Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
‘David Taylor’ claims hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding was to persuade him to cooperate with the CIA
A British citizen has claimed he was tortured in Somalia and questioned by US intelligence officers, raising concern that controversial practices of the post-9/11 “war on terror” are still being used.
The 45-year-old from London alleges he has endured hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding at the hands of the Somali authorities to persuade him, he believes, to cooperate with the CIA. Foreign Office officials are aware of the allegationsof torture and US involvement, but their failure to act has raised questions over UK complicity.
It was by focusing on his silenced victims, says the dogged Miami Herald reporter, that she was able to help bring the billionaire sex offender to justice after police and prosecutors had failed
The town of Palm Beach in Florida, the crime writer Carl Hiaasen has observed, “is one of the few places left in America where you can still drive around in a Rolls-Royce convertible and not get laughed at.” It’s an unironic island, filled with the super-rich and famous, plastic surgeons and, of course, the former US president, Donald Trump, who holds court at his ostentatious Mar-a-Lago resort.
A satellite of Miami, the island prides itself on its many flamboyant charity balls, but no amount of good-cause fundraising can remove the whiff of corruption that hangs heavy in the subtropical air. If money talks in most places, in Palm Beach it speaks with a confident authority that’s seldom questioned. Never has that understanding been more egregiously demonstrated than in the case of the inscrutable financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
With the school term finally over, Britons are flying to Europe in their tens of thousands, record levels for this Covid year. They are arriving in countries where the Delta variant paralysing Britain is just becoming dominant – and Europe is responding by clamping down.
Some countries have tightened border controls, with Malta barring entry to unvaccinated travellers and Germany bringing in stricter quarantine rules for people arriving from Spain and the Netherlands. More broadly, authorities from Greece to Italy and France to Portugal are bringing in what are effectively vaccine passports for a wide range of activities, although most are shying away from using that term, which has become incendiary.
US president is being much tougher than expected on Beijing, but a lack of solidarity will undermine his policy’s success
It’s generally accepted in Washington that once-buoyant hopes for the emergence of a free, democratic China, initially sparked by Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking 1972 visit, have sunk without trace. President Xi Jinping’s regime is now described as a “systemic rival”, “strategic competitor” or outright “threat”. The EU, Nato, the UK, and regional allies broadly agree: the era of engagement is over.
What’s lacking is agreement over what comes next. The hole where common policy and joint action should be gapes ever more dangerously amid almost daily collisions on multiple fronts with Xi’s aggressive, authoritarian one-party state. If it’s not about human rights abuses, cyberhacking, or trade, it’s Taiwan, visas, spying, maritime disputes, the Indian border, or alleged hostage-taking.
Demonstrators in several cities denounce president for alleged corruption and Covid mismanagement
Protesters took to the streets in several Brazilian cities on Saturday to demand the impeachment of Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s far right president whose popularity has fallen in recent weeks amid corruption scandals against the backdrop of the pandemic.
This week, news broke that Brazil’s defence ministry told congressional leadership that next year’s elections would not take place without amending the country’s electronic voting system to include a paper trail of each vote.
Jury selection nears in sex-trafficking trial of R&B star
Prosecutors detail new claims but not new charges
Federal prosecutors in R Kelly’s sex trafficking case say the R&B star had sexual contact with an underage boy as well as girls, and jurors should hear those claims.
Demonstrators say law that bans teaching of issue in schools is causing division in Hungary
Thousands of Hungarians have joined the annual Budapest Pride march to support LGBTQ people and protest against a law that limits teaching about homosexuality and transgender issues in schools.
Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in power since 2010, has introduced social policies that he says aim to safeguard traditional Christian values from western liberalism, stoking tensions with the EU.
Real estate holdings published for first time show it owns 4,051 properties in Italy, 1,120 abroad
The Vatican has released information on its real estate holdings for the first time, revealing it owns more than 5,000 properties, as part of its most detailed financial disclosures ever.
The information released on Saturday was contained in two documents – a consolidated financial statement for 2020 for the Holy See and the first ever public budget for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (Apsa).
A conservative radio host in Tennessee who urged listeners not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has changed track and called on listeners to get the shot, after contracting the virus and ending up in hospital in “very serious condition”.
In the UK, discontent with the government’s self-isolation policy is growing as food industry bosses condemned changes to ease the “pingdemic” as “worse than useless”.
PA Media reports that hospitality leaders have warned of a summer of closures and train operators have been forced to cut services. The agency says:
There were increasing calls for Boris Johnson to bring forward his wider relaxation of quarantine rules for the fully vaccinated from 16 August as businesses were hampered by staff being told to isolate as coronavirus cases soar.
In a bid to calm the concerns of industry, ministers published a limited list of sectors whose double-jabbed workers are eligible to avoid isolation if they undergo daily testing before the wider easing of rules for England.
Tunisia suffered 317 deaths in the last 24 hours, its worst daily toll since the start of the pandemic, its health ministry has said.
