World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk |
- Top US general Mark Milley faces Republican grilling over Trump storm – live
- ‘Blah, blah, blah’: Greta Thunberg lambasts leaders over climate crisis
- Syrian exiles forced to prop up regime with fees for avoiding conscription
- Bangkok on alert as 70,000 homes flood in Thailand
- At least 25 injured after explosion at block of flats in Gothenburg
- R Kelly’s ex-wife says victim shaming stopped women coming forward
- Earliest European portraits of African men on show together for first time
- Barack Obama: tax the rich, including me, to fund Biden spending plan
- Simone Biles says she should have quit a long time before Tokyo 2020
- Gibraltar cave chamber discovery could shed light on Neanderthals’ culture
- Coronavirus live: 10% of England’s secondary school pupils have long Covid symptoms after infection; record Russia deaths
- Inside the San Francisco Bay Area’s pandemic murder surge: ‘No one knows this pain but us’
- Wealthy nations must share more resources or risk crisis for billions, warns UN chief
- This fourth grader just wants to go to school. Florida’s risky Covid policies force her to stay home
- Anita Hill on sexual harassment and survival: ‘You have to think: what is my life for?’
- Squid Game: the hellish horrorshow taking the whole world by storm
- ‘Racism is rampant’: Alien Weaponry, the metal band standing up for Māori culture
- Pinker’s progress: the celebrity scientist at the centre of the culture wars
- The invisible migrant workers propping up Ireland’s €4bn meat industry
- After SPD win in Germany, is Europe’s centre left on the rise?
- Sabina Nessa: man appears in court charged with murder of teacher
- ‘My future is overseas’: Tunisians look to Europe as Covid hits tourism
- Biden is treating migrants little better than Trump did. That’s shameful | Xochitl Oseguera
- Future Fund worth $250bn says FoI requests ‘administratively burdensome’
- Germany election: far-right AfD loses status as main opposition
- Lava continues to erupt from volcano on Spanish island of La Palma – video
- Attorney Gloria Allred says R Kelly is 'the worst' predator she has ever pursued – video
| Top US general Mark Milley faces Republican grilling over Trump storm – live Posted: 28 Sep 2021 06:51 AM PDT
Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate armed services committee, sharply criticized the Biden administration for its coordination with the Taliban. The Republican senator accused the White House of negotiating with terrorists amid the Kabul evacuation mission. Inhofe today: "We went from 'we we will never negotiate with terrorists' to 'we must negotiate with terrorists.' "
Senator Jack Reed, the Democratic chairman of the armed services committee, opened the hearing with some criticism of today's witnesses. Reed said he was "disappointed" that the Pentagon leaders did not send their opening statements to the committee until late last night, giving senators and staffers very little time to review their remarks. Continue reading... |
| ‘Blah, blah, blah’: Greta Thunberg lambasts leaders over climate crisis Posted: 28 Sep 2021 02:00 AM PDT Exclusive: Activist says there are many fine words but the science does not lie – CO2 emissions are still rising Greta Thunberg has excoriated global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as "blah, blah, blah". She quoted statements by Boris Johnson: "This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging", and Narendra Modi: "Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower" but said the science did not lie. Continue reading... |
| Syrian exiles forced to prop up regime with fees for avoiding conscription Posted: 28 Sep 2021 05:49 AM PDT Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Siraj reveal how refugees are pressured for cash Early this year, Yousef, a 32-year-old Syrian living in Sweden, found himself faced with an impossible choice: either enlist in the army of the government that made him a refugee, or risk his family losing their home back in Syria. Military service is mandatory for Syrian men between the ages of 18 and 42, and the stakes rose significantly in February when an army official announced on Facebook that a new regulation would allow authorities to confiscate the property of "service evaders" and their families. Pressure was mounting on Yousef to decide. Continue reading... |
| Bangkok on alert as 70,000 homes flood in Thailand Posted: 28 Sep 2021 05:58 AM PDT Soldiers set up barriers and sandbags to protect archaeological ruins as well as neighbourhoods Thai authorities have rushed to protect parts of Bangkok from flood waters that have already inundated 70,000 homes and killed six people in the country's northern and central provinces. Tropical Storm Dianmu has caused flooding in 30 provinces, with the kingdom's central region the worst hit, the Thai Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department said. Continue reading... |
