Category Archives: Russia

Coronavirus live news: claim that asymptomatic transmission ‘very rare’ was ‘misleading’, says WHO official

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WHO expert backtracks after saying asymptomatic transmission ‘very rare’

Here are the latest developments in the world coronavirus outbreak so far on Tuesday:

Germany plans to extend its travel warnings for non-European countries until 31 August, government sources have told the Reuters news agency, adding that Berlin was also strongly advising against any cruises due to the special risks related to the pandemic.

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Trump move to take US troops out of Germany ‘a dangerous game’

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UK politicians and military experts warn decision could hand advantage to Russia

British politicians and European military experts have warned that Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw 9,500 troops from Germany risks handing a strategic advantage to the Kremlin and undermining the postwar western military alliance.

It would also affect the United States’s ability to operate in the Middle East and Africa – although there is scepticism as to whether the notoriously fickle president will be able to carry out the threat before November’s election.

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St Petersburg death tally casts doubt on Russian coronavirus figures

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City issues 1,552 more death certificates in May than last year, but Covid-19 toll was 171

New mortality data from Russia’s second-largest city has reignited questions about whether the country’s official tally has discounted thousands of deaths tied to the coronavirus outbreak.

St Petersburg issued 1,552 more death certificates this May than in the previous year, a nearly 32% rise indicating that hundreds of deaths tied to the pandemic are not reflected in the city’s official coronavirus death toll for the month of 171.

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Putin orders state of emergency after huge fuel spill inside Arctic Circle

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President lambasts power plant owner ‘for not reporting earlier’ incident bigger than Kerch spill

Vladimir Putin has ordered a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel spilled into a river inside the Arctic Circle.

The spill occurred when a fuel reservoir at a power plant near the city of Norilsk collapsed on Friday.

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Donald Trump offers to invite Vladimir Putin to expanded G7 summit

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US president initiated call with Russian leader, according to Kremlin account, where they discussed pandemic, oil and space

Donald Trump has offered to invite Vladimir Putin to an expanded G7 meeting in September, but the invitation has already been adamantly opposed by the UK and Canada.

According to a Kremlin account on Monday, the US president initiated the call, in which the two leaders talked about the coronavirus pandemic, oil prices and cooperation in space, as well as Trump’s postponement of a planned G7 summit at Camp David this month and the inclusion of other countries.

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Wars without end: why is there no peaceful solution to so much global conflict?

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A new study shows that 60% of the world’s wars have lasted for at least a decade. From Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Congo DRC, has endless conflict become normalised?

Libya’s civil war entered its 7th year this month with no end in sight. In Afghanistan, conflict has raged on and off since the Soviet invasion in 1979. America’s Afghan war is now its longest ever, part of the open-ended US “global war on terror” launched after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks.

Yemen’s conflict is in its sixth pitiless year. In Israel-Palestine, war – or rather the absence of peace – has characterised life since 1948. Somalis have endured 40 years of fighting. These are but a few examples in a world where the idea of war without end seems to have become accepted, even normalised.

Why do present-day politicians, generals, governments and international organisations appear incapable or uninterested in making peace? In the 19th and 20th centuries, broadly speaking, wars commenced and concluded with formal ultimatums, declarations, agreed protocols, truces, armistices and treaties.

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Coronavirus live news: Spain’s prime minister seeks final two-week extension of state of emergency

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Brazil becomes fourth worst country for deaths; pressure builds on South African president over his handling of outbreak

Bosnia’s state court has ordered the release of a regional prime minister and two other men suspected of corruption in connection with the import of defective ventilators for coronavirus patients.

The court of Bosnia-Herzegovina said their detention was unnecessary, and turned down the prosecution’s requests to detain the three men for 30 days.

Senior public health officials have made a last-minute plea for ministers to scrap Monday’s easing of the coronavirus lockdown in England, warning the country is unprepared to deal with any surge in infection and that public resolve to take steps to limit transmission has been eroded.

The Association of Directors of Public Health said new rules, including allowing groups of up to six people to meet outdoors and in private gardens, were “not supported by the science” and that pictures of crowded beaches and beauty spots over the weekend showed “the public is not keeping to social distancing as it was”.

