Category Archives: World News

South Korea U-turns on 69-hour working week after youth backlash

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Protesters claim proposed increase in hours would risk health and fail to boost low birth rate

South Korea’s government has been forced to rethink a planned rise in working hours after a backlash from younger people who said the move would destroy their work-life balance and put their health at risk.

The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines.

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Indian state to open new Asiatic lion sanctuary as numbers soar

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Gujarat accused of being possessive after conservationists pleaded for more of the endangered lions to be moved to other areas

Lion conservation efforts in the Indian state of Gujarat have been so successful that a new sanctuary will be opened to house the abundant numbers of big cats.

Gir national park is home to the world’s only Asiatic lion population and the only place outside Africa where a lion can be seen in its natural habitat.

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Canada: university president to take leave amid controversy over Indigenous ancestry claim

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Incident involving Vianne Timmons is latest high-profile case of apparent cultural identity fraud

The president of a Canadian university has apologized and is taking a leave of absence after allegations that she falsely claimed to be Indigenous, in the latest high-profile case of apparent cultural identity fraud.

Vianne Timmons, who is president of Memorial University of Newfoundland, said that she would be taking a six-week leave after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published a report last week questioning her claims that her father’s great-great-grandmother was Mi’kmaq.

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Honduras to switch ties from Taiwan to China, says president

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Xiomara Castro’s move would leave Taiwan with formal diplomatic relations with only 13 countries

The Honduras president, Xiomara Castro, has said she has instructed her foreign minister to establish official relations with China, a move that would end its ties with Taiwan and further isolate the island on the world stage.

The Central American country’s switch from Taipei to Beijing would leave Taiwan with formal diplomatic ties with only 13 countries.

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Virus outbreak in West Bengal leaves 19 children dead and thousands in hospital

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Indian state in crisis after adenovirus hits 12,000 people this year and families with sick children camp outside Kolkata hospital

Nineteen children have died of acute respiratory infections in West Bengal this year, and thousands more are in hospital as India grapples with an adenovirus outbreak.

More than 12,000 cases of adenovirus have been recorded in the state since January. More than 3,000 children have been admitted to hospital with severe flu-like symptoms.

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Kia ora e hoa: dozens of New Zealand and Māori words added to Oxford English Dictionary

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Newly-added words include koha – a gift or offering – and kōrero, meaning a conversation or chat

New Zealanders will now see the common and casual te reo Māori greeting Kia ora e hoa! – meaning “hi mate” – in their Oxford English Dictionaries, as the institution moves to recognise the “profound and lasting impact” the Indigenous tongue has had on New Zealand’s language.

E hoa, or friend, is one of 47 New Zealand English words or expressions added to the dictionary in its latest update – most of them in te reo Māori, which is an official language of New Zealand. The OED describes itself as the definitive record of the English language.

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Parents in Indonesia outraged by 5.30am school start trial

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Controversial pilot project in Kupang, the capital of East Nusa Tenggara province, has twelfth-graders at 10 high schools starting classes in the dark

Early every morning in a city in Indonesia’s far east, sleepy teenagers can be seen trudging through the streets on their way to school.

The students are taking part in a controversial experiment to get the day off to a much earlier start.

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Pakistan: riot police fire teargas on crowds trying to prevent arrest of Imran Khan

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It is the second time in recent weeks that police have been dispatched to serve an arrest warrant to the former prime minister

Pakistan riot police have used water cannon and teargas to push back supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan who gathered outside his house to prevent officers from arresting him.

Khan was ousted from office by a no confidence vote last year, and has been snarled in a series of legal cases as he campaigns for early elections and his return to office.

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Miscalculation fears rise after Russian fighter jet collides with US drone over Black Sea

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US accuses Russia of ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ intercept of MQ-9 Reaper drone over waters west of Crimea

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A Russian fighter has collided with a US Reaper drone, forcing it down into the Black Sea, in what US forces called an “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept.

A US European Command statement said the collision happened just after 7am on Tuesday morning, when two Russian Su-27 fighter jets flew up to the MQ-9 Reaper drone over international waters west of Crimea. The statement said the Russian pilots sought to disrupt the US aircraft before the collision.

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Russian downing of US drone marks escalation of confrontation near war zone

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Russia’s and China’s ‘signalling’ to US aircraft in international airspace is nothing new, but downing a craft is a worrying development

On any given day around Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, Russian and Nato aircraft and naval vessels, manned and unmanned, buzz around in close proximity, a constant recipe for a superpower crisis along the edges of a war.

The stakes are raised by the fact that both sides have thousands of nuclear warheads as a weapon of last resort, and the risks are raised considerably by reckless behaviour.

