Six In The Morning Sunday 24 October 2021

 

CNN Investigation: Tens of millions of filthy, used medical gloves imported into the US

By Scott McLean, Florence Davey-Attlee, Kocha Olarn and Tim Lister, CNN

Updated 1059 GMT (1859 HKT) October 24, 2021

Trash bags stuffed full of used medical gloves, some visibly soiled, some even blood-stained, litter the floor of a warehouse on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Nearby is a plastic bowl, filled with blue dye and a few gloves. Thai officials say migrant laborers had been trying to make the gloves look new again, when Thai health authorities raided the facility in December.

There are many more warehouses just like it still in operation today in Thailand -- trying to cash in on the demand for medical-grade nitrile gloves, which exploded with the coronavirus pandemic. And they're boxing up millions of these sub-standard gloves for export to the United States, and countries around the world amid a global shortage that will take years to ease.

Poor countries to be offered extra funding to break Cop26 impasse

Climate finance plan needed to gain backing of developing nations for any deal at Glasgow talks

Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent

Sun 24 Oct 2021 13.34 BST

Poorer countries are to be offered billions of dollars more in funding to cope with the impacts of climate breakdown in an effort to break the impasse between developed and developing countries at the UN Cop26 climate summit.

The UK government, as Cop26 host, will unveil the proposals on Monday along with ministers from Germany and Canada, who have been charged with drawing up a plan for climate finance, needed to gain the backing of scores of developing countries for any deal at the talks, which open in Glasgow next Sunday.

However, the Cop26 climate finance plan is likely to be overshadowed by a row within the UK government over overseas aid, as the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, prepares fresh cuts to the UK’s aid budget in the comprehensive spending review on Wednesday, against the wishes of Cop26 supporters in the cabinet.

German police stop far-right vigilante border patrols near Polish border

Police in Germany have stopped dozens of armed, far-right vigilantes patrolling to stop migrants from entering Germany via the Polish border. Germany has sent hundreds of police officers to the border with Poland.

German officials on Sunday said they had stopped more than 50 vigilantes — armed with pepper spray, batons and other weapons — who were patrolling along the Polish border.  

The group had answered a call by German far-right party The Third Way (Der Dritte Weg), which had urged members to stop migrants from crossings into Germany from Poland.

What did the police do?

Police said they had seized the group members' weapons, which also included a machete and a bayonet, near the border town of Guben. The individuals were banned from going near the border area.

Israel to build over new 1,300 W.Bank settler homes

The announcement from the housing and construction ministry in right-wing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's government said tenders had been published for 1,355 homes in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.

Those new homes add to the more than 2,000 residences which defence sources have said in August would be authorised for West Bank settlers.

Final approval is expected from the defence ministry this week for those homes.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting, called on world nations, and especially the United States, to "confront" Israel over the "aggression" that settlement construction poses for the Palestinian people.

Crossing the Darién GapA Deadly Jungle on the Trek to America

Some 90,000 people have crossed the Darién Gap this year on the trek to the U.S. The jungle between Colombia and Panama is one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world - and not everybody makes it out alive.

By Nicola Abé and Santiago Mesa (Photos) in Panama and Colombia

Wickendy Romain was lucky this morning. The Haitian is standing in the harbor of Necoclí, a village in northern Colombia in a gray muscle shirt, a beaming smile on his face. He did it. The 31-year-old has managed to get ahold of one of the few tickets for the crossing of the Gulf of Urabá – a scrap of paper with his name on it, along with a date: Oct. 15, 2021. This, he believes, is his ticket to a new life in the United States of America.

Behind him, thousands of people are crowded at the barrier. Families with small children, pregnant women. They sleep and eat there in the queue, mothers breastfeeding their babies. Security forces swing their batons, yell "get out” and try to push the people back. Like Romain, almost all of them come from Haiti. He, too, stood for several days in the line before he was finally able to buy a ticket. All of them share the same dream.

Ethiopia launches new air raids on Tigray region: Gov’t

The government says a TPLF training and military command post was the target of the raid in western Tigray, followed by a second strike in the region’s north.

Ethiopia’s military has carried out a second air attack in the northern part of Tigray, according to a statement issued by the government shortly after it said it launched an air raid on a rebel-held facility in Tigray’s west.

The raids on Sunday would be the seventh and eighth aerial bombardments in the war-hit region in a week.

“Today the western front of (Mai Tsebri) which was serving as a training and military command post for the terrorist group TPLF has been the target of an air strike,” government spokeswoman Selamawit Kassa said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).