Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Greta Thunberg leads protests as Covid rules restrict numbers compared with last year
School pupils, youth activists and communities around the world have turned out for a day of climate strikes, intended to underscore the urgency of the climate crisis even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Social distancing and other Covid-19 control measures dampened the protests, but thousands of activists posted on social media and took to the streets to protest against the lack of climate action from world leaders. Strikes were scheduled in at least 3,500 locations around the globe.
Extreme weather, locust invasions and violence have forced people to flee their homes
Millions of people were uprooted from their homes by conflict, violence and natural disasters in the first six months of this year, research has found.
Nearly 15m new internal displacements were recorded in more than 120 countries between January and June by the Swiss-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
‘Leisure is a feminist issue’ says Surabhi Yadav, whose photography project captures carefree moments of women around her
When Surabhi Yadav’s mother, Basanti, died Yadav realised she had never really known her. “I knew her as my mother, but nothing else,” she says. “I asked one of her friend’s how she remembered her and she told me: ‘She was the funniest and goofiest in our group.’ Those were not words I associated with my mother. I thought of her as a very serious person.”
Her father was the “funny one”, she thought, although her mother never appreciated his humour. “Now, as an adult, I understand that part of it is that my father’s jokes were often sexist, often at her expense.”
Girls in Uttar Pradesh targeted in assaults aiming to reinforce caste and gender hierarchies, say activists
A spate of brutal rapes and murders of young girls in a single district of India over the past month has provoked outrage and exposed the ongoing use of sexual violence as a tool of oppression and revenge against lower caste communities.
Over the past month, the Lakhimpur Kheri district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has witnessed four incidents of girls being raped and brutally murdered. At least two of the girls were Dalits, the lowest caste in the Hindu system of social hierarchy, who were previously referred to as “untouchables” and cast out from society.
Our South Asia correspondent on how coronavirus has affected a country’s livelihoods, faith and democracy
Pacing through the labyrinth of old Delhi, a place where life usually leaks out of every crack, I found myself straining my ears for the familiar sounds of chaos. But gone were the noises of the teeming vegetable markets and the horns of rickshaws piled so high with baskets they seem to defy the laws of physics; gone were the calls of the chai wallahs, the hiss of parathas on the griddle and the loud bleating of the goats who, in winter months, are dressed in bright jumpers to protect them from the cold. This was late March, days after a nationwide lockdown was imposed across India, and Delhi had never seemed so silent.
Reporting on south Asia during the pandemic has been a strange, and at times frustrating, experience. The strict lockdown meant state borders were shut, trains were stopped for the first time in history and all domestic and international flights grounded. I was stuck in Delhi, a city I love and call my home, but which is also a notorious bubble in which it can be hard to get a real sense of what is going on across the rest of India.
An Israeli cabinet minister, who heads an ultra-orthodox Jewish party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative coalition, has tendered his resignation in protest at a looming coronavirus lockdown. Housing minister Yaakov Litzman argued the restrictions would unfairly impede religious celebrations of Jewish holidays.
The rules - the most extensive Israel will have imposed since a lockdown that ran from late March to early May - are expected to go into effect on Friday, the Jewish new year Rosh Hashana, and span into the Yom Kippur fast day on 27 September.
This wrongs and scorns hundreds of thousands of citizens. Where were you until now? Why have the Jewish holidays become a convenient address for tackling the coronavirus...?
We have to move on, to make the decisions necessary for Israel in the coronavirus era, and that is what we will do in this session.
India has reported 94,372 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, taking total cases past 4.7 million.
The daily increase was down on the record global spike in the previous 24 hours of 97,570 new cases and came after three days of recording more than 95,000 new cases. Infections have been growing faster in India than anywhere in the world.
Educators in the disputed region are fighting to keep pupils on track amid repeated lockdowns, curfews and internet blackouts
Asmat Jan, 15, practises her singing in a meadow, against a backdrop of Kashmir’s towering mountains. In front of her, around 50 other children squat in perfect, straight lines. A couple of adults hover nearby.
Education has gone open-air across the valley in Indian-administered Kashmir and this is one of the many makeshift community classes that have sprung up in response to the repeated closure of schools under two separate lockdowns, alongside a communication blackout in this hotly disputed territory imposed in August last year. While political restrictions have eased a little in Kashmir since India revoked the region’s special status and degree of autonomy, a brief reopening of education in February lasted only until April’s Covid-19 lockdown brought classes to yet another grinding halt.
India has surpassed Brazil to become the country with the second highest number of coronavirus cases, as the virus continues to spread through the country of 1.3 billion at the fastest rate of anywhere in the world.
India recorded more than 90,000 cases overnight, bringing the number of infections in the country past 4.2 million and overtaking Brazil, which with 4.1 million cases had been the second worst-affected country for several months.
India has recorded a global one-day record of more than 90,000 positive coronavirus cases, taking the country past Brazil as the second most infected country in the world, with 4.2m confirmed cases.
On Sunday India recorded 90,802 new cases and 1,016 deaths. The worst affected state continues to be Maharashtra, home to the financial capital, Mumbai. It has had nearly a quarter of the country’s total infections, and on Sunday it reported a record 23,350 new cases.
India reported a record daily rise of 83,883 coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking its total to 3.85 million cases, just as the country pushed ahead with attempting a return to normality and kickstarting its economy.