| At least 25 injured after explosion at block of flats in Gothenburg Posted: 28 Sep 2021 06:19 AM PDT Swedish police say resultant fire is under control as emergency services rule out gas leak as the cause Police are investigating whether an explosive device was left in an apartment building after four people were seriously hurt in an explosion and fire in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. About 25 people were taken to hospital after the blast on Tuesday morning set ablaze the building in a central residential area. Firefighters pulled people from the building while others used tied sheets to lower themselves from balconies as grey smoke billowed out of stairwells and windows. Continue reading... |
| R Kelly’s ex-wife says victim shaming stopped women coming forward Posted: 28 Sep 2021 04:49 AM PDT Drea Kelly puts focus on what happens outside courtroom after singer's racketeering and sex trafficking conviction The culture around victim shaming stopped women coming forward sooner about the abuse they experienced at the hands of R Kelly, the singer's ex-wife Drea Kelly has said. A New York jury on Monday found R Kelly guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed on women and children. Continue reading... |
| Earliest European portraits of African men on show together for first time Posted: 28 Sep 2021 02:00 AM PDT Rijksmuseum says change in focus prompted by renewed interest in wake of Black Lives Matter The two earliest portraits of men of African descent in the history of European art are being exhibited together for the first time in their 500-year history, reflecting a change of focus championed by the Black Lives Matter movement, curators at the Rijksmuseum have said. Among more than 100 portraits by Renaissance artists being showcased by the museum in Amsterdam from Tuesday are Albrecht Dürer's 1508 sketch, discovered in the German painter's workshop at the time of his death, and Jan Jansz Mostaert's portrait, dating from about 1525. Continue reading... |
| Barack Obama: tax the rich, including me, to fund Biden spending plan Posted: 28 Sep 2021 04:11 AM PDT Former president says billionaires should 'pay a little bit more in taxes' to fund healthcare, childcare and the climate crisis fight Barack Obama says wealthy Americans – including himself – can afford tax rises to help fund Joe Biden's ambitious spending plan. Related: Pelosi: Biden spending plan, infrastructure deal and funding 'must pass' next week Continue reading... |
| Simone Biles says she should have quit a long time before Tokyo 2020 Posted: 28 Sep 2021 04:24 AM PDT
Simone Biles has admitted that she should have walked away from the Olympic programme "way before" the Tokyo Games. Biles withdrew from five of her six finals at the Olympics in July to focus on her mental health after suffering from a phenomenon known as the twisties that affected her spatial awareness when competing. Continue reading... |
| Gibraltar cave chamber discovery could shed light on Neanderthals’ culture Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:00 PM PDT Researchers find space in Gorham's Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 years Researchers excavating a cave network on the Rock of Gibraltar have discovered a new chamber, sealed off from the world for at least 40,000 years, that could shed light on the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who occupied the area for a thousand centuries. In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham's Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand. Continue reading... |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2021 06:44 AM PDT One in 10 secondary school pupils in England and third of staff have long Covid symptoms after getting virus; official Russian tally reports 852 fatalities in 24 hours
The president of South Africa and the head of Oxfam joined forces to call on World Trade Organization (WTO) members and manufacturers to allow fairer access to Covid jabs. They addressed a WTO public event on trade and vaccines and asked for a waiver on intellectual property rights. South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said a waiver on patents was needed to save millions of lives during the pandemic. This is not the time just to be uni-dimensionally focused on profit. This is the time to save lives. The reality is the current trade rules enable rich country governments and pharmaceutical corporations to work hand in hand to artificially limit vaccine supplies to developing countries. I must appeal to BioNTech - the vaccine has turned your CEO into a double digit billionaire.
