Category Archives: World News

‘On the brink of disaster’: Europe’s Covid fight takes a turn for the worse

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As France imposes curfews, even countries that previously managed well are struggling badly

“It’s not a word I’ve heard in a long, long time,” an elderly Paris resident said, leaving her apartment in mask and gloves for an early expedition to the shops. “A curfew. That’s for wartime, isn’t it? But in a way I suppose that’s what this is.”

Europe’s second coronavirus wave took a dramatic turn for the worse this week, forcing governments across the continent to make tough choices as more than a dozen countries reported their highest ever number of new infections.

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Estimated 5,000 Cape fur seal foetuses spotted on Namibian coast

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Scientists searching for reasons fear breeding cycle will be disrupted for years to come

An estimated 5,000 Cape fur seal foetuses have been found along the shores of Namibia, a large portion of the expected new pup arrivals.

The bodies were spotted by Naude Dreyer of Ocean Conservation Namibia (OCN), who flew his drone over Walvis Bay’s Pelican Point seal colony on 5 October and counted hundreds of bodies. “This is tragic, as it makes up a large portion of the new pup arrivals expected in late November,” he tweeted.

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Italian woman tells how colleague spiked coffee to ‘eliminate’ her from job

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Alice Bordon says she is still shocked co-worker drugged her to make her underperform

An Italian woman has described how a bitter workplace rivalry resulted in a colleague spiking her morning cappuccino with a sedative as job cuts loomed.

Alice Bordon, the target of the plot, told the newspaper La Stampa that she had always trusted the colleague and was still incredulous that she had tried to “eliminate” her by slipping a tranquilliser into her coffee so that she would feel sleepy and underperform at work.

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Remdesivir has very little effect on Covid-19 mortality, WHO finds

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Results of major trial described as sobering, with drug found not to improve survival rates

Remdesivir, one of the big treatment hopes for Covid-19, has very little effect on preventing deaths, according to a large and comprehensive trial run by the World Health Organization.

The drug, made by the US biotech firm Gilead, has been talked up as a potential cure and was taken by Donald Trump. A trial in the US had previously showed it reduced the length of stay in hospital. But the gold-standard Solidarity WHO trial, which was based on a far larger sample – 3,000 people on the drug, compared with as many who were not – showed remdesivir had little effect on deaths over 28 days.

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Battle over EU ban on ‘veggie burger’ label reaches key vote

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Farmers and meat lobbyists accuse plant-based food producers of ‘cultural hijacking’

The terms “veggie burger” and “veggie sausage” could be banned under proposals being voted on by the European parliament next week. Also banned would be terms such as “yoghurt-style” and “cheese-like” for plant-based alternatives to dairy products.

Sales of these products are growing fast but farming and meat lobbyists say the terms mislead people and amount to a “cultural hijacking” of the meat industry. Opponents, backed by major food companies including Unilever and Nestle, say the claims of consumer confusion are ridiculous. They say a ban would also contradict the EU’s drive to help consumers choose more sustainable food and cut climate-heating emissions.

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‘Call out the lies’: UK charities hit back over bids to blame refugees for housing crisis

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Far-right harassment of asylum seekers and refugees in emergency accommodation comes as Home Office gears up for mass evictions

Thousands of asylum seekers and refugees temporarily housed in emergency accommodation across the UK are being “unfairly and inaccurately” blamed for the national housing crisis, according to a coalition of more than 100 housing organisations.

Charities including Shelter, Homeless Link and the Big Issue say the housing emergency is the fault of the government, not those who have fled trafficking, violence and conflict.

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Twitter softens policy on hacking after row over blocked New York Post story

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Move follows criticism from Republicans and others over story about Joe Biden’s son

Twitter has softened its policies against the sharing of hacked material after the backlash over its decision to block a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son.

Republican senators declared their intention to subpoena the Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey next week, forcing him to explain the decision, after he apologised for the lack of communication about the blocking.

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October Crisis: 50 years after a bloody spasm that nearly tore Canada apart

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A campaign by Quebec separatists culminated in two kidnappings, a killing and the suspension of civil liberties

Tanks rumbled down Montreal streets. Soldiers stood guard in Quebec City. After the declaration of martial law, police conducted warrantless raids, detaining nearly 500 people. Two high-profile kidnappings – of a British diplomat and a senior politician – ended with a grisly murder.

For a brief period in October 1970, Canada was gripped by fear as separatists in the province of Quebec dramatically escalated their battle for independence.

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Western spies privately blame Russia’s FSB for Alexei Navalny poisoning

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Exclusive: stark conclusion shared between London, Berlin and Paris in effect points finger at Kremlin

Western security agencies have privately concluded that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the country’s FSB domestic spy agency, in effect pointing the finger at the Kremlin for ordering the attack.

The stark conclusion has been shared between London, Berlin and Paris, among others, and underpins the decision this week by the UK and the EU to target the FSB chief, Alexander Bortnikov, with sanctions.

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Senior Libyan coastguard commander arrested for alleged human trafficking

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Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, is suspected of being behind the drowning of dozens of refugees

The UN-backed government in Libya has arrested a coastguard commander alleged to be one of the world’s most ruthless human traffickers.

On Wednesday, authorities in Tripoli said Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, and suspected of being behind the drowning of dozens of people, has been arrested in the Hay-al-Andalus district of the city and is now being detained by Rada special forces.

