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

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


Former South African president Jacob Zuma granted appeal to jail sentence

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 11:48 PM PDT

Constitutional court agrees to hear challenge to 15-month prison-term, as Zuma rallies political support

Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, appeared on Saturday to have won a reprieve from imminent imprisonment on contempt of court charges after the country's most senior judges agreed to hear his challenge to a 15-month jail sentence awarded last week.

Police were ordered to arrest the 79-year-old by the supreme court if he did not surrender to authorities by Sunday after he failed to appear before a corruption inquiry earlier this year.

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Brazilians take to streets to demand removal of Jair Bolsonaro

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 11:50 AM PDT

Calls for president's impeachment grow amid claims government sought to profit from Covid jabs

Huge crowds of protesters have returned to the streets of Brazil's biggest cities to demand the removal of a president they blame for more than half a million coronavirus deaths.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators hit the streets of Rio de Janeiro on Saturday morning as calls for Jair Bolsonaro's impeachment intensified after allegations that members of his government had sought to illegally profit from the purchase of Covid vaccines.

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After the retreat: what now for Afghanistan?

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 10:00 PM PDT

As the west departs, the Taliban are resurgent. They say they have changed – but misogyny and brutality still mark their rule

The public flogging in Obe district, captured on video that quickly went viral this spring, was a mistake, a local Taliban judge admitted. Commanders were angry.

As the footage spread between urban Afghans, who shared it on their smartphones, it revived memories of darker times when the militants ruled the country, and an outpouring of revulsion.

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At least 29 people die in military plane crash in Philippines

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:34 AM PDT

At least 50 injured people pulled from burning wreckage of C-130 Hercules after it crashed when it missed runway

At least 29 people were killed and at least 50 injured when a Philippine military aircraft carrying troops crashed and burst into flames after missing the runway in the south of the country, officials said.

Ninety-two people, most of them recent army graduates, were onboard the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft when the accident happened as it tried to land on Jolo island in Sulu province at about midday on Sunday.

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Imposing ‘imaginary’ values risks EU collapse, Slovenian PM claims

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:54 AM PDT

As Slovenia takes over the EU presidency, its prime minister warns that the west cannot impose its liberal views on central Europe

Slovenia's prime minister Janez Janša, a rare EU ally of Hungary's right to outlaw the promotion or portrayal of homosexuality to children, has claimed that imposing "imaginary European values" on central Europe could lead to the union's collapse.

Janša, who publicly backed Donald Trump in his attempt to overthrow the US presidential election result, leads Slovenia as it takes the EU's rolling presidency, steering the bloc's agenda for the next six months. He is a deeply controversial figure, whose political career includes being jailed while battling for Slovenia's independence from Yugoslavia and an overturned conviction for corruption.

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Astronauts at China’s new space station conduct first spacewalk

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:31 AM PDT

Two astronauts work for seven hours outside Tiangong station, in first of two spacewalks planned for mission

Chinese astronauts have performed the country's first tandem spacewalk, working for seven hours on the outside of the new Tiangong station in orbit around Earth.

Tiangong's construction is a significant step in China's ambitious space programme. China has previously landed a rover on Mars and sent probes to the moon.

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The new circus comes to town: fiery support for Donald Trump at rain-soaked Florida rally

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 09:42 PM PDT

Fireworks, a Trump impersonator and undying belief in the former president at his second rally after leaving office

Their trust in Trump remains unshaken.

Supporters of Donald Trump, the former US president, gathered in their thousands at a rain-soaked rally in Florida on Saturday unmoved by criminal charges against his business.

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Miami condo collapse: reports reveal board’s long debate over repairs

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 11:00 PM PDT

Documents obtained by media show concern and frustration after engineer warned of structural damage

New reports have detailed long debate among condo board members at Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, over extensive and costly repairs the building was expected to undergo before it collapsed on 24 June.