There has been a further 16 coronavirus deaths and 2,370 cases recorded in Scotland in the past 24 hours, the latest figures show. It means the death toll under this daily measure - of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days - stands at 8,551. Continue reading... |
| Inside the San Francisco Bay Area’s pandemic murder surge: ‘No one knows this pain but us’ Posted: 28 Sep 2021 03:00 AM PDT Guardian analysis reveals region-wide increase in violent deaths, but Black and Latino residents make up majority of victims On the night of 3 September 2020, Sonya Mitchell got a call as she was leaving work. Her 23-year-old son, Daimon "Dada" Ferguson, had been shot in a drive-by outside his older sister's home. In the months before, Mitchell, 56, had been watching reports of shootings in her hometown of Vallejo, in the San Francisco Bay Area, with increasing concern. There was the shooting at a birthday party on 9 June that killed two women and injured a 10-year-old. Three separate shootings had rocked the city on 20 August, including a double homicide that left a 25-year-old man and his 24-year-old girlfriend dead in a car with their infant son. Continue reading... |
| Wealthy nations must share more resources or risk crisis for billions, warns UN chief Posted: 28 Sep 2021 06:00 AM PDT António Guterres says unequal access to Covid vaccines and affordable loans in developing countries will widen inequality The head of the UN has called on rich countries to step up efforts to protect workers hit by the Covid-19 pandemic with an additional $1tn (£736bn) injection of funds to avoid a twin-track recovery that widens the gap with the world's poorest nations. Speaking in New York, the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, said the most serious global public health and economic crisis the world has faced in the past century was on course to worsen existing inequalities and threaten "the long-term livelihoods and well-being of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people" without a greater determination by rich nations to share resources. Continue reading... |
| This fourth grader just wants to go to school. Florida’s risky Covid policies force her to stay home Posted: 28 Sep 2021 02:00 AM PDT Governor DeSantis's 'soft-on-Covid approach' makes the classroom too dangerous for immuno-compromised children The only place nine-year-old Reefy Kinder wants to be is in school with her friends. She has missed so many lessons in six years battling a long-term gastro-intestinal condition, including more than 30 surgeries during many months as an inpatient at Orlando's Arnold Palmer children's hospital, that she figures she has a lot to catch up on. Standing in her way, according to Reefy and her mother, Jamie, are Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and his handpicked new state surgeon general Joseph Ladapo, an opponent of mask mandates who believes vaccines are no more effective than eating healthily and losing weight in the fight against Covid-19. Continue reading... |
| Anita Hill on sexual harassment and survival: ‘You have to think: what is my life for?’ Posted: 28 Sep 2021 04:00 AM PDT Before Christine Blasey Ford and Monica Lewinsky, there was Anita Hill, shamed for exposing the actions of a powerful man. She explains how she withstood the tumult Anita Hill sits so still that, when she is not speaking, I worry that the screen through which we are talking may have frozen. Yet despite her lawyerly, academic poise, she exudes warmth: you would feel safe confiding in her. And that is what people have been doing for the past 30 years – telling her of their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault. "I was a symbol of so many people's experiences," she says. In the pantheon of women shamed for exposing the actions of high-profile men – before Christine Blasey Ford in 2018 and Monica Lewinsky in 1998 – there was Anita Hill. In 1991, the US president, George HW Bush, nominated Clarence Thomas to the supreme court. Senate hearings for his confirmation were completed without incident, until an interview of Hill by the FBI was leaked to the press. In it, Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment while he was her supervisor in two separate jobs, at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Among other claims, Hill said that Thomas discussed women having sex with animals, and pornographic films depicting group sex or rape scenes, and described his own sexual prowess and anatomy. According to Hill, Thomas's behaviour forced her to resign from her job. Continue reading... |
