Posing as ‘Maxim Ustinov’, a fictional aide for a top FSB general, Navalny phoned Konstantin Kudryavtsev and asked for details of the operation, demanding to know what had gone wrong. Unaware that he was being spoofed, Kudryavtsev apparently confirmed the FSB was behind the poisoning and said his colleagues had applied novichok to the inner seams of the opposition leader’s boxer shorts, when Navalny was staying in the Siberian city of Tomsk
Continue reading...Category Archives: World News
EU foreign ministers pave way for revival of Iran nuclear deal
Step would allow Tehran to come back into compliance with deal, so long as US sanctions were lifted
EU foreign ministers have agreed not to set fresh preconditions on a revival of the Iran nuclear deal, believing Tehran and Washington should be able to come back into full compliance with the agreement without at this stage needing to accept to extend or strengthen it.
The step removes one of the potential roadblocks to Iran coming back into compliance with the existing deal, so long as the US lifts its sanctions and complies with UN resolutions.
Continue reading...Global food industry on course to drive rapid habitat loss – research
World faces huge wildlife losses by 2050 unless what and how food is produced changes
The global food system is on course to drive rapid and widespread ecological damage with almost 90% of land animals likely to lose some of their habitat by 2050, research has found.
A study published in the journal Nature Sustainability shows that unless the food industry is rapidly transformed, changing what people eat and how it is produced, the world faces widespread biodiversity loss in the coming decades.
Continue reading...Navalny says Russian officer admits putting poison in underwear
Opposition leader apparently dupes spy agency worker into revealing role in novichok plot
One of the operatives allegedly involved in the attempt to kill Alexei Navalny has confessed to his role in the plot, and has revealed that the Russian opposition leader was apparently poisoned via his underwear.
Navalny phoned two members of the team from Russia’s FSB spy agency, which allegedly tried to murder him. One recognised him immediately and hung up. The second operative, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, was seemingly duped into thinking he was talking to an aide working for a top FSB general.
Continue reading...Hong Kong activist Nathan Law applies for asylum in Britain
Exclusive: Law said he chose UK in hope of ‘sounding an alarm’ over threats to democracy in Europe from China
Opinion: I left for London so I could tell Britain truth about China
The Hong Kong activist Nathan Law has applied for asylum in the UK, six months after fleeing his home on the eve of the national security law coming into force.
Law revealed in an opinion article for the Guardian on Monday that he had submitted a refugee claim to the UK government. He said he had chosen Britain in the hope he could “sound an alarm” over threats to democracy in Europe from the Chinese Communist party.
Continue reading...‘It speaks to an ancient history’: why South Africa has the world’s most exciting dance music
Styles like afrohouse, gqom and amapiano are thriving – but with ‘half-baked white kids getting a lot more airplay’, South Africa’s inequalities still hold the dance scene back
Many people got their first taste of South African dance music this year via six Angolans dancing in their backyard, dinner plates in hand. Their viral video, with casual but masterful moves set to Jerusalema by South African producer Master KG, created a global dance craze; the track ended up all over Radio 1 this autumn and topped streaming charts across Europe.
Jerusalema is just one track amid what has now become arguably the most vibrant and innovative dance music culture on the planet. In South Africa, dance music is pop music, from townships like Soweto and KwaDabeka to cities like Durban and Cape Town. The country has 11 official languages, each with their own cultural practices, and even the national anthem of the so-called Rainbow Nation is comprised of the country’s five most commonly spoken: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English. Out of this rich cultural heritage, and in a country that has long had distinct dance styles like jaiva, marabi, kwela and mbaqanga, has come wave after wave of astonishing work.
Continue reading...Coronavirus live news: Boris Johnson to hold crisis meeting as India joins countries banning flights from UK
India joins France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Bulgaria in flight bans over new strain; US aid bill should have votes to pass
- European states ban travel from UK as new Covid strain takes hold
- What do we know about the fast-spreading Covid variant in UK?
- Hard lockdown ‘needed to prevent Sydney Christmas Covid surge’
- Moderna vaccine shipments begin as US reels under Covid surge
- See all our coverage
That’s all from me, Caroline Davies. Thank you for your time. Handing over now to my colleague Aamna Mohdin.
The chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, Ken Marsh, has said there is “no way” officers will be knocking on the doors of “normal” households in London to check coronavirus restrictions were being followed now the city is in Tier 4.
“We won’t be knocking on people’s doors at all, unless there is a large group and noise, ie a party or something like that.
Continue reading...Kilauea volcano erupts after earthquake on Hawaii’s Big Island
During it’s last eruption in 2018 Kilauea spewed lava for four months, destroying 700 homes
The Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island has erupted.
The eruption began late on Sunday in the Halema’uma’u crater, according to the US Geological Survey. Kilauea is in the Hawaii Volcanoes national park.
Continue reading...Hong Kong court reinstates mask ban at public gatherings
Judges’ decision appeared to rely on government accounts of violence at protest rallies in 2019
Hong Kong’s court of final appeal has reinstated a full ban on wearing masks at public gatherings, ruling in favour the government’s use of colonial-era laws.
The decision overturns the ruling by an appeal court in April, which found the ban, made unilaterally by the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, at the peak of 2019’s protests, was partly unconstitutional in that it could not be declared for lawful public gatherings. It also upheld the constitutionality of using the colonial-era ordinances for the first time in half a century.
