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Davos 2020: Greta Thunberg opens panel as Trump joins 1tn tree-planting scheme – day one live
Coronavirus: shares in Asia Pacific fall sharply as fears mount
Trump impeachment: Senate prepares for opening of historic trial
Study finds shock rise in levels of potent greenhouse gas
Jailed British-Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert rejected Iran's offer to work as a spy
Prince Harry arrives in Canada to join Meghan and Archie
Parents of Irish girl found dead in Malaysia sue resort owner
Johnson faces likely defeat as peers debate move to reinsert child migrant protections in Brexit bill - live news
US case against Huawei's Meng Wanzhou is 'fiction', say lawyers
Former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei jailed for bribery
'Earth sandwich': two men, two slices of bread and 12,724km of filling
From vagina eggs to anti-vaxxers: is it time for an influencer detox?
New EU science chief warns of drop-off in UK research funding
'It was painful to declare it': outbreak of animal disease was blow to Sudan exports
US briefing: impeachment trial, coronavirus and gun violence
Hondurans in no man’s land after Mexican troops block path to US
Sydney professor who allegedly sent fake threats to herself out on bail
Teenage boy the latest to die in Libyan refugee detention centre
Tony Blair is wrong. Africa won't be the answer to Britain's post-Brexit problems
'The river is our home': Bangladeshi boatmen mourn their receding waters
Trump impeachment trial: the key senators who could cross party lines
What are the Luanda Leaks?
Richmond, Virginia gun rally - in pictures

Davos 2020: Greta Thunberg opens panel as Trump joins 1tn tree-planting scheme – day one live

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 04:31 AM PST

Rolling coverage of the first day of the World Economic Forum, including Donald Trump's special address and Greta Thunberg's panel session

Latest: Young activists demand action at Davos
Thunberg: Listen to the science
Coming up: Donald Trump's special address
The agenda

12.31pm GMT

Thunberg now warns that the world is still on fire, due to lack of progress from world leaders.

"This is not not about right and left. We couldn't care less about your party politics," Thunberg continues (she's being heard in absolute silence),

From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left, and the centre have all failed.

No political ideology or economic structure has managed to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world.

12.27pm GMT

Elsewhere in Davos, Greta Thunberg is speaking about the climate emergency again - to another packed room.

She begins with a pointed reminder that little has happened since she wowed WEF in 2019.

One year ago, I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire, Thunberg reminds the audience.

I said I wanted you to panic. I'd been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do.

We're not telling you to rely on technologies that don't exist at scale yet, and perhaps never will.

Planting trees is good, of course, but it's nowhere near enough, and it cannot replace real mitigation and rewilding nature.

We don't need to lower emissions....Emissions need to stop.

Coronavirus: shares in Asia Pacific fall sharply as fears mount

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 01:00 AM PST

Memories of 2003's Sars outbreak cause jitters on financial markets, with Hong Kong worst hit, as death toll rises to four

Shares have fallen across Asia Pacific amid mounting concerns about a new strain of coronavirus in China that has left at least four people dead and spread to at least four countries.

With the economic damage done by the devastating 2003 Sars virus still fresh in the mind of many traders, stocks were sold heavily on Tuesday and expectations grew that the markets were in for more falls in the days ahead.

Trump impeachment: Senate prepares for opening of historic trial

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 10:15 PM PST

Mitch McConnell unveils resolution to move trial forward with unanticipated speed, consigning key proceedings to late-night hours

As Donald Trump prepared on Tuesday to address the billionaires in Davos, the US Senate prepared to hear opening arguments in an impeachment trial that could remove Trump from the presidency, if not from his seemingly unassailable perch in the public eye.

For only the third time in history, prosecutors sent by the House of Representatives will rise on the Senate floor to charge the president with "high crimes and misdemeanors" and declare that he must be turned out of the White House.

Study finds shock rise in levels of potent greenhouse gas

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 02:00 AM PST

Scientists had expected fall in levels of HFC-23 after India and China said they had halted emissions

Efforts to reduce levels of one potent greenhouse gas appear to be failing, according to a study.

Scientists had expected to find a dramatic reduction in levels of the hydrofluorocarbon HFC-23 in the atmosphere after India and China, two of the main sources, reported in 2017 that they had almost completely eliminated emissions.

Jailed British-Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert rejected Iran's offer to work as a spy

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 02:35 PM PST

Melbourne University academic rebuffed bid to recruit her in exchange for her release, letters reveal

Iran tried to recruit the British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert as a spy for Tehran in exchange for her release, but the overture was furiously rebuffed, letters smuggled out of Evin prison reveal.

Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated academic specialising in Middle East politics, is currently being held in Ward 2A, an isolated Revolutionary Guard-run wing of Tehran's notorious Evin prison, serving a 10-year sentence for espionage, a charge she, and the Australian government, rejects as entirely false.

Prince Harry arrives in Canada to join Meghan and Archie

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 01:05 AM PST

Family to be reunited for first time since couple announced they would drop royal titles

Prince Harry has arrived in Canada where he and his wife, Meghan, plan to start their new life outside of the royal family.

