Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Raymond Siu blames protests on ‘fake news’ – but critics fear the label will be used to muzzle dissent
Hong Kong’s new police chief has called for a “fake news” law to tackle “hostility against the police”, in what analysts see as an indication of the next phase of the crackdown on free speech in the former British overseas territory.
“I understand that there are residents who are still hostile against us,” Raymond Siu, 55, said at his first media briefing since taking office on Friday. “In this regard, I told my colleagues that many of these torn relationships and hostility against the police are due to fake news.”
Vice-president faced with colossal task as migrants live with brutal reality of arduous journey and border restrictions
The sun beat down on the 30ft border fence that separates El Paso, Texas from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, as temperatures headed towards 100F on the southern border that stands as a symbol for so much in American politics.
Iván Duque says ‘cowardly’ attack will not stop him tackling drug trafficking, terrorism and organised crime
Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, said a helicopter carrying him and several senior officials came under fire in the southern Catatumbo region bordering Venezuela, in a rare instance of a direct attack on a presidential aircraft.
Duque said everyone on board the helicopter was safe, including the defense minister, Diego Molano; the interior minister, Daniel Palacios and the governor of Norte de Santander state, Silvano Serrano.
Just 11% of Russia’s 146 million population is fully vaccinated – whether due to vaccine skepticism, doubts about Sputnik or other Russian-made vaccines, or “nihilism”, as a Kremlin spokesperson has suggested.
But with more than 20,000 new cases reported across Russia in the last two days, as well as tough new restrictions on those who have not received their jabs, lines at public vaccination centres are now stretching out the door.
Bangladesh has announced it will impose a tough new lockdown starting on Monday, after a “dangerous and alarming” surge in Delta variant cases of coronavirus.
AFP reports:
All government and private offices will be shut for a week and only medical-related transport will be allowed, the government said late Friday.
“No one can step out of their homes except in emergency cases,” a statement added.
They were sold as gadgets that meant you would never miss a delivery. But now doorbell cameras – from Amazon’s Ring to Google’s Nest – are recording our every move
I have got a new doorbell. It’s brilliant. It should be; it cost £89. It’s a Ring video doorbell; you’ll have seen them around. There are others available, made by other companies, with other four-letter names such as Nest and Arlo. When someone rings my doorbell, I’m alerted on my smartphone. I can see who is there, and speak to them.
My phone is ringing! C major first inversion chord, arpeggiated, repeated, for the musically trained – you’ll recognise it if you’ve heard it. It’s a delivery. Amazon, as it happens; Amazon acquired Ring in 2018, reportedly for more than $1bn.
Local media say victims of the fire in central China were boarding pupils aged between seven and 16
At least 18 people have been killed and 16 injured after a fire broke out at a martial arts school in central China, according to the local government.
Official state news agency Xinhua reported that all victims were boarding pupils, while local media said they were aged between seven and 16.
Amid bemusement from scientists at the deluge of often undeserved criticism, the Guardian pieces together the story behind the vaccine’s successes and failures
In January 2020, when most of the world slept soundly in ignorance of the pandemic coming its way, a group of scientists at Oxford University got to work on a vaccine to save the planet. They wanted it to be highly effective, cheap, and easy to use in even the poorest countries.
Prof Sarah Gilbert, Prof Andrew Pollard and others pulled it off. With speed crucial, they designed it and launched into trials before bringing in a business partner. The giant Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca would manufacture it, license it around the world – and not make a profit until the pandemic was over.
The louder opposing voices grow, the more determined the president becomes to go ahead with his ‘grand fantasy project’
There isn’t usually a lot going on at the Sazlıdere dam north-west of Istanbul, one of several reservoirs providing the megacity with fresh water. Yet this week the calm expanse of forest, farms and marshland was at the centre of the latest battle of narratives in Turkish politics.
On Saturday, President Recep Tayip Erdoğan is due to attend a ceremony here for an element of the biggest and boldest of the construction megaprojects that have come to define his two decades in office: his “crazy” Istanbul canal.
With infections at highest since January, country is introducing curbs for non-vaccinated
Russia has finally admitted it has a vaccination problem – but with an “explosion” of new cases driving the country’s daily toll to its highest since January, the question is whether that public realisation has come too late.
Just 11% of Russia’s 146 million population is fully vaccinated – whether due to vaccine skepticism, doubts about Sputnik or other Russian-made vaccines, or “nihilism”, as a Kremlin spokesperson has suggested.
Attack occurs in Gao region where insurgents linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State are active
Thirteen UN peacekeepers have been wounded in northern Mali by a car bomb, the UN mission said, while Mali’s army said six of its soldiers were killed in a separate attack in the centre of the country.
The attack on Friday in the north targeted a temporary base set up by the peacekeepers near the village of Ichagara in the Gao region, where Islamist insurgents linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State are active.
