As US states faced a deadline to place orders for a coronavirus vaccine, California went back into lockdown and federal authorities advised the wearing of masks indoors, new infections reached a record 227,885 on Friday.
Related: 'Ridiculous double standard': LA residents condemn maze of Covid restrictions
Continue reading...Men in their mid-30s drown and boy, 9, in hospital, after incident on Australia’s Sunshine Coast
Two men have drowned and a boy has been taken to hospital after getting into trouble in the surf on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
The men in their mid-30s were pulled from the water at Teewah Beach in Noosa North Shore about 2.30pm on Saturday but could not be revived.
Continue reading...Vaccine could be in use by 2024 if next year’s human trials are successful
The Oxford team that has produced a successful coronavirus vaccine is about to enter the final stage of human trials in its quest for an inoculation against malaria.
The Jenner Institute director, Prof Adrian Hill, said the malaria vaccine would be tested on 4,800 children in Africa next year after early trials yielded promising results.
Continue reading...The prize-winning author’s life is now an episode of Steve McQueen’s hit series Small Axe. He talks about working on the project and his latest novel, based on a Jamaican slave uprising
Amid the brunchtime clatter of a busy south London cafe, Alex Wheatle is talking about how, lately, he has been considering 1970s pop culture and the way it has shaped and warped his perception of self. “I grew up with Tarzan on TV; Tarzan beating up all the black guys he came across and being able to talk to the animals while the black people couldn’t,” he says. “And I hate to admit it, but when I was 10 or 11, I actually cheered for Tarzan when he was fighting with a so-called ‘savage’. It was only later that I thought: ‘I think I’ve got that wrong.’”
In many ways, Wheatle’s 20-year writing career has been about correcting that wrong. Because if the focus of the author’s extraordinary early years was on mistruths around his heritage – about its history, its value, its implicit inferiority to a loin-clothed white saviour – then the intervening period has been all about creating the depictions of nuanced black heroism he was denied as a child.
Continue reading...Health workers and teachers have priority in first mass immunisation programme
Moscow’s coronavirus taskforce said on Saturday that it was distributing the Sputnik V vaccine to 70 clinics, marking Russia’s first mass Covid-19 immunisation.
The taskforce said the Russian-made vaccine would be made available first to doctors and other medical workers, teachers and social workers because they ran the highest risk of exposure to the disease.
Continue reading...Capsule will burn through atmosphere before landing in South Australia in the early hours of Sunday morning
Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully separated a capsule and sent it toward Earth to deliver samples from a distant asteroid that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on our planet.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the capsule successfully detached Saturday afternoon from 220,000km (136,700 miles) away in a challenging operation that required precision control. The capsule is now descending to land in a remote, sparsely populated area of Woomera, Australia, on Sunday.
Continue reading...From non-polluting transport to sustainable industries, urban areas are perfect for testing radical solutions to global problems
• Ada Colau is the mayor of Barcelona
The pandemic will leave behind a very different world from that of a year ago. Thousands of people have died; entire industries have been brought to the brink; welfare states have been shaken. In the coming years, the major challenge facing all public leaders will be charting a path of recovery through the devastating human, social and economic marks that Covid-19 has left on our societies.
But rather than redoubling on the fragile world of the pre-pandemic age, we should be taking advantage of this moment to build one that is more just, balanced and sustainable.
Continue reading...WHO says virus spreading fast despite vaccine progress; French infections rise to 2.29m; Brazil reports 627 new deaths. Follow latest updates
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Saturday reported 14,255,535 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 214,099 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 2,439 to 277,825.
The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as Covid-19, caused by coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on 4 December versus its previous report a day earlier.
2000 football fans in London have started watching the first Premier League game to allow fans into a ground since March.
At 5:30pm local time, the game between West Ham and Manchester United kicked off at the London Stadium, after the ban on fans entering stadiums was lifted on 2 December.
Continue reading...My friend Aynür’s life tells the story of how Uighurs have been purposefully dehumanised by the party-state
During my first year living in Ürümchi, the capital of Xinjiang, I met Aynür (not her real name). It was 2007, and she described life in China as difficult but improving for Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking predominantly Muslim people. Aynür spoke both Uighur and Mandarin, and was proud of being “in-between cultures”. She described herself as a bridge between the Han majority, who make up about 90% of China’s population and the Uighurs, Xinjiang’s ethnic majority.
Aynür invited me to her home and we watched China’s national day celebrations – parades of tanks, warheads, and motorcades – on TV . Aynür could not understand my lack of amusement; the spectacle made her proud of China’s rapid development and hopeful that Xinjiang’s problems could be resolved. Over the years, as new policies affected her work, her home and her family life, her outlook changed. The hints had been there when we first met: she worried aloud about future generations’ ability to speak the Uighur language and their right to practise their religion. When Aynür asked to see pictures of my “homeland”, she was stunned by the sight of Scottish flags adorning Edinburgh castle. She was amazed that “minority people” within larger nations could express their own identity. “If we were allowed to do this, most of our problems would be gone.”