Related: Health officials make last-minute plea to stop lockdown easing in England

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Trump cancels summit but says he will invite Putin to later G7 event

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US president intends to convene 11 nations at later date in push to counter China

Donald Trump has been forced to cancel a planned face-to-face summit of G7 leaders in June and now wants to host an expanded meeting in September dedicated to countering China, to which Vladimir Putin would be invited.

Trump revealed on Saturday that he had cancelled the June meeting, which he had billed as a symbol of the US “transitioning back to greatness”, after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, told him in a phone call that she saw the summit in Washington DC as a health risk. Hundreds of security staff, journalists and officials also attend the two-day summits.

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Trump justice department forces out top FBI lawyer in Flynn case – report

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A top FBI lawyer who was criticised on Fox News for his role in the investigation of Michael Flynn has resigned after being asked to do so by senior figures at the Department of Justice, NBC News reported on Saturday.

Related: What is 'Obamagate' and why is Trump so worked up about it?

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Pussy Riot and Chilean group join forces against state repression

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Activists release manifesto, calling on civilians to set the institutions of the state on fire – ‘in a figurative sense’

Governments around the world are using the coronavirus as an excuse to step up repression and push back civil liberties, warns a new song by Pussy Riot, released alongside a new manifesto written with the Chilean feminist collective Lastesis.

Related: Chile security forces' crackdown leaves toll of death and broken bodies

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Coronavirus live news: WHO sounds alarm over surge of Covid-19 cases in Latin America

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Longest official mourning period in Spain’s democracy; unrest grows in UK PM’s party over Dominic Cummings lockdown breach; WHO says Americas are new Covid-19 epicentre. Follow the latest updates

There have now been 118,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the 54 nations of Africa, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

So far, about 48,000 people in Africa who have tested positive for the virus have recovered, while 3,500 have died, according to the latest updated from WHO African region on Wednesday morning.

Over 118,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 48,000 recoveries & 3,500 deaths. View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/V0fkK8dYTg pic.twitter.com/W1hbvugno1

Hi, this is Damien Gayle taking the reins of the live blog now, bringing you the latest headlines and stories, and the best of the Guardian’s coverage, from the coronavirus pandemic around the world.

If you have any comments, tips or suggestions for coverage please drop me a line, either via email to damien.gayle@gmail.com, or via Twitter direct message to @damiengayle.

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Coronavirus live news: US deaths from Covid-19 have passed 100,000

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Qatar Covid-19 app ‘exposed 1m people’s personal details’; WHO sounds alarm over surge of Covid-19 cases in Latin America

Tom McCarthy writes that one of the key problems facing American efforts to emerge from the Covid-19 crisis is the population’s aversion to vaccines.

Only about half of Americans say they would get a Covid-19 vaccine if available, according to a poll, as a top US government scientist tempered claims by Donald Trump that the United States would be able to invent, manufacture and administer hundreds of millions of vaccine doses by the end of the year.

Related: Just half of Americans plan on getting Covid-19 vaccine, poll shows

Further to our story at 20.29, data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the United States has recorded more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, moving past a grim milestone even as many states relax mitigation measures to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The US has recorded more deaths from the disease than any other country in the pandemic, and almost three times as many as the second-ranking country, Britain, which has recorded more than 37,000 Covid-19 deaths.

Related: US passes 100,000 coronavirus deaths as states relax lockdown measures

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Global report: Germany to relax travel curbs as Spain mourns Covid-19 victims

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France defends tracking app amid privacy concerns and Hungary aims to lift state of emergency

Denmark has made it easier for cross-border couples separated from their partners by lockdown to meet again, while Germany is expected to allow travel to 31 European countries from mid-June, as EU countries continued to lift coronavirus restrictions.

People living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany can now visit partners in Denmark by signing a simple declaration rather than having to provide photos, phone records and other proof of a relationship, the Danish justice minister, Nick Hækkerup, said.