Related: Miami condo death toll rises to 24 amid plans to demolish remaining structure

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Burned churches stir deep Indigenous ambivalence over faith of forefathers

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:00 AM PDT

After hundreds of unmarked graves were found at Canada's former Catholic-run residential schools, churches in First Nations territories have been destroyed by suspected arson

For more than a century, the clapboard church set amid rolling hills in western Canada has been a spiritual home to the Upper Similkameen Indian Band.

To build St Anne's, residents of Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve #2 travelled 40 miles to the closest town, hauling lumber back to their community by horse and wagon.

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Private plane crash in Haiti kills all six on board, including two Americans

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 07:25 PM PDT

Six people on board a private plane were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, the identities of the other four people are not known

All six people on board a private plane, including two American missionaries, were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, southwest of capital Port-au-Prince, according to media reports and a missionary group.

The plane went down on Friday evening en route from an airport in Port-au-Prince to the southern coastal city of Jacmel, typically a short flight, reported the Miami Herald, citing a statement by the National Civil Aviation Office (NCAO). Reuters could not independently confirm the report.

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Biden announces investigation into international ransomware attack

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 02:43 PM PDT

President addresses hack of Kaseya software that has affected hundreds of US businesses and shut down Swedish shops

Joe Biden said on Saturday he had directed US intelligence agencies to investigate a sophisticated ransomware attack that hit hundreds of American businesses as the Fourth of July holiday weekend began and aroused suspicions of Russian gang involvement.

Related: Joe Biden cherry-picks audience to promote bipartisan infrastructure deal

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Health service buckling as third coronavirus wave fuelled by Delta variant sweeps across South Africa

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 01:30 AM PDT

With new cases soaring by 25% President Cyril Ramaphosa warns of massive resurgence of infections

The health system in Johannesburg, South Africa's biggest city, is being overwhelmed by a massive wave of infections driven by the Delta variant, the winter in the southern hemisphere and a faltering vaccine campaign.

The new variant is now dominant in Africa's most developed country, where the official death toll is now more than 60,000, though excess mortality statistics suggest more than 170,000 may have died from Covid.

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Coronavirus live: face masks in England to be personal choice, says minister; Russia reports 663 more deaths

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 04:18 AM PDT

Mask wearing to become voluntary in all settings after final restrictions lift; Russia reports 25,142 new cases in a day

Iran announced today it was reimposing coronavirus restrictions on major cities, as the spread of the highly contagious delta variant spurs fears of another devastating surge in the nation, the Associated Press reports.

After over a year battling the worst virus outbreak in the Middle East, Iran ordered the closures of non-essential businesses in 275 cities, including the capital of Tehran.

The shutdown of all public parks, restaurants, dessert shops, beauty salons, malls and bookstores applies to the country's "red" and "orange" zones, or municipalities ranked as having an elevated risk of Covid-19. The government said it was also imposing a travel ban between cities with high infection rates.

Bulgaria is considering offering incentives to encourage people to get vaccinated against Covid, interim prime minister Stefan Yanev said today, Reuters reports.

Bulgaria is one of the few countries where people can choose between four different anti-coronavirus shots approved in the European Union. Still, only 14.5% of Bulgarian adults are fully vaccinated, putting the country far behind its EU peers.

On top of a general mistrust of authorities in the former communist country, Bulgarians often cite a fear of new medical products as their reason for refusing the vaccination. Another reason is that about 400,000 people have already been infected and developed resistance.

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International airlines may be forced to suspend flights to Australia after arrival cap halved

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 01:36 AM PDT

Industry says any suggestion by Coalition government that airlines are price gouging is 'insulting and bizarre'

Families of Australians stranded overseas devastated after arrivals cap slashed

International airlines claim they could be forced to suspend services to Australia from next week after national cabinet agreed to halve the number of people allowed to enter the country – and they say any suggestion of price gouging is "insulting and bizarre".

