Svetlana Alexievich warns of ‘civil war’ after unrest that followed Sunday’s disputed election result
Belarusian Nobel prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich has condemned police violence against protesters in her country and urged Alexander Lukashenko to go peacefully.
The 72-year-old author won the 2015 Nobel literature prize for her work chronicling the horrors of war and life under the repressive Soviet regime including the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Continue reading...Pro-democracy activist says he did not expect to be arrested so soon given the global outcry, and that it suggested chaos in the ranks
Jimmy Lai has said he was surprised to be arrested so quickly, and suggested there was “great disorder” among Chinese and Hong Kong authorities about how to handle the territory’s national security law.
The 71-year-old media tycoon and prominent pro-democracy figure was arrested on Monday, on suspicion of committing foreign collusion crimes in breach of Beijing’s national security law, and conspiracy to defraud.
Continue reading...Bolivia considers a pragmatic, if not macabre, option as it struggles to keep pace with Covid-19 deaths
As surging Covid-19 cases across Latin America leave cemeteries and funeral homes struggling to keep pace, engineers in Bolivia have come up with a solution as pragmatic as it is macabre: a mobile crematorium.
The five-metre by two-and-half-metre oven is small enough to fit on to a trailer, and is powered by locally produced liquefied petroleum gas – making it a cheap option for families who cannot afford a funeral service.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern sound ominous tone, with expectation of a long lockdown for the country’s biggest city
Covid-19 may have been circulating in New Zealand’s biggest city for weeks, the country’s top health official has said, as 13 new community cases were confirmed – all linked to the four cases announced on Tuesday.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the growing cluster in Auckland, now totalling 17, “would get worse before it gets better” in the city of more than 1.4 million people.
Continue reading...Bob Woodward’s second book on the Trump White House has a title, Rage, and promises to reveal the secrets of “25 personal letters exchanged between [Donald] Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that have not been public before”.
Related: It Was All a Lie review: Trump as symptom not cause of Republican decline
Continue reading...Joe Biden and Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of leaving the US “in tatters” by failing to lead the country through the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout, as they debuted the Democratic presidential ticket the party hopes will defeat him in November’s election.
Related: 'Ready on day one': Joe Biden welcomes Kamala Harris at their first event as running mates – live
Continue reading...Restaurant diners told to order one dish less than number of people under new system criticised as overly controlling
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has launched a campaign targeting a new enemy of the country: food waste.
“Waste is shameful and thriftiness is honourable,” Xi said in a speech published on Tuesday, describing the amount of food that goes to waste in the country as “shocking and distressing”, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
Continue reading...Home Office says 14 people were flown out, while 19 of those due to be removed had their tickets deferred
A charter flight to remove asylum seekers who recently arrived in the UK on small boats took off on Wednesday morning carrying 14 people, the Home Office said, despite last-minute high court actions and other interventions just hours before takeoff.
Nineteen people due to fly did not board the plane. The Home Office said 14 people were placed on the charter flight destined for France and Germany.
Continue reading...Russia said on Wednesday the first batch of its Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine would be ready within two weeks and rejected safety concerns over its rapid approval as 'groundless'. The health minister, Mikhail Murashko, said the vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Institute, would be administered on a voluntary basis. The vaccine has not yet completed its final trials. Only about 10% of clinical trials are successful and some scientists fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety
Continue reading...Joe Biden has picked his former one-time presidential rival Kamala Harris to be his running mate, making her the first woman of color on a major party presidential ticket. The Guardian's Lauren Gambino explains Harris's trailblazing background, the 'hunger for black, female leadership' and the excitement around the Californian senator's nomination
France cancels marathon as cases pick up; WHO warns displacement of people in Beirut risks accelerating spread; four new cases in Auckland
Jordan will close its only land trade border crossing with Syria for a week after a spike in Covid-19 cases coming from its northern neighbour, officials said.
They said the interior minister’s decision to close the main Jaber border crossing would come into effect on Thursday morning.
Britain’s NatWest is cutting at least 500 jobs across its retail business and closing one of its remaining offices in London as banks press on with cost-cutting in the face of a wave of expected loan losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The state-backed bank is finalising a voluntary redundancy round targeting cutting 550 full-time equivalent roles across its branches and ‘premier banking’ premium service, union Unite told Reuters.
Tens of thousands of people working for banks have risen to the challenge that the pandemic created. The banks’ response should not be a repeat of the austerity measures that we saw after the financial crisis.
