Category Archives: World News

‘To heal, we must remember’: Biden holds memorial for 400,000 US Covid victims – live

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The justice department has said it will not pursue insider trading charges against Republican senator Richard Burr.

The New York Times reports:

The Justice Department informed Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, on Tuesday that it would not pursue insider trading charges against him, according to his lawyer and another person briefed on the decision, quietly ending a monthslong investigation into his dumping of hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock in the turbulent early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

The decision by the department and the Securities and Exchange Commission effectively cleared a cloud of legal jeopardy that has loomed over Mr. Burr since the sales were first disclosed in March. At the crux of the case was whether Mr. Burr, then the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had acted based on nonpublic information about the contagion that he received at senators-only briefings.

California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra launched 9 lawsuits against the Trump administration.

The lawsuits include challenges of:

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Coronavirus live news: Germany extends partial lockdown as UK suffers record daily Covid deaths

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Germany extends lockdown to 14 February and tightens restrictions; US deaths pass 400,000; US suffers record daily deaths

Covid-19 is unlikely to ever die out, even with vaccination efforts, but it could become more transmissible and less deadly, New Zealand’s director general of health has warned.

“If you think about influenza, which was first recorded in 1172 I think, in Europe … these viruses don’t tend to die out … They change over time and in fact what we are seeing with these new variants with the Covid-19 virus is that they tend become more transmissible and less deadly over time,” Dr Ashley Bloomfield told the AM Show on Wednesday.

Related: Covid unlikely to die out, says New Zealand health chief Ashley Bloomfield

If you fancy a break from the bad news, why not spend a few minutes thinking about sphinx moths (also known as hawk moths):

Related: The nature of the sphinx moth: 'it uses its big-ass tongue to get this guy pollinated' | Helen Sullivan

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Coronavirus live: Spain reports record new cases; Italy may take legal action over Pfizer vaccine delivery delays

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Spain records 41,576 new cases; Italy considers legal action over Pfizer vaccine delivery delays; France warns against wearing home-made masks

Spain logged another record number of new infections on Wednesday afternoon, recording 41,576 new cases in the preceding 24 hours and bringing the country’s total caseload to 2,412,318. It also recorded 464 deaths.

The new record came five days after the previous single-day high of 40,197 new cases.

Health authorities in Madrid have started mass testing hundreds of young people for Covid-19 at universities in a bid to detect asymptomatic carriers.

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Giuseppe Conte wins confidence vote in Italy’s senate by slim margin

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Prime minister faces leading an even more unstable coalition after exit of Matteo Renzi’s party

Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has managed to cling to power, but he will plough ahead with an even more fragile government as the country battles to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic and recession.

Conte, who has led two different administrations since 2018, was supported by 156 lawmakers in the senate on Tuesday, with 140 voting against and 16 abstaining. Conte also won a vote of confidence in the lower house on Monday.

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Biden administration ‘to declassify report’ into Khashoggi murder

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Decision would mean US could assign blame for death on to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman

The Biden administration will declassify an intelligence report into the murder by the Saudi government of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to Avril Haines, who has been nominated to serve as director of national intelligence.

The decision means that the US is likely to officially assign blame for Khashoggi’s brutal murder to the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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Fiji warned on failings at home after winning UN human rights council role

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Fiji won a fierce contest to head the global rights group, but coalition of NGOs says repression and abuses domestically must be addressed

Fiji has won an intense and secretive geo-political battle to become the first Pacific island nation to win presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council, but its ascension has come with demands from critics for it to address systemic rights abuses at home.

Overcoming last-minute challenges from Bahrain and Uzbekistan, both backed by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, Fiji decisively won 29 out of 47 votes to take control of the powerful and influential global body.

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Global sales of electric cars accelerate fast in 2020 despite pandemic

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Sales of electric cars rose by 43% while overall car sales slumped by a fifth last year

Global sales of electric cars accelerated fast in 2020, rising by 43% to more than 3m, despite overall car sales slumping by a fifth during the coronavirus pandemic.

Tesla was the brand selling the most electric cars, delivering almost 500,000, followed by Volkswagen. Sales of electric cars more than doubled in Europe, pushing the region past China as the world’s biggest market for them, according to data published on Tuesday by EV-volumes.com, a Sweden-based consultancy.

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Single Covid vaccine dose in Israel ‘less effective than we thought’

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Surge in infections dampens optimism over country’s advanced immunisation programme

Israel’s coronavirus tsar has warned that a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be providing less protection than originally hoped, as the country reported a record 10,000 new Covid infections on Monday.

In remarks reported by Army Radio, Nachman Ash said a single dose appeared “less effective than we had thought”, and also lower than Pfizer had suggested.

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Even in a Moscow jail, Alexei Navalny is dangerous to Putin

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Analysis: release of investigation into Putin’s wealth shows opposition leader is still determined to expose Russian president

For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has refused to say Alexei Navalny’s name in public, referring to him as “that gentleman”, or more recently, the “patient”, a reference to his suspected poisoning by FSB agents.

In the logic of politics, Putin is simply trying not to give the Russian opposition leader free advertising. But his linguistic game also points to a rivalry that has become deeply personal, stoked by a decade of attacks against friends and family, and made urgent by the understanding that Navalny will not back down despite the threat of death by poisoning or prison.

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Police find stolen Leonardo copy museum did not know was missing

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Museum shut due to coronavirus was unaware that 500-year-old Salvator Mundi had been missing

Italian police has found a 500-year-old copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in a Naples flat and returned it to a museum that had no idea it had been stolen.

