Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Emmanuel Macron has said national divisions during the Covid-19 pandemic have highlighted the need to “beef up” EU powers, as he opened a consultation on Europe’s future at an event that was almost cancelled due to internal squabbling.
Speaking from a TV studio set up in the middle of the hemicycle of the European parliament in Strasbourg, the French president said he hoped the Future of Europe conference, a rolling series of events and online public opinion surveys, would strengthen EU level decision-making.
Najla El-Mangoush subjected to personal abuse after demanding withdrawal of Turkish troops and mercenaries
Libya’s first female foreign minister has come under pressure to resign and been subjected to personal abuse seven weeks into the job, after she called for Turkish troops and mercenaries to leave her country.
Najla El-Mangoush, a lawyer and human rights activist, was appointed foreign minister by the country’s interim prime minister, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, after he faced a backlash for backtracking on promises that 30% of ministerial posts would go to women.
Grieving families gathered on Sunday after an attack on a girls’ school in the Afghan capital of Kabul in which about 50 people were killed and at least twice as many injured, mainly female pupils aged between 11 and 15. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, blamed the Taliban, saying the group was 'escalating its illegitimate war and violence'.
The Taliban denied responsibility and blamed Islamic State
Activists claim Rai regulary breaks its own code of ethics when it should be setting example to rest of industry
Activists opposed to racism, homophobia, antisemitism and sexism in the Italian media have written to the public broadcaster, Rai, urging it to stop promoting “intolerable” content.
Rai apologised recently for the use of blackface in its shows, and advised editors to stop airing productions in which performers wear makeup to imitate black people, but stopped short of an outright ban.
Eib is now in its seventh season, fearlessly tackling subjects from Beirut’s drag queen scene to Jordanian widows’ rights
Rude, fault or blemish; flaw, disgrace or shame. The word has many shades, but nearly every woman who grows up in Arabic-speaking households knows its singular weight. “Anything related to women is eib,” says Tala El-Issa, from her home in Cairo. “If they want to talk about their bodies, it’s eib, their problems – eib. Just being a woman is almost eib.”
When the team at Sowt, an Arabic podcasting network based across the Middle East, wanted to create a show that charged fearlessly into the region’s taboos around sex and gender, the title was obvious. “Eib” is now in its seventh season, the company’s longest-lasting podcast and its most popular.
Police said on Sunday they had in their custody three of the four suspects in Thursday’s blast targeting the former president Mohamed Nasheed, who is recovering in hospital after multiple operations.
Barack and Michelle Obama express sorrow at passing of ‘true friend and companion’
Former President Barack Obama’s dog Bo died on Saturday from cancer, the Obamas said on social media.
News of Bo’s death was shared by Obama and his wife, Michelle, on Instagram, where both expressed sorrow at the passing of a dog the former president described as a “true friend and loyal companion.”
Pope Francis has given his backing to the campaign calling for the suspension of coronavirus vaccine patents to boost supplies to poorer countries.
In a video message to the Vax Live event, Francis backed “universal access to the vaccine and the temporary suspension of intellectual property rights”. And he added his condemnation of the “virus of individualism” that “makes us indifferent to the suffering of others”.
US agency accuses Beijing of failing to meet expected standards regarding its space debris
Remnants of China’s biggest rocket have landed in the Indian Ocean, ending days of speculation over where the debris would hit and drawing US criticism over a lack of transparency.
The coordinates given by Chinese state media, citing the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO), put the point of impact west of the Maldives archipelago.
Coup leaders ban opposition national unity government, and contact with them, as they seek to quell ongoing protests
Myanmar’s military rulers have branded a national unity government formed by MPs forced to flee in the wake of the coup a terrorist group and blamed it for bombings, arson and killings as part of a propaganda campaign in state-controlled media on Saturday.
Myanmar’s army overthrew the elected government on 1 February and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking months of protests during which hundreds of people have been killed by security forces. In response, local militias have been formed to confront the army while anti-junta protests have continued across the south-east Asian country and strikes have paralysed the economy.
Under the government’s current plans it will be half a century before house prices return to affordability
One-third of New Zealanders rent.In my electorate and home, Auckland Central, the centre of the largest city in the country, it’s even more: 54%.
For a really long time, the conversation around housing was one of avocados and flat whites. Renters, we were told, were in a temporary moment of their life. They were, the story went, on a path to homeownership, if only they could reign in their spending on fancy cafe food.
Colonial Pipeline said it shut down 5,500 miles of pipeline, which carries 45% of the east coast’s fuel supplies
One of the largest pipelines in the US has been shut down after an apparent cyber-attack, its operator has said.
Colonial Pipeline said it had shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which carries 45% of the east coast’s fuel supplies and travels