Optimism abounds as leaders from Fiji to Papua New Guinea welcome the new US president-elect
Joe Biden’s presidential ascension had not even been settled when Fiji’s forthright prime minister was already urging greater US action on climate change from the incoming American leader.
“Congratulations Joe Biden,” Frank Bainimarama tweeted on Saturday afternoon. “Together, we have a planet to save from a climate emergency and a global economy to build back better from Covid-19.”
Continue reading...European Investment Bank accused of failure to properly assess impacts of supported projects in Africa and Asia
The EU-funded European Investment Bank has been using taxpayer cash to support infrastructure projects linked to alleged human rights violations, an investigation by NGOs shows.
The report – led by campaign groups Counter Balance and the CEE Bankwatch Network – has accused the EIB of a lack of transparency and a failure to properly assess the impact of its funding as it extends its role beyond Europe to former Soviet republics, Africa and Asia.
Continue reading...This docuseries could have asked bigger questions on domestic violence, or the murder of Pistorius’s scarcely mentioned girlfriend. Instead, it is a flawed, fawning hagiography
The BBC provoked an outcry last month when it ran a two-minute trailer for this four-part documentary series (BBC Two and BBC iPlayer) that referred to “an international hero who inspired millions” who had “suddenly found himself at the centre of a murder investigation”, without once mentioning the name of the woman Pistorius killed: Reeva Steenkamp. If you did not know the story, you would probably have thought you were about to watch a re-examination of a murder investigation gone wrong and the righting of a terrible miscarriage of justice. The BBC eventually apologised and replaced the advert with something they said was more representative of the tone of the film.
They should just have left it. It was a meretricious trailer for a meretricious film by a director – Daniel Gordon – who, in one of the press interviews for the series, said he was “still flip-flopping” on the matter of Pistorius’s guilt.
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s resolve not to accept the result of the presidential election appeared unshaken on Sunday, as he continued to promote conspiracy theories about the vote, with little outward sign that anyone in his inner circle was prepared to talk him into conceding.
Related: Who will tell Trump to go? Not Melania or Jared, reports say
Continue reading...Confusion reigns as accounts of attempts to talk president into conceding to Joe Biden are swiftly shot down
As Donald Trump spent Sunday morning visiting one of his golf clubs and doubling down on bogus election fraud claims, conflicting reports emerged about whether the president’s family and top advisers were advising him to admit defeat.
Related: Joe Biden gets to work as president-elect while Trump refuses to concede
Continue reading...The government’s military operation against leaders of the Tigray region could have devastating consequences across the Horn of Africa
What a difference a year makes. Just over 12 months ago, Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel peace prize. The Ethiopian prime minister had overseen extraordinary change in his brief tenure: though the committee singled out the peace deal he had signed with Eritrea, ending an apparently intractable dispute, he had also embarked upon sweeping domestic reforms. Yet while the relaxation of intense political repression brought real hope, there was also fear that the improvements were precarious at best, with too much expected of one man.
Now Africa’s second most populous nation is on the brink of civil war. In the early hours of 4 November – as the world’s attention was fixed on the United States – Mr Abiy launched a major military operation in the northern region of Tigray and imposed a state of emergency. He said he was responding to an attack by the region’s ruling party on an army base, which they have denied; the Ethiopian parliament has now voted to replace them with a centrally-imposed administration.
Continue reading...The small Indian village of Thulasendrapuram burst into celebration after waking up to the news that Kamala Harris will become the first woman and the first person of south-Asian descent to become US vice-president. People set off firecrackers, played music and shared food in the village, where Harris's maternal grandfather was born. 'We take immense pride in her victory, and who she has become,' said one resident
US close to 10m cases, with India second on 8.5m cases, followed by Brazil and Russia
The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has passed 50 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, which showed that the US, India and Brazil have the highest figures.
A total of 50,052,204 infections had been reported around the world by Sunday evening.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stay silent while Iran waits to see how US will compensate for Trump sanctions
Most world leaders rushed to congratulate Joe Biden on his election, but Russia and China, two likely losers from the defeat of Donald Trump, remained silent, perhaps waiting for the outgoing president to concede defeat.
The president of the Maldives, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, is thought to be the first to have congratulated Biden, tweeting his welcome within 24 minutes of the US networks declaring Biden victorious. By contrast, Vladimir Putin, accused of collusion in Trump’s 2016 victory, and Xi Jinping kept their counsel.
Continue reading...Country’s prime minister sent in federal troops and aircraft last week in major escalation
Heavy casualties have been reported in ongoing clashes between the Ethiopian army and troops loyal to the ruling party of the restive northern province of Tigray.
At least six people were killed and 60 people wounded in one location along the Tigray border alone, Doctors Without Borders said on Saturday, and a medical official said nearly 100 government soldiers had been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the northern Amhara region.
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Here are some details on the reaction to Biden’s win in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and other Pacific nations, from Ben Doherty, the Guardian’s Pacific editor:
Joe Biden’s presidential ascension had not even been settled when Fiji’s forthright prime minister was already urging greater US action on climate change from the incoming American leader.