Officers said late Monday they had arrested the 36-year-old owner of the flat on suspicion of receiving stolen goods, after the painting was discovered in his bedroom cupboard.

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Mexico archaeologists reveal tale of cannibalism and reprisal from conquest

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A convoy of Spaniards and allies was ritually sacrificed in 1520 at Tecoaque – ‘the place where they ate them’ – before Hernán Cortés wreaked revenge

New research suggests Spanish conquistadores butchered at least a dozen women and their children in an Aztec-allied town where the inhabitants sacrificed and ate a detachment of Spaniards they had captured months earlier.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History published findings on Monday from years of excavation work at the town of Tecoaque, which means “the place where they ate them” in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs.

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Europe can only fix its relationship with Africa if it exorcises its colonial ghosts | Shada Islam

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Paternalism and racism must be tackled if the EU is to rebuild trust with a young, economically dynamic continent

Black Lives Matter protests last summer sparked an uncomfortable reckoning for many European nations with a legacy of slavery and colonialism.

Excavating this dark history via revised school curriculums and initiatives such as Black History Month is difficult. But it is badly needed, and not just to dispel the self-congratulatory and entirely false narratives about Europe’s “civilisational” past still being driven by nationalist and populist politicians.

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Guatemalan security forces block Honduran migrant caravan heading to US – video

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Guatemalan security forces blocked hundreds of migrants advancing towards the US on Monday.

The government said the road in eastern Guatemala reopened to traffic on Monday after troops and police officers launched teargas and pushed them  back down the highway.

Security forces closed in on the migrants just beyond the village of Vado Hondo, some 55km from the borders of Honduras and El Salvador.

The removal of the group was the latest effort by Guatemalan authorities to break up the caravan, which authorities said numbered close to 8,000 people ,within hours of its departure for the US last week.

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US presidential pardons: a potted history of a shabby convention

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Donald Trump is expected to pardon more than 100 people, following in the footsteps of White House predecessors

Donald Trump is hardly unique in his controversial use of presidential pardons, which have been a sometimes sordid feature of US politics for well over two centuries.

In his final hours in office, Trump is expected to pardon more than 100 people, including political allies, friends and cronies. He has already granted clemency to principal figures from his 2016 campaign.

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Sri Lankan holy man’s ‘miracle’ potion for Covid turns sour

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Minister who publicly drank syrup touted as coronavirus cure tests positive

A self-styled Sri Lankan holy man’s supposed miracle potion to prevent Covid-19 has turned sour after a minister who publicly drank it was taken to hospital with the virus.

Thousands defied public gathering restrictions to swamp a village in central Sri Lanka last month to get the syrup made by Dhammika Bandara.

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EU border force head faces calls to quit over allegations he ‘misled’ MEPs

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Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri accused over failure to appoint officers to protect people’s rights, with home affairs commissioner calling for ‘clarity’

The head of the EU’s border force is under growing pressure to stand down after being accused by the European commission of acting unlawfully and giving misleading evidence to MEPs.

The allegations against Fabrice Leggeri, the executive director of Frontex, relate to the agency’s failure to recruit any of the 40 officers it is obliged to employ to protect the rights of people crossing into Europe.

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Coronavirus live news: China and WHO criticised by independent Covid panel; US nears 400,000 deaths

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California’s state epidemiologist calls to stop 300,000 vaccinations after possible severe allergic reactions; tens of thousands skip vaccination in India

The Times is reporting on a British Airways pilot who has returned home after a record 243 days in hospital with Covid-19.

Nicholas Synnott, 59, was admitted to hospital in Texas in March and released just before Christmas to go home to Betchworth, Surrey.

Staunch your tears and stay your sorrows - Helen might have departed this ‘ere blog but I, Amelia Hill, am here to walk beside for the next few hours - more like a wise guide, I like to think than that mad pontificator, the Ancient Mariner. But I guess we need to see what the next few hours bring...

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Landlocked Lesotho faces food crisis amid Covid border closures

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Food price increases and economic impact of lockdowns have left a quarter of the kingdom’s population reliant on food aid, UN warns

Almost a quarter of Lesotho’s population will require food aid between January and March as a result of Covid-19 restrictions, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned.

More than 580,000 people out of a population of 2.2 million are estimated to be food insecure, despite predictions of normal to above average rains this year and the potential for above average cereal production.

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EU’s Covid vaccination debacle is down to institutional inflexibility

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Supply delays underline there was no legal or economic justification for central planning

A storm is raging over the EU’s failure to have ordered more of the approved Covid-19 vaccines ahead of time. Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of the US pharmaceutical company Moderna, which gained approval for its vaccine shortly after Pfizer/BioNTech, claims that the EU has relied too much on “vaccines from its own laboratories”.

Did the European commission prioritise supporting its own pharmaceutical industry over protecting human lives? In fact, matters are not as simple as that. Contrary to what Bancel wants us to believe, the EU has actually ordered too little of its own vaccine. After all, the vaccine that is being administered most widely across the west was developed by a German company, BioNTech, and thus comes from the EU (though it was tested and partly produced in partnership with Pfizer in the US and with Fosun Pharma in China).

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‘The Capitol riot was our Chernobyl’: James Comey on Trump, the ‘pee tape’ and Clinton’s emails

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The former FBI director was sickened and angered by the attack incited by the president. But has he come to terms with his part in getting him elected?

As an investigator turned author, James Comey has developed a forensic eye for detail. The colour of the curtains in the Oval Office. The length of Donald Trump’s tie. Something about the US president that the camera often misses.

“Donald Trump conveys a menace, a meanness in private that is not evident in most public views of him,” says Comey, a former director of the FBI, from his home in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington DC.

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