Category Archives: World News

Genoa bridge collapse: relatives criticise inauguration ‘celebration’

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New bridge, named Genoa San Giorgio, replaces Morandi bridge that collapsed in 2018

A band played Italy’s national anthem before the names of the 43 people killed in the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa in 2018 were read aloud as the replacement bridge was inaugurated on Monday evening.

The reading was followed by a minute of silence during a ceremony attended by president Sergio Mattarella, prime minister Giuseppe Conte, and Renzo Piano, the Genoa-born architect who donated his design for the new bridge, named Genoa San Giorgio.

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WhatsApp spyware attack: senior clergymen in Togo among activists targeted

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Bishop from Togo among 1,400 individuals alerted by WhatsApp to malware attack

A prominent Catholic bishop and a priest in Togo have been told they were targeted by spyware made by the private surveillance firm NSO Group, in the first known case of its kind involving members of the clergy.

A joint investigation by the Guardian and the French newspaper Le Monde can reveal that Bishop Benoît Alowonou and five other critics of Togo’s repressive government were alerted by WhatsApp last year that their mobile phones had been targeted with the spying technology.

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How a musician’s death unleashed violence and death in Ethiopia

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160 people have died following the killing of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa, leaving the ethnically and politically riven country more divided than ever

The figure holding a gun stepped beside the car in which Haacaaluu Hundeessaa was sitting in Addis Ababa, and pulled the trigger. The cold-blooded killing on the night of 29 June cut short the young life of one of Ethiopia’s most popular musicians and activists. It was also the start of some of the most consequential few days in recent Ethiopian history.

Hours later, in the lakeside town of Ziway in Ethiopia’s Oromia region – from which Haacaaluu came – Selas Russell woke to the sound of gunfire and shouting. Soon a friend rang her. “Get up, grab your passport, leave your belongings and run for your life,” he told the Ethiopian-born British citizen who owns a hotel in the town.

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Coronavirus live news: world may never find ‘silver bullet’ Covid vaccine, says WHO

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Covid-19 survivors have higher rates of mental ill-health, study says; Belgium sees ICU admissions double; Singapore to use electronic tags to monitor some travellers

Here are the main headlines from our global coronavirus coverage so far on Monday:

About 1.5 million Italians - 2.5% of the population of Italy- may have already contracted coronavirus, nationwide antibody tests indicate, according to the Associated Press.

The figure, announced by health officials on Monday, is six times the number of confirmed cases in Italy’s official virus tally. The results — viewed with the country’s overall death toll of close to 35,000 —align with a 2.3% estimated mortality rate of the virus.

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TikTok row: Microsoft pursues deal as Pompeo says Trump will take action soon

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Microsoft confirms acquisition plans, hours after US secretary of state says Chinese software companies are feeding data directly to Communist party

Donald Trump will take action in coming days to tackle an array of national security risks presented by TikTok and other Chinese software companies, Mike Pompeo has said, as Microsoft revealed it was pursuing a deal after speaking to the US president.

Microsoft said late on Sunday that - after a conversation between Trump and its CEO, Satya Nadella – it would move quickly on acquisition talks with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, completing talks no later than 15 September. It pledged to ensure that all private data of American users was transferred to, and remained in, the US.

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Inside Lebanon’s economic crisis – podcast

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Scenes of economic despair are visible across Lebanon – from shops to homes, businesses to hospitals. Guardian journalist Martin Chulov discusses why the country is verging on financial collapse

Across all pockets of a country conditioned to hardship over decades of war and tumult, the effects of a catastrophic economic implosion were evident when the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov took a road trip across Lebanon. Since March, the prices of most goods have nearly tripled, while the value of the national currency has fallen by 80% and much of the country has ground to a halt. Those who still have work are surviving month to month. Poverty is soaring, crime is rising, and streets are incendiary. The country has defaulted on one bond payment and a second is due soon.

