Academics analyse whether hair and hearing loss may also be linked to coronavirus
From hearing loss and rashes, to being tall and bald, as the Covid-19 pandemic develops, a host of new symptoms and risk factors are being linked to the virus. We take a look at the evidence.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Thomas Lishman charged with prominent local figures in ‘landmark human rights case’
A former British army officer is facing up to 13 years’ imprisonment in Romania for facilitating an ayahuasca ceremony in which the hallucinogenic Amazonian healing medicine was consumed by prominent figures, including the former head of the country’s secret police.
Thomas Lishman, 58, was arrested on 15 December last year as police and special forces raided a retreat centre outside Bucharest at dawn. It followed an evening where attendees sat in a circle meditating and drinking ayahuasca, a brew which is said to lead to mystical life-changing experiences. Some were later taken to hospital to provide blood samples.
Continue reading...The decision is ‘an assault on fundamental freedoms’, says Hong Kong Watch, as democracy deteriorates
The Hong Kong government has postponed its upcoming elections for one year, citing the growing coronavirus outbreak in the territory but sparking immediate accusations that the pandemic was being used as a pretext to suppress democracy.
The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced on Friday she had invoked colonial-era emergency regulations to delay the 6 September vote to 5 September 2021, saying it was the “hardest decision I have made in the past seven months”, but had the full support of the Chinese central government.
Continue reading...Author of This Mournable Body detained as part of sweeping crackdown by security agencies
Tsitsi Dangarembga, the award-winning Zimbabwean novelist who was nominated for the Booker prize longlist earlier this week, was arrested on Friday amid a sweeping crackdown by security agencies ahead of planned anti-corruption demonstrations.
Hundreds of police and soldiers remained on the streets of Harare, the capital, and others cities late into the evening, ordering inhabitants to go home and stay indoors.
Continue reading...Singer’s claim vaccine is being concealed is latest example of stars spreading falsehoods during pandemic
Dancer, singer, songwriter, actor, director – Madonna has had quite the career.
But the queen of pop’s latest reinvention came this week in the form of a video posted on Instagram that shared a coronavirus conspiracy theory with her 15 million followers.
Continue reading...Club des Internationaux Français pulls its 2,000 birds from event citing safety fears
The Tour de France of international pigeon racing has been rocked by scandal and acrimony after 11 French birds were found dead on the eve of the competition in a suspected poisoning.
A further seven French pigeons are said to be seriously unwell prompting the Club des Internationaux Français (CIF) to urgently withdraw its 2,000 birds from the blue ribbon event citing concerns about safety and “fairness in this competition for all”.
Continue reading...Emmanuel Macron has set a historian to investigate colonial brutality – but yet more evidence is no substitute for action
Clarifying the past is a notoriously difficult task at the best of times, but exceptionally so in relation to the intensely bloody history of Algeria.
France, its former coloniser, has a long record of covering up the atrocities it committed, so the facts are frequently disputed. This has prolonged anger and resentment among the victims of an imperial adventure that continues to divide the two nations.
Continue reading...Patients on island camps face long wait for specialist help and mental health services, while in Athens others are left destitute
In a fresh blow to refugees and migrants experiencing dire conditions in Greece, frontline medical charity Médecins San Frontières (MSF) on Thursday announced it has been forced to closed its Covid-19 isolation centre on Lesbos after authorities imposed fines and potential charges.
From the island of Lesbos to the Greek capital of Athens, asylum seekers and recognised refugees, some with serious medical conditions, are unable to access healthcare or see a doctor as treatments are disrupted by new regulations.
Continue reading...Reporters for independent outlets, many in rural areas, say pressure won’t deter them from covering embarrassing stories
Facing a continuing upward trajectory in Covid-19 cases, the Indian government is clamping down on media coverage critical of its handling of the pandemic.
More than 50 Indian journalists have been arrested or had police complaints registered against them, or been physically assaulted.
Continue reading...Exclusive: British-Australian academic will meet diplomat for first time since sudden move to a new notorious prison
The imprisoned British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is set to be granted a meeting with Australia’s ambassador to Iran as soon as Sunday.
Following reports in the Guardian that Dr Moore-Gilbert was seriously unwell in Qarchak prison and had been removed from quarantine because she was attempting to write to the ambassador for help, the state-run Mizan news agency reported she was in “perfect health”.