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Special relationship becomes personal as Sunak and Biden bond in San Diego

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College football, Mexican cola and muffins – UK prime minister has plenty to talk about in private hour at Aukus

It is common for British and American leaders to try to show the “special relationship” between their two countries extends to them personally.

When Rishi Sunak landed in San Diego for a flash visit to see Joe Biden, the world’s media were spared any such attempts verging on the grandiose.

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Polish court convicts activist for helping woman get abortion pills

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Justyna Wydrzynska sentenced to community service after telling court she sent pills to victim of domestic violence

A court in Poland has convicted an activist for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills, sentencing her to eight months of community service in a landmark case over abortion rights in the predominantly Catholic country.

“I do not feel that I am facing the court alone,” said Justyna Wydrzynska at the hearing on Tuesday. “Behind me are my friends and hundreds of women I have not had the luck to meet yet.”

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France faces another day of strikes ahead of key vote on pension reforms

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Rubbish piles up and record number of people take to streets in protest against raising retirement age to 64

French unions have called for a show of force with a final day of strikes and protests in the run-up to a crucial vote on Emmanuel Macron’s fiercely contested pensions overhaul in parliament.

The call for an eighth day of national mobilisation on Wednesday comes as rubbish piles up in Paris and a number of other French cities after continuing strikes by refuse collectors who oppose the bill that will increase the official retirement age from 62 to 64.

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Catalonia launches operation to clear fish from reservoir to save drinking water

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Focus is on Sau reservoir, where water supplies have plunged to their lowest level since 1990

Officials in Catalonia have launched what is being described as an extraordinary operation to clear as many as 1.5 tonnes of fish a day, including many invasive species, from a rapidly dwindling reservoir in the hopes of salvaging drinking water as drought continues to grip the region.

The operation is focused on the Sau reservoir, a sprawling body of water flanked by mountains and tree-covered hills about 60 miles north of Barcelona, where water supplies have plunged to their lowest level since 1990.

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Farmers-led party set to prosper in key Dutch regional elections

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Green transition in spotlight as party opposed to nitrogen emission cuts surges in polls

A new party led by farmers fighting cuts to nitrogen emissions looks set to be the big winner in key Dutch regional elections that could severely weaken the government and, analysts suggest, herald a Europe-wide backlash against the green transition.

The BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB) was launched in 2019 and has just one MP, but its people-against-the-elites platform has struck a chord with disaffected voters, and polls suggest it could finish as the second-largest or even the largest party in Wednesday’s vote.

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‘Trail of war crimes’ left by DRC rebel group as recent attacks leave 300,000 displaced

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After a year of murder, rape, disease and looting, aid workers ask the international community: ‘Where the hell have you been?’

More than 300,000 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have had to abandon their homes because of fighting between the M23 rebel group and the government last month.

According to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, more than 800,000 people have now been displaced by the conflict since last March, and there is a humanitarian crisis that regional and international powers have allowed to fester.

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Bali to ban tourists from renting motorbikes

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Governor says foreigners will only be allowed to rent cars, after series of road traffic offences

The Indonesian island of Bali plans to ban tourists from renting motorbikes after a series of incidents in which foreigners have violated traffic rules.

Bali’s governor, Wayan Koster, said that underchanges to be imposed this year, foreigners would only be allowed to drive cars rented from travel agents.

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China to reopen to foreign tourists for first time since Covid crisis

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Authorities will resume issuing all visas after closing borders to international holidaymakers in 2020

China will reopen its borders to foreign tourists for the first time in the three years since the Covid pandemic erupted by allowing all categories of visas to be issued.

The removal of this last cross-border control measure on Wednesday comes after authorities declared victory over the virus last month.

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Oscars TV ratings improve – to third worst ever

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This year’s Academy Awards with Jimmy Kimmel at the helm drew an average TV audience of 18.7m – and a bigger share of younger viewers

The audience for the 2023 Academy Awards broadcast improved substantially on last year’s unimpressive figures, with a 12% jump on what was the second worst ratings performance in history.

Early ratings from Nielsen, supplied to the Hollywood Reporter, said that the show on ABC attracted an average of 18.7m viewers, compared to 16.6m in 2022. The audience share in the key 18-49 age demographic also improved, from 3.76 last year to 4.0.

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Russia says it does not recognise Hague court amid reports of arrest warrants

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International criminal court prosecutor is said to be preparing to formally open two war crimes cases

Moscow has said it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the international criminal court in The Hague, after reports that the court is expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals over the war in Ukraine.

“We do not recognise this court; we do not recognise its jurisdiction,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday morning.

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