University of Rhode Island board votes unanimously to revoke degrees given to key allies of Donald Trump in 2003 and 2014
The University of Rhode Island will revoke honorary degrees given to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn, key allies of Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
The URI board of trustees on Friday voted unanimously to revoke the degrees, which were given to Giuliani in 2003 and Flynn in 2014.
Continue reading...A skier in northern Finland was treated to a stunning display as the vivid aurora borealis and a bright moon shone in the sky early on Saturday 15 January. Jari Romppainen filmed the footage in Ranua, a municipality in the Finnish province of Lapland. According to Finland's national tourist site, the northern lights are visible for about 200 nights a year from Lapland
Film star and California governor pictured at scene of accident in which police confirm one woman taken to hospital
Arnold Schwarzenegger has reportedly been involved in a multi-vehicle crash that resulted in a woman being taken to hospital.
The former bodybuilder and governor of California was pictured at the scene, in photos shared by the TMZ website, in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon.
Continue reading...Hundreds also wounded as Saudi-led coalition denies reports it bombed detention centre in Sa’ada
The UN has condemned an airstrike on a detention centre in northern Yemen as the death toll rose to more than 80.
The airstrike in the rebel-held Sa’ada province on Friday morning followed a Houthi drone attack on the United Arab Emirates on Monday that killed three people. It marks an intensification of violence in the seven-year civil war between the government, supported by a Saudi-led coalition, and the Iranian-backed rebels.
Continue reading...When inventor David Mayman took to the skies, it seemed he’d answered an age-old longing. So why did no one seem to care?
We have jetpacks and we do not care. An Australian named David Mayman has invented a functioning jetpack and has flown it all over the world – once in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty – yet few people know his name. His jetpacks can be bought but no one is clamouring for one. For decades, humans have said they want jetpacks, and for thousands of years we have said we want to fly, but do we really? Look up. The sky is empty.
Airlines are dealing with pilot shortages, and this promises to get far worse. A recent study found that, by 2025, we can expect a worldwide shortfall of 34,000 commercial pilots. With smaller aircraft, the trends are similar. Hang-gliding has all but disappeared. Ultralight aircraft makers are barely staying afloat. (One manufacturer, Air Création, sold only one vehicle in the US last year.) With every successive year, we have more passengers and fewer pilots. Meanwhile, one of the most dreamed of forms of flight – jetpacks – exists, but Mayman can’t get anyone’s attention.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Costa Rica
Continue reading...Some Trumpland observers are convinced that he is in serious legal trouble as New York’s AG investigation of Trump Organizations’s finances intensifies
When Donald Trump announced plans in 2006 to build a golf complex on ancient sand dunes on the Aberdeenshire coast in Scotland he told reporters it was love at first sight. “As soon as I saw it there was no question about it,” he said. It would be the world’s “greatest golf course”.
This week Trump International Scotland became a central element of a case that looks poised to dominate his post-presidential life, and could even put him behind bars.
Continue reading...In Chonhar a blue and yellow flag marks the de facto border as Russian forces amass across a shimmering expanse of water
Peering through binoculars, Mykola Chekman pointed to the bridge connecting Ukraine to Russian-controlled Crimea. “It’s not the first time the peninsula has been occupied,” he observed. He added: “Crimea has seen a lot of war.”
Chekman – a Ukrainian army photographer – was standing on the castellated tower of what was once a tourist cafe. It is now a base for Ukrainian forces, facing off against their invisible Russian counterparts across a shimmering expanse of water and duck-filled lagoons.
Continue reading...Travel restrictions have stranded almost 150,000 students, workers and others hoping to join relatives
Late last year, Pablo Ortez quit his job, sold his belongings and prepared to join his wife in Japan, where she is studying for a doctorate.
But 72 hours before he was due to leave Argentina, he checked the Japanese foreign ministry website to find that the government had imposed a near-blanket travel ban to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.
Continue reading...The boyfriend of Gabby Petito admitted killing her in a notebook discovered near his body in a Florida swamp, the FBI announced on Friday.
It was the first time authorities squarely pinned the blame for Petito’s death on Brian Laundrie, though he was the prime suspect all along.
