Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos will become world’s fourth-richest woman but has promised to give away half of award
The world’s biggest divorce settlement will be made official this week as Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos hands over a 4% stake in the online shopping giant to his soon-to-be ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos.
A judge is expected to sign legal papers transferring the Amazon shares – worth $38bn (£29bn) – into MacKenzie Bezos’s name. It is by some distance the largest divorce settlement in history the previous record was $2.5bn paid to Jocelyn Wildenstein when she divorced art dealer Alec Wildenstein in 1999.
Vladimir Putin may relish his place at the table in Vienna but he will be tempted to cash in on rising prices
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) will meet this week in Vienna under a familiar pretext: to act as stewards of oil market stability. In practice, oil ministers from the world’s most powerful oil-producing nations will thrash out a deal to limit the amount of oil flowing into the global market and avoid an oil price collapse.
The latest pact is expected to extend a milestone deal first struck between Opec and a Russian-led alliance of nations outside the cartel in the wake of the oil price crash.
In an abandoned chocolate factory in Ontario, Canopy Growth is nurturing global ambitions. But could it thrive in Britain?
The musky aroma hits you from the car park at the headquarters of Canopy Growth, the world’s largest cannabis company.
Inside this nondescript warehouse – an abandoned Hershey’s chocolate factory in Smiths Falls, Canada – awaits the stuff of a stoner’s wildest dreams. Myriad rooms teem with row upon row of bushy marijuana plants at various stages of maturity, under intense lamplight, swaying in the breeze of dozens of fans.
Air Canada’s planned C$520m purchase of Air Transat could be bad news for passengers who already pay double what Americans do
For most Canadians, flying from one corner of their country to the other can be a pricey endeavour – so expensive, in fact, that they could fly to Europe or Asia for nearly the same price.
Online travel agency Kiwi noted in its 2017 flight price index that Canadians pay more than twice the price Americans do for similar-distance domestic flights.
Solar Foods hopes wheat flour-like product will hit target in supermarkets within two years
A Finnish company that makes food from electricity, water and air has said it plans to have 50m meals’ worth of its product sold in supermarkets within two years.
Solar Foods is also working with the European Space Agency to supply astronauts on a mission to Mars after devising a method it says creates a protein-heavy product that looks and tastes like wheat flour at a cost of €5 (£4.50) per kilo.
Heads-up: One of Donald Trump’s top advisors has warned that America could press on and raise tariffs on Chinese imports.
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, has said America is insisting on ‘structural changes’ to China’s intellectual property laws, with effective enforcement for any breaches.
“If need be, we may move ahead – we may move ahead on additional tariffs.
We have word from the WH --> Kudlow says there are no preconditions set ahead of any trade talks with China. (per @Reuters, Fox News)
This G20 summit is Theresa May’s last big foreign trip before stepping down as PM.
She’s expected to hold meeting with Australian PM Scott Morrison, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Quite the lineup for Theresa May's one-to-one meetings at this G20 summit in Osaka - Putin, Mohammad bin Salman, Erdogan...And Trump will be here too, of course. So much for that "rules-based global order" she prizes.
PSA Group’s decision is boost to British car industry and workers at Ellesmere Port plant
PSA Group said it will build its new Vauxhall Astra car at its Ellesmere Port plant but only on the condition the government secures a good Brexit deal.
The decision is a major boost for the embattled British car industry and the 1,100 employees at the plant, whose future had been thought to be dependent on winning the Astra contract.
A new £200m outdoor adventure park, which is being launched with the support of the celebrity adventurer Bear Grylls, is being fronted by a financier who has raised millions of pounds from private investors and whose businesses have a multimillion-pound “black hole”.
Fund managers call on world leaders to bring in carbon pricing and phase out coal power ahead of G20
Superannuation funds and investors representing US$34tn in assets – nearly half of the total under management across the globe – have called on world leaders to bring in carbon pricing and phase out coal power to limit global heating to 1.5C.
Released ahead of a G20 leaders meeting in Osaka, Japan, the statement by 477 institutional investors urges world leaders to accelerate their response to the climate crisis to ensure the goals of the 2015 Paris climate deal can be met.
Carmaker to have 25 electrified models on sale by 2023 as strict new EU rules loom
BMW is accelerating its push away from the internal combustion engine towards battery technology, as the German carmaker seeks to double the number of electric and hybrid vehicles it sells in the next two years.
The company will have 25 electrified models on sale in 2023, two years earlier than previously planned, it announced on Tuesday. More than half of the vehicles will be fully electric.