India now has the fastest growing Covid-19 infection rate in the world, and is only 100,000 cases behind Brazil, the second worst-affected country in the world. Experts are predicting that the south Asian nation will soon overtake Brazil (4 million) and then the US (6.1 million) to hold the dubious title of having the highest number of cases globally.
Military buildup increases fears of further confrontations between nuclear powers
India has moved troops to the eastern stretch of its border with China since clashes erupted between the nuclear-armed rivals on the western part of their border in the Himalayas in June, a government official said.
The clashes in the Ladakh region in June, in the western part of their border, was the worst violence between the countries in decades and there has been little sign of a reduction in tension, with further military action in the past week.
Spain recorded 8,115 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday evening, 2,731 of them diagnosed in the previous 24 hours, according to the latest figures from the national health ministry.
The latest statistics bring the country’s total to 470,973 cases, of which 99,889 have been logged over the past fortnight. Over the past seven days, 159 people have died from the virus, bringing the death toll to 29,152.
Cuban authorities launched a strict 15-day lockdown of Havana on Tuesday in order to stamp out the low level but persistent spread of coronavirus in the capital.
Aggressive anti-virus measures, including closing down air travel, have virtually eliminated Covid-19 in Cuba with the exception of the capital, where cases have increased from a handful a day to dozens daily over the last month.
Here’s a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments from the last few hours.
Next year’s GCSE and A-level exams could be pushed back to give pupils more time to study the syllabus, the England’s education secretary has said.
Gavin Williamson said England’s exams regulator, Ofqual, was working with the education sector to decide whether there should be a “short delay” to the exam timetable in 2021.
I know there’s some concern about next year’s exams, and that’s why we’ve been working with Ofqual on changes we can make to help pupils when they take GCSEs and A-levels next year.
Ofqual will continue to work with the education sector and other stakeholders on whether there should be a short delay to the GCSE, A and AS-level exam timetable in 2021, with the aim of creating more teaching time.
Ministers had warning after warning about problems with this year’s exam results, but allowed it to descend into a fiasco.
This is too important for Boris Johnson to leave until the last minute. Pupils heading back to school need clarity and certainty about the year ahead.
Labour’s suggestion of a delay to help with ‘catch-up’ is worthy of serious consideration.
A delay is not without its problems, a consequential delay to the publication of results will put pressure on higher education providers such as universities and colleges as well as employers. All this will need to be dealt with.
Defence ministry claims it countered Chinese moves that ‘violated the consensus’ on the standoff in the Ladakh region
India has said its soldiers thwarted China’s “provocative” military movements near a disputed border in Ladakh region amid a months-long standoff.
A statement by India’s defence ministry said China’s Peoples Liberation Army “carried out provocative military movements to change the status quo” and “violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements” to settle the standoff in the cold-desert region.
India has set a new national record of daily coronavirus infections, reporting more than 77,000 cases in 24 hours, just shy of the global one-day record tally held by America.
India’s health ministry reported 77, 266 new cases on Friday. The largest ever one day rise is 78,427, reported by the US on 25 July. India also recorded more than 1,000 new deaths taking total fatalities, to 61,529, the fourth highest total in the world, behind the US, Brazil and Mexico.
Thousands of ritual statues are dunked into the sea off Mumbai each year – but coronavirus and pollution concerns are forcing change
In the quiet housing estate of Angrewadi in the heart of Girgaon in south Mumbai, people are celebrating the 100th consecutive year of the Ganesh Chaturthi, the Hindu festival of the elephant-headed god of new beginnings. Statues of Lord Ganesh are brought into homes and put on display for offerings and prayers.
On the 11th and final day of the festival, the ritual of Ganesh Visarjan takes place – falling this year on 1 September. The statues, normally made of soluble plaster of paris, are traditionally carried in a public procession with music and chanting, and are then immersed in either a river or the sea. Here, they slowly dissolve in a ceremony that dramatises the Hindu view of the ephemeral nature of life – but also causes widespread pollution.
Gunjan Saxena was one of the first women in the IAF, but her biopic has drawn rebukes from fellow officers over sexism claims
Former and current members of the Indian military have criticised a Netflix film for portraying the armed forces as rife with gender discrimination.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) has written to an Indian censor board, as well as Dharma Productions, which produced the film, and Netflix to complain that Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl “presented some situations that are misleading and portray an inappropriate work culture especially against women in the IAF”.
Twenty-eight people pulled out of block of flats south of Mumbai amid monsoon rain
At least 90 people are feared trapped in the debris of a five-storey building that collapsed to the south of India’s financial capital of Mumbai, according to police in Maharashtra state.
The building, which contained around 47 flats, caved in on Monday evening, a police statement said.
Travellers from the UK to France are required to self-certify that they are not suffering coronavirus symptoms or have been in contact with a confirmed case within 14 days preceding travel.
Russia aims to ramp up production of its potential Covid-19 vaccine to between 1.5 million and 2 million doses a month by the end of the year, Reuters reports.
Industry minister Denis Manturov said on Sunday that the nation hopes to eventually produce 6m doses a month, according to the RIA news agency.
New study shows preference for a son is highest in north of country with Uttar Pradesh having highest deficit in female births
An estimated 6.8 million fewer female births will be recorded across India by 2030 because of the persistent use of selective abortions, researchers estimate.
Academics from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia projected the sex ratio at birth in 29 Indian states and union territories, covering almost the entire population, taking into account each state’s desired sex ratio at birth and the population’s fertility rates.