| Squid Game: the hellish horrorshow taking the whole world by storm Posted: 28 Sep 2021 03:19 AM PDT In the gory thriller that has swiftly become a smash hit on Netflix, competitors play children's games for huge cash prizes … and if they lose, they die. Can you stomach it? What if winning playground games could make you rich? That's the basis of Squid Game – the South Korean show currently at number one on Netflix around the world – where debt-ridden players sign up to compete in six games for a cash prize of 45.6 billion won (around £28m). The small print: if you lose, you get killed. In the first episode, a game of Grandma's Footsteps (known as Red Light, Green Light in South Korea) leaves bodies piled high as the shell-shocked winners proceed to round two. It's blood-splattered child's play – a kind of Takeshi's Castle with fatalities, or Saw with stylish shell suits. If you can stomach the events of the first episode, what follows is a tightly written horror thriller that has captivated viewers. The nine-part series is the first Korean show to reach the top spot on the streaming platform in the US, and is currently number one in the UK. Its success won't come as a surprise to a generation of viewers who got hooked on murderous dystopian series The Hunger Games and cult favourite Battle Royale. But Squid Game's backdrop is South Korea's present-day, very real wealth inequality. Continue reading... |
| ‘Racism is rampant’: Alien Weaponry, the metal band standing up for Māori culture Posted: 28 Sep 2021 12:44 AM PDT The New Zealand trio have gone global thanks to their forthright Māori-language songs, which confront colonial history and ongoing inequality New Zealand was a war zone in the mid-1800s. On one side were the British and the colonial government, craving a stranglehold on more of the country's land. On the other were the indigenous Māori people, fighting to preserve tino rangatiratanga: their sovereignty and self-determination. On 29 April 1864, the British invaded Pukehinahina, also known as Gate Pā. Despite being grossly outnumbered, the Māori fended off the attackers using concealed trenches and guerrilla tactics. It was a fleeting victory in a war that, ultimately, led to the confiscation of 3m acres of Māori land. Continue reading... |
| Pinker’s progress: the celebrity scientist at the centre of the culture wars Posted: 27 Sep 2021 10:00 PM PDT How the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker became one of the world's most contentious thinkers On a recent afternoon, Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, was sitting in his summer home on Cape Cod, thinking about Bill Gates. Pinker was gearing up to record a radio series on critical thinking for the BBC, and he wanted the world's fourth richest man to join him for an episode on the climate emergency. "People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways – as problem-solving or as conflict," Pinker, who appreciates the force of a tidy dichotomy, said. "You can think of it as Bill versus Greta. And I'm very much in Bill's camp." A few weeks earlier, Gates had been photographed in Manhattan carrying a copy of Pinker's soon to be published 12th book, Rationality, which inspired the BBC series. "We sent it to his people," Pinker said. Pinker is an avid promoter of his own work, and for the past 25 years he has had a great deal to promote. Since the 1990s, he has written a string of popular books on language, the mind and human behaviour, but in the past decade, he has become best known for his counterintuitive take on the state of the world. In the shadow of the financial crisis, while other authors were writing books about how society was profoundly broken, Pinker took the opposite tack, arguing that things were, in fact, better than ever. Continue reading... |
| The invisible migrant workers propping up Ireland’s €4bn meat industry Posted: 28 Sep 2021 03:00 AM PDT There has been a chronic mistreatment of workers in the country's meat industry, according to unions Read more: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe In spring 2018, Alina Serbenco's husband, Vasile, sat in a fast-food outlet in Dublin and plugged his mobile phone into a socket to recharge. It had been only a few months since he had moved from Romania to take up a job in a car wash, but he was being paid less than half the minimum wage and could not send money home to Alina and their two children. Homeless and living in a car, Vasile urgently needed a new job. As he scrolled through Facebook, he spotted an advert for a job in a meat factory. It was posted by Irish employment agency AA Euro, a specialist recruitment consultancy working with companies in the agricultural, food processing, construction and mining industries, which has offices across the EU, including in Romania, Poland and the Netherlands. The job offer was up to 70 hours a week of work for just over the minimum wage and a room in a house for about €60 (£51.50) a week. Vasile decided to apply. Continue reading... |
| After SPD win in Germany, is Europe’s centre left on the rise? Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:00 PM PDT Analysis: some say Covid has increased voters' sense of social justice, but the picture remains uneven Social democracy is back, according to jubilant SPD officials. And after Germany's oldest political party edged the narrowest of wins against its conservative CDU/CSU rival, it may be tempting to believe Europe's centre left is stirring. Not everywhere, though: in France, the Socialist party shows no sign of recovering from its near-obliteration in 2017, when it failed to make the second round of the presidential election and crashed from 280 MPs to 30 and just 7.4% of the vote. Continue reading... |
