Category Archives: World News

South Africa tobacco ban greeted with cigarette smuggling boom

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With tobacco sales banned in effort to curb coronavirus, illegal trade has surged on border with Zimbabwe

South Africa and Zimbabwe have stepped up border patrols in a bid to stop cigarette smuggling, which has boomed since Pretoria banned the sale of tobacco in March.

The country claimed smokers were more prone to Covid-19 – something that has been challenged by tobacco companies – but the illegal trade has increased, despite South Africa erecting a R37m (£1.7m) 25-mile fence across the border in April as part of its measures to curb the spread of coronavirus. Smugglers have been crawling through broken sections of the fence and taking advance of the particularly porous Beitbridge/Musina crossing point.

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‘There hasn’t been rehabilitation’: Afghanistan struggles with fate of ‘Daesh wives’

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The Afghan government is facing hard decisions over the futures of hundreds of detained radicalised women and their children

The “Daesh wives” from the Afghan branch of Islamic State look very young. Most are already mothers.

Hundreds of them have fled combat, airstrikes and near-starvation in eastern Afghanistan where the faction of Isis known as Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK) has been under fierce bombardment from Afghan and US special forces, as well as involved in violent clashes with rival militants the Taliban.

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Coronavirus live news: Bolsonaro says he may have had coronavirus as cases rise in 27 US states

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Mike Pence to hold first coronavirus task force briefing in weeks on Friday; Texas pauses next phase of reopening; Brazil registers 39,483 new cases; Follow the latest updates

Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for the Guardian from Wellington:

It was a case of “plenty of room at the inn” for a hotel in a New Zealand ski resort town during the country’s strictest weeks of Covid-19 lockdown, with eight babies born there due to a lack of local maternity facilities.

The hotel, the Ramada at Remarkables Park in Queenstown, accommodated parents, babies and their midwives free of charge while the births happened, according to the website Stuff.

“Our ‘Ramada babies’ will always be welcome here and we look forward to them visiting in future." - Ramada Suites by Wyndham Remarkables Park Queenstown Manager Suzanne Pentecost.#RamadaSuitesbyWyndhamRemarkablesParkQueenstown

Read more: https://t.co/JC22As58al pic.twitter.com/hUvKmxtXkE

Steven Morris, Helen Pidd and Archie Bland report:

A major incident was declared after tens of thousands of people defied pleas to stay away and descended in their droves on beaches in Bournemouth and other stretches of the Dorset coast.

Related: Major incident declared as people flock to England's south coast

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Coronavirus live news: global death toll exceeds 490,000; soldiers sent to Italian town amid tension over new outbreak

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WHO needs $31.3bn over 12 months for vaccines; France plans 1.3m tests to find ‘hidden clusters’; Mike Pence to hold first taskforce briefing in weeks

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has offered to help hospitals in other states struggling to cope with Covid-19 cases.

He also criticised states that reopened their economies before getting the virus under control, saying there was “undeniable, irrefutable evidence” those states made a mistake.

The global death toll has passed 490,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The figure has reached 490,632 with the US accounting for 124,509 fatalities, the highest of any country.

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Lightning strikes kill more than 100 in India

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Bihar state records one of the highest daily tolls from lightning in recent years as monsoon begins

At least 107 people have died from lightning strikes in northern and eastern India, officials said, during the early stages of the annual monsoon season.

Some 83 people were killed in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar after being struck by lightning, and another 24 died in northern Uttar Pradesh state. Dozens more were injured, officials said.

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Iran says Tehran blast was industrial gas tank explosion

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News agency says site of incident not related to military and investigations under way

An industrial gas tank exploded overnight in Tehran, Iran’s defence ministry has said, after images of the blast were widely shared on social media.

“A gas tank exploded in the Parchin public area. Thank God there were no casualties,” said a ministry spokesman, Brig Gen Davoud Abdi.

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Nigerian pop star allegedly abducts woman after she accuses him of rape

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Seyitan Babatayo’s claims against D’banj spark outrage in Nigeria as activism against sexual abuse rises

A woman who accused an Afrobeats star of rape has claimed she was subsequently targeted by police and then held hostage by the singer, sparking outrage amid rising activism in Nigeria against endemic sexual abuse.