Martin tells Rachel Humphreys about how government corruption and financial mismanagement have lead to Lebanon finding itself on the brink of financial collapse.

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Two cruise ships hit by coronavirus weeks after industry restarts

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Outbreaks of Covid-19 recorded on MS Roald Amundsen in Norway and the Paul Gauguin in Tahiti

Covid-19 has been detected on at least two cruise ships – one in the Arctic and one in the Pacific – just weeks after cruising holidays restarted.

At least 40 passengers and crew from the MS Roald Amundsen have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and authorities are trying to contact trace hundreds of passengers from two recent Arctic voyages the ship took.

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‘I’m going nowhere but up’: Winston Peters on populism, politics and the polls

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Veteran politician, who is being aided by Brexiteers Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore, is bullish about New Zealand First’s chances at the election

“When you talk about populism, let me ask you this question,” says Winston Peters, the MP who has at times been in a position to handpick who will lead New Zealand. “In your profession or mine: who wants to be unpopular?”

The eccentric veteran politician – rich-voiced and finely-tailored – has held seats in New Zealand’s parliament since 1979 with only two breaks from his time in office, advancing his minor party on a platform of curbing immigration, benefits for pensioners, and exhortations to “common sense”.

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Israel protests may dent Netanyahu’s ego, but do they threaten his power?

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Israeli PM says media makes demonstrations seem more significant than they are – he could have a point

Images of thousands of people in the streets and police scuffling with protesters paint a picture of an increasingly isolated prime minister whose lengthy grip over Israel may finally be loosening.

The visuals are striking, and the protests have certainly grown in size, yet whether they can hurt more than Benjamin Netanyahu’s ego is still to be seen.

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South Africa registers more than half a million coronavirus cases

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Infections rise following easing of lockdown as government struggles to retain public trust

South Africa has registered more than half a million confirmed cases of Covid-19, health officials have said, as the government struggles to retain public trust amid allegations of widespread corruption, arbitrary decisions on restrictions and administrative incompetence.

Africa’s most industrialised nation was widely praised for its early response to the pandemic but criticism has since mounted as a strict lockdown was eased.

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Coronavirus global report: ‘response fatigue’ fears as Mexico hits 9,000 daily cases

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Many countries that believed they were past the worst are grappling with new outbreaks, says WHO

Mexico has recorded more than 9,000 daily coronavirus cases for the first time, as the country overtook the UK with the world’s third-highest number of deaths from the pandemic after the US and Brazil.

The surging numbers were reported as the World Health Organization warned of “response fatigue” and a resurgence of cases in several countries that have lifted lockdowns.

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Untold stories of Jewish resistance revealed in London Holocaust exhibition

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Diaries and manuscripts turn spotlight on little-known acts of endurance and bravery

From quiet acts of bravery, to overt acts of rebellion, Jewish resistance to the Holocaust took many forms, yet research shows they remain largely unacknowledged in traditional UK teachings about the genocide.

A new exhibition, drawing on thousands of previously unseen documents and manuscripts, is placing some of the little-known personal stories of heroism, active armed resistance, and rescue networks in the extermination camps and ghettos at the forefront.

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Bolivians driven from pillar to post as Covid-19 overwhelms hospitals

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Grover Ponce, 42, died after being shuttled between six different health facilities as his family watched in rising desperation

In the two weeks before he died from suspected Covid-19, Grover Ponce was shuttled between six hospitals, as his wife Paola Medina battled the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Bolivia’s health system.

Just days after he was finally admitted to La Portada hospital in La Paz, he had to be rushed to intensive care in another hospital in El Alto. But by then it was too late. He suffered two cardiorespiratory arrests and died on Sunday.

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Coronavirus live news: Victoria declares state of disaster and nightly curfew for Melbourne

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Hundreds of ‘mystery cases’ have forced decision in Australian state; UK planning to avoid a second national lockdown; South Africa’s cases pass 500,000

Coronavirus infections in the Philippines surged past 100,000 Sunday in a troubling milestone after medical groups declared that the country was waging a losing battle against the virus and asked the president to reimpose a lockdown in the capital.

