Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns
A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.
The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.
Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander
US forces plunged their main operating base in Afghanistan into darkness and abandoned it to looters when they slipped away in the middle of the night after two decades at the site without notifying their Afghan allies.
The furtive departure from Bagram airbase, which is vital to the security of Kabul and holds about 5,000 mostly Taliban prisoners, infuriated the Afghans. Many saw it as emblematic of a withdrawal they say is being carried out entirely to fit an American political schedule, with no heed for the collapsing security situation on the ground.
Nation with Hans Christian Andersen-inspired football song is hoping for fairytale win against England
People dancing on buses is not something you see every day in Denmark. Rule-abiding Danes tend to keep their celebrations low-key – but not this summer.
Football fans brought traffic to a standstill in Aarhus after Denmark beat the Czech Republic in the Euro 2020 quarter-finals and even scaled public transport to broadcast their euphoria and belt out another round of Re-sepp-ten – first a hit for Denmark’s national team at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. The anthem’s crowd-sourced lyrics are laden with Hans Christian Andersen imagery and feel particularly apt this year.
Parliament fails to renew law barring Arab citizens from extending citizenship rights to spouses
The Israeli parliament has voted down an extension to controversial legislation that bars Arab Israelis from extending residency or citizenship rights to Palestinian spouses, in an early blow to the country’s new coalition government.
After a marathon all-night voting session that ended on Tuesday morning, the Knesset decided not to renew the law in a 59-59 vote. The outcome is widely seen as a stinging defeat for the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who failed to unite the coalition’s disparate ideological wings in what he reportedly himself referred to as a “referendum” on the new government.
Workers and residents exposed to dangerous levels of toxic dust in wake of 2019 fire, lawyers claim
French and Paris authorities are facing further legal action over worrying lead levels around Notre Dame Cathedral in the wake of the devastating fire two years ago.
Lawyers for a branch of one of the country’s most powerful unions, which has joined forced with a health association and local residents, will submit a legal case on Tuesday for “endangering life … by persons unknown”.
Black patterns used to attract mates can cause the insects to overheat in hotter climates
Male dragonflies are losing the “bling” wing decorations that they use to entice the females as climates get hotter, according to new research.
The results have led to the scientists calling for more work on whether this disparate evolution might lead to females no longer recognising males of their own species in the long run.
Borders bill will allow for charges against migrants ‘knowingly’ arriving in UK without permission
Ministers are to reveal proposals for a suite of new laws paving the way for offshore centres for asylum seekers and criminal charges for migrants “knowingly” arriving in the UK without permission.
The nationality and borders bill, formerly known as the sovereign borders bill, has been described by the Home Office as containing “the most radical changes to the broken asylum system in decades” making it harder for those who enter illegally to stay in the UK.
All but one of the herd of 13 were born in captivity, but conservationists hope they can be ‘rewilded’
A herd of elephants born and raised in a Kent zoo are about to get on a plane to travel almost 4,500 miles (7,000km) to Kenya, in order to reintroduce them to the wild in a first-of-its kind operation.
The herd of 13, which includes three calves, were all but one born at Howletts Wild Animal Park, a private zoo near Canterbury. The mammoth mission to “rewild” the elephants is being carried out by the Aspinall Foundation, the Kenya Wildlife Service and Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.
Florida governor declares state of emergency in 15 counties, including site of collapsed condo
Tropical Storm Elsa was expected to make landfall in Cuba on Monday afternoon, after 180,000 people were evacuated from southern regions amid fears of heavy flooding.
Elsa is expected to bring tropical storm conditions to Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including Miami-Dade county, where the partially-collapsed Champlain Towers condominium was demolished with explosives on Sunday night.
Tory MP Tom Tugendhat raises concerns about deal in light of global computer chip shortage
The UK’s largest producer of semiconductors has been acquired by the Chinese-owned manufacturer Nexperia, prompting a senior Tory MP to call for the government to review the sale to a foreign owner during an increasingly severe global shortage of computer chips.
Nexperia, a Dutch firm owned by China’s Wingtech, said on Monday that it had taken full control of Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), the UK’s largest producer of silicon chips, which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles.
Italian prosecutors are examining fresh evidence that suggests coronavirus was spreading in the country weeks before the first case of local transmission was officially detected as criminal investigations continue into continental Europe’s deadliest outbreak.
Lawyers representing the families of Covid-19 victims say the medical records of a man in his 50s who was admitted to a hospital with bilateral pneumonia at the end of January 2020 in Bergamo, the Lombardy province severely hit during the first wave of the pandemic, “could change the timeline of the pandemic in Italy”.
Gunmen overpowered security staff at Bethel Baptist high school in Kaduna state
Gunmen have kidnapped 140 children from a boarding school in north-western Nigeria, a school official has said, in the latest in a wave of mass abductions targeting schoolchildren and students.
Heavily armed criminal gangs in north-west and central Nigeria often attack villages to loot, steal cattle and abduct people for ransom, but since the start of the year have increasingly targeted schools and colleges.
Star of music, TV and film who had UK Top 10 hit in 1978 with Do It, Do It Again had been suffering an undisclosed illness
Raffaella Carrà, the pop singer and actor who was an entertainment icon in her native Italy, has died aged 78.
Her long-term partner, Sergio Iapino, announced her death, saying: “Raffaella has left us. She has gone to a better world, where her humanity, her unmistakable laugh and her extraordinary talent will shine forever.” He said she had been battling an unnamed illness for some time.
Reports claim Brazilian president, already accused of mishandling Covid, was involved in embezzlement scheme
The Brazilian president has come under further pressure after being personally implicated in an alleged corruption racket involving the supposed misappropriation of his workforce’s wages.
Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who admires Donald Trump, took office in January 2019 vowing to “forever free the fatherland from the yoke of corruption”.
Non-Russian producers now required to mark their bottles as sparkling wine
If anything is guaranteed to get French wine producers in a fizz, it is the suggestion that champagne can be made anywhere outside the Champagne region in France.
As a protected appellation, the term is jealously guarded and legally defended. As the Champagne committee’s website clearly states: “Champagne only comes from Champagne.”
An underwater gas leak caused a whirling vortex of fire to spew out of the ocean surface west of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula on 3 July. The fire began in an underwater pipeline connected to a platform owned by the state oil company Pemex. The fire took more than five hours to put out and no injuries were reported
The body created by the speaker will have a broad mandate to examine the facts, circumstances and causes of the Capitol attack
Nancy Pelosi’s creation of a House select committee to investigate the 6 January insurrection reopens the possibility of a comprehensive inquiry into myriad security failures and the causes of the deadly attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.
If you missed it yesterday, US president Joe Biden, speaking at a White House party marking the Fourth of July, urged Americans to get vaccinated to stave off a rise in cases of the coronavirus Delta variant, describing it as the patriotic thing to do.
“Think back to where this nation was a year ago,” the president said in a speech on the theme of “Independence Day and independence from Covid-19”.
Andrew Sparrow has launched his UK live blog for the day with this opening:
In September last year, announcing his winter economy plan, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, gave a speech saying the country had to start getting back to normal because it could not live with restrictions forever. “We must learn to live with it [coronavirus] and live without fear,” he said. With its implied refusal to defer to the ‘health and safety’ science lobby, its worldly realism about risk and its focus on the interests of the economy, the speech delighted Conservative MPs.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be premature. There were two more lockdowns to come. But this afternoon Boris Johnson is essentially going to resurrect Sunak’s message from last autumn when he explains what the government wants to happen in England from 19 July, the date set for the final lifting of restrictions.