Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Ukraine announced a new high of 8,752 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, the national security council said on Saturday, up from 8,312 cases on Friday.
Total infections stood at 387,481, it said.
Coronavirus is “running riot” across all age groups in the United Kingdom, says Prof Calum Semple, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.
Speaking in a personal capacity, Semple told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
Two-time Malaysian PM criticises Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts after the attack on Nice church
The former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has stood by his widely condemned comments on attacks by Muslim extremists in France, saying they were taken out of context. He also criticised Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts.
Mahathir, 95, sparked widespread anger when he wrote on his blog on Thursday that “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.
The 44-year old victim of the Nice knife attack who told paramedics “tell my children I love them” as she died of stab wounds has been named Simone Barreto Silva, who worked as a carer for elderly people.
Silva, who was born in the Brazilian state of Bahia, was a citizen of France, where she had reportedly lived for about 30 years.
Demonstrations held in Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories and Afghanistan
Tens of thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere joined protests on Friday over the French president Emmanuel Macron’s vow to protect the right to caricature the prophet Muhammad.
Demonstrations in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, turned violent as 2,000 people who tried to march towards the French embassy were pushed back by police firing teargas and using batons. Crowds of Islamist activists hanged an effigy of Macron from an overpass after pounding it with their shoes.
Tunisian Brahim Aouissaoui, 21, gave no indication he was contemplating violence
The 21-year-old Tunisian man who is accused of using a kitchen knife to kill three people in a church in Nice spoke to his family 12 hours before the attack, giving no indication he was contemplating violence.
Brahim Aouissaoui grew up among eight sisters and two brothers in a modest home on a potholed road in Thina, a working-class neighbourhood in an industrial zone close to Sfax, a major port on Tunisia’s eastern coast.
Iranian man held on suspicion of manslaughter following deaths of at least four people
An Iranian man has been held on suspicion of manslaughter following the deaths of four people, and the disappearance of a further three who are believed to have died, as they attempted to cross the Channel.
Iranian Kurds Rasul Iran Nezhad and his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and two of their children, Anita, nine, and Armin, six, drowned on Tuesday as they tried to reach Britain by boat after departing from near Dunkirk.
Children in France aged six and over will have to wear face masks in the classroom to keep schools open, the prime minister said on the eve of a second national lockdown.
Speaking before the national assembly backed the new restrictions by 399 votes to 27, Jean Castex said the mandatory use of masks was being extended to primary school pupils on the advice of public health officials. Only children over 11 have had to wear masks in school until now.
Parishioners of the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice, where a woman was beheaded and two others were killed by a knife attacker on Thursday, have paid tribute to the victims. 'I'm so shocked. I still imagine him, I still see him walking, lighting up the candles,' said Laura Male, as she remembered the church warden
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday that he would step up the deployment of soldiers to protect places of worship and schools after a knife attack in Nice in which three people were killed. Speaking from the scene, a defiant Macron said France had been attacked 'because of our values, our taste for freedom, the possibility there is here to believe freely'
France will not give in to terrorism, Emmanuel Macron has said in a call for firmness and unity after the country’s latest terrorist attack left three people dead.
On Thursday morning, a man armed with a knife killed two women and a man at the Notre-Dame Basilica in the city centre of Nice on the Côte d’Azur
Many of the factors in the surge in violence of a few years ago have gone but some still remain
The “vision of horror” in Nice, as police described the scene of a fatal knife attack in a church on Thursday, is a serious challenge for Emmanuel Macron. The French president has promised a crackdown on Islamist extremism, including shutting down mosques and other organisations accused of fomenting radicalism and violence, and said France was engaged in an existential battle against radical Islamic ideologies and separatism. His hardline interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has spoken of extremists as the enemy within.
