World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

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World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk


Spain warned of dire impact of second coronavirus lockdown

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:30 PM PDT

Businesses and psychologists say the country is still reeling from its earlier confinement

As officials across Spain wrestle with a surge in coronavirus cases, a chorus of voices is warning that another lockdown could have dire consequences for a country that just months ago emerged from one of Europe's strictest confinements.

While cases of the virus have climbed across Europe, Spain has led the pack in recent days. More than 78,000 cases have been detected in the past two weeks, pushing the 14-day infection rate to 166 per 100,000, compared with 67 in France and 22 in the UK.

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‘I feel she was abandoned’: The life and terrible death of Belly Mujinga

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:00 PM PDT

A devoted mother and transport worker, Mujinga was confronted by an angry passenger as Covid-19 swept the UK in March. Her death made headlines and raised pressing questions about race, abuse and workers' rights

It is maybe three metres from the concourse in Victoria station to the ticket office. As Belly Mujinga ran, she would have been scared. It was 21 March, a Saturday, late in the morning. Victoria was a ghost of its former self. Hardly anyone was around to see Belly as she dashed for the ticket office, her breath shaky and uncontrolled, her hand reaching out to wipe the spittle from her face.

There are facts in the story of Belly – and there is a version of events that is disputed. Then there is the symbol that Belly has become to so many people – people who never met her or heard the sound of her voice, but who know her name and the story of what happened to her in those fear-filled days at the start of the coronavirus outbreak in Britain.

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UK coronavirus live: secondary school pupils in Scotland should wear face coverings from Monday

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:17 AM PDT

Wearing masks in Scotland will not be mandatory, while in England Alok Sharma, business secretary, says pupils and staff will not be penalised for wearing masks

People with eating disorders are at significant risk of negative impacts of the pandemic, a research paper says.

Data was collected from 129 people experiencing, or in recovery from, an eating disorder during the early stages of the UK pandemic lockdown. Participants were aged between 16 and 65 years.

Fantastic research study from @TheCyberPsyche and @CatherineTalb from @NorthumbriaUni- almost 9/10 participants said their ED symptoms had worsened in the pandemic. They believe this will have long-term effects on their symptoms and recovery. See more here: https://t.co/ch5GRDo909

People with blood cancer are at greater risk of dying if they go to hospital with coronavirus than people with other types of cancer, research shows.

A paper published by Lancet Oncology found that of 224 people with blood cancer (leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma) who got coronavirus and ended up in hospital, 36% of them died.

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Van Morrison blasts Covid gig limits as 'pseudoscience'

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:00 PM PDT

Star calls for live music to challenge social distancing rules, but faces fan backlash

Van Morrison has denounced the supposed "pseudoscience" around coronavirus and is attempting to rally musicians in a campaign to restore live music concerts with full capacity audiences.

The 74-year-old Northern Irish singer launched a campaign to "save live music" on his website, saying socially distanced gigs were not economically viable. "I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up," he said.

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RNC night one: Republicans argue only Trump can save America

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:59 PM PDT

President's allies and family issued dark warnings of what's at stake in the election, and an array of misleading claims

Republicans have used the first night of their national convention to issue dark warnings about the future of America, arguing that re-electing Donald Trump is the only way to save the country from falling into socialism, economic ruin, violence and anarchy.

Monday night's theme was officially the "land of promise," but the collection of speeches offered an almost apocalyptic vision of what's at stake in November's elections, and a dizzying array of misleading claims.

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Africa to be declared free of wild polio after decades of work

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:17 PM PDT

Achievement comes following Nigeria vaccination drive, with last cases of wild virus recorded four years ago

Africa is expected to be declared free from wild polio, after decades of work by a coalition of international health bodies, national and local governments, community volunteers and survivors.

Four years after the last recorded cases of wild polio in northern Nigeria, the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) is expected to certify that the continent is free of the virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis and in some cases death.

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Coronavirus live news: Gaza in lockdown following first local cases; Hong Kong man re-infected

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 01:45 AM PDT

Four cases detected in Gaza outside of quarantine facilities; First known case of re-infection prompts immunity concerns; Usain bolt tests positive for Covid-19. Follow the latest updates

Indonesia reported 2,447 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday, taking the total number of cases to 157,859, data from the country's COVID-19 taskforce showed.

The data recorded an additional 99 deaths, taking the total to 6,858, the highest COVID-19 death toll in Southeast Asia.

As the debate about wearing face masks continues around the world here's an interesting story from Bloomberg about what happened in South Korea when one woman with coronavirus visited a Starbucks cafe north of Seoul earlier this month: more than two dozen patrons tested positive days later, but the four face mask-wearing employees escaped infection.

