Category Archives: World News

European hamster and caterpillar fungus on brink of extinction

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Update to IUCN red list warns of hamster’s falling birth rate and high demand for fungus

Hamsters and fungi may not be poster species among those threatened with extinction but are no less important in ecosystems, according to an updated list of the world’s most fragile species.

The European hamster once scurried across much of Europe and Russia but has now vanished from most of its original range and on current trends will go extinct within 30 years, according to the update of the IUCN red list, the global database of species on the brink.

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Naya Rivera: Glee star feared dead after son found alone in boat at lake

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California sheriff’s department launches search after actor’s four-year-old son found alone on boat at Lake Piru

The former Glee actor Naya Rivera is missing and feared to have drowned at a lake in southern California.

A search operation at Lake Piru was suspended on Wednesday evening and was due to resume on Thursday.

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At least 180 civilians killed in Burkina Faso town, says rights group

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Human Rights Watch suggests involvement of security forces in deaths over recent months

At least 180 civilians have been killed in recent months in a single town in Burkina Faso, with evidence pointing towards the country’s often-accused security forces, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Between November 2019 and June this year, groups of dozens of dead bodies were found often tied and blindfolded, strewn along major highways, beneath bridges and across fields in the rural region, the report published on Thursday said. Most of the bodies were buried by residents while the remains of others were left unclaimed.

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Zimbabwe health minister facing coronavirus corruption charge sacked

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Obadiah Moyo has been charged with criminal abuse of office over the alleged awarding of a $60m contract for Covid-19 supplies

A Zimbabwean health minister charged with corruption in connection with the awarding of a multimillion dollar contract for Covid-19 medical supplies has been fired by the president.

Obadiah Moyo was sacked by Emmerson Mnangagwa this week for inappropriate conduct by a public official.

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Group of rare Cross River gorillas caught on camera in Nigeria

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Conservationists hope first known camera-trap images of species are sign of resurgence

Rare images of a group belonging to one of the most endangered gorilla subspecies in the world suggest their numbers could be recovering after decades of persecution, conservationists in Nigeria have said.

Seven Cross River gorillas including infants of varying ages can be seen in the first known camera-trap images of the species, taken in the Mbe mountains in south-east Nigeria by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

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Boris Johnson’s pledge to recruit 50,000 more NHS nurses is in doubt

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Number of nurses coming from EU fell again and coronavirus prevented further arrivals

Boris Johnson’s pledge to recruit 50,000 more NHS nurses is in doubt after the number coming from the EU fell again and coronavirus prevented thousands of arrivals from the rest of the world.

The prime minister made the promise a cornerstone of his general election campaign last year and has since reiterated many times his determination to deliver the increase.

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Hunger could kill millions more than Covid-19, warns Oxfam

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Starvation looms from Afghanistan to Haiti as coronavirus restrictions wipe out incomes and cut food supplies

Millions of people are being pushed towards hunger by the coronavirus pandemic, which could end up killing more people through lack of food than from the illness itself, Oxfam has warned.

Closed borders, curfews and travel restrictions have disrupted food supplies and incomes in already fragile countries, forcing an extra million people closer to famine in Afghanistan and heightening the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, where two-thirds already live in hunger.

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‘The virus can kill anyone’: families condemn Bolsonaro’s claim young people face little risk

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Far-right leader is adamant the young can rest easy but 3,500 Brazilians under the age of 40 have already died from Covid-19

Young people should not fret about coronavirus, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro declared on Tuesday as he announced he had contracted the illness.

But Hugo Dutra was youthful and fit: a dance-addicted millennial with no underlying medical conditions. He died in Rio on 18 April, after eight days on a ventilator.

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China has shown it is willing to pay the economic price of suppressing Hong Kong | James Lim

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Now that it has its own financial hubs on the mainland, Beijing may be prepared to risk the fate of its golden goose

Last week, the Chinese government passed a broad national security law criminalising dissent in Hong Kong. While the law has already had a chilling effect on protests, the consequences for Hong Kong’s economy are unclear. Since 1 July, Hong Kong’s stock market has climbed. Some foreign businessmen in Hong Kong have dismissed the law’s potential effect on business. This incredulity is unsurprising: for decades Hong Kong has thrived as a gateway for international capital into and out of China. Surely Beijing wouldn’t kill its own “golden goose”?

But investors and businessmen, used to the unencumbered movement of capital, may have lost sight of recent changes. Contemporary China is different today to just 10 years ago, let alone to the 1990s when Hong Kong was handed over by the British. Now a global power that commands one-sixth of the world’s GDP and is increasingly authoritarian, it is approaching Hong Kong with a new rationale that is both political and economic.

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I prosecuted Srebrenica war criminals, but I know others are still walking free | Serge Brammertz

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Until we bring all the genocide’s perpetrators to justice, we are again failing the boys and men massacred in Bosnia in July 1995

  • Serge Brammertz was the chief prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2008 until its closure in 2017

This Saturday, like every 11 July on the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, the remains of newly identified victims will be buried alongside the thousands already interred at the cemetery and memorial site in the Bosnian town. The bodies of Almir Halilović, Sakib Kiverić, Emin Mustafić and Fuad Ðozić, who died in the 1995 slaughter, will not, however, be among them.

Twenty-five years ago, senior Bosnian Serb leaders committed genocide against Srebrenica’s Bosnian Muslims. The town had been designated a UN safe area. But Bosnian Serb forces besieged and captured it and systematically executed more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, burying them in mass graves. They terrorised 35,000 more Bosnian Muslims – women, children and the elderly – before expelling them from the area.