There was also a stabbing outside the French consulate in Saudi Arabia on Thursday and an incident in the French city of Avignon involving a man armed with a knife who tried to attack police. It follows the murder two weeks ago of a schoolteacher in Conflans on the outskirts of Paris after he had shown students a caricature of the prophet Muhammad, and the wounding of two people outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo.
President calls for firmness and unity after man with knife kills three people in church
France will not give in to terror, Emmanuel Macron has said, in a call for firmness and unity after the country’s latest terrorist attack left three people dead.
The president issued a sombre but defiant message after a man armed with a knife killed two women and a man in the Notre-Dame basilica in central Nice, the second such attack in France in less than a fortnight.
A video captured the sound of gunfire as police responded at the scene of a deadly church attack in the French city of Nice on Thursday. A man armed with a knife has killed three people – two women and a man – during the terrorist attack inside the Notre-Dame Basilica in the city centre. Police described the scene as a 'vision of horror'. The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, said the attacker had said 'Allahu Akbar' several times while he was being arrested and handcuffed by police
As the row over the discharge of Covid-positive patients into Scotland’s care homes during the early days of the pandemic deepens, health secretary Jeane Freeman has insisted that a new report does not diminish government accountability, writes Libby Brookes, the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.
The report – which concluded the risk of an outbreak linked to discharge of positive or untested patients was “not statistically significant” - prompted anger from opposition parties, care chiefs and unions, who argued that it failed to properly explain why dozens of patients who tested positive for coronavirus, along with thousands who went untested, were discharged from Scottish hospitals into care homes in April and May.
For relatives and families of people who have died in care homes during this pandemic, I want them to know really clearly that I am not saying that this report says there is no accountability here or that I think that report in any way offers them comfort. It’s a very technical report and it comes to a statistical conclusion but that doesn’t take away from the human impact of this virus…
Angela Merkel faced shouts and heckles in Germany’s parliament this morning as she outlined her government’s plans for a “soft” second lockdown, writes Philip Oltermann, the Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief.
From Monday, bars, restaurants, theatres, swimming pools and fitness studios will close for a month, and public gatherings be limited to two households or up to ten people. Unnecessary travel is discouraged and hotels advised not to host tourists. Schools, nurseries and shops will stay open, however.
Mayor says suspect arrested after attack near church in southern French city
A knifeman killed three people and injured several others in an attack inside a church in Nice on the Côte d’Azur.
The killings happened at 9am on Thursday morning inside the Notre-Dame basilica in the city centre. There were unconfirmed reports in the French media that at least one of the victims had been beheaded.
France will go back into a nationwide lockdown starting this week to try to contain the Covid-19 pandemic that is again threatening to spiral out of control, French president Emmanuel Macron said in an address to the nation on Wednesday. The new measures he announced – which come into force on Friday – will mean people have to stay in their homes except to buy essential goods, seek medical attention or use their daily one-hour allocation of exercise.
French satirical newspaper depicted Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in his underwear
Turkey has threatened “legal and diplomatic” action against the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo after it published a caricature of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on its latest front page.
The drawing described as “disgusting” by the Turkish leader and Ankara’s announcement that prosecutors have launched an official investigation into the publication have worsened already heightened tensions between the two countries.
Rasul Iran Nezhad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi drowned along with their children Anita and Armin
Four Iranian Kurds who died trying to cross the Channel in high winds were members of one family who paid smugglers thousands of euros after two failed attempts to reach Britain, the Guardian has been told.
Rasul Iran Nezhad and his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and two of their children, Anita, nine, and Armin, six, drowned as they tried to reach Britain by boat, according to a relative of the family and the Iranian-Kurdish human rights organisation Hengaw.
Demonstrations are growing across the Muslim world against the French president Emmanuel Macron and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad.
In Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, about 40,000 people were involved in a demonstration organised by the country’s largest Islamist party, while protests took place in Pakistan, Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan.
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished cartoons of Muhammad in September, before the trial of 14 people accused of involvement in a terrorist attack against the publication’s offices in 2015 for publishing the same caricatures.