Photographs showed the Duke of Sussex stepping off a WestJet plane at Vancouver international airport, flanked by security guards, and getting straight into a waiting car on the tarmac.

Parents of Irish girl found dead in Malaysia sue resort owner

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 02:21 AM PST

Family of 15-year-old Nora Anne Quoirin have asked authorities to conduct inquest

The parents of an Irish girl who was found dead after going missing from a Malaysian resort last year have sued the resort owner for alleged negligence and formally requested a public inquest into her death.

Nora Anne Quoirin, 15, who had special needs, went missing in August from an eco-resort in Seremban, about 44 miles south of the Malaysian capital, while sleeping at night in a room with her siblings.

Johnson faces likely defeat as peers debate move to reinsert child migrant protections in Brexit bill - live news

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 04:28 AM PST

Rolling coverage of the day's political developments as they happen

12.28pm GMT

Earlier today my colleague Owen Jones posted this on Twitter.

I'm hearing from several sources that Jess Phillips is considering withdrawing from the contest today. https://t.co/Oqf7JLD4NM

BREAK: Two sources in two separate unions say @jessphillips will make a campaign announcement later.

They expect her to pull out of #LabourLeadership race.

12.23pm GMT

In the House of Lords peers are debating the report stage of the EU (withdrawal agreement) bill for the second day, and they have just started debating amendment 18, the one tabled by the Labour peer Lord Dubs that would reinstate provisions in the bill ensuring that the government remained bound by a commitment to accept unaccompanied child refugees wanting to join family members in the UK.

The original EU (withdrawal agreement) bill contained this provision. But it was dropped when Boris Johnson published a new version of the bill after the general election.

If the argument is put to the British public, they tend to respond positively ...

What we are talking about here is a very small number of children who would be positively affected by this measure. And that's why I'm pretty keen on it.

US case against Huawei's Meng Wanzhou is 'fiction', say lawyers

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 07:32 PM PST

Extradition hearing begins in Canada as defence team rejects allegations that executive tried to get around Iran sanctions

The accusations of sanctions busting against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou have been dismissed by her lawyers as "fiction" at the start of a legal hearing in Canada in which she is fighting extradition to the United States.

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the technology conglomerate, and eldest daughter of its founder Ren Zhengfei, is wanted by US authorities for alleged fraud in trying to circumvent Washington's sanctions against Iran.

Former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei jailed for bribery

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 12:11 AM PST

Former public security vice-minister caught up in Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign

The former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei, who was detained on a visit to China in 2018, has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for bribery in a case that has shaken the international police organisation.

Meng – a former vice-minister of public security in China – is among a growing group of Communist party cadres caught in President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign, which critics say has also served as a way to remove the leader's political enemies.

'Earth sandwich': two men, two slices of bread and 12,724km of filling

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 04:29 PM PST

Men in New Zealand and Spain calculated longitude and latitude to perfectly align both slices

An Auckland university student has created an "earth sandwich" with a stranger in Spain, after a long search for an accomplice.

Etienne Naude, 19, placed a slice of white bread on the ground at Bucklands Beach in Auckland, using longitude and latitude to ensure he was precisely opposite a volunteer he had found in the south of Spain after posting for help on Reddit.

From vagina eggs to anti-vaxxers: is it time for an influencer detox?

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 11:00 PM PST

Scepticism can be healthy – especially when celebrities are pushing debunked nonsense

For purveyors of snake oil, January is an especially lucrative month. Fresh from our festive excesses, our bodily insecurities are readily exploited by those looking to make a quick buck from a worthless ware. This month has already seen the unedifying sight of a Kardashian pushing a "flat-tummy" shake to her 27.7 million Twitter followers, while Netflix has abandoned any pretension of quality-control by allowing the actor Gwyneth Paltrow her own show, effectively a glorified promotional vehicle for Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop.

For those so inclined, Paltrow sells all manner of pseudoscientific regimes, from "jade eggs" (essentially rocks that Paltrow recommends women carry in their vagina, despite gynaecologists imploring people not to do this) to "healing stickers" to a $75 candle that ostensibly smells of Paltrow's vagina. Sadly, neither repeated admonishment by scientists and doctors nor a lawsuit against Goop for medically unsupported claims have done anything to impede their popularity, and the candles have already sold out, as did the jade eggs before them.

New EU science chief warns of drop-off in UK research funding

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 02:42 AM PST

Mauro Ferrari joins organisation at a tricky time and says his focus is on identifying 'breakthrough people'

At the age of 43, Mauro Ferrari astonished his peers by giving up his career as a highly regarded professor of engineering at the University of California in Berkeley to enrol at medical school.

He had been driven to find a cure for the cancer that had killed his wife at the age of 32, leaving him alone with three traumatised children. "I feel comfortable talking about this now – I didn't for years," he says. "Everyone has got a wound that pushes them to do better."