Continue reading...How the Guardian covered 2020 – the year that changed the world
This year was the most challenging and extraordinary year for news. Our journalists worked tirelessly throughout 2020, from the very start of the year with the Australian bushfires, through the struggle for Hong Kong, the Harvey Weinstein verdict to the death of George Floyd, and the dramatic and divisive US presidential election. But of course, the Covid-19 pandemic was the dominant global story of the year. The Guardian's coverage sought to foreground the science and the latest data, hold the government and the scientific establishment to account and expose incompetence, and bring empathy and humanity to the stories of the victims. Here are some of the highlights of our journalism over that time.
• Show your support for the Guardian’s powerful, open, independent journalism in 2020 and the years ahead
France’s ban on UK transport came as surprise, says Grant Shapps
Transport secretary says UK aims to resolve issue ‘as soon as possible’ amid fears over new Covid strain
France’s 48-hour ban on freight hauliers from Britain was “surprising”, the UK transport secretary has said, amid expected chaos at British ports.
Although Grant Shapps said the disruption was not a “specific problem” in regards to food and medicine shortages in the short term, the government’s aim was to “get this resolved as soon as possible”.
Continue reading...Epidemiologist looks to the past to predict second post-pandemic ‘roaring 20s’
Dr Nicholas Christakis says once pandemics end, often there is a period in which people seek out extensive social interactions
It is almost exactly one year since the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was identified by Chinese scientists as the source of a new, lethal respiratory illness.
Since, more than 1.5 million people have died globally, economies worldwide have shut down multiple times and societies have isolated in their homes and watched holidays pass without the closeness of family and friends. Ahead of us is a year undertaking the most logistically challenging public health campaign ever.
Continue reading...‘Slaughtered like chickens’: Eritrea heavily involved in Tigray conflict, say eyewitnesses
Despite denials by Ethiopia, multiple reports confirm killings, looting and forcible return of refugees by Asmara’s forces
In early December, Ethiopian state television broadcast something unexpected: a fiery exchange between civilians in Shire, in the northern Tigray region, and Ethiopian soldiers, who had recently arrived in the area.
To the surprise of viewers used to wartime propaganda, the Tigrayan elders spoke in vivid detail of the horrors that had befallen the town since the outbreak of war between the federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s longstanding ruling party, which was ousted from the state capital of Mekelle in late November.
Continue reading...Inside Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine development
From a small discovery to producing at scale, photojournalist David Levene documents the groundbreaking work of the scientists of Oxford University during the development of a vaccine which is now poised for approval by medicines regulators
From the moment the coronavirus spilled out of China and spread around the world, the great hope for the return of normal life lay with safe and effective vaccines. While wearing masks and washing hands helped to reduce the flood of infections, they would never be enough to hold back the tide. Social distancing – a phrase that does nothing to convey the hardship of the act – suppresses the virus, no doubt. But what kind of life is a life lived apart?
Continue reading...The Arab spring wasn’t in vain. Next time will be different | Nesrine Malik
Lessons have been learned about how to convert the forces that demand equality into those that deliver it
At the end of 2010, I was en route to Sudan for Christmas, scouring Arabic social media in search of scraps of information about a story unfolding in Tunisia; a story the Arab media was censoring and the western media was still ignoring. A street trader, Mohammed Bouazizi, had set himself on fire in protest at the government in the city of Sidi Bouzid, sparking demonstrations that spread across the country.
Weeks before the protests toppled Tunisia’s president-for-life, you could see that something about this uprising was different. There was something about the way the protests resonated in households around the Arab world, the intensity of the moral outrage and the force of the momentum that felt new and exciting.
Continue reading...Caste-based area names to be changed across Indian state to ‘increase unity’
Millions of people in Maharashtra to have neighbourhoods renamed but critics say plan means little without behavioural change
The names of neighbourhoods in the Indian state of Maharashtra based on the caste of people who have traditionally lived there are to be be changed, to reflect the country’s evolving attitudes.
In the same way Indian surnames reveal the caste to which a person belongs, neighbourhoods have acquired names based on the caste of the community that predominates.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern: I try to turn self-doubt into ‘something more positive’
New Zealand prime minister admits watching bad television to relax and says some people she admires most have that ‘gnawing lack of confidence’
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has revealed she suffers “imposter syndrome” and watches “bad crime shows” to wind down.
Ardern won a second term in a landslide victory in October after successfully leading her country through the coronavirus pandemic with fewer than 30 deaths.
Continue reading...Dozens of Al Jazeera journalists allegedly hacked using Israeli firm’s spyware
Citizen Lab researchers say cyber-attack using NSO Group software likely ordered by Saudia Arabia and UAE
Spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence firm was allegedly used to hack the phones of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists in an unprecedented cyber-attack that is likely to have been ordered by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to leading researchers.
In a stunning new report, researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said they discovered what appears to be a major espionage campaign against one of the world’s leading media organisations, which is based in Qatar and has long been a thorn in the side of many of the region’s autocratic regimes.
Continue reading...Multiple European countries ban travel from UK over new Covid strain
WHO tells members to redouble efforts to stop spread as Israel turns away UK passport holders
European countries have begun to close their doors to travellers from the UK after the discovery of a fast-spreading strain of Covid-19 in England.
As the World Health Organization called on its members in Europe to step up measures, countries including France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands announced bans on travel from the UK.
Continue reading...Trump attempt to overturn election is ‘nutty and loopy’, Romney says
- Utah Republican decries flirtation with Flynn martial law plan
- Trump wanted conspiracy theorist Powell as special counsel
Donald Trump’s flirtation with declaring martial law in battleground states and appointing a conspiracy theorist as special counsel to help his attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden are “really sad” and “nutty and loopy”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday.
Related: Biden mulls punishments for Russia over suspected role in government hack
Continue reading...