The article on journalist and advice columnist E Jean Carroll’ssexual assault allegations against President Trump mysteriously disappeared on the New York Post website on Friday afternoon; the wire story by the Associated Press was also scrubbed.
Today, CNN is reporting that former editor-in-chief Col Allan - a longtime Trump supporter and “old lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch who returned to the conservative tabloid as an adviser in early 2019” - ordered that the story be removed.
Some news: Murdoch lieutenant Col Allan ordered the removal of the New York Post's story on Jean Carroll's sexual assault allegation against Trump, sources tell me and @garveyshufflehttps://t.co/GTh4z7N2eZ
Hundreds of children were moved out of a Texas Border Patrol station where they were held with inadequate food, water and sanitation for weeks. At this station, a legal team interviewed 60 children and documented kids forced to take care of kids, no clean clothing, weeks of no baths and poor nutrition.
This morning, my office was informed that only 30 children remain in the Clint Border Patrol station in El Paso County.
Last week, @hrw lawyers found 255 children in beyond alarming conditions in the same station. pic.twitter.com/tmBC3M0aqP
JUST IN: 249 of the children are now in the ORR shelter system according to Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the agency. https://t.co/gdhsc2GgkH
Billionaires call for tax on extreme wealth to combat inequality
‘America has a moral responsibility to tax our wealth more’
More than a dozen prominent US billionaires are calling for a new government tax on extreme wealth to help combat income inequality, provide funding for climate change initiatives and range of public health issues.
Questions over how chief executive David Hisco was allowed to run up large expense accounts and over wife’s purchase of a bank property
Pressure is mounting on the ANZ bank board after New Zealand’s central bank ordered two independent reviews into the company’s conduct following the departure of its NZ chief executive who ran up expense accounts averaging more than $400,000 a year.
The bank’s chairman, former New Zealand prime minister Sir John Key, last week announced the departure of David Hisco, who is an Australian, after the company learned of his spending for “non-monetary benefits” including a personal chauffeur service and wine cellaring.
Exclusive: Special rapporteur on health says social justice more important for mental health than therapy and medication
Austerity, inequality and job insecurity are bad for mental health and governments should counteract them if they want to face up to the rising prevalence of mental illness, the UN’s top health envoy has said.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian to coincide with a hard-hitting report to be delivered to the UN in Geneva on Monday, Dr Dainius Pūras said measures to address inequality and discrimination would be far more effective in combatting mental illness than the emphasis over the past 30 years on medication and therapy.
Foreign powers have no right to interfere in ‘internal affair’, says Zhang Jun, as Beijing also calls for trade compromise
China has said it will not allow the G20 nations to discuss the Hong Kong issue at its summit this week, assistant foreign minister Zhang Jun said on Monday.
Millions of people demonstrated on the streets of the city this month against a bill that would allow people to be extradited to the mainland to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist party.
‘National security’ measure seriously escalates tensions after clashes in Tbilisi during protests against visit by Russian MP
Vladimir Putin has banned Russia’s airlines from flying to Georgia, a day after a Russian lawmaker’s visit to the country prompted violent clashes between protesters and police.
The ban is a serious escalation in tensions between the neighbouring countries, which fought a war in 2008. The suspension of flights is designed to put pressure on Georgia’s tourism industry, which accounted for 7.6% of the country’s GDP in 2018. More than 1.4 million Russians visited Georgia last year.
Bank of England governor says UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to EU
The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, has said that the UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to the EU in a no-deal Brexit, rejecting a claim made by Boris Johnson that this could be avoided.
Tory leadership candidate Johnson said this week that tariffs would not necessarily have to be paid if the UK left the EU without a deal because the UK could rely on article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt).
Cities say short-term holiday lettings market is contributing to soaring long-term rents
Ten European cities have demanded more help from the EU in their battle against Airbnb and other holiday rental websites, which they argue are locking locals out of housing and changing the face of neighbourhoods.
In a joint letter, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Krakow, Munich, Paris, Valencia and Vienna said the “explosive growth” of global short-stay lettings platforms must be on the agenda of the next set of European commissioners.
Police and guards at North Mara have been accused of killing dozens – possibly hundreds – of locals
When safari tourists drive to the Serengeti national park in Tanzania, few realise they are passing one of the world’s most contentious goldmines.
From the escarpment above the plain, the North Mara facility is so large that it at first resembles a bare hillside. But look closer and the artificial mound is made up of tiers of reddish brown earth, from which a thin grey plume of smoke drifts up to the sky.
Over the past 10 years, at the North Mara goldmine – which is operated by London-listed Acacia Mining – there have been more than a dozen killings of intruding locals by security personnel.