Covid: Netherlands and other parts of Europe see protests over new restrictions
Fresh unrest has erupted in the Netherlands against new lockdown rules amid rising Covid-19 cases in Europe.
People hurled fireworks at police and set fire to bicycles in The Hague, one night after protests in Rotterdam turned violent and police fired shots.
Thousands of demonstrators also took to the streets in Austria, Croatia and Italy as anger mounted over new curbs.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was "very worried" about rising coronavirus cases on the continent.
Its regional director, Dr Hans Kluge, told the BBC that unless measures were tightened across Europe, half a million more deaths could be recorded by next spring.
On Helmand’s bleak wards, dying children pay the price as western aid to Afghanistan is switched off
The staff are unpaid, the drugs are running out. Gereshk hospital can only watch as tiny infants succumb to treatable diseases
Shirin has paid heavily for both Afghanistan’s conflict, and its abrupt end in Taliban victory. Three years ago her husband lost his leg when a roadside bomb hit his bus. Then in the summer the militants’ victory brought peace to her corner of Helmand, but a halt to the foreign aid funds that paid her salary as a hospital cleaner and kept the family afloat.
They fell behind on rent, were evicted from their home and began running out of food. Three weeks ago, worn down by cold, hunger and disruption, Mohammad Omar died from wounds that had never fully healed, leaving her a single mother to their four children.
New Details Shed Light on Lukashenko's Human Trafficking Network
Insiders reveal fresh details about Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko's inhumane smuggling system, comprised of a network of front companies that spreads to Syria, Turkey and Iraq, secret money transfers and the use of soldiers as traffickers.
By Jürgen Dahlkamp, Christina Hebel, Muriel Kalisch, Steffen Lüdke und Maximilian Popp
Ahead of him, Mhamad can see barbed wire and then Polish soldiers. Their faces are covered and they are armed. When Mhamad looks back, he can see Belarusian soldiers. They, too, are wearing masks and carrying weapons. Whenever Mhamad or his children need to relieve themselves in the forest, they have to pass the men who have taken up positions behind them. Mhamad explains over the phone that the Belarusians give them precisely five minutes to do so. "Don’t run away,” they admonish. "We will find you!”
Mhamad, a married 40-year-old and father of three, isn't interested in running away. He wants to keep going. Mhamad fled the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, arriving in Minsk by plane via Dubai with his family in the hope of reaching the European Union and applying for asylum there - without having to risk his life crossing the Mediterranean. Now he’s stuck, trapped at the EU’s external border with his wife and three children. The youngest is less than two years old.
‘We just want to work and get on with our lives’
The Gulf shuts out its migrant workforce
by Sebastian Castelier & Quentin Müller
‘Everyone’s afraid of losing their job in Saudi Arabia for not getting back in time,’ said Waqas Ahmad, a Pakistani air conditioner repairman who lives in the Saudi city of Jizan. Hundreds of Saudi-based Pakistanis have been stranded on visits home during the pandemic because of Pakistan’s decision to vaccinate its 221 million citizens mainly with vaccines from Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm (despite China’s top disease control official acknowledging their low effectiveness).
Pakistan, a strategic partner in China’s global infrastructure network, the Belt and Road Initiative, is a central element in China’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’. China has supplied over 1.1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to more than 100 countries during the pandemic in an attempt to boost diplomatic ties and its image as a ‘reliable partner’, especially in countries without access to western-manufactured drugs.
INTERPOL’S UPCOMING ELECTION RAISES FEARS ABOUT AUTHORITARIAN INFLUENCE
A UAE official accused of overseeing torture is running for president of Interpol, while a Chinese official seeks a spot on the executive committee.
TIINA JAUHIAINEN KNOWS the reach of the United Arab Emirates firsthand. In 2018, Jauhiainen helped her friend and skydiving partner Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum escape the country after accusing her father, the ruler of Dubai, of restricting her basic freedoms and locking up her sister. Jauhiainen and Sheikha Latifa fled the UAE on Jet Skis and boarded a yacht, but they were captured by Indian commandos in international waters and sent back to the UAE, where Sheikha Latifa was returned to her family and Jauhiainen was detained for a few weeks.
Months later, back in her native Finland, Jauhiainen applied for a visa to Australia, where she wanted to visit a friend. Australia rejected her application, stating that she was the target of a criminal investigation. She later learned that she was named in a “red notice” requested by the UAE and issued by international policing agency Interpol — and only after a lawyer intervened did she get the notice rescinded. “It just shows how easily they can abuse the system,” Jauhiainen told The Intercept.
She died from a snakebite. But the real killer was her husband
Updated 0103 GMT (0903 HKT) November 21, 2021
Uthra's mother found her daughter lying motionless in bed at the family home, her left arm dotted with blood.
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