Japan’s total confirmed Covid-19 cases topped 500,000 at the weekend, official data showed. Infections have spread rapidly, with cases increasing from 400,000 in early February. Vaccines remain widely unavailable in the country, which is now grappling with the emergence of more contagious variants.
On May 19, for the first time since the pandemic struck, the world-famous Shakespeare’s Globe theatre on London’s South Bank, hopes to open its doors to audiences. A Midsummer Night’s Dream kicks off a summer season of live drama and the eerie stillness that currently hangs over this beautiful replica Elizabethan playhouse will be broken by the sound of audience members.
Marchers took to the streets in Bucharest to protest against restrictive measures to fight the spread of Covid-19, as Romania recorded more than 4,000 new cases and 139 deaths on Saturday. About 1,000 people converged on Victory Square and University Square, opposing curfews and business closures.
Thailand on Sunday reported 967 new coronavirus cases, a single-day record, as the south-east Asian country deals with a third wave of infections. The new cases took Thailand’s total number of infections to 32,625, with deaths remaining at 97, according to the kingdom’s department of disease control.
Valneva, the French Covid-19 vaccine maker backed by the UK government, has filed for a US initial public offering seeking to take advantage of investor appetite for biotechnology during the pandemic. The Paris-listed company, with a market cap of more than €1bn, filed to raise $100m in American Depositary Shares.
London-listed Novacyt shares tumbled nearly 40 per cent to 421.4p before the weekend after it issued a warning on revenues when the UK Department of Health and Social Care did not extend its supply contract for Covid-19 tests. Novacyt said it has taken legal advice, adding “it has strong grounds to assert its contractual rights”.
Vaccitech, the start-up that owns the technology behind the AstraZeneca vaccine, has warned that concerns about the rare blood clotting side-effect could hit royalties and affect the reputation of products in its pipeline. The Oxford university spinout on Friday published its prospectus for an initial public offering of at least $100m on Nasdaq.
China’s Center for Disease Control is thinking about mixing vaccines and varying the sequence of doses to boost efficacy. Gao Fu, the agency’s head, said health authorities were “considering how to solve the problem that the efficacy of existing vaccines is not high”, according to local media.
Kyiv says another soldier seriously wounded by artillery fire by Russia-backed separatists in the east of the country.
The Ukrainian military said that a soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in artillery fire from Russia-backed separatist rebels, as hostilities rise sharply in the country’s east.
As of the reported attack on Sunday, Ukraine says 27 soldiers have been killed in the east this year, more than half the number who died in all of 2020.
Russia denies Western claims that it has sent troops into eastern Ukraine to help the rebels, but officials say the army could intervene if Ukraine tries to retake the area by force.
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Sunday that “if Russia acts recklessly, or aggressively, there will be costs, there will be consequences”.
In recent weeks, fighting has intensified between Ukraine’s army and pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, with signs of a Russian troop build-up in the region raising concerns of major escalation in the long-running conflict.
Ukraine has accused Russia of amassing thousands of military personnel on its northern and eastern borders as well as on the annexed Crimean peninsula.
The Kremlin said on Sunday it was not moving towards war with Ukraine, but that it “will not remain indifferent” to the fate of Russian speakers in the conflict-torn region.
Meanwhile, Moscow said it feared the resumption of full-scale fighting in eastern Ukraine and could take steps to protect civilians there. Kyiv has said it will not launch an offensive against the Russia-backed separatists.
Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists have been fighting in eastern Ukraine since shortly after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
The conflict in Ukraine’s east has killed more than 13,000 people and turned into a nagging problem in Moscow’s relations with the West.
Fighting has subsided in the past few years but a diplomatic solution to settle the eastern region’s status has stayed out of reach.
Crimea is still recognised as part of Ukraine by the United Nations, and Kyiv says it will one day win it back.
