Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Joe Biden has said there will be repercussions for border patrol agents over their harsh treatment of Haitian migrants at the southern US border between Texas and Mexico, calling it an embarrassment to the nation. Images of agents on horseback corralling migrants in Del Rio as thousands tried to enter the US drew international attention. The president said he bears ultimate responsibility for the situation
It’s New Zealand’s 1pm Covid press conference, and Chris Hipkins is eyeballing a room of journalists. He stands, sanitising his hands, and takes a moment to look around.
A coalition appears inevitable after two surveys suggest almost equal support for CDU and former favourite
The race to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor remains completely open two days before western Europe’s most populous country goes to the polls, with the latest predictions showing the leading parties almost neck and neck.
Two leading polls published on Friday ahead of Sunday’s election indicate the Social Democrats (SPD) have lost their lead over the Christian Democrats (CDU). One, carried out by Civey for the broadcaster ZDF, showed the SPD to be stable on 25%, but the CDU to have risen to 23%. A poll released later in the day for the polling institute Allensbach for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung showed the race to be even tighter, with the SPD on 26%, the CDU on 25%.
More members of Brazil’s government have tested positive for Covid on Friday, in addition to Tereza Cristina earlier on Friday (see 12:55), including president Jair Bolsonaro’s son.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman has confirmed that he has Covid, according to Reuters, as has solicitor general Bruno Bianco.
In England, Covid cases are going down despite restrictions being relaxed. Science editor Ian Sample looks at the potential reasons behind the decrease.
In early September, outbreak modelling for the government’s Sage advisers showed Covid hospitalisations had the potential to soar. If people rushed back to work and resumed all the socialising they had put on hold, the number of daily admissions in England could peak at 7,000 within six weeks. It was, in effect, a worst-case scenario, barring a dramatic waning of immunity or a troublesome new variant.
The optimistic scenario looked very different. Assuming a more gradual return to normality, the modelling had daily Covid hospitalisations rising slowly and slightly, topping out at nearly 2,000, before falling again in November. Now, even that looks overly gloomy. Over the past fortnight, hospitalisations have fallen in England, even as schools and offices reopened.
The agreement with Wanzhou clears a topic of dispute between US and China and could bring release of two Canadians
Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive at the centre of a three-way diplomatic row between China, the US and Canada has reached an agreement with US prosecutors to resolve the bank fraud case against her, in a process that should allow her to leave Canada, where she has been under house arrest.
Meng is expected to appear virtually in a hearing on Friday afternoon in Brooklyn federal court. She was arrested at Vancouver international airport in December 2018 on a US warrant, and was indicted on bank and wire fraud charges for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.
Petrofac made admission as part of deal to end four-year corruption investigation by Serious Fraud Office
A multinational oil firm, which was led by a major Conservative donor, has admitted that its employees paid bribes to land contracts, as it struck a deal to end a corruption investigation into the company.
The admission was announced by the firm, Petrofac, on Friday to settle a four-year corruption and money laundering investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
Protesters parading an effigy of Rodrigo Duterte in Manila call for policies that prioritise people and planet
A monstrous effigy of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was paraded through the country’s capital Manila on Friday as protesters joined a worldwide youth climate action.
About a hundred young people wearing masks gathered in one of several socially distanced demonstrations around the country in support of the global climate strike by the international Fridays for Future movement.
Attackers dressed as lawyers opened fire and killed Jitendra ‘Gogi’ Maan before police shot them dead
One of India’s most notorious gangsters has been shot dead in a Delhi courtroom after members of a rival gang disguised themselves in lawyers’ cloaks and opened fire.
The shooting took place as Jitendra Maan, alias Gogi”, previously one of Delhi’s most wanted men, entered the court to face murder and extortion charges. Police returned fire, according to officials, killing two gunmen.
Lawsuit alleges settlement in Cambridge Analytica case driven by desire to protect founder
Facebook paid $4.9bn more than necessary to the US Federal Trade Commission in a settlement over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in order to protect Mark Zuckerberg, a lawsuit has claimed.
The lawsuit alleges that the size of the $5bn settlement was driven by a desire to protect Facebook’s founder and chief executive from being named in the FTC complaint.
Rally to demand government action on climate crisis is first worldwide since start of pandemic
Hundreds of thousands of people in 99 countries have taken part in a coordinated global climate strike demanding urgent action to tackle the ecological crisis.
The strike on Friday, the first worldwide climate action since the coronavirus pandemic hit, is taking place weeks before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK.
From turning CO2 into rock to capturing the breath of office workers, a growing number of companies think the answer is yes
Does the world need millions of machines sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the air to beat the climate crisis? There is a fast-growing number of companies that believe the answer is yes and that are deploying their first devices into the real world.