Valérie Bacot convicted of the premeditated murder of Daniel Polette after suffering over 20 years of violence
A French woman who killed her stepfather, who raped her at the age of 12 and later became her husband, has been convicted of premeditated murder but spared any more time in prison.
Valérie Bacot was subject to more than 20 years of violence at the hands of Daniel Polette, with whom she had four children. The court heard she shot and killed him after he began prostituting her to strangers, fearing that he was about to begin abusing their teenage daughter.
• PM responds to discovery of graves at Indigenous schools
• Trudeau stops short of ordering national investigation
Justin Trudeau has said that Canadians are “horrified and ashamed” by their government’s longtime policy of forcing Indigenous children to attend boarding schools where nearly 1,000 unmarked graves have now been discovered – but stopped short of launching a national investigation.
An estimated 751 unmarked graves were recently discovered on the grounds of the former Marieval Indian residential school in Saskatchewan which operated from 1899 to 1997. Last month, 215 remains were reported at a similar school in British Columbia.
MSF says it condemns attack on colleagues ‘in strongest possible terms’ after bodies found near car
Three aid workers who had been working in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have bee found dead, their organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières, announced on Friday.
MSF said it had lost contact with the workers while they were traveling on Thursday afternoon. Their bodies were found near their empty car this morning.
EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way for more homegrown content
It was during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.
“The elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the programmes afterwards,” she said.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Friday received the first dose of a domestically produced coronavirus vaccine, as many other elderly Iranians queued at 5am in the hope of receiving any jab.
Khamenei, wearing a surgical mask and a black turban and sitting under a picture of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, received a dose of a domestically produced vaccine licensed on 14 June. He was given a single dose of the COVIran Barekat jab, developed by the state-owned foundation Setad. Khamenei said he had been determined to wait for a homegrown vaccine.
Cases of transnational repression found in 28 countries are ‘just the tip of the iceberg’, say rights researchers
China is using its unprecedented economic clout across vast swathes of Asia and the Middle East to target Uyghur Muslims living beyond its borders through a sprawling system of transnational repression, a new report says.
Beijing’s crackdown on Xinjiang province, where more than 1 million people are thought to have been detained in a network of internment camps in recent years, has coincided with a rise in efforts to control Uyghurs living overseas, the report found.
Newspaper’s closure shows how pro-democracy movement and press freedom are being crushed
On Wednesday morning, the Apple Daily reporter Angel Kwan was at a government press conference for the Hong Kong census when her phone started buzzing with notifications. Six days earlier, hundreds of police had raided her workplace, arrested her bosses and seized dozens of computers. On Monday, the company board had said it would have to shut the paper unless authorities unfroze its finances.
As she stood holding her microphone towards the government official, Kwan did not dare look at her phone and the news it heralded: Apple Daily was shutting down. Today.
Thousands of South African opposition activists have rallied in Pretoria to demand a faster coronavirus vaccination rollout in the continent’s worst-hit country.
Protesters are urging regulators to approve more vaccines and speed up the pace of inoculations as less than 4% of South Africa’s 59 million population have been jabbed.
AFP reports:
“Our agenda is simple, give our people vaccines, we want to open our economy,” Julius Malema, leader of the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters, told more than 2,500 supporters in Pretoria.
In a gathering criticised as a possible super-spreading event, EFF supporters clad in red party regalia marched to the offices of the health products regulator to demand the approval of more vaccines.
Bodies are washing up on the banks of the Ganges in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, as rains swell the river and expose bodies buried in shallow graves during the peak of the country’s latest wave of coronavirus infections.
Reuters reports:
Videos and pictures in May of bodies drifting down the river, which Hindus consider holy, shocked the nation and underlined the ferocity of the world’s biggest surge in infections.
Though cases have come down drastically this month, the Uttar Pradesh city of Prayagraj alone has cremated 108 bodies found in the river in the last three weeks, said a senior municipal official.
Vice-president Kamala Harris is visiting the Southern border today amid ongoing criticism from Republicans about Harris’s absence from traveling there yet.
VP Kamala Harris boards AF2 to El Paso for her first visit to the border as VP. She was greeted by Sec. Mayorkas, Sen. Durbin and Rep. Escobar, all of whom are joining her on her trip. pic.twitter.com/GFr44Lw62Y
Vice President Kamala Harris will be in El Paso on Friday, where she will tour a Customs and Border Protection processing facility, meeting with advocates and NGOs. She will also be delivering remarks on her visit.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who has been helping with negotiations on immigration legislation on Capitol Hill, and Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, will be accompanying Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the trip.
Excerpts from a new book about Donald Trump’s presidency includes details about the 45th president’s increasingly violent language in the oval office.
...the book reveals new details about how Trump’s language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show.
“That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!”