You can read more about what happened at Starbucks and what it means for your health here https://t.co/elzHUkRpta

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Greta Thunberg returns to school after year of climate activism

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 07:52 PM PDT

Swedish environmental activist says she's heading back to the classroom after travelling the world, spreading her conservation message

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has returned to school after a year off campaigning to curb climate change.

"My gap year from school is over, and it feels so great to finally be back in school again!" the 17-year-old tweeted, attaching a smiling photo of herself with a schoolbag on her back and her hands resting on a bicycle.

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Anger, grief and dark humour fill Christchurch high court as victims face gunman

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:33 AM PDT

Victims and the bereaved describe how their lives have been changed since the Australian terrorist's massacre

"Good afternoon to everyone except you," Wasseim Alsati Daragmih told the terrorist. There was a ripple of laughter in the courtroom and a smile from the Australian man who had shot him.

It was the afternoon of the second day of sentencing for the man who stormed two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019, killing 51 people and wounding dozens more – including Darragmih.

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Tests indicate Alexei Navalny was poisoned, says German clinic

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:42 AM PDT

Kremlin critic being treated with same antidote used after 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury

Tests indicate that Alexei Navalny was the victim of a poisoning and he is being treated with atropine, the same antidote used after the 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury, the German clinic where the Kremlin critic is a patient said on Monday.

While Berlin's Charité hospital did not identify the specific poison responsible for Navalny's sudden illness on an internal Russian flight last Thursday, the substance was part of a group that affects the central nervous system, and includes nerve agents and pesticides, as well as some drugs.

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Wisconsin police fire teargas during second night of protest over shooting of Black man

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:08 PM PDT

Kenosha police confront demonstrators shouting 'no justice, no peace' over the shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday

Anger over the shooting of a Black man by police spilled into the streets of Kenosha for a second night Monday, with police again firing teargas at hundreds of protesters who defied a curfew, threw bottles and shot fireworks at law enforcement guarding the courthouse.

The south-eastern Wisconsin city became the latest flashpoint in a summer of racial unrest in the US after footage of police shooting Jacob Blake apparently in the back, as he leaned into his SUV with his three children inside, circulated widely on social media Sunday. The 29-year-old was hospitalised in a serious condition.

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Infants exposed to air pollution have less lung power as adolescents – study

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 03:01 PM PDT

Researchers find that even exposure to levels below EU limits has an impact

Infants exposed to even low levels of air pollution experience reduced lung function as children and teenagers, researchers have found.

Their study found that exposure to air pollution in the first year of life reduced lung function development from the ages of six to 15, even at pollution levels below EU standards.

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British Museum removes founder's statue over slavery links

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:20 AM PDT

Hans Sloane 'pushed off pedestal' and placed with artefacts putting his work in context of British empire

The British Museum has removed a bust of its founding father, who was a slave owner, and said it wanted to confront its links to colonialism.

Hartwig Fischer, the institution's director, revealed the likeness of Sir Hans Sloane has been placed in a secure cabinet alongside artefacts explaining his work in the context of the British empire.

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‘Next fire season is already upon us’: NSW to adopt all recommendations of bushfire inquiry report

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:02 PM PDT

Report finds climate change 'clearly played a role' in conditions that led up to Australia's 2019-2020 fires, which were so extreme, traditional firefighting methods often failed

Last summer's bushfire disaster was so unusual that traditional firefighting methods, such as hazard reduction burning, failed in some instances, an inquiry into the crisis heard.

The final report of the New South Wales bushfire inquiry, published on Tuesday, said the 2019-20 bushfire season brought fires in forested regions on a scale not seen in recorded history in Australia.

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'Dead' woman discovered alive in body bag at funeral home

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 06:41 PM PDT

20-year-old Timesha Beauchamp was discovered alive shortly before she was to be embalmed, according to family lawyer.

A young woman who was declared dead at her suburban Detroit home opened her eyes at a funeral home as she was about to be embalmed, a lawyer has said.

"They would have begun draining her blood to be very, very frank about it," Geoffrey Fieger told WXYZ-TV. Fieger, who was hired by the family, identified the woman as Timesha Beauchamp.

The Southfield fire department acknowledged it was involved in a bizarre set of events on Sunday that began when a medical crew was summoned to a home where a 20-year-old woman was unresponsive.

Paramedics tried to revive her for 30 minutes and consulted an emergency room doctor, the department said.

The doctor "pronounced the patient deceased based upon medical information provided" from the scene, the department said.