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Chinese detention ‘leaving thousands of Uighur children without parents’

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Researcher says Xinjiang files reveal government strategy of long-term social control

Thousands of Uighur children appear to have been left without parents as their mothers or fathers were forced into Chinese internment camps, prison and other detention facilities, according to evidence from government documents in Xinjiang.

Records compiled by officials in southern Xinjiang and analysed by the researcher Adrian Zenz indicate that in 2018 more than 9,500 mostly Uighur children in Yarkand county were classified either as experiencing “single hardship” or “double hardship” depending on if one or both parents were detained.

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Coronavirus: what has changed about what we know? – video explainer

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Covid-19 has spread around the world, sending millions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope. From symptoms and long Covid to vaccines and treatments, the Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley, explains what we now know about the virus that we did not at the beginning of the crisis

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US election: Rudy Giuliani’s daughter endorses Joe Biden

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‘I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now,’ former New York mayor’s daughter writes in Vanity Fair

Rudy Giuliani’s daughter has endorsed Joe Biden for president in an essay for Vanity Fair, writing that in this historic election “none of us can afford to be silent”.

“My father is Rudy Giuliani,” Caroline Rose Giuliani said in the magazine. “We are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise. I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a ‘Giuliani’ feels counterintuitive, but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now.”

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Pressure grows on Zimbabwe to free detained student leader

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International groups join calls for the release of Takudzwa Ngadziore, held for protesting against Mnangagwa’s regime

A campaign focusing on the detention of 22-year-old Takudzwa Ngadziore, who has been held for 30 days in a remand prison, is gaining momentum in Zimbabwe, putting pressure on President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government to release the student.

Ngadziore, president of the Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu), was arrested and jailed last month for protesting outside a car hire company, Impala Car Rental. The company has been under pressure from campaigners to release details of the alleged use of one of their vehicles in the suspected abduction of another student activist, Tawanda Muchehiwa.

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Rickshaw driver’s son beats odds to join famed UK ballet school

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After just four years’ training in India and some fast crowd-funding, Kamal Singh joins English National Ballet School

Kamal Singh did not even know what ballet was when he turned up nervously at the Imperial Fernando Ballet School, in Delhi, during the summer of 2016. But the 17-year-old, known as Noddy, whose father was a rickshaw driver in the west of the city, had been transfixed by ballet dancers in a Bollywood film, and wanted to try it for himself.

Four years on Singh is now one of the first Indian students to be admitted to the English National Ballet school. He started this week.

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NZ election 2020: Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins make final push to persuade voters

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PM tours shopping malls in Auckland, while Collins takes final chance to attack Ardern’s record

Political leaders in New Zealand put in a frantic final day on the campaign trail before Saturday’s vote, with Jacinda Ardern, the Labour leader and prime minister, making a whistle-stop tour of shopping malls in the largest city, Auckland, where she was greeted by hundreds of fans who clamoured for selfies.

It was a more muted day for Judith Collins, the leader of centre-right opposition party National, who opted for a handful of events with party volunteers and reporters as she made a last attempt to poke holes in Ardern’s track record. A final poll on Thursday showed Collins’s party languishing about 15 points behind Labour.

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Coronavirus live news: Berlin court overturns government curfew on bars and restaurants; record Swiss cases

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Berlin bar curfew suspended after court considers move ‘disproportionate’; Czech Republic records 9,721 new infections, Switzerland sees 3,105 cases

Bosnia’s new Covid-19 infections hit a record high for the third day in a row, with 621 cases on Friday, and authorities warned the healthcare system could collapse if the trend continues.

The country of around 3.3 million people has so far recorded 32,845 cases of the coronavirus with 980 deaths. Currently there are 7,262 active cases, or 1,512 more than a week ago.

“It’s not a word I’ve heard in a long, long time,” an elderly Paris resident said, leaving her apartment in mask and gloves for an early expedition to the shops. “A curfew. That’s for wartime, isn’t it? But in a way I suppose that’s what this is.”

Europe’s second wave took a dramatic turn for the worse this week, forcing governments across the continent to make tough choices as more than a dozen countries reported their highest ever number of new infections.

Related: 'On the brink of disaster': Europe's Covid fight takes a turn for the worse

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Twitter down: social media platform suffers global outage with users unable to post

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Millions of users left unable to tweet or share stories for more than an hour

Twitter has suffered an outage in many countries across the world, leaving millions of users unable to post to its platform.

The entire social media site went down for a number of minutes and, although it was quickly brought back online, users were unable to tweet or retweet anything for more than an hour.

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‘I love this country’: US doctors head to New Zealand as cure for America’s ills

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Number of physicians yearning for a move has increased substantially since the Covid-19 pandemic, recruitment firms say

When Dalilah Restrepo, then a New York-based physician, clicked on an email in 2018 asking if she was “looking for experiencing something abroad”, she was sceptical. “And then I opened it, and I was like … New Zealand? Gosh, that’s a bit drastic.”

Restrepo, who had been in private practice for “10 or 11 years”, was exhausted.

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Ricardo’s ark: Mexican man opens his home to 300 dogs in path of hurricane

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Ricardo Pimentel’s menagerie also included cats, rabbits, chicks, sheep and a hedgehog evacuated from his animal shelter

As Hurricane Delta closed in on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, Ricardo Pimentel opened his home – to about 300 dogs.

Related: Tens of thousands flee as Hurricane Delta lashes Mexico's Yucatán peninsula

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