Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
New president offers blunt preview of Iran’s global relations but vows to salvage nuclear deal with the west
Iran’s president-elect staked out a hardline position in his first remarks since his landslide election victory, rejecting the possibility of meeting Joe Biden or discussing Tehran’s ballistic missile programme and support of regional militias.
The comments by Ebrahim Raisi on Monday offered a blunt preview of how Iran might deal with the wider world in the next four years as it enters a new stage in negotiations to resurrect its tattered 2015 nuclear deal with global powers.
Hungarian-born Zsolt Balla speaks of his ‘historic responsibility’ to serve Jewish soldiers
The German army has installed its first rabbi as a religious counsellor in 100 years, in a symbol of the renewal of Jewish life decades after the Holocaust.
Priests and pastors are already providing religious services to the estimated 94,000 Christians in the military.
Exclusive: number of UK productions seen as ‘disproportionate’ and threat to Europe’s cultural diversity
The EU is preparing to act against the “disproportionate” amount of British television and film content shown in Europe in the wake of Brexit, in a blow to the UK entertainment industry and the country’s “soft power” abroad.
The UK is Europe’s biggest producer of film and TV programming, buoyed up by £1.4bn from the sale of international rights, but its dominance has been described as a threat to Europe’s “cultural diversity” in an internal EU document seen by the Guardian.
A hungry elephant crashed through a kitchen wall looking for something to eat in the early hours of Saturday morning in southern Thailand. Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon was awoken by crashing and banging. When she went to find out what had happened, she discovered the male elephant, named Boonchuay, rummaging through her kitchen
A fresh electronic lottery is to decide the fate of prospective attendees of Tokyo 2020 as organisers must refund some 910,000 tickets due to new caps, of up to 50% of a venue’s capacity or a maximum of 10,000 residents of Japan, announced today.
The number of spectators, all of whom must be resident of Japan, is to be capped at 2.72 million, according to Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto, meaning some 910,000 ticket holders will lose their chance to see the Games.
A Thai temple building a 69-metre-tall Buddha statue that will be visible across Bangkok has said construction is nearly complete but the opening may be pushed back to 2022 due to delays caused by the pandemic.
The Royal Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen temple on the outskirts of Bangkok dates back to 1610 and is located on a island created by canals flowing from the Chao Phraya river. Work on the statue, which is as tall as a 20-storey building, started in 2017 and should be completed this year, but due to the pandemic the official opening may be pushed back to 2022, said temple spokesman Pisan Sangkapinij.
Country at a ‘tipping point’ that could affect wider region, experts warn, as ‘donor fatigue’ causes aid shortfall
The continuing exodus of millions of Venezuelans is reaching “a tipping point” as the response to the crisis remains critically underfunded.
More than 5.6 million have left the country since 2015, when it had a population of 30 million, escaping political, economic and social hardships. It has become the largest external displacement crisis in the region’s history, and the most underfunded.
Biden and Putin must persuade other nuclear states that such a conflict ‘should never be fought’
Meeting last week, the US and Russian presidents issued a joint statement declaring: “a nuclear war should never be fought and could never be won”. This consciously echoes what Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev said in a landmark summit in 1985, when the US and USSR started to step up nuclear arms control, and gradually reduced the world’s fear of nuclear catastrophe.
Many reports of the Biden-Putin summit have not even mentioned this joint statement, because it sounds like simple common sense. Who wants a nuclear war?
Woman finds hungry elephant rummaging for late-night snack – and it’s not the first time he’s stopped by
Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon was awoken in the early hours of Saturday morning by crashing and banging. When she went to find out what had happened, she discovered an elephant’s head poking through her kitchen wall beside the drying rack.
The male elephant, named Boonchuay, appeared to be looking for something to eat. His trunk rummaged through the kitchen drawers, knocking pans and cooking paraphernalia to the floor. He chewed on a plastic bag as Ratchadawan, unsure what to do, filmed the episode on her phone.
