Category Archives: World News

North Korea’s ‘ghost ships’ linked to illegal fishing by China fleet, study finds

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Almost 600 North Korean ‘ghost ships’ have washed up on the coast of Japan in the past five years, some containing the corpses of their crew

“Dark fleets” of hundreds of Chinese vessels are fishing illegally in North Korean waters, according to a study, forcing displaced local fishermen to risk their lives in distant waters in unsafe boats, many of which are carried across rough seas to the coast of Japan.

In a report published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, Global Fishing Watch (GFW), says more than 900 vessels of Chinese origin fished illegally in the area in 2017, and 700 in 2018. Together it is estimated they caught more than 160,000 metric tonnes of squid, worth more than $440m (£346m).

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Two sex scandals in a week: New Zealand faces reckoning over MPs’ behaviour

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Exits of an MP and a minister might signal a new attitude in a nation where politicians’ private lives have traditionally been off-limits

After a New Zealand MP quit and a minister was fired in successive days over allegations of sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, was asked by a reporter whether it was “open season” on any member of parliament who had “ever had an affair”.

“I don’t want to get drawn into hypotheticals,” Ardern replied as she faced questions about the sacking of Iain Lees-Galloway, her minister of workplace relations and safety, over his workplace relationship with a former staffer in his office.

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US daily coronavirus deaths surpass 1,000 for first time since June

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US death toll at more than 142,000 while Trump admits Covid-19 crisis will ‘get worse before it gets better’

Daily deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday surpassed 1,000 for the first time in the US since the start of June, as Donald Trump admitted the crisis would “get worse” before it got better.

The seven-day average for the number of deaths in the country has been slowly rising this month, according to multiple data analyses, and went past the 1,000 mark on Tuesday, taking US fatalities to more than 142,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has forecasted that the country will reach 150,000 deaths by early August.

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Lawyers protest as Zimbabwean journalist’s bail decision postponed

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Hopewell Chin’ono arrested after reporting on alleged profiteering in deals for coronavirus supplies

Lawyers for a prominent investigative journalist in Zimbabwe who was arrested this week have accused authorities of persecution after magistrates postponed a decision on bail for 24 hours, blaming a Covid-19 curfew.

Hopewell Chin’ono, an internationally respected reporter, recently published documents raising concerns that powerful individuals in Zimbabwe were profiting from multimillion-dollar deals for essential supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

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Newly excavated tools suggest humans lived in North America at least 30,000 years ago

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Artefacts from central Mexico cave are strong evidence humans lived on continent 15,000 years earlier than previously thought

Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least 30,000 years ago, some 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday.

The artefacts, including 1,900 stone tools, showed human occupation of the high-altitude Chiquihuite cave over a 20,000-year period, they reported in two studies published in the journal Nature.

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‘Open your eyes’: Yemen on brink of famine again, UN agencies warn

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Millions face devastating hunger if relief efforts are not stepped up in a country ravaged by war, locusts and now Covid-19

Yemen is in danger of an imminent return to devastating levels of hunger and food insecurity, according to new analysis released by UN agencies.

The World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Unicef say that the percentage of the population predicted to face acute food insecurity in southern areas of the country will rise from 25% to 40% by the end of the year.

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Coronavirus live news: WHO reports worrying infection trends in southern Europe and Balkans

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WHO says Americas remain global hotspot but cases accelerating in southern Europe, Balkans and Africa; Trump urges people to wear masks

As the coronavirus spreads around the world, there are concerns that it will mutate into a form that is more transmissible, more dangerous or both, potentially making the global health crisis even worse.

What do we know about the way the virus is evolving?

Related: Will Covid-19 mutate into a more dangerous virus?

The US federal government has signed a contract with Pfizer for 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine, once it is approved.

The health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, said on Fox News:

We just signed a contract with global pharmaceutical leader Pfizer to produce 100 million doses of vaccine starting in December of this year with an option to buy a half a billion doses.

Now those would of course have to be safe and effective.

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‘We were beaten’: 20 LGBTQ+ Ugandans file lawsuit over alleged torture

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Group arrested during Kampala lockdown and later released allege horrific abuse during the 50 days they were on remand in prison

Twenty LGBTQ+ men and women have filed lawsuits against the Ugandan authorities over alleged torture after they were arrested and imprisoned on charges related to the coronavirus lockdown.

The group were held on remand for more than 50 days and according to a statement from the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF), the legal organisation defending them, endured “taunting, flogging, scalding … as well as denial of access to food, sanitary facilities and medication”.