From 14 July, overseas arrivals will be slashed from 6,070 to 3,035 a week – crushing the hopes of thousands of Australians stuck overseas and looking to get home.

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Centre Court ovations, limbo-dancing grans – it’s all been humbling, say Oxford vaccine creators

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 11:30 PM PDT

Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green tell of their pioneering vaccine work but warn the battle is far from over

Sarah Gilbert's experiences at Wimbledon last week clearly had a profound impact on the medical researcher – though it was not the standing ovation that the vaccine pioneer received on Centre Court that turned her head. It was the sleekly efficient operations she experienced at the tennis championships that most impressed her.

"Everything goes really, really smoothly there because they've got years of experience at Wimbledon," she told the Observer last week. "They have also got extremely well trained staff and have had years of investment in infrastructure."

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A drop in the ocean: rewilding the seas

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 03:00 AM PDT

From giant clams to zebra shark, marine biologists want to replace lost and vanishing species at sea but face unique obstacles – not least rampant overfishing

Kneeling on the seabed a few metres underwater, I pick up a clam and begin gently cleaning its furrowed, porcelain smile with a toothbrush. It's a giant clam but a young one and still just a handful. Here in Fiji, giant clams or vasua as they are known, were so heavily overfished for their meat and shells that by the 1980s they were thought to be extinct locally. Australian clams were imported to start a captive breeding programme, and subsequent generations of their offspring have been released on coral reefs across Fiji. They're still vulnerable to fishing and poaching, but if carefully guarded the giant clams do well and have become symbols of healthy corals reefs inside well-managed marine protected areas.

A key to their early survival is rearing them in cages to keep them safe from predators until they're large enough to survive by themselves. However, the cages also exclude herbivorous fish, so the clams can easily get overgrown by seaweed, which is where the regular toothbrushing comes in.

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Holidays from hell: Naga Munchetty, David Baddiel, Jon Snow and others on their worst breaks

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 04:00 AM PDT

We're all so desperate to get away. But were our summer trips as good as we remember? Famous travellers tell their sorry tales

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Alicia Keys: ‘I’ve always had to be strong’

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 12:00 AM PDT

Alicia Keys reflects on 20 years of stardom, going makeup free and where she gets her 'grit energy'

In 2016, when Alicia Keys released her sixth studio album, Here, she celebrated the launch with a gig in New York's Times Square. An article written in the Guardian by a journalist who was on the promotional junket described the machinery of her management system at the time, as functioning "like an onion". A formidable, multi-layer of managers, confidants, coaches, assistants, a personal film crew and various people with ambiguous job functions formed around Keys, like a "shock absorber". Fast forward to 2021. I am waiting to interview Keys via Zoom on the day she launches a special edition of Songs in A Minor, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking award-winning debut album that started it all. When she appears on screen there is no "onion", no entourage, no shock absorber. Just her. She is sitting on a light-coloured sofa in front of a floor-to-ceiling wall of immaculately lined-up books. And she is trying to pull a jumper on. Her voice – smooth, deep and slightly gravelly – calls out, "Good morning!" and as she inches in to take her position close to the screen, she smiles so fully that every crevice of her face lights up.

Looking at a barefaced Alicia Keys, hair pulled back into a bun, one can't help marvel at how much she still resembles the 20-year-old who made her 2001 TV debut singing Falling on The Oprah Winfrey Show. (Winfrey, who calls herself Alicia's "mother-sister-friend" has since said, "Even before she belted out the first soulful notes of the lyrics that made her famous, I could feel the power of her presence.") Following the God-like endorsement of the influential Winfrey (and the backing of Clive Davis, the legendary music producer who gave Keys her big break), the song topped the charts. The album sold millions (10.5m physical sales and 645.8m streams to date) and Keys was nominated in six Grammy award categories. She won five of them and has since gone on to win 10 more. Keys is still awestruck that she, and the album that brought her global fame, still have a presence today.