'It was painful to declare it': outbreak of animal disease was blow to Sudan exports

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 03:35 AM PST

Rift Valley fever led to temporary block on trade, with devastating impact on farmers and livestock

'Live animals are the largest source of infection': dangers of the export trade

Thousands of sheep waiting to be exported ended up dying of hunger and thirst, after an outbreak of Rift Valley fever led to a temporary Saudi block on trade.

The appearance of the disease in any country that depends on the export trade is potentially catastrophic. Countries are supposed to notify the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), which will then place restrictions on their trade.

US briefing: impeachment trial, coronavirus and gun violence

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 03:36 AM PST

Tuesday's top story: Senate prepares to hear opening arguments in Trump's impeachment trial. Plus, why it's time for a celebrity influencer detox

Good morning, I'm Tim Walker with today's essential stories.

Hondurans in no man’s land after Mexican troops block path to US

Posted: 21 Jan 2020 03:28 AM PST

Hundreds of migrants become stranded at river between Guatemala and Mexico

Hundreds of Central American migrants have become stranded in a sort of no man's land on the river border between Guatemala and Mexico, after running up against lines of Mexican National Guard troops deployed to keep them from moving en masse into the country and north towards the US.

The path forward was blocked by troops with riot shields, and about 100 National Guard agents with anti-riot gear formed a barrier into the night. But for many, a return home to impoverished and gang-plagued Honduras, where most of the migrants are from, was unthinkable.

Sydney professor who allegedly sent fake threats to herself out on bail

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 10:26 PM PST

Magistrate dismisses police contention Prof Dianne Jolley is a threat to public safety, after she spends two weeks in jail

Police have been accused of acting in "secret" to obtain key documents in the case of a Sydney professor's alleged fake harassment campaign.

Prof Dianne Jolley, the dean of science at the University of Technology Sydney, was arrested in November for allegedly sending fake threats to herself after the university planned to cancel a Chinese medicine course.

Teenage boy the latest to die in Libyan refugee detention centre

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 11:00 PM PST

The 16-year-old, from Eritrea, had been in the facility for more than a year and died of an unknown illness and lack of medical care

A 16-year-old is the latest person to die in a network of Libyan detention centres where refugees and migrants are locked up indefinitely after they are returned to the war-torn north African country by the EU-funded coastguard.

Fellow detainees in Sabaa detention centre, Tripoli, named the boy as Adal Debretsion, an Eritrean who had reportedly been locked up for more than a year. They said the teenager died on 12 January of an unknown illness and a lack of medical care.

Tony Blair is wrong. Africa won't be the answer to Britain's post-Brexit problems

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 10:00 PM PST

Far from promising an economic miracle, the UK has missed the boat on a continent on the brink of a painful debt crisis

Tony Blair's cheerleading for the UK-Africa investment summit is of a piece with much of the former prime minister's recent career. Trading in grand-sounding ideas, often very short on detail, he brings the pitch of an evangelist crossed with a lobbyist to the world's biggest problems.

Blair's latest piece of rhetorical woo-woo unites (and promises to address) a series of disparate preoccupations: eradicating poverty and encouraging good governance in Africa while solving the issue of Britain's trading relationships post-Brexit. All seasoned with just a hint of post-colonial hubris.

'The river is our home': Bangladeshi boatmen mourn their receding waters

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 03:00 AM PST

Decreased flows caused by water-hungry neighbours, especially India, are damaging river communities

• All photographs by Kaamil Ahmed

Holding his downturned palm level with his waist, Musana Robi Das indicates how tall he was when he started working on Bangladesh's rivers.

As a child he helped his father ferry villagers across local waterways. Now a tall and spindly 50-year-old, he has had to abandon that life as a boatman. The waters now sit so low that his services are unnecessary. So the past decade has instead been spent repairing shoes inside a dimly lit wooden booth in the village market.

Trump impeachment trial: the key senators who could cross party lines

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 10:15 PM PST

While a conviction is unlikely, some Republican senators such as Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins could break ranks over trial procedure while two Democrats could back the president

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has pledged "total coordination" with the White House in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. But the 47-member Democratic caucus in the Senate could take control of key parts of the process, enabling them to call witnesses or merely to prevent a quick dismissal of the case, by recruiting four Republicans to make a 51-seat majority.

A two-thirds majority of 67 senators would be needed to convict and remove Trump from office, a seemingly unreachable number for Democrats.

What are the Luanda Leaks?

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 07:00 AM PST

Leak has shown how Africa's richest woman built her empire, but how did it happen?

Community bulldozed at site of Isabel dos Santos 'masterplan'

Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of the former president of Angola, claims to be a self-made businesswoman, but a cache of documents investigated by the Guardian and partners appears to tell a different story.

The Luanda Leaks are a trove of 715,000 emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts that help explain how Dos Santos built a business empire worth an estimated $2bn.

Richmond, Virginia gun rally - in pictures

Posted: 20 Jan 2020 03:53 PM PST

Advocates and militia members gather in Virginia's state capitol to protest potential gun control measures