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Once There Was Brasília review – sci-fi odyssey into Brazil’s murky politics

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An intergalactic refugee travels through time to modern-day Brazil in an eerie tale that has real-life corruption at its heart

Brazilian director Adirley Queirós here cobbles together something comparable, though far more lo-fi, to Wong Kar-wai’s 2046: a haunted, backwards-looking sci-fi assembled from textures of the past, which encourages you to pick through the wreckage of political ideology it strews in its wake. Wellington Abreu plays WA4, a Mad Max-style refugee from outer space who, as punishment for an illegal land occupation on his own planet, is sent to Earth to assassinate the real-life former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek on the inauguration day of the capital city, Brasília, in 1961. But his ship crash-lands in the present day, in the satellite city of Ceilândia, an overflow enclave for the dispossessed that represents how the country’s utopia has been thwarted.

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Femicides rise in Mexico as president cuts budgets of women’s shelters

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New figures reflect surge in violence against women during pandemic while government implements austerity measures

Violence against women has surged in Mexico since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but the country’s president has downplayed the problem and slashed the budgets of agencies charged with addressing women’s issues.

Figures released this week show that crimes such as femicides climbed 7.7% in the first half of 2020, when compared with the same period last year, and shelters have reported a sharp rise in the number of women attempting to flee domestic violence.

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Morgan Stanley: ex-employees seek contract release to allege racial discrimination

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Former workers have ‘important’ stories to tell and ‘feel a heightened sense of obligation to come forward’, lawyer says

At least six former employees are asking Morgan Stanley to release them from confidentiality agreements so they can tell their stories of alleged racial discrimination at the investment bank.

Related: Mike Pompeo attacks WHO in private meeting during UK visit

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China says US ordered abrupt closure of its Houston consulate

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Beijing condemns move that could mark dramatic escalation in diplomatic tensions

The closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston threatens to start a fresh diplomatic row between China and the US, with Beijing accusing the US of giving it 72 hours to shut the diplomatic mission in a move it described as “unprecedented” and an “outrageous” escalation.

China said the US told the consulate on 21 July to cease all operations and events, and that Beijing threatened retaliation if the decision was not withdrawn.

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‘We suffer in silence’: coronavirus takes heavy toll on Brazil’s army of gravediggers

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Alcoholism and depression ‘part and parcel’ for those who bury the bodies of Covid-19 victims – more than 80,000 so far

Miguel Braga has done many things in life: sold lollipops, hawked cleaning products, guarded cars. This year, as Covid-19 shook Brazil, he turned his hand to burying bodies.

“Someone has to do it,” said the 30-year-old father-of-two, who earns £200 ($250) a month carving 2m x 1m resting places into the caramel coloured soils of Latin America’s largest cemetery.

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Mary Trump on her Uncle Donald: ‘I used to feel compassion for him. That became impossible’

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She is a psychologist who used to deny being related to Donald – now she has written an explosive bestseller about him. She discusses his racism, incompetence, cruelty and why he never laughs

Dinner in the Trump household was a hierarchical affair. Fred Trump, the patriarch, sat at the head of the table, with son Donald on his right and daughter Maryanne on his left. Other family members took their places in descending order of assigned importance.

But one Thanksgiving, the eldest son, Fred Jr, found himself relegated to the junior end of the table with his daughter Mary. “During the course of the meal, my grandmother choked,” Mary Trump recalls. “My dad had been a volunteer ambulance driver in the late 60s and early 70s so he knew the Heimlich manoeuvre and he very gently manoeuvred her into the kitchen and gave her the Heimlich, and that basically saved her from choking.

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British security services to get extra powers in wake of Russia report

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Counter-espionage laws to be strengthened as government accused of failing to respond to security threat

Legislation to clamp down on foreign spying is being considered by Downing Street in the wake of a damning report laying bare the impact of Russian influence in Britain and accusing the government of “badly” underestimating the threat posed by the Kremlin.

Under the new legislation, foreign agents would have to register in the UK in a move modelled on similar requirements in the US and Australia.

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‘Coronavirus ruined everything’: the long wait for new limbs in Kurdistan

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Decades of war have resulted in a high demand for prosthetics – and patients are anxious to visit clinics as they finally reopen

Concentration is etched on Hussein’s face as he walks along a scuffed yellow line painted on the floor of the clinic’s rehabilitation room. He’s getting a feel for his new prosthetic.

Hussein lost his left leg below the knee in 1987 when he stepped on a landmine while fishing at Lake Dukan, around 100km (62 miles) east of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Mines and other unexploded remnants of successive wars litter the landscape, causing new injuries every year. More than half the clinic’s 15,100 patients are amputees. Roughly 4,600 of them lost limbs as a result of conflict – 2,500 of these to landmines.

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First active leak of sea-bed methane discovered in Antarctica

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Researchers say potent climate-heating gas almost certainly escaping into atmosphere

The first active leak of methane from the sea floor in Antarctica has been revealed by scientists.

The researchers also found microbes that normally consume the potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only arrived in small numbers after five years, allowing the gas to escape.

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