The Oakland county medical examiner's office said the body could be released to the family without an autopsy, according to the fire department.

But then came a startling discovery at the James H Cole funeral home in Detroit: the woman was still alive more than an hour later.

"Our staff confirmed she was breathing" and called a emergency medical crew, the funeral home said.

Fieger said: "They were about to embalm her, which is most frightening, had she not had her eyes open ... The funeral home unzipping the body bag, literally that's what happened to Timesha, and seeing her alive with her eyes open."

Fieger did not return a message from the Associated Press.

Beauchamp was in a critical condition on Monday night, said Brian Taylor, spokesman for the Detroit Medical Centre.

"My heart is so heavy. Someone pronounced my child dead, and she's not even dead," Beauchamp's mother, Erica Lattimore, told WDIV-TV.

Southfield said it was conducting an internal investigation but insisted that the fire and police departments had followed procedures.

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'It's terrifying': can anyone stop China's vast armada of fishing boats?

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:45 PM PDT

Ecuador stood up for the Galápagos, but other countries don't stand a chance against the 17,000-strong distant-water fleet

The recent discovery by the Ecuadorean navy of a vast fishing armada of 340 Chinese vessels just off the biodiverse Galápagos Islands stirred outrage both in Ecuador and overseas.

Under pressure after Ecuador's strident response, China has given mixed signals that it could begin to reel in its vast international fishing fleet. Its embassy in Ecuador declared a "zero tolerance" policy towards illegal fishing, and this week it announced it was tightening the rules for its enormous flotilla with a series of new regulations.

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Beirut's devastating blast has not shaken the ruling class's grip on Lebanon | Gilbert Achcar

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:00 AM PDT

Many Lebanese people had hoped for a silver lining to this tragedy of an independent government and new elections

The tremendous blast that shook Lebanon on 4 August will be recorded as a major turning point in the country's history, no less so than the much less powerful explosion that killed former prime minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. Judging from the 15 years it took before a UN-appointed tribunal basically admitted its impotence on the latter event, there won't be any official certainty about the circumstances of the terrible explosion at Beirut's port in the foreseeable future. A few conclusions can, however. be drawn about this highly traumatic tragedy.

Related: 'Our stitches ran out': Beirut's struggle to deal with injuries from port blast

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The fashion industry echoes colonialism – DfID's scheme will subsidise it | Meg Lewis

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:30 AM PDT

Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of supply chains, which rely on the labour of black and brown workers. The deep inequalities won't be fixed by injecting funds at the top

Is the UK governed by parliamentary democracy or big businesses? It is a question that should concern us all, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between the two, as the government hands out multimillion-pound contracts to private firms with dubious track records, and ministers revolve between roles at big banks and government. Last week, the line between UK aid and private businesses was called into question, as the Department for International Development (DfID) announced the decision to direct £4.85m of taxpayers' money towards the work of large retailers including M&S, Tesco and Primark.

The DfID funding is intended to support large companies to fix vulnerable supply chains and ensure that "people in Britain can continue to buy affordable, high-quality goods from around the world". These aims, along with the fact that UK brands have been entrusted to deliver them, set off alarm bells for labour rights campaigners like myself, who advocate for better working conditions in the global garment industry.

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Donald Trump Jr calls Joe Biden 'Loch Ness monster' in Republican convention speech – video

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:32 PM PDT

Donald Trump Jr has attacked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on the opening night of the Republican National Convention, calling his father's rival 'the Loch Ness monster of the swamp' and 'Beijing Biden'. Trump Jr joined girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle in making the case for his father's reelection on the event's first of four nights

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'They think they’ll be left to die': pandemic shakes already fragile Venezuela

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:00 AM PDT

Venezuela's official Covid-19 death toll stands just over 300, but hospital employees suggest the true situation may be far worse

As they are hauled into Maracaibo's University hospital, pale, wheezing and panicked, a recurring cry emerges from the mouths of coronavirus patients in this bedraggled Venezuelan metropolis.

"Save me!" they plead as they enter A&E, according to hospital staff too scared to give their names. "Please don't let me die!"

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Is this the end of the road for dollar dominance?

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 11:00 PM PDT

In the short term, probably not, but with China weaponising the yuan stern challenges lie ahead

The recent sharp depreciation of the US dollar has led to concerns that it may lose its role as the main global reserve currency. After all, in addition to the Federal Reserve's aggressive monetary easing – which threatens to debase the world's key fiat currency even further – gold prices and inflation expectations have also been rising.

But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the dollar's early demise are greatly exaggerated. The greenback's recent weakness is driven by shorter-term cyclical factors. In the long run, the situation is more complicated: the dollar has both strengths and weaknesses that may or may not undermine its global position over time.