Continue reading...A cache of documents in civil litigation against the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was unsealed on Thursday night, including early 2015 correspondence with her longtime confidant Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
“You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it,” Epstein wrote in a 25 January 2015 email to Maxwell. “go outside, head high, not as an esacping[sic] convict. go to parties. deal with it.”
Continue reading...As the economy falters, President Emmerson Mnangagwa blames foreign interference, issues warnings to ‘rogue Zimbabweans’
Hundreds of police and soldiers have been deployed on the streets of cities across Zimbabwe ahead of planned anti-corruption demonstrations on Friday.
Recent weeks have seen rising tensions in the poor southern African country as security agencies have sought to stifle widespread anger at soaring prices, inadequate public services and allegations of graft at the highest levels of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.
Continue reading...Justin Trudeau has told parliament he did not intervene to make sure a charity his family did paid work for would win a government contract.
Related: Justin Trudeau faces calls for criminal investigation into family's charity links
Continue reading...A portrait of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician shot dead by police in her own home earlier this year, will appear on the cover of the latest issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.
It is the first time in the magazine’s 20-year history that the cover will not feature the magazine’s namesake: Oprah Winfrey.
Continue reading...Former president called for Americans to fight Trump’s effort to undermine the right to vote in eulogy at congressman’s funeral
Barack Obama hailed John Lewis as a founding father of “a fuller, better” United States in a soaring eulogy on Thursday, while forcefully calling on Americans to stand up to the forces threatening a cause the late congressman was willing to die for: the right to vote.
From the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr once preached, Obama traced the arch of Lewis’s life – a child born into the Jim Crow south, the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in 1963, a leader of the civil rights marches in Selma, and a US congressman from Georgia – tying his legacy to the present-day civil rights protests ignited by the death of George Floyd, a black man under the knee of a white police officer. He then drew a line from the racist leaders who opposed civil rights in the 1960s to the policies and ideologies embraced by Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Secretary of state receives bipartisan grilling, and makes false claim to have fought along East German border as soldier in 1980s
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw nearly 12,000 troops from Germany has come under bipartisan attack in the Senate, amid warnings it would disrupt US alliances.
Related: Barack Obama praises John Lewis as 'a man of pure joy and unbreakable perseverance' – live
Continue reading...Mexican women’s groups have expressed deep disappointment after the supreme court dodged a ruling on a proposal which could have opened a legal path towards decriminalizing abortion.
In a 4-1 decision, the court voted on Wednesday against the proposal for technical reasons – without addressing arguments that restrictions on abortion violated women’s rights and contravened international treaties to which Mexico is a signatory.
Continue reading...Nation’s first popularly elected president oversaw transition from martial law to democracy
Lee Teng-hui, known as Taiwan’s “father of democracy” and its first popularly elected president, has died, according to a statement from his family.
Lee, who oversaw Taiwan’s transition from martial law to one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia, died of septic shock and multiple organ failure at Taipei Veterans general hospital on Thursday evening. He had been in hospital for more than five months after choking while drinking milk and later contracting pneumonia. He was 97 years old.
Continue reading...Ambassador’s warning comes in response to UK’s special visa offer to Hong Kong citizens
China will not recognise the British national (overseas) passport as a legal travel document, raising the prospect that the 3 million Hong Kong citizens eligible for the passport will be banned from leaving Hong Kong by the Chinese government.
The warning was made at a press conference by the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, in which he also warned that it was hard to imagine a global Britain that bypassed or excluded China. Decoupling from China would mean decoupling from growth and the future, he suggested.
Continue reading...French prime minister says full lockdown must be avoided; number of global cases passes 17m; Japan to lift ban on re-entry of some foreign residents starting next week
Governments have the right to restrict protests on public health grounds, within reason, the UN Human Rights Committee said, as demonstrations clash with coronavirus outbreaks around the world.
The committee stepped in to formulate its legal interpretation having seen a gap in the international norms being tested before the pandemic started, since when the matter has become more pressing.
The protection of ‘public health’ ground may exceptionally permit restrictions to be imposed, for example where there is an outbreak of an infectious disease and gatherings are dangerous.
It’s understandable and acceptable that for health reasons there may be limits on your rights.
The Philippine government’s Covid-19 task force confirmed 3,954 new infections on Thursday, the country’s largest single-day increase in new cases.
The information on the surge in infections, which was a sharp increase from the record 2,539 cases confirmed on 8 July, was mentioned in a regular circular issued by the inter-agency task force.
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