Seyitan Babatayo reported to Nigerian police on 6 June, three days after she alleged on Twitter that the music star D’banj, whose real name is Oladapo Oyebanjo, had forcibly gained access to her hotel room as she slept and raped her.

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Bank of England blocking release of Venezuelan gold, court hears

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$1bn gold hoard subject of dispute between Nicolás Maduro and rival Juan Guaidó

Claims that the Bank of England is unlawfully blocking the release of 31 tonnes of gold valued at nearly $1bn(£805m) and intended to combat the coronavirus in Venezuela have been heard in the high court this week.

The bars are among the 400,000 bars of gold held in the Bank’s vaults, but there is a political dispute about their rightful owner.

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Drain brain: Nasa offers prize money for best lunar loo design

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Agency hopes to attract novel solutions for its Artemis mission to the moon in 2024

“It certainly isn’t the prime focus of the mission,” said Nasa’s Mike Interbartolo. “We’re not going back to the moon so we can say we pooped on the moon, but we don’t want an Apollo situation either.”

Interbartolo, is project manager for the Lunar Loo Challenge, a Nasa competition launched on Thursday that hopes to attract new and innovative solutions to the problem of capturing and containing human waste in space.

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Exclusive: Viber severs ties with Facebook in growing boycott

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Service adds to firms shunning Facebook over refusal to act against Donald Trump posts

The messaging service Viber, the fifth biggest with more than a billion users around the world, is severing all ties to Facebook as part of a growing boycott of the company by commercial partners.

The campaign, initially started in the US after Facebook’s refusal to take action against posts from Donald Trump which critics said incited violence, has now grown to become an international movement.

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US politics: police officers fired in North Carolina over racial slurs video – live updates

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The Associated Press are reporting that Donald Trump is facing renewed criticism over his plans to celebrate Independence Day with a showy display at Mount Rushmore.

Native Americans who view the monument as a desecration of land violently stolen from them and used to pay homage to leaders hostile to native people are planning protests for the presidents’s 3 July visit.

As mentioned earlier, Donald Trump isn’t expected to be seen wearing a face mask during his trip to Wisconsin later today, despite the fact that everybody else will.

This isn’t the only time that the president has made himself an exception to the rule. In this video, my colleague Maanvi Singh looks back at how Trump has long been contradicting and defying science during the coronavirus outbreak, and the impact this has had on the country’s faltering handling of the pandemic.

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Coronavirus live news: cases surge in Europe since lockdown easing, says WHO

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Cases worldwide growing by 1m per week; Latin American death toll expected to reach 390,000 by October; Texas hospitals near capacity; volunteers receive first doses of experimental vaccine

Guardian analysis of coronavirus data, in combination with the University of Oxford’s coronavirus government response tracker, has identified that 10 of the 45 most badly-affected countries are also among those rated as having a “relaxed response” to the pandemic, underlining the mitigating impact of effective government public health policies. You can read the Guardian investigation here.

The countries include the US - which is experiencing its largest increase in coronavirus cases since April; Iran, Germany and Switzerland - two European countries where the R rate has risen above one this week [...]

A country has been classed as being “relaxed” if its stringency index score is under 70 out of 100, according to the latest data from the University of Oxford’s tracker. The tracker assesses countries’ public information campaigns, containment measures and closures to give them a score out of 100 on their stringency index.

More on the rise of cases in Israel.

With 532 new infections reported by the health ministry in the past 24 hours, Israel has seen the emergence of a number of hotspots including in the Sea of Galilee resort of Tiberias, as well as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – the highest daily total in more than two months.

Related: Israel brings back tracking system amid surge in Covid-19 cases

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Global stock market rally is a gamble, IMF warns investors

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Report identifies gap between market optimism and depressed state of economies

The global stock market rally represents a gamble by investors that central banks will ignore the risks of a buildup in debt and continue to provide support at the current record levels, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

In an update to its half-yearly global financial stability report, the IMF said central banks had been pivotal in the recovery of share prices from their Covid-19 trough but there was now a gap between the optimism of financial markets and the depressed state of economies.