US President Joe Biden, who previously oversaw Washington’s policies on Ukraine, is viewed as a strong ally by Ukrainians and his top diplomat Blinken, in talks this week with his French and German counterparts, agreed on supporting Ukraine against “Russian provocations”.
US Secretary of State says Biden administration concerned by China’s ‘increasingly aggressive actions’ against Taiwan.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the United States is concerned by China’s “increasingly aggressive actions” directed at Taiwan and remains committed to ensuring peace and stability in the western Pacific region.
Blinken said on Sunday that the Biden administration is committed to ensuring that Taiwan “has the ability to defend itself”.
“What we’ve seen, and what is of real concern to us, is increasingly aggressive actions by the government in Beijing directed at Taiwan,” Blinken said during an interview on NBC programme Meet the Press.
“It would be a serious mistake for anyone to try to change the existing status quo by force.”
He declined to comment when asked if the US would consider military action against China.
Blinken’s comments come days after the US warned China against what Taiwan, which Beijing views as part of China, and the Philippines had described as increasingly aggressive Chinese naval and aerial exercises.
Manila has criticised Beijing for sending what it called “maritime militia” vessels to a wide area within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, while Taiwan said Chinese planes had crossed into the island’s air defence area.
On Monday, the Chinese carrier, Liaoning, also led a naval exercise near Taiwan, and Beijing said that such drills will become regular occurrences.
Beijing has blamed the increased tensions on Washington after it said it had tracked the USS John McCain destroyer through the Taiwan Strait last week.
US President Joe Biden has continued to take a hard line against Beijing on several issues, including the Chinese government’s treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority in the western region of Xinjiang, which the Biden administration has described as a “genocide“.
US and Chinese officials traded rebukes last month during the first high-ranking meeting between the two governments since Biden took office in January.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, the US State Department announced it would lift rules to make it easier for US government officials to meet with Taiwanese representatives.
The updated guidance came in response to an act of Congress that required a review.
“These new guidelines liberalize guidance on contacts with Taiwan, consistent with our unofficial relations,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
Price also said the guidelines would “provide clarity throughout the Executive Branch on effective implementation of our ‘one China’ policy” – a reference to the longstanding US policy under which Washington officially recognises Beijing rather than Taipei.
A blackout at an Iranian atomic site has been described as "nuclear terrorism" by officials, raising tensions in the region.
It happened at the Natanz facility, 125 miles (200km) south of Tehran, which had just fired up advanced centrifuges which can enrich uranium more quickly, according to state media.
Uranium is enriched for use in nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Image:A damaged building after a fire broke out at the Natanz facility last July
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, did not directly blame anyone for the incident.
"To thwart the goals of this terrorist movement, the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to seriously improve nuclear technology on the one hand and to lift oppressive sanctions on the other hand," Mr Salehi said, according state TV.
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He added: "While condemning this desperate move, the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasises the need for a confrontation by the international bodies and the (International Atomic Energy Agency) against this nuclear terrorism."
Power was cut across the plant's above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls, nuclear programme spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said earlier on Sunday.
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"Here the power has been cut off indeed, and we do not know the reason for the outage," Mr Kamalvandi said.
"The incident is under investigation and we will inform you about the reason as we find out."
A word state television attributed to Mr Kamalvandi, spoken in Farsi, can also be used for "accident".
Image:The Natanz plant pictured in 2005
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran's activities, said it was "aware of the media reports" but declined to comment further.
Malek Shariati Niasar, a politician who speaks on behalf of the Iranian parliament's energy committee, tweeted that the incident was "very suspicious", and raised concerns about possible "sabotage and infiltration".
Some of his fellow politicians are looking for further information, he added.
In recent weeks, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described Iran as the major threat faced by his country.
Iran has blamed Israel for the killing of a scientist who began its nuclear programme decades ago.
It is not the first time there have been concerns about the safety of the Natanz site, which is Iran's main centre for uranium enrichment.