Continue reading...The US secretary of state described talks in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, intended to reduce tensions that have risen since Russia massed troops near Ukraine's border, as ‘frank and substantive’. But Antony Blinken repeated the US and Nato’s position that there could still be no compromise on the central issue of the right of Ukraine and other countries to join Nato in the future
Continue reading...‘Humans are social and we Irish more than most,’ Micheál Martin tells country after ending 20 months of social restrictions
Ireland has ended what has been one of the longest and strictest set of coronavirus restrictions in Europe, with the end of lockdown declared “a good day” by the country’s prime minister.
In a televised address to the nation the taoiseach, Micheál Martin, announced that the “the majority of public health measures” would be swept away from 6am on Saturday after the cabinet concluded they were no longer justifiable.
Continue reading...An airstrike on a prison in northern Yemen has killed at least 60 people and wounded 200 more. The violence marked an especially deadly day in the seven-year war, leaving bystanders searching through rubble with their bare hands to rescue those trapped in the detention centre in Sa’ada. Overwhelmed nearby hospitals said they had been forced to turn away some of the injured. The attack comes five days after the Houthis claimed a drone-and-missile attack on Abu Dhabi that killed three people
Continue reading...Move comes amid ‘frank and substantive’ talks in Geneva and announcement by Russia of new military exercises
The US has offered to hold a summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin as a last-ditch effort to stop the slide to a new war in Europe, as Russia continued to build up its forces along the Ukraine border and announced new naval exercises in the Black Sea.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Washington and its allies were also ready to respond in writing next week to Russian demands on the future of Nato and European security, which Moscow has said must be addressed to avoid it taking “military measures”. But, speaking in Geneva where he held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Blinken repeated the US and Nato position there could still be no compromise on the central issue of the right of Ukraine and other countries to join Nato in the future.
Continue reading...Hardline approach to pandemic risks damaging global economy, says Kristalina Georgieva
China, the world’s second largest economy, should review its zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic or risk damaging the global recovery, according to the head of International Monetary Fund.
Kristalina Georgieva said Beijing should reassess the use of lockdowns to limit the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant since it became clear the harm to human health was less severe than the Delta variant.
Continue reading...Seven days after a massive volcanic eruption that spawned a tsunami and ash cloud, communications are still largely down and the scale of the catastrophe unknown
It was the week Tonga disappeared.
Riveted by the shocking satellite images of the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano and subsequent tsunami, the eyes of the world turned to the South Pacific island country, home to about 100,000 people, on Saturday. But just as the world was desperate for news from Tonga, it went dark.
Continue reading...Gabriel Boric, 35, picks youthful team including at defence the granddaughter of Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a coup
Chile’s millennial president-elect, Gabriel Boric, has named a progressive cabinet, with a ministerial team which for the first time anywhere in the Americas is dominated by women.
Boric, a 35-year-old former student leader, will replace the billionaire rightwing president Sebastián Piñera on 11 March as he becomes the youngest president in Chile’s history.
Continue reading...Activists, artists, film-makers and nuns across India write to 50-year-old after court clears Franco Mulakkal
Hundreds of letters of support have poured in for a nun in Kerala after a court acquitted a bishop accused of raping and abusing her over two years, in the first case of its kind to hit the Indian Catholic church.
The handwritten letters from activists, artists, journalists, film-makers and fellow nuns across India have expressed outrage at last week’s court verdict that cleared Bishop Franco Mulakkal of all charges of sexual abuse after the judge said the victim, a 50-year-old nun, was not a “sterling witness”.
Continue reading...A former employee of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organising committee, jailed on contested corruption charges, faces fresh legal action after his former bosses withheld his severance pay meaning he will default on a loan, his family say.
Abdullah Ibhais, a former media manager, was last year given a three-year sentence for misappropriating state funds – a charge that he insists was concocted as punishment for him criticising the handling of a migrant workers’ strike.
Continue reading...Matthew Willson from Surrey was shot in ‘reckless’ shooting as he was visiting his girlfriend
An astrophysicist from Surrey has died after being hit by a stray bullet while lying in bed during a trip to Atlanta.
Dr Matthew Willson, 31, from Chertsey, was shot in the early hours of Friday when a weapon was discharged by a group of individuals from a neighbouring block of flats in the suburb of Brookhaven. No suspects have been arrested.
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