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‘We are on our own’: Bangladesh’s pregnant garment workers face the sack

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Employers are avoiding paying maternity benefits and purging union members as orders plummet during Covid-19, say activists

A few weeks ago, Kalpona Akter’s phone started vibrating. She watched with mounting dread as message after message poured in. First there was the garment worker who had been sacked for demanding personal protective equipment for his colleagues. Then pregnant women and union members started calling for help, saying they were also losing their jobs.

As Bangladesh’s garment sector reels from the economic impact of Covid-19 and the shock of £2.4bn of cancelled or suspended orders inflicted on the industry by overseas fashion brands, a wave of job losses has swept across the country. Moreover, during lockdown hundreds of thousands of workers were not paid for work they had already done.

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How to stop your glasses steaming up – and 19 other essential facts about face masks

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How often should you wash a cloth mask? And how effective are the disposable ones? The expert guide to choosing, wearing and caring for your face covering

The British have been slow to embrace face masks, despite calls from public health experts. Uptake has been just 25% in the UK, compared with 83.4% in Italy and 65.8% in the US. The president of the Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, said this week that wearing one “is the right thing to do” and that a refusal to do so should be seen as socially unacceptable as drink-driving or not wearing a seatbelt.

Perhaps one of the problems has been the changing advice as new evidence emerges. The World Health Organization (WHO) now recommends people wear cloth masks. Ramakrishnan said that in the UK, “the message has not been clear enough, so perhaps people do not really understand the benefits or are not convinced”. It also doesn’t help that the guidance across the UK is different.

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US reaches 3m confirmed Covid-19 cases as Pence pushes for schools to reopen – live

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Nine in 10 Americans believe that racism and police violence are problems in the country, a Guardian/Opinium Research poll has found, a sign that public opinion is shifting away from the views put forward by Donald Trump.

The US president has been criticised for relentlessly stoking white fear and grievance in recent weeks, putting him at odds with Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests that have swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.

Related: Nine out of 10 Americans say racism and police brutality are problems, poll finds

Donald Trump, who has villanized and denigrated Mexican migrants and threatened Mexico with tariffs, took a different tone with Obrador today.

During the meeting, when two protectionist presidents were ironically touting a trade deal, celebrating the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal, both leaders had cordial words for each other.

Trump launched his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists.

He's spread racism against our Latino community ever since.

We need to work in partnership with Mexico.

We need to restore dignity and humanity to our immigration system.

That's what I'll do as President.

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Indigenous Americans had contact with Polynesians 800 years ago, DNA reveals

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  • Study shows groups crossed vast ocean in about the year 1200
  • Proof of encounter found in DNA of present-day populations

Indigenous Americans and Polynesians bridged vast expanses of open ocean around the year 1200 and mingled, leaving incontrovertible proof of their encounter in the DNA of present-day populations, new studies have revealed.

Whether peoples from what is today Colombia or Ecuador drifted thousands of kilometres to tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific, or whether seafaring Polynesians sailed upwind to South America and then back again, is still unknown.

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The Guardian view on Brexit and trade: an expensive geography lesson | Editorial

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Boris Johnson is learning the hard way that the UK’s position on the globe is a relevant factor in its negotiations with Brussels

It is possible that Boris Johnson meant it when he said last year that Brexit would not involve checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but only if he did not understand the deal he had signed. His position made sense as dishonesty or ignorance. It was never true.

As Brexit talks continue in London this week, it turns out the government has submitted to the EU its application to put border control posts at Irish Sea ports. That is a necessary act of compliance with the Northern Ireland protocol in the withdrawal agreement.

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Johnny Depp accused of suffering ‘blackouts’ over violent behaviour

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Court hears allegation that film star was too intoxicated to recall assaulting Amber Heard

The film star Johnny Depp has been accused in court of suffering “blackouts” and having no recollection of his violent past because of his excessive drinking and drug-taking.

During his second day in the witness box at the high court in London, the 57-year-old actor faced allegations that his self-destructive behaviour and jealousy of his ex-wife Amber Heard led him to assault her repeatedly in the course of their four-year relationship.

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China’s Great Firewall descends on Hong Kong internet users

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Residents rush to erase digital footprints as law gives police powers over online activity

At midnight on Tuesday, the Great Firewall of China, the vast apparatus that limits the country’s internet, appeared to descend on Hong Kong.

Unveiling expanded police powers as part of a contentious new national security law, the Hong Kong government enabled police to censor online speech and force internet service providers to hand over user information and shut down platforms.

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Two charged over attack on French bus driver who refused entry to unmasked men

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Philippe Monguillot left brain dead after assault by men not wearing Covid-19 face masks

French prosecutors have charged two men with attempted murder after a bus driver was assaulted and left brain dead for refusing to let a group of people who were not wearing face masks board the bus.

Four men set upon 59-year-old Philippe Monguillot in the south-western town of Bayonne on Sunday after he asked three of them to wear masks and tried to check another man’s ticket.

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Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts of CO2 from air

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It may be best near-term way to remove CO2, say scientists, but cutting fossil fuel use remains critical

Spreading rock dust on farmland could suck billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air every year, according to the first detailed global analysis of the technique.

The chemical reactions that degrade the rock particles lock the greenhouse gas into carbonates within months, and some scientists say this approach may be the best near-term way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

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