There was an explosion at its centrifuge assembly plant last July that authorities later described as sabotage.
The plant is now being rebuilt inside a nearby mountain, to help withstand enemy airstrikes.
Natanz has also been targeted by the Stuxnet computer virus.
Image:The Natanz plant has restarted its centrifuges. Pic: Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP
Since the former US president, Donald Trump, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran has begun enriching uranium at up to 20% purity.
That is a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
Markus Söder, prime minister of Bavaria, has declared his intention to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor, in a move that sets the stage for a showdown with Armin Laschet, the CDU leader who has also laid claim to Germany’s top job.
Söder’s move takes German politics into uncharted territory. Normally the leader of the Christian Democratic Union has a near-automatic claim to run as the chancellor candidate for the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the much smaller CSU.
But Laschet’s poor approval rating and the CDU’s recent slide in the polls just five-and-a-half months ahead of elections to the Bundestag have encouraged Söder, who is leader of the CSU as well as Bavarian prime minister, to lay claim to the candidacy himself.
Söder said he and Laschet had had a “friendly and open”, but “inconclusive”, conversation over the weekend about who should run as the CDU/CSU’s joint candidate. “We came to the conclusion that both of us are suitable and both are ready,” he told reporters.
“There are no doubts about both of our determination to be candidate,” he said. “Both of us think we have good reasons.”
He added that if the CDU supported him, then he was prepared to run, but if it decided differently he would accept the outcome and the two parties would continue to work together.
Söder’s chances of ascending to the chancellery are better than for any CSU leader in a generation. The CDU’s sharp decline in the polls has triggered panic among many CDU MPs and prompted some of them to look to Söder as the party’s potential saviour.
Yet no member of the CDU’s governing executive has endorsed him. Most remain loyal to Laschet, who is prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, as well as being CDU leader. The CDU executive will meet on Monday and many observers expect it to close ranks behind their leader.
In an interview with German TV channel ARD, Söder said it had not been his “life plan” to run for chancellor. “The response I’ve been getting, and the expectation of a lot of people in Germany, and the polls, are playing an important — if not the absolutely decisive — role,” he said.
“There have been a lot of people calling from the CDU too, saying declare yourself, say if you’re generally prepared [to run],” he added.
The Christian Democrats had long soared in the polls, credited with Germany’s deft stewardship of the first wave of the pandemic. But in recent months they have experienced a sharp decline, with voters blaming them for recent missteps in coronavirus policy and, in particular, the slow pace of Covid-19 vaccinations. They have also suffered from revelations that a number of CDU and CSU MPs received large commissions on deals to procure face masks at the height of the first wave last year.
A hard-charging populist with a reputation as a political shape-shifter, Söder has enjoyed strong approval ratings throughout the pandemic, which revealed him as a decisive crisis manager.
He threw his hat in the ring at a meeting of the leadership of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group on Sunday, which was also attended by Merkel and Laschet.
Laschet declared his intention to run at the same meeting. Speaking at a joint press conference afterwards, Laschet said he and Söder would decide among themselves who should be the candidate.
“We will answer this question well, in the spirit of the high personal regard we have for each other,” he said.
The two men had initially said they would reach a mutual decision between them before the end of May. But in recent days, more senior figures in both Berlin and Bavaria have urged them to speed up.
“When I consider the mood in the CDU as a whole, the decision should be taken very swiftly,” Laschet told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
A nuclear facility in Iran was hit by a "terrorist act" a day after it unveiled new advanced uranium centrifuges, a top nuclear official says.
He did not say who was to blame but urged the international community to deal with nuclear terrorism.
Israeli media suggest the incident was a result of an Israeli cyber attack.
Last year, a fire broke out at the Natanz underground facility, which the authorities alleged was the result of cyber sabotage.
The latest incident comes as diplomatic efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear deal - abandoned by the US under the Trump administration in 2018 - have resumed.