Young players excluded from matches because of their religious dress find a way to play on and encourage other hijab-wearing women into the sport
Founé Diawara was 15 years old when she was first told she could not wear her hijab in a football match.
It was an important game. She had recently got into the team of a club in Meaux, the town north-east of Paris where she grew up, and they were playing a local rival. Diawara had been wearing her hijab during training, but as she was about to walk on to the pitch, the referee said she must remove it if she wanted to play.
Frontrunner Abiy Ahmed needs popular mandate to bolster his grip on power amid growing criticism
Voters have begun casting their ballots in delayed elections in Ethiopia that supporters of the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, say are proof of his commitment to democracy and critics warn could be the launchpad for consolidation of an increasingly authoritarian rule.
The national and regional polls take place against a background of a gruelling military conflict in the northern Tigray region, the looming prospect of a famine, rising ethnic violence and deep economic problems.
Premier is first in country’s history to be ousted by opposition MPs and has a week to decide next move
Sweden’s parliament has backed a no-confidence vote in the centre-left prime minister, Stefan Löfven, making him the first premier to be ousted by opposition MPs in the country’s history and giving him a week to resign or call snap elections.
The vote, called by the nationalist Sweden Democrats barely a year before a general election, plunges Sweden back into political uncertainty four years after the last inconclusive poll produced a deadlocked parliament and led to months of negotiations to form a coalition.
Hong Kong demanded Taiwanese staff sign commitment to Beijing’s one-China principle in visa renewals
Taiwan says it has pulled back all but one staff member from its Hong Kong trade office after they refused to sign a commitment to the one-China principle required for visa renewals.
The officials returned from Hong Kong on Sunday, leaving just one colleague at the office, which acts as Taiwan’s diplomatic presence.
Princess, who was seized trying to flee the sheikhdom in 2018, has appeared in several social media posts in recent months
A Dubai princess who has been the subject of concern from a United Nations panel after being seized trying to flee the sheikhdom in 2018 has appeared in a social media post that described her as being in Spain on a “European holiday.”
An Instagram image published by a woman identified in British media as former Royal Navy member Sioned Taylor shows Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum at Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport.
The islands has been feeling the weight of a tourism industry that has ballooned to what many believe is beyond the islands’ capacity
On a recent Sunday morning, Makua Beach looks like the picture of paradise.
A stretch of soft, yellow sand lies on a strip of land between the lush Waianae mountain range and the deep blue Pacific Ocean on the north-west coast of Oahu. Waves crash against rocks along the beach, and a monk seal can be seen swimming near the shore.
Myanmar has reported what is believed to be its highest daily increase in Covid cases since the February coup, as concerns grow over the country’s collapsed health system and the junta’s continued crackdown on medics.
Myanmar’s Covid response was plunged into chaos when the military seized power on 1 February, detaining the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Poor families cannot afford healthcare and schooling but good harvests offer some hope, World Bank finds
The number of Zimbabweans in extreme poverty has reached 7.9 million as the pandemic has delivered another economic shock to the country.
According to the World Bank’s economic and social update report, almost half of Zimbabwe’s population fell into extreme poverty between 2011 and last year, with children bearing the brunt of the misery.
More than 12 years have passed since xenophobic violence swept unexpectedly through South Africa’s townships, leaving more than 60 people dead, hundreds injured and tens of thousands displaced from their homes. Photojournalists James Oatway and Alon Skuy document the unrest in a new book, [BR]OTHER
In May 2008, a series of xenophobic attacks accompanied by widespread looting and vandalism left at least 62 people dead, 1,700 injured and 100,000 displaced in South Africa. The violence began in Alexandra in Johannesburg after a local community meeting at which migrants were blamed for crime and for “stealing” jobs. Within days the attacks had spread around the country, with Ramaphosa settlement on the East Rand becoming one of the areas that witnessed inhumanity on an unthinkable level.