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

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


Olympic skeleton racer freed from Beijing isolation facility after tearful video plea for help

Posted: 02 Feb 2022 05:26 PM PST

  • Kim Meylemans wrongly taken to a second Covid facility
  • IOC steps in and Belgian now feels 'safe' in Olympic village

Belgian skeleton racer Kim Meylemans has been freed from an isolation facility in Beijing following a plea for help in a tearful video posted on Instagram.

Meylemans confirmed that she now felt "safe" at the Olympic village after the Belgian Olympic Committee and the IOC stepped in when they learned she had wrongly been taken by ambulance to a second government facility and was told she would have to isolate for 14 more days due to Covid-19 concerns.

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Ship fight: row erupts over wreck in US waters identified as Captain Cook’s Endeavour

Posted: 02 Feb 2022 07:31 PM PST

Rhode Island archaelogists denounce Australian National Maritime Museum announcement as 'premature' and driven by 'Australian emotions or politics'

A 22-year partnership between US and Australian researchers to identify James Cook's ship the Endeavour has descended into a row, after the Australian Maritime Museum announced the discovery.

The museum's chief executive, Kevin Sumption, announced on Thursday he was satisfied that a shipwreck in waters off Rhode Island in the US was "the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia's maritime history".

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International Space Station will plummet to a watery grave in 2030

Posted: 02 Feb 2022 06:42 PM PST

Nasa confirmed the ISS will plunge into the Pacific ocean to join other decommissioned space stations, satellites and space debris

The International Space Station (ISS) will continue its operations until 2030 before heading for a watery grave at the most remote point in the Pacific, Nasa confirmed in a new transition plan this week.

More than 30 years after its 1998 launch, the ISS will be "de-orbited" in January 2031, according to the space agency's budget estimates. Once out of orbit the space station will make a dramatic descent before splash landing in Point Nemo, which is about 2,700km from any land and has become known as the space cemetery, a final resting place for decommissioned space stations, old satellites, and other human space debris.

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Tainted cocaine kills 16 in Argentina with dozens more hospitalised

Posted: 02 Feb 2022 06:02 PM PST

Local media reported the drug had been 'cut' with a toxic substance, likely by a drug gang looking to cut costs

At least 16 people have died in Argentina and dozens have been hospitalised after consuming cocaine suspected of containing a poisonous substance, authorities in Buenos Aires province, at the centre of the incident, said.

A spokesperson for the provincial security minister Sergio Berni, shared a list of fatalities at hospitals in the suburban region around the country's capital city, raising the number from 12 deaths and 50 people hospitalised announced earlier.

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‘Nobody can say anything’: China cracks down on dissent ahead of Olympics

Posted: 02 Feb 2022 06:00 PM PST

Communist party tightens grip on critics to preserve 'perfect' image of Winter Games

A chill is blowing through Chinese civil society as activists, journalists and academics report receiving police warnings and censorship of their social media platforms in recent weeks as Beijing prepares to host the Winter Olympics beginning on Friday.

In mid-January, the Beijing-based human rights activist Hu Jia said in a tweet that China's state security apparatus was summoning activists around the country to question them and warn them to stay silent.

The author Zhang Yihe and prominent journalist Gao Yu said they had lost some or all of their access to WeChat, China's dominant social media platform. Academics including Guo Yuhua, the outspoken Tsinghua University sociologist, and He Weifang, the Peking University law professor, reported similar issues.

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Australia live news updates: Albanese says aged care minister ‘must resign today’; nation records at least 82 Covid deaths

Posted: 02 Feb 2022 07:38 PM PST

Albanese says aged care services minister 'must resign today'; CMO says 'we are past the peak' of Omicron as nation records at least 82 Covid-19 deaths, with dozens of cases in ICU. Follow all the day's news

Speaking of the ongoing Covid aged care crisis, health and aged care minister Greg Hunt is defending the government's handling of the situation, telling ABC radio that 99% of aged care workers are now double-vaccinated:

We have over 99% vaccination rate amongst aged care workers, one of the highest rates in the world; 91% vaccination rate for residents. We've been able to have one of the lowest rates of loss of life in aged care in the world ...

But it is immensely hard for so many. The mental health impacts of people being locked down in aged care, which is a protective mechanism for them, but at the same time it has a huge impact on their quality of life.

If they can't endorse [federal environment minister Sussan Ley] they should get out of the way and let the federal executive ensure we can get things done.

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‘We relied on the lake. Now it’s killing us’: climate crisis threatens future of Kenya’s El Molo people

Posted: 31 Jan 2022 11:30 PM PST

Lake Turkana's shores have been home to the El Molo for millennia but as rising waters swallow homes and sacred sites they face losing everything

Mombasa Lenapir briefly strokes the waters of Kenya's Lake Turkana with his hand as he boards the rickety canoe. A piece of hippo tooth or kalate, dangles from his right earlobe, evidence that he once killed a hippo in his younger years, a rite of passage.

Lenapir is 70 and looks older, one of the El Molo community that has lived on the shores of Lake Turkana for millennia. Two years ago, he had to leave his home when rising waters engulfed his village, Komote, turning it into an island. Fearing being marooned by the expanding lake, Lenapir and other families built new homes on the mainland, while some opted to remain on the new island and use canoes to travel between the two settlements.

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