On Saturday, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated new centrifuges at the Natanz site, which is key to the country's uranium enrichment programme, in a ceremony broadcast live on television.
Centrifuges are needed to produce enriched uranium, which can be used to make reactor fuel - but also material for nuclear weapons.
It represented another breach of the country's undertakings in the 2015 deal, which only permits Iran to produce and store limited quantities of enriched uranium to be used to produce fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
What has Iran been saying?
On Sunday, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), Behrouz Kamalvandi, said an "incident" had occurred in the morning involving the nuclear facility's power network.
Mr Kamalvandi did not provide further details but told Iran's Fars news agency there there had been "no casualties or leaks".
Later state TV read out a statement by AEOI head Ali Akbar Salehi, in which he described the incident as "sabotage" and "nuclear terrorism".
"Condemning this despicable move, the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasises the need for the international community and the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] to deal with this nuclear terrorism," he was quoted as saying.
"Iran reserves the right to take action against the perpetrators."
The IAEA said it was aware of the reports of an incident but would not comment.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan said that it could be assumed that the incident was an Israeli cyber operation, citing the discovery in 2010 of the Stuxnet computer virus, believed to have been developed by the US and Israel, which was used to destroy centrifuges at Natanz.
Haaretz newspaper also said the incident could be assumed to be an Israeli cyber attack.
Ron Ben-Yishai, a defence analyst at the Ynet news website, said that with Iran progressing towards nuclear weapons capability it was "reasonable to assume that the problem... might not have been caused by an accident, but by deliberate sabotage intended to slow the nuclear race accelerated by the negotiations with the US on removing sanctions".
The Iranian nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has been in intensive care since Donald Trump pulled the US out of it.
Under the Biden administration diplomatic efforts have been redoubled to revive it.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned against a return to the deal, and declared last week that Israel would not be bound by a new agreement with Tehran.
What happened to the deal?
The nuclear deal only allows Iran to produce and store limited quantities of uranium enriched up to 3.67% concentration. Uranium enriched to 90% or more can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Mr Trump said the accord was based on "a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy programme" and reinstated crippling economic sanctions in an attempt to compel Iran to negotiate a replacement.
Iran, which insists it does not want nuclear weapons, refused to do so and retaliated by rolling back a number of key commitments under the accord.
It has since accelerated the breaches in an attempt to increase pressure on the US. They have included operating advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium, resuming enrichment to 20% concentration of the most fissile U-235 isotope, and building a stockpile of that material.
At the Maslovka railway station just south of the Russian city of Voronezh, there's a small military camp, a few trucks and a tent.
The clearing in front is rutted thanks to the steady unloading of military equipment in recent weeks.
A soldier recognises us from the day before.
"Hello spies," he said.
Image:The unloading of equipment at the railway station has left the ground rutted
Russia's military build-up in Crimea and along the border with Ukrainehas hardly been subtle.
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It has coincided with the breakdown of the latest ceasefire in the simmering conflictbetween Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
More and more videos have appeared on social media of Russian troop movements - artillery convoys along the bridge connecting Russiawith Crimea; trains loaded with weaponry coming from as far east as Siberia.
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These sightings from ordinary Russians alongside warnings from Ukrainian generals preceded the Russian military's announcement of exercises in the region and sent alarm bells ringing across Western capitals.
The kit unloaded at Maslovka is headed to a nearby training ground, which has been turned into a huge military field camp.
Image:Russian forces have created a military field camp near the city of Voronezh
It stretches for around a mile and a half and backs right onto a neighbourhood of dachas, the weekend homes of mostly Voronezh city-folk who tell us the build-up began in late March.
We accidentally drive right in, though the soldiers make no effort to come after us.
There are a large number of military trucks, row after row of tents, troops milling about.
The sign at the entrance is one that most Russian conscripts remember from military service - "Difficult on exercise, easier in the fight".
The site was first identified through open source methods by the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) in Moscow.