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Paula Rego: ‘Making a painting can reveal things you keep secret from yourself’

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 12:00 AM PDT

On the eve of her biggest ever UK show, the figurative artist recalls a 70-year 'non-career' tackling fascism, abortion, tragedy and the solidarity of women

When a Paula Rego retrospective at Tate Britain was first suggested three years ago, it was welcomed as an irresistible – an inevitable – proposal. For, as the show's curator Elena Crippa observes, there is only a handful of contemporary female artists who have achieved comparable status. And there are not many artists who have made women their subject in the inward, intense and complicated way that Rego has over the decades – painting them in pain, power and surrender. This is the largest show of her career, with more than 100 pieces – paintings, collages, drawings, pastels, etchings, sculptures – many never seen in this country before. It will be a chance to unriddle the stories the paintings tell and to celebrate an artist of fabulous – in every sense – talent. And, as with any well-curated retrospective, it will be a way in to the narrative of Paula Rego's own life.

In the weeks before the show's opening, Rego – now 86 – has been gamely answering questions back and forth with me over email, with her daughter, Cas Willing, as secretary. And what has emerged as one of the remarkable things about her is that, undeterred by age and its challenges, she still goes to work every day in her Camden studio, in north London. Almost 20 years ago, I met her there and will never forget the thrill of feeling backstage – for there is a theatrical element to her work, a coming together of props, an undertow of drama. I recall a lifesize horse, racks of clothes and a couch given to her by an analyst – appropriately, given her interest in the collective unconscious (she started analysis in 1966). And it is in this studio that she continues to work with her leading lady, Lila Nunes, loyal model and friend (she is, like Rego, from Portugal).

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‘I want to make people laugh’: Quentin Dupieux, the fun auteur of French cinema

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 04:00 AM PDT

The cult director talks about his first UK release – about a man's obsession with a cowboy jacket – surreal dreams, and why he won't kill off Flat Eric, the yellow puppet that launched his career

The name "Quentin" clearly operates as a lucky charm if you're an idiosyncratic film-maker, especially if you deal with sudden death, craziness and Z-movie Americana. But only one Quentin – the French one, the weirder one – can these days genuinely be called a cult director. Quentin Dupieux's films are admired, even loved, in France; puzzled over in the US; and as yet, largely unknown in the UK. That may change with the arrival of Deerskin (2019), his first theatrical release in Britain. It's about that most universal of themes: a man's morbidly, even murderously obsessive passion for a cowboy jacket.

Starring French box-office fixture Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and respected art-house regular Adèle Haenel (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Deerskin is a very black comedy – although its colour scheme is bizarrely dominated by shades of suede-like beige. Its hero, Georges, is a man obsessed with a tasseled buckskin blouson, the sort once seen on the sleeves of LPs by 60s California bands who fancied themselves as western bandits. On a Skype call from Uzès in the south of France, Dupieux, who sports a dense shrubbery of black beard and a dishevelled mop of hair one hesitates to call "Borisian", explains that Georges's jacket is a garment that has haunted the director himself for 20 years, ever since he used it in a music video.

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Anne Theroux: ‘I want to have my say’

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 01:00 AM PDT

Her marriage to the prolific author Paul Theroux fell apart in 1990. He has written about the divorce, now she tells her side of the story

In 1996 the author Paul Theroux wrote a short story about the final evening of a marriage, where the characters talk poetically and drink champagne. "The reality", writes Anne Theroux today, "was different."

I arrive at the café early, but Theroux had arrived earlier still. She greets me from the far side of a wisteria- strung patio, elegant in the shade. We are meeting to discuss her memoir, based on a diary she kept in 1990, the year her marriage was collapsing, and over the course of our conversation we stumble only once, but in quite an unexpected place. "I'm not a writer," she says, her voice suddenly a little ragged. But, you are, I insist – you have written a book. "I would never describe myself as a writer just because I've written one book." Why? "I suppose I think Paul would be quite cross if I claimed to be a writer." I will claim it for her then, only partly out of political spite.