From turning CO2 into rock in Iceland, to capturing the breath of office workers, to “putting oil back underground”, their aim is to scale up rapidly and some have already sold their CO2 removal services to buyers including Bill Gates, Swiss Re, Shopify and Audi. Prices, however, are sky high – $600 (£440) per tonne and more. Given that humans emit about 36bn tonnes a year, that is problematic. .
Analysis: the west tried to impose its alien values and it is time to try a new approach, as Joe Biden has indicated
Some years ago, in Afghanistan, the anthropologist Scott Atran asked a Taliban fighter what it would take to stop the fighting, because families on both sides were crying. The fighter replied: “Leave our country and the crying will stop.”
The crying may not have stopped, but the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan without an air force, heavy arms or expensive training, against US-backed Afghan government forces that outnumbered them four to one. In doing so, they have taken an important step closer to realising their stated goal, which is the creation of an Islamic emirate governed according to their interpretation of sharia law.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Éric Zemmour slug it out in much-publicised two-hour debate
Two men; two completely different visions for France.
In a debate that lasted more than two hours, the hard-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the hard-right Éric Zemmour, expected to be a presidential candidate, went head to head on prime-time television on Thursday evening.
Nooruddin Turabi, in charge of Afghan prisons, says executions and removal of hands will restart, but possibly not in public
The Taliban will resume executions and the amputation of hands for criminals they convict, in a return to their harsh version of Islamic justice.
According to a senior official – a veteran leader of the hardline Islamist group who was in charge of justice during its previous period in power – executions would not necessarily take place in public as they did before.
A childhood encounter with a hyena inspired Hawa Jama Abdi’s first verse. Now she is part of an arts project designed to encourage women storytellers - and unite all Somalis
When Hawa Jama Abdi was eight years old, she got lost in a forest and found herself in the path of a hyena. In her place, many would have run, some would have frozen – but Jama Abdi, the blind daughter of Somali pastoralists, kept her cool, and composed her first poem. The verse ran:
I lived in fear of you, day and night It is a miracle world if I am standing in front of you, tonight Since I am blind and cannot see anything Come to my rescue and let your voice be my company
As debt-laden Chinese property giant enters 30-day grace period, officials look to limit unrest and job losses
The embattled Chinese property developer Evergrande is inching closer to the potential default that investors fear, after missing an interest payment deadline.
The company, which has total debts of about $305bn (£222bn), has run short of cash, and investors are worried that a collapse could pose systemic risks to China’s financial system and reverberate around the world.
After 16 years in power, Angela Merkel is to retire as chancellor after a general election on Sunday, leaving a gaping hole in German politics. Merkel announced in October 2018 that her fourth term in office would be the last. The decision marks the first time since 1949 that an incumbent chancellor has not run for re-election. Appointed chancellor for the first time on 22 November 2005, Merkel has been in office for almost as long as Helmut Kohl, Germany’s longest-serving leader, who was in power for just over 16 years
Antonio Guterres said ‘more ambition from every country’ was required and that current emissions rates threatened the ‘very survival of Pacific communities’
The secretary general of the United Nations has told Pacific nations that a 45% cut in emissions by 2030 was needed globally to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, adding that continuing on the current trajectory “puts us on a catastrophic pathway”.
António Guterres was speaking at a virtual meeting with Pacific Island Forum leaders as part of the UN general assembly taking place in New York.
Jacinda Ardern wants to make New Zealand a world leader in Covid vaccinations, inoculating 90% of the population, but experts warn there will be challenges ahead as the prime minister seeks to find a way to take the harshest lockdowns “out of the toolbox”.
Ardern’s aim to make the population one of the most vaccinated in the world may seem ambitious but it was made as Covid modellers warned that anything less could result in 7,000 deaths, and 60,000 hospitalisations in the event of a community outbreak. So far, New Zealand has recorded a total of just 27 deaths.
Frustration in Auckland has been rising and the cabinet would have been aware it risked losing the crowd
One of the many quotes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte that he probably never said, was that he preferred his generals lucky, rather than able. When it’s a matter of life and death, “give me lucky generals,” he’s reputed to have pleaded.
It’s a view that New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern echoed this week when she announced that Auckland – home to about a third of all New Zealanders – was moving out of the strict level 4 lockdown to level 3. Replace “generals” with “policy” and you get a pretty accurate sense of cabinet’s big call this week. In a country that has essentially tattooed “go hard, go early” on to one collective arm and “stay home, stay safe” on to the other, the decision to let about 300,000 people go back to their places of work when Auckland’s still getting 15-30 cases a day in the community is a turning point in the government’s approach to this pandemic. Both in public health terms and politically. A year ago, public opinion wouldn’t have worn such faith in “lucky generals”. But that was a year ago.