Continue reading...Five still trapped after accident involving workers dismantling underground equipment at Diaoshuidong coal mine
Eighteen miners have been confirmed dead after a carbon monoxide leak at a coal mine in southwestern China, state media reported, with rescue efforts under way to reach five others still trapped underground.
Twenty-four miners were caught up in the accident at the Diaoshuidong mine in the city of Chongqing, around 1,800km south-west of Beijing, after the gas leak occurred on Friday, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Continue reading...Rightwing prime minister Viktor Orbán reignites anti-Soros rhetoric with EU dispute
Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is threatening to veto the new EU budget over a provision that would link some funding to rule-of-law concerns. As the standoff intensifies, he has found a familiar enemy to blame: the 90-year-old financier and philanthropist George Soros.
Orbán has reinvigorated his government’s anti-Soros campaign, which has often been marked by conspiratorial and antisemitic rhetoric, as Hungary and Poland have tussled with other European leaders over the so-called “rule-of-law” mechanism. The dispute is holding up final agreement on the EU’s €1.7tn (£1.5tn) seven-year budget and recovery package.
Continue reading...Australian experts and Israeli cybersecurity firm allege ‘unusual behaviour’ by Twitter accounts retweeting or liking Zhao Lijian’s tweet
A Chinese official’s tweet of an image of an Australian soldier that sparked a furious reaction from Canberra was amplified across social media by unusual accounts, of which half were likely fake, Australian experts and an Israeli cybersecurity firm say.
The digitally created image that purported to show an Australian soldier holding a bloodied knife to the throat of an Afghan child was tweeted by China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, on Monday.
Continue reading...Nearly all of 700 troops will leave over next few months follow president’s latest order with short notice
The US will pull out nearly all its estimated 700 troops in Somalia over the next few months, the latest in a series of short-notice withdrawals ordered by Donald Trump in his last few weeks in power.
A Pentagon statement on Friday said that some of the troops would be repositioned in neighbouring countries while others – it did not say how many – would leave the region altogether.
Continue reading...World Health Organization leaders have warned vaccines do not mean the end of the coronavirus pandemic, and renewed their advice to follow guidelines during the Christmas and new year period
Continue reading...Taitusi Ratucaucau served 11 years in the Royal Logistics Corps, only for his contract to be terminated and his life left in limbo
Two decades ago, when Taitusi Ratucaucau signed his papers, there was such hope. A career in the British Army would bring security, adventure, a sense, too, of service.
In 2000, his homeland Fiji, roiled by a protracted and violent coup, held little hope. A career in the British military was Ratucaucau’s ticket to a wider world.
Continue reading...Astonishing rock paintings discovered in Colombia hold a lesson for today’s rainforest
In the past week, remarkable images of ancient cave art have hit the headlines: rock paintings made in South America around 12,000 years ago. The art, created on rock faces in the Serranía de la Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, is a riot of ochre-coloured geometrical pattern, handprints, and images of animals and humans. Until recent excavations, the works of art had been unknown to the international community. Their exuberant creativity will soon be revealed to a broad audience in the UK thanks to the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.
The people who made these works of art were, it is believed, among the earliest humans to occupy the region, after migrations across what is now the Bering Strait some 25,000 years ago. Preliminary study of the iconography of the art has led scholars to speculate that among the deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, serpents, turtles and porcupines, long-extinct megafauna are also represented: mastodons, American ice-age horses, giant sloths, camelids.
Continue reading...Congresswoman says price was appropriate because garment was made by unionised workers in America – unlike ‘Trump’s merch’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a swift response for conservatives criticizing her for selling a “Tax the Rich” sweatshirt for $58. The price was right, the leftwing New York Democrat said, because the campaign merchandise was made by unionised workers in the US rather than in China, unlike political wear sold by, for example, Donald Trump.
Related: When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious'
Continue reading...India has summoned Canada’s top diplomat to protest at comments by Justin Trudeau on recent mass protests by farmers in the country. Indian officials warned that continued “interference” in domestic affairs could harm relations between the two countries.
Related: Indian farmers march on Delhi in protest against agriculture laws
Continue reading...Saudi prince hails progress in negotiations brokered by Kuwait and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner
A breakthrough in the three-and-a-half-year dispute between Qatar and its neighbouring Gulf states appears to have been achieved following what were described as “fruitful” talks to resolve the conflict.
The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said “significant progress” had been reached in the last few days and he was optimistic all countries were close to finalising a resolution.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch says testing regulations are demeaning and target women based on racial stereotypes
World Athletics, the sport’s global governing body, targets women from countries in the global south for “abusive sex testing” based on arbitrary definitions of femininity and racial stereotypes, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
A report by the rights group, published on Friday, claims female runners are being pushed out of competitive events, which some rely on for their livelihoods. Athletes struggle with emotional trauma and feel discriminated against and humiliated by the testing, said HRW.
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