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Coronavirus: singing celebrities make film urging Britons to get Covid jab – video

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 03:59 AM PDT

Celebrities including the comedian David Walliams and actor Jim Broadbent have called on their fellow Britons to 'get back to the rhythm of life', by getting vaccinated against Covid.

In the film, which is to the tune of a song from the 1966 musical Sweet Charity, Broadbent enters an empty theatre before celebrities including Walliams, actors Asa Butterfield, Colin Salmon, Derek Jacobi and Don Warrington, and singer Nicola Roberts take the stage to perform the song.

More than 44.8 million people in the UK have received at least one jab while almost half of adults have received a second dose

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Six children killed in Syria shelling

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 07:25 AM PDT

Artillery fired from government-controlled area kills eight civilians and injures others in Idlib province

Artillery fire from government-controlled territory and airstrikes killed at least eight civilians in Syria's last rebel enclave on Saturday, most of them children, rescue workers and a war monitor said.

The shelling in Ibleen, a village in the southern Idlib province, hit the home of Subhi al-Assi, killing him, his wife and three of his children in their sleep, according to the rescue service known as White Helmets and Idlib's health directorate. Al-Assi was an administrator in a local health centre.

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Miami condo collapse: death toll at 24 as crews seek cat seen alive on balcony

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 03:45 AM PDT

The death toll from the collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, stood at 24 by Sunday, with 121 still missing. But in a small moment of hope, a cat was seen wandering a lower floor of the remaining flank of the 12-story condominium complex that partly collapsed near Miami.

Related: Miami condo death toll rises to 24 amid plans to demolish remaining structure

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Cheek to cheek: keeping the tango alive during Covid in Buenos Aires | photo essay

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:00 AM PDT

The dance that depends on what Covid prevents – close physical intimacy – is not only a cultural passion but also now a threatened source of income for many workers. Photographer Anita Pouchard Serra has been documenting how dancers are surviving the crisis

In a pretty little plaza next to a railway track, there is proof that not even a pandemic can keep us apart.

Five couples lean in, cheek to cheek, marking steps that mirror the circuitous route of life. If there is a map, it rises out of a portable speaker, and the melancholic poetry of a tango.

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Republicans revive soft-on-crime rhetoric amid rise in US homicides

Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:00 AM PDT

Biden rolls out fresh policy proposals to try to counter rising crime as Democrats look to bat away Republican attacks

Rising crime rates in the US and efforts from the White House and in Congress to pass sweeping police reform legislation have thrust crime policy into the center of the national political debate.

In early mayoral, congressional and senatorial campaigns, attacks are flying back and forth over whether candidates are tough on crime or want to defund the police, often using blunt language that masks the nuances of a complicated issue.

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Biden warns 'lives will be lost' if more people aren't vaccinated against Covid – video

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 08:40 AM PDT

Joe Biden has warned that although America has Covid-19 'on the run' the latest variant is of particular concern among those who remain unvaccinated – as the president's goal of 70% of US adults receiving at least one shot of vaccine by the Fourth of July holiday looks set to fall short.

'I'm not concerned there's going to be a major outbreak … another epidemic nationwide. But I am concerned lives will be lost,' he said.

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The Brazilian protest leader determined to bring Bolsonaro’s ‘genocidal’ government down - video

Posted: 03 Jul 2021 02:33 AM PDT

The Guardian follows Guilherme Boulos, who ran against Bolsonaro in the last elections, as he leads thousands through the streets of São Paulo, calling for the country's president to be impeached. 

The pressure is mounting on Bolsonaro as he faces a scandal over allegedly corrupt Covid vaccine deals and public rage over his handling of a pandemic that has killed more than half a million people. 

Boulos has helped lead and organise two mass demonstrations already in the past month and will be at the forefront of a third protest this Saturday. Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out. 


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