The Department of Health reported a record-high daily tally of 5,032, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 103,185, including more than 2,000 deaths, the Associated Press news agency reports.

In the UK, where police have broken up several large dance parties since the lockdown began earlier this year, a warning has been issued to people to stay away from an area in south-west England, where they have been forced to break up a rave attended by a “large volume” of partygoers.

Gloucestershire police sent out this tweet this morning:

Police are currently in the Forest of Dean near to Speculation Car Park dispersing a rave. People are advised not to attend the area due to safety and Covid risks. This will likely take some time to resolve this issue. pic.twitter.com/rtYrXSqWb3

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Cramped workplaces, parties … the factors fuelling local Covid-19 spikes

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What have resurgences around the world taught us about how local clusters emerge?

  • Coronavirus – latest updates
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    • It is not always possible to pinpoint the origin of a local spike in cases, particularly in countries like the UK, where the disease is still circulating at relatively significant levels.

    But in countries where overall caseloads are lower, and with rigorous test-and-trace schemes, it has been possible to pinpoint the factors that have sparked or fuelled local outbreaks.

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    The images of ordinary Soweto that captured apartheid’s injustice

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    David Goldblatt’s photo essay from 1972 is a key document of an era. Now he is the subject of a major show in London

    The photographer David Goldblatt, the great chronicler of the apartheid era in South Africa, is to be celebrated by one of the first London art galleries to re‑open this month.

    Goldblatt, who died in 2018, has not been the subject of a major London show for more than 30 years. The new exhibition, David Goldblatt: Johannesburg 1948-2018, at the Goodman Gallery in Mayfair, will focus on a particularly moving photo essay, Soweto, from 1972. The photographs in the series were taken over six months in a febrile atmosphere that would lead to an uprising in this impoverished area of Johannesburg four years later.

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    Beijing repression forces Hong Kong opposition into new tactics

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    Dissidents urge united stand against Chinese and look to eastern bloc tactics for inspiration

    Prominent Hong Kong democracy activists have responded to China’s crackdown on opposition politicians, student campaigners and tenured academics by considering tactics that would have seemed exaggerated in the open city a few months ago.

    The student leader Nathan Law, who was placed on a police “wanted” list just weeks after flying into exile in the UK, said he would cut off all contact with relatives living in his home city, in an apparent bid to protect them from suspicion or pressure.

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    MI6, the coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover-up

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    Documentary reveals evidence confirming a British spy’s role in restoring the Shah in 1953 – and how the Observer exposed the plot

    The hidden role of a British secret service officer who led the coup that permanently altered the Middle East is to be revealed for the first time since an Observer news story was suppressed in 1985.

    The report, headlined “How MI6 and CIA joined forces to plot Iran coup”, appeared in the 26 May edition but was swiftly quashed. It exposed the fact that an MI6 man, Norman Darbyshire, had run a covert and violent operation to reinstate the Shah of Iran as ruler of the country in 1953. Yet just a few days after the newspaper came out, all fresh evidence of this British operation and of Darbyshire’s identity disappeared from public debate.

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    Britain might look to Germany to heal the north-south divide | Torsten Bell

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    What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall involved money, and lots of it

    Before the government was forced into locking down British regions, it wanted to level them up, closing productivity gaps between north and south. That’s a valuable objective, reinforced by new research on UK regional inequality from academics appropriately spread across Sheffield, Birmingham and London. The paper reminds us that the UK has some of the biggest productivity gaps between regions in the developed world, with global leaders in parts of London and the south-east very different to some cities in the north and Midlands.

    There’s nothing new in politicians or academics pointing to the north-south divide, but more interestingly the work notes that the UK has not always led the way in this inequality between places. Most countries had higher regional gaps than the UK for most of the 20th century. Indeed, the UK’s productivity gaps fell postwar and their surge is only a post-90s phenomenon.

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