"It looks more like preparing for an offensive operation, not just to protect our land," CIT's Ruslan Leviev told us in Moscow.
But he does not believe it's a prelude to war.
"It looks like a show of force to put pressure on the Ukrainian government, to show your posture on the international stage, to show your position to the new American administration."
Image:The military build-up has hardly been subtle
Locals pottering around their dachas hardly spare a thought for the military build-up next door.
"If Zelensky (the Ukrainian president) isn't a fool, then nothing will happen. If he is a fool, anything could happen," said Nina, a pensioner who we meet watering her garden.
"'Anyway, it's not him who decides things, it's the Americans."
She does not want to give her surname.
"I hope I haven't revealed any military secrets," she added.
"There are always exercises here, every summer," said Yuri, a local guard.
"Stop all this talk of war."
But there are not exercises on this scale.
Neither here nor elsewhere along Russia's border with Ukraine.
Image:Western calls to de-escalate the situation appear to have been ignored
Not since the annexation of Crimea has Russia beefed up its presence there to this extent, re-deploying an air brigade from near the Estonian border and sending 10 naval vessels from the Caspian to reinforce the Black Sea fleet.
In response, the US has announced it will send two warships into the Black Sea.
The German chancellor asked Vladimir Putinthis week to wind down the military build-up.
This Sunday after consultations with his US counterpart, Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raabtweeted the same.
It does not appear to be happening.
The Russian position is clear. What happens on Russian soil is Russia's business.
It is hard to argue with that.
The UK 🇬🇧 & US 🇺🇸 firmly oppose Russia’s campaign to destabilise Ukraine. @SecBlinken & I agreed Russia must immediately de-escalate the situation & live up to the international commitments that it signed up to at @OSCE. Our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty is unwavering.
But ostentatious muscle-flexing around Ukraine is not an option for the West to ignore - the stakes are too high, they are for all involved.
Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky may clamour for fast-track NATO membership but he will not get it.
For all their loud protestations over NATO's possible eastward-creep, the Kremlin knows that.
US President Joe Biden may declare his unwavering support for Ukraine's territorial sovereignty and integrity but he will be wary of walking anywhere near potential conflict with Russia.
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Ukraine president visits Donbas region amid tensions
And surrounded as he is by Russian forces, president Zelensky knows re-taking the country's eastern Donbas region, parts of which are held by separatists, is wishful thinking as is any large-scale fight with his powerful neighbour to the East.
It is of course hard to know what Russia is playing at but they seem to be eyeing the long game.
Coercive diplomacy to extract concessions in negotiations on Donbas, a powerful display of military muscle for the new US administration to take note of while the de facto annexation of the separatist regions of Ukraine chugs along apace.
Image:Russia seem to be eyeing the long game
According to Russian state news agency Ria Novosti, 420,000 people in the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics have already received Russian passports.
Russia is aiming for one million by parliamentary elections this September.
"It's unifying their legislation with the Russian one, it's providing them with the Russian vaccine, it's providing them with passports. It doesn't mean Russia wants to annex them," said Maxim Samorukov from the Moscow Carnegie Institute.
"At least in the near future," he added.
It also provides quite the justification for full-scale intervention should Russia's calculus change.
Image:The Kremlin is sending a message to Ukraine and the wider international community
President Putin has said allowing Ukrainian troops along Russia's border with the separatist regions could lead to a Srebrenica-type massacre - the 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces.
Dmitry Kozak, Russia's representative in negotiations on Ukraine, has threatened that a Ukrainian assault on Donbas would be a '"self-inflicted gunshot wound in the foot and to the head".
"If the Srebrenica massacre takes place there, we will have to stand up for their defence," he said.
Sharp rhetoric to match an aggressive display of military might.
All in the interests of deterrence? Perhaps.
But also an indication that eight years of sanctions has hardly served to deter Russia from at the very least flexing its muscles, if not more.