Related: Pacific nations herald Biden presidency amid hope for action on climate emergency
There are a number of troubling statistics out today on the current state of Covid-19 in the US, the most urgent crisis Biden will inherit. Reuters has published an analysis of where things stand in the worsening pandemic in America, as the country nears 10m cases, becoming the first nation in the world to surpass that figure. Some specifics from the news agency’s report:
Related: Coronavirus live news: US nears 10m cases as global infections pass 50m
Continue reading...The former prosecutor and senator is the first woman to fill her upcoming White House role. What does her life so far tell us about how she will govern?
Kamala Harris has spent her life crashing through glass ceilings and accumulating “firsts”. She was the first female district attorney of San Francisco, the first female attorney general of California, the first Indian American in the US Senate, the first Indian American candidate of a major party to run for vice-president. Soon she will become the first female vice-president. If Joe Biden only serves one term, as expected, there is a chance that in 2024 she could become the first black female president.
The problem with phrases like “first black female president” is that they confine the California senator to the sort of boxes she has always tried to avoid. “When I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created,” she told the Washington Post last year. “I am who I am … You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it.” She does not agonise over her identity – she simply calls herself a “proud American”.
Continue reading...Zehra Doğan spent nearly three years in Turkish jails and smuggled out her works as dirty laundry
An exiled artist who spent almost three years in jail in Turkey is shining a light on Kurdish feminism with a daring exhibition of works she created while behind bars.
Zehra Doğan was among the thousands of people who have been caught up in arrests and detentions in Turkey since the 2016 attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. Those detained are accused of either supporting the Gülenist movement, blamed for the failed putsch, or the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a militant group, both of which are outlawed.
Continue reading...On his road to the White House, the former vice-president has had a dramatic journey, overcoming family tragedy and political tumult along the way
Joe Biden was born on 20 November 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was the oldest of four children in a Catholic family; his mother, Jean, had Irish roots. The family’s economic fortunes were up and down, with Biden’s father, Joseph, later becoming a successful car-tyre salesman. At school Biden was class president, although his grades were unremarkable.
Continue reading...Coronavirus potentially poses a threat to the very existence of places such as Roccafiorita in Sicily
When the mayor of Roccafiorita received a phone call in October informing him that an employee in his office had tested positive for Covid-19, his heart sank.
Set among the forests at the foot of Mount Kalfa, Roccafiorita is the smallest village in southern Italy. The average age of its 187 inhabitants is over 60. If Covid were to spread among the population, the village could disappear.
Continue reading...Biden’s presidency could help reduce global heating by about 0.1C if plans fulfilled, say experts
The election of Joe Biden as president of the US could reduce global heating by about 0.1C, bringing the goals of the Paris agreement “within striking distance”, if his plans are fulfilled, according to a detailed analysis.
Biden’s policy of a target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and plans for a $1.7tn investment in a green recovery from the Covid crisis, would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents. Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.
Continue reading...President Aliyev says country’s forces have taken Shusha, despite Armenian denials
Azerbaijan has said it has recaptured the symbolic town of Shusha, a claim denied by Armenian officials as fighting in the bloody six-week-old battle over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory appeared to reach an apex.
“[This day] will become a great day in the history of Azerbaijan,” said Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, in a televised address. His announcement on Sunday was greeted with celebrations on the streets of Baku as Azerbaijanis gathered to wave flags and sing.
Continue reading...Partisan tactics once used to fight the Nazis have been turned against Alexander Lukashenko’s brutally repressive regime
In Minsk, what people here call the Great Patriotic War is never far away. Monuments, street names and museums venerate the memory of the awful years from 1941 to 1945, when the Soviet Union was at war with Nazi Germany.
Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, has used the years of partisan resistance against the Nazi occupation of the country, and the eventual victory by the Red Army, as the basis for a neo-Soviet, Belarusian identity.
Continue reading...New York representative denies Movement for Black Lives and Green New Deal cost seats
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticised the Democratic party for incompetence in a no-holds-barred, post-election interview with the New York Times, warning that if the Biden administration does not put progressives in top positions, the party would lose big in the 2022 midterm elections.
Signaling that the internal moratorium in place while the Democrats worked to defeat Donald Trump was over, the leftwing New York representative sharply rejected the notion advanced by some Democrats that progressive messaging around the Movement for Black Lives and the Green New Deal led to the party’s loss of congressional seats in last week’s election.
Continue reading...‘Mother Suu’ remains popular despite coronavirus, conflict in Rakhine state and genocide charges
Voters across Myanmar have gone to the polls for an election that is expected to return to power the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains hugely popular at home despite allegations of a genocide that have destroyed her reputation abroad.
Queues of people waited in line, in some cases for hours, to cast their ballots on Sunday in the country’s second general election since the end of full military rule. Most were wearing masks as a precaution against the coronavirus. The country has confirmed more than 60,000 infections, the majority of which were reported since mid-August.
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