| Sabina Nessa: man appears in court charged with murder of teacher Posted: 28 Sep 2021 04:49 AM PDT Koci Selamaj, 36, from Eastbourne, accused of killing schoolteacher on 17 September A man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a primary schoolteacher whose body was found in a park near her home in south-east London. Koci Selamaj, 36, was remanded in custody, accused of killing Sabina Nessa on Friday 17 September. Continue reading... |
| ‘My future is overseas’: Tunisians look to Europe as Covid hits tourism Posted: 27 Sep 2021 11:30 PM PDT As the pandemic deals a death blow to an already struggling sector, former workers see little hope for recovery The seafront along the town of Hammamet in Tunisia is deserted. Looking out at the bright empty coast from his souvenir shop, Kais Azzabi, 42, describes the crowds that would stroll along the broad boulevards. Today, there is nobody. "It was very busy here," he says, gesturing to the street and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. "Since the corona started, everything stopped." Continue reading... |
| Biden is treating migrants little better than Trump did. That’s shameful | Xochitl Oseguera Posted: 28 Sep 2021 03:24 AM PDT We thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrong We thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrong. Most of us were shaken and horrified, and the country rightfully embarrassed, by images of US border patrol agents on horseback attacking asylum seekers, including at least one child, in Texas. Thankfully, that has been stopped and an investigation is now underway. We need more than an investigation, though: we need to know that nothing like that will ever happen again. Continue reading... |
| Future Fund worth $250bn says FoI requests ‘administratively burdensome’ Posted: 28 Sep 2021 03:15 AM PDT Fund says 'hundreds of hours a year' are required to process requests that would be shielded under proposed Coalition legislation • Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing The $250bn Future Fund says receiving 10 to 20 freedom of information requests a year is "administratively burdensome" and has confirmed proposed changes by the Morrison government would have shielded it from the kind of request that exposed investments in a company linked to the Myanmar military. Last month, the Coalition introduced a bill granting wide-ranging exemptions to the Future Fund from freedom of information law, prompting criticism that it was a "calculated response" to an FoI that revealed its $3.2m investment in an Adani company criticised by the United Nations for an arrangement that gave financial support to the Myanmar military. Continue reading... |
| Germany election: far-right AfD loses status as main opposition Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:49 AM PDT Party that entered German parliament in 2017 drops about 2% nationally despite performing strongly in east The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which made a whirlwind entry into the German parliament in 2017, is set to lose its status as the main opposition force following Sunday's election but has at the same time emerged as the strongest party in parts of eastern Germany. The party, which rose to prominence on an anti-immigrant ticket after the arrival of around 1m refugees in 2015 but has more recently focused its attention on attacking the government's pandemic management, dropped just over 2% nationally to secure 10.3% of the vote. Continue reading... |
| Lava continues to erupt from volcano on Spanish island of La Palma – video Posted: 28 Sep 2021 02:09 AM PDT Lava continued to erupt from a volcano in La Palma on Tuesday morning. The volcano, which has already caused widespread devastation, burying more than 500 buildings and displacing more than 6,000 people since last week, was calmer on Monday. But scientists have warned it is too early to say the eruption has finished. The plume of ash smoke that began on 19 September stopped in the early hours of Monday, only to resume two hours later Continue reading... |
| Attorney Gloria Allred says R Kelly is 'the worst' predator she has ever pursued – video Posted: 27 Sep 2021 05:21 PM PDT After R Kelly was convicted in his sex trafficking trial, attorney Gloria Allred, who represented several of Kelly's alleged victims, said the R&B singer is 'the worst' predator she has ever pursued in her 47 years of practicing law. Kelly was convicted by a federal jury on all nine counts he faced after prosecutors accused the R&B singer of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed upon Black women and children. Kelly's lawyer Deveraux Cannick said 'I'm sure we'll be appealing'. Continue reading... |
| You are subscribed to email updates from World news | The Guardian. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
Posting Komentar