. And the evidence to date suggests that countries pursuing elimination of Covid-19 are performing much better than those trying to suppress the virus. Aiming for zero-Covid is producing more positive results than trying to “live with the virus”.

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