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Australians took more out of their super accounts in June than they put in

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:02 AM PDT

Labor says the latest statistics make the legislated rises in compulsory superannuation from 9.5% to 12% more important than ever

Australian workers took more out of their superannuation accounts in the June quarter than they put in – the first time net contributions have been negative since the compulsory retirement savings scheme was introduced in 1992.

Labor seized on the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority quarterly statistics, released on Tuesday, saying they show the effect of $33bn withdrawn so far under the early release scheme.

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Leadership of merged DfID evidence of ‘hostile takeover’ by FCO, say critics

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 02:14 AM PDT

NGOs and MPs fear appointments to Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office reflects unbalance priorities

The UK's ambassador to the EU is to become political director of the newly merged Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), one of seven senior officials who will form the core of the leadership team when the department launches next week.

Tim Barrow is one of five appointees from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office chosen to serve on the board of the FCDO. Two further appointments are officials from the Department for International Development (DfID).

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Dear Christchurch, Breivik's trial showed us extremist ideas struggle in the light | Åsne Seierstad

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 08:18 PM PDT

A 10-week trial of Anders Breivik afforded him publicity, and underground infamy, but the openness benefited the victims too

Terror wouldn't work if no one wrote about it. Terrorists crave our attention, our anger and our tears. Norway and New Zealand have both been struck by attacks from violent extremists inspired by ideas from the same root – white supremacy and Islamophobia – but the two countries have chosen different paths in how to deal with it. Norway chose openness and full exposure, while the case around the Christchurch shooter seems dimly lit.

In 2011, the then Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, sat in his home office to work on a speech he was going to give the following day at the summer camp of the Labour party youth when a loud bang sounded. Anders Breivik had dressed as a police officer and detonated the bomb outside the prime minister's office in downtown Oslo, killing eight. He then travelled to the island of Utøya where the camp would be held and shot and killed 69 people, mostly teenagers.

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Alexei Navalny tests point to possible nerve agent attack, experts say

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 09:58 AM PDT

Raised levels of cholinesterase are important piece in the puzzle of Kremlin critic's sudden illness

High levels of the chemical cholinesterase in tests on Alexey Navalny are a compelling clue that he was poisoned with a nerve agent, experts have said.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical and biological counter-terrorism expert, said the presence of cholinesterase inhibitors suggested Navaly was suffering from nerve agent poisoning. Raised levels of cholinesterase were an important "jigsaw piece in the puzzle", he said.

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'We knocked the bastard off': rare photographs of Edmund Hillary's Everest expedition

Posted: 25 Aug 2020 12:05 AM PDT

More than half a century ago, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to summit Everest. Now a collection of rare photos from Hillary's life is up for auction in New Zealand, featuring scenes of the climbers tackling the world's tallest peak

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'I have only one choice': mother of Christchurch victim forgives killer – video

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 06:21 PM PDT

Janna Ezat, whose son Hussein Al-Umari was one of 51 people killed in 2019's  Christchurch shooting, came face-to-face with the gunman in court, telling 29-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, she forgave him. "I have decided to forgive you, Mr Tarrant, because I don't have hate, I don't have revenge," she said during victim statements. "The damage is done. Hussein will never be here. I have only one choice: to forgive you."


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Donald Trump accuses Democrats of plot to 'steal' election at Republican convention – video

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 02:07 PM PDT

In an unscheduled appearance on the first day of the Republican national convention, Donald Trump falsely claimed Democrats were attempting to steal the election by expanding absentee voting during the coronavirus pandemic. 'The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,' he told delegates in Charlotte, North Carolina

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Belarus: Lukashenko brandishes rifle in official clips released after Minsk protest – video

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 10:01 AM PDT

The embattled Belarusian president is shown brandishing a rifle in official footage taken during protests in Minsk on 24 August. Alexander Lukashenko watched the demonstrations from his helicopter before a meeting with riot police outside his palace in clips released by his press service. He could be heard pledging to 'deal with' the protesters, after a crowd estimated at more than 200,000 gathered to call for his removal

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Video appears to show black man shot in back by police in Wisconsin

Posted: 24 Aug 2020 08:06 AM PDT

* Some viewers may find the following footage distressing* 

Footage posted on social media appears to show police shooting at a man seven times as he leaned into a vehicle in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The man, identified by the Wisconsin governor as Jacob Blake, is in a serious condition in hospital after the shooting at about 5pm on Sunday.  Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said Blake's three young sons were in the car. A police officer is being investigated by the Wisconsin justice department 

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