According to Reuters, the ministry also reported 5,624 new cases, increasing concerns about the country’s ability to fight the pandemic, with intensive care units in hospitals completely full and a lack of oxygen supplies. The vaccination campaign is moving slowly. The agency reports:
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the daily death tally in Tunisia is now the highest in Africa and in the Arab world.
The total number of cases since the start of the pandemic has reached about 560,000, with more than 18,300 deaths, out of a total population of 11.6 million people.
Death toll from heavy monsoon rains on western coast climbs to 76, with nearly 90,000 people evacuated
Rescuers in India combed through mud and debris on Saturday in a desperate search for survivors as the death toll from heavy monsoon rains climbed to 76, with nearly 90,000 people evacuated.
Torrential downpours have lashed India’s western coast in recent days, leaving dozens missing near the financial capital of Mumbai and causing the worst floods in decades in the resort state of Goa.
Will Cathcart claims government officials around the world among 1,400 WhatsApp users targeted in 2019
Senior government officials around the world – including individuals in high national security positions who are “allies of the US” – were targeted by governments with NSO Group spyware in a 2019 attack against 1,400 WhatsApp users, according to the messaging app’s chief executive.
Will Cathcart disclosed the new details about individuals who were targeted in the attack after revelations this week by the Pegasus project, a collaboration of 17 media organisations which investigated NSO, the Israeli company that sells its powerful surveillance software to government clients around the world.
Americans are paying more for gas, hotels and used cars – and Republicans sense an opportunity to inflict a political wound upon the Democrats
Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have been eager to celebrate America’s economic rebound as pandemic-related restrictions are relaxed and more businesses reopen. But there has been one sore spot in recent economic reports that Democrats have been less enthusiastic about: inflation.
Durbanites expected another lockdown, not isolation enforced by violence and looting. But as the city I love turned to ruin, I saw fear change to bravery and community spirit
The past week has been one of the most difficult of my life. My home descended into chaos. Durban, a holiday city with a melting pot of cultures and a diverse range of people who live and work here, came to a standstill as rioters took to the streets to spread chaos after the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma.
As the variant tears its way through the US and vaccination rates plateau in the state, hospitals are experiencing a new wave of cases
Nurse Matt Robinson braced himself before pushing the heavy doors to the recently reopened Covid-19 ward at Methodist University hospital in downtown Memphis, Tennessee.
This hadn’t been in the script. After over a year of continuous work with Covid-19 patients throughout the pandemic, the burnout brought on by constant exposure to death and trauma, Robinson had hoped his job might return to normal.
Workers have become unlikely stars of the video app, while revealing harsh conditions
Agricultural workers throw their buckets into the air at the end of harvest like at a graduation ceremony. A construction site turns into a concert hall, with workers wearing strands of hemp as wigs and singing into bits of plastic piping instead of microphones. A market stall becomes a runway as fruit vendors strut their stuff: a bunch of bananas as headgear, leeks dangling from their necks.
With posts from factories, fields and construction sites, workers in Turkey are going viral on TikTok. The app’s staples such as challenges, dancing and comedy abound, but amid the joy it is hard not to miss the criticism of dire working conditions.
MPs vote unanimously for abolition, making it the 23rd African state to end capital punishment
Sierra Leone has become the latest African state to abolish the death penalty after MPs voted unanimously to abandon the punishment.
On Friday the west African state became the 23rd country on the continent to end capital punishment, which is largely a legacy of colonial legal codes. In April, Malawi ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, while Chad abolished it in 2020. In 2019, the African human rights court ruled that mandatory imposition of the death penalty by Tanzania was “patently unfair”.
Move by international body set up to implement post-war peace deal follows attempts to downplay 1995 Srebrenica massacre
The top international official in Bosnia has outlawed denial of genocide in the Balkan country to counter attempts by Bosnia’s Serbs to deny the scope of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Europe’s only post-second world war genocide.
Valentin Inzko, the outgoing head of Bosnia’s Office of the High Representative, or OHR, introduced the changes to the country’s criminal code on Friday, bringing in prison sentences of up to five years for genocide denial and for the glorification of war criminals, including naming of streets or public institutions after them.
UN human rights experts decry arrests and evictions of ethnic Karen from Kaeng Krachan national park
UN human rights experts have urged Unesco not to grant World Heritage Site status to a national park in Thailand, where they said Indigenous people are being arrested and evicted from their traditional lands.
The UN experts said in a statement: “This is an important precedent-setting case, and may influence policies on how Indigenous peoples’ rights are respected in protected areas across Asia.
Switching to synthetic gems may have environmental upsides but it could harm the very communities consumers worry about
Diamonds have long been in the debt of marketing genius. Until the 1940s they were not a popular choice for engagement rings. Then, in 1947, a stroke of brilliance: De Beers’ “A Diamond is Forever” campaign. The slogan was a hit. The market transformed. Today diamond engagement rings are ubiquitous, winking from the windows of upmarket jewellers.
Earlier this year came another glittering moment in diamond PR. Pandora, the world’s largest jewellery retailer, announced it would be switching entirely to lab-made diamonds. It generated positive headlines around the world, dubbed an “ethical stand against mined diamonds”.