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Well at least we now know where Donald Trump stands on QAnon supporting Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some members of the Republican party disowned her campaign after a series of racist videos emerged in which she complains of an “Islamic invasion” into government offices, claims Black and Hispanic men are held back by “gangs and dealing drugs”, and pushes an antisemitic conspiracy theory that the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is Jewish, collaborated with the Nazis.
And that seems all fine with the commander-in-chief
Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent. Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up - a real WINNER!
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said his department did everything by the book in regards to arms sales to Saudi Arabia in 2019, after a government watchdog found the risk of civilian casualties in Yemen was not fully evaluated.
His comments came after a state department inspector general report earlier this week concluded the state department did not fully evaluate the risk of civilian casualties in Yemen when it pushed through a huge 2019 precision-guided munitions sale to Saudi Arabia, report the Associated Press.
Rising chorus of concern over Sputnik V vaccine stems from opaque development and lack of mass-testing
In 1977 Scott Halstead, a virologist at the University of Hawaii, was studying dengue fever when he noticed a now well-known but then unexpected feature of the disease.
Animals that had already been exposed to one of the four closely-related viruses that cause dengue and produced antibodies to it, far from being protected against other versions became sicker when infected a second time, and it was the antibodies already produced by the first infection that were responsible, allowing the second infection to hitchhike into the body.
Continue reading...Opposition leaders jailed or driven out of country amid crackdown on protests over election results
Authorities in Belarus say they have arrested more than 6,000 people during three nights of violently suppressed demonstrations against vote-rigging in Sunday’s disputed presidential election, as more footage and accounts emerged of police beating and violently detaining protesters.
Opposition leaders have been jailed and driven out of the country in a massive crackdown following the election, which the election commission said was won in a landslide by President Alexander Lukashenko.
Continue reading...Apple Daily founder and pro-democracy activist returns to office following arrest under national security law
The Hong Kong pro-democracy figure and media mogul Jimmy Lai received a hero’s welcome as he returned to his newspaper after being arrested on allegations of foreign collusion, while Chinese state media labelled him a “genuine traitor”.
Lai, his sons, senior executives from his Next Digital media company and others including the activist Agnes Chow were detained under Beijing’s national security law on Monday. Hundreds of police officers also raided the offices and newsroom of Apple Daily, the popular tabloid Lai founded, in a move decried as an assault on press freedom.
Continue reading...Informed by baile funk, metal and more, Linn da Quebrada and Jup do Bairro – with producer Badsista – are dodging racism, transphobia and music industry resistance to tell their own stories
Jup do Bairro and Linn da Quebrada first met at a festival in São Paulo through mutual friends. It didn’t go well, Jup says while we wait for Linn to join our Zoom call. “I looked at her and joked: Is it Linn for linda?”, meaning beautiful in Portuguese. “I remember she rolled her eyes and I thought: Yikes, game over!”
But the two musicians kept running into each other. “Linn often performed at the same parties I was invited to and since we both lived far from the city centre, we’d always wait for the bus together,” Jup says. In the end, they became close friends and eventually musical partners.
Continue reading...Indigenous people in headwaters region say financing harms communities and ecosystems
Indigenous people living at the headwaters of the Amazon have called on European banks to stop financing oil development in the region, as it poses a threat to them and damages a fragile ecosystem, after a new report found $10bn in previously undisclosed funding for oil in the region.
The headwaters of the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru are home to more than 500,000 indigenous people, including some who choose to live in voluntary isolation. The area, covering about 30m hectares (74m acres), hosts a diverse rainforest ecosystem, but it is threatened by the expansion of oil drilling.
Continue reading...Fight to eradicate disease getting ‘back on track’ after surge in cases due to pause in vaccination campaigns
Polio vaccination campaigns have resumed in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the last two polio-endemic countries in the world – after a “surge” in cases.
The pandemic halted campaigns in both countries in March and confirmed cases have now reached 34 in Afghanistan and 63 in Pakistan – where cases are being recorded in areas of the country previously free of the disease.
Continue reading...Survivors who say alleged assailants go unpunished have begun publicly shaming them online
Egypt is witnessing a wave of online outrage targeting rape culture and sexual assault, as survivors use social media to shame alleged abusers and demand change.
A growing number of social media accounts gather survivors’ testimony and attempt to shame alleged attackers, angry at elite perpetrators they say routinely go unpunished.
Continue reading...A campaign has highlighted plight of unmarried couples from different countries parted for months
Sarah flew home to Germany in April, leaving her boyfriend, Fares, behind in Jordan, unsure when they might see each other again. “She thought it might take a couple of months,” Fares said.
Inside, he was steeling himself for as long as six months apart, although “I didn’t tell her that,” he says.
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