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Russia to hold Victory Day parade on 24 June, says Vladimir Putin

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President announces new date for military showpiece as rate of Covid-19 infections slows

Vladimir Putin has said Russia will hold its postponed Victory Day military parade on 24 June and declared that the country’s coronavirus outbreak has stabilised, on the same day as it posted a record death toll from the virus.

The decision to hold the parade in a month’s time is likely to mean thousands of soldiers being scrambled to begin rehearsals for the complex event, while millions of Russians remain under strict orders to shelter at home.

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Boris Johnson’s senior adviser refuses to apologise for lockdown breach – as it happened

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Dominic Cummings will not resign; WHO drops hydroxychloroquine from global study into experimental coronavirus treatments. This blog is now closed

We’ve fired up a brand new blog at the link below – follow me there for the latest:

Related: Coronavirus live news: WHO drops hydroxychloroquine trial as Mexico death toll questioned

The White House on Monday issued a statement amending the timing of the start of new restrictions on travel from Brazil to the United States to 11.59pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, 26 May.

The White House announced on Sunday that it was restricting travel from Brazil to the United States, two days after the South American nation became the world’s No. 2 hotspot for coronavirus cases.

In its original announcement, it said the restrictions would come into force on 28 May.

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Global report: Muslims face curfews ahead of Eid amid Covid-19 crisis

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Pandemic subdues Ramadan festivities as Taliban declares ceasefire; Spain and Greece to welcome tourists

Muslims worldwide prepared to celebrate Eid under lockdown, with the strictest governments bringing in 24-hour curfews for the holiday – but across the world the slow march is continuing out of coronavirus quarantine.

For the first time since the beginning of the outbreak, China said it had recorded no new cases of the virus; Spain joined Greece in saying it would be reopening to foreign tourists from July, and also said its football league would start again next month.

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US security officials ‘considered return to nuclear testing’ after 28-year hiatus

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Discussion held this month as way to press Russia and China into agreeing arms control deal, officials say

US officials have debated whether to carry out the first US nuclear tests in 28 years as a way to pressure Russia and China into make a trilateral arms control deal, according congressional aides and former officials.

They said the discussion took place at a “deputies meeting” of senior national security officials at the White House on 15 May, but that the proposal was shelved for the time being.

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Coronavirus live news: South America is now pandemic’s epicentre, says WHO

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Madrid and Barcelona to ease lockdown as Spain’s death toll stays under 100 again; 660,000 people forced to flee homes during crisis despite UN global ceasefire call

Peru has extended its state of emergency until the end of June with only a very partial lifting of its lockdown as infections continue to climb despite more than two months of confinement.

Peru is the second-worst affected Latin American country, with more than 111,000 cases and a death toll of 3,148, according to official figures.

It’s not just an extension ... there is a strategy to combat the virus. This disease will not beaten in a short time. It’s not a 100m sprint, it’s a marathon.

Over the course of the last 60 days we have made great efforts but we have to make another qualitative jump in the health sector.

France regrets a British decision to impose a quarantine on people arriving from mainland Europe and stands ready to impose reciprocal measures, the Agence France-Presse news agency has quoted the country’s interior ministry as saying.

The UK’s home secretary Priti Patel announced earlier on Friday that travellers arriving in the UK from 8 June will have to tell the authorities where they will be staying and face spot checks to ensure they quarantine themselves for 14 days.

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Trump to pull US out of third arms control deal

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The Open Skies Treaty allows Russia and western nations to conduct observation flights

The US has declared its intention to leave the Open Skies Treaty, which is intended to reduce the risk of war by allowing Russia and western nations to conduct observation flights over each other’s territory.

Washington informed the other 33 parties to the treaty of its intention to deliver a formal six-month notice of withdrawal on Friday, accusing Russia of violations.

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Spain reports lowest daily death toll in over two months – as it happened

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Brazil daily death toll jumps by nearly 1,200; East Africa facing ‘triple menace’ of Covid-19, floods and locusts. This blog is now closed

We are closing this live blog now, but you can stay up to date on all our coverage with our new global blog which you can find below.

Related: Coronavirus live news: Trump pushes to open churches as Brazil death toll passes 20,000

Here the latest developments at a glance:

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