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Woody Allen’s new film to open San Sebastián film festival

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Rifkin’s Festival, which was shot in the Spanish city last year, chosen to headline annual film festival

Rifkin’s Festival, the new film by Woody Allen, has been selected to open the San Sebastián film festival in Spain.

Starring Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel and Gina Gershon, Rifkin’s Festival was shot in and around the city in 2019, and according to the plot synopsis takes place during the festival itself. “It tells the story of a married American couple who go to the San Sebastián festival and get caught up in the magic of the event, the beauty and charm of the city and the fantasy of movies. She has an affair with a brilliant French movie director, and he falls in love with a beautiful Spanish woman who lives there.”

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Bulgarian PM could be investigated over audio threat to ‘burn’ MEP

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Elena Yoncheva demands investigation into tape of man with voice like Boïko Borissov’s

A Bulgarian MEP has demanded an investigation following the emergence of an audio recording of a man who sounds like the country’s prime minister, Boïko Borissov, vowing to “burn” her.

Elena Yoncheva, a former journalist who has been engaged in a campaign to expose government corruption, said the public prosecutor needed to scrutinise the seven-minute recording, which has been heard by more than a million Bulgarians since it was posted anonymously on YouTube and other social media.

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Viruses do not take breaks. The world can learn from how the DRC is beating Ebola

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The African conflict zone has shown resilience and resourcefulness – and leaders tackling Covid-19 should heed its example

The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has ended. Thursday marked 42 days since the last person with Ebola was discharged from care, double the maximum length of time it takes for symptoms to appear. Nearly two years of hard work and leadership by the communities in DRC has paid off, with the end of the first Ebola outbreak in a conflict zone.

It’s a time for celebration but not complacency. Viruses do not take breaks. DRC’s 10th Ebola outbreak may have come to a close but an 11th, in the north-west part of the country, was detected on 1 June. Cases are appearing 240km away from Mbandaka, the centre of this latest outbreak.

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Israel brings back tracking system amid surge in Covid-19 cases

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Knesset votes to approve bill authorising domestic security agency to track infections

Israel is experiencing an alarming surge in coronavirus cases, which has prompted the government to approve reimposing a controversial tracking system administered by the country’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, over the reported objections of the agency.

Cases in the country have surged again after Israel eased restrictions at the end of May – a move that coincided with the Shavuot holiday, when people crowded beaches on both the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee.

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EU parliament leader: Boris Johnson seems unwilling to find compromise in Brexit talks

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Exclusive: David Sassoli says UK appeared unenthusiastic in recent trade negotiations

Boris Johnson appeared unwilling to compromise in order to secure a trade and security deal with Brussels when he joined EU leaders for a summit last week, one of the three who attended the meeting has told the Guardian.

David Sassoli, the president of the European parliament, punctured a recent outbreak of optimism over a potential deal by warning that the EU had been left concerned at the end of a video conference call by the lack of “enthusiasm” to find common ground on the most contentious issues.

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Revealed: countries facing coronavirus rise as lockdown relaxed

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Of the 45 countries to have recorded more than 25,000 coronavirus cases to date, 21 currently have relaxed responses to the pandemic. Of these, 10 are reporting a rising number of cases

Ten countries currently facing serious increases in coronavirus infections are among those nations with less stringent approaches to managing their outbreaks.

Guardian analysis of coronavirus data, in combination with the University of Oxford’s coronavirus government response tracker, has identified that 10 of the 45 most badly-affected countries are also among those rated as having a “relaxed response” to the pandemic, underlining the mitigating impact of effective government public health policies.

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Uruguay and Paraguay buck Latin America coronavirus trend

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Despite sharing borders with Brazil, small countries can claim victory against virus

Latin America has become the new centre of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic but two small countries, Uruguay and Paraguay, have bucked the regional trend and can claim a near total victory against the virus.

Though they are strangely dissimilar – Uruguay is a progressive enclave with the lowest poverty index in Latin America, while Paraguay has poverty estimates of 30-50% and is rife with corruption – both nations have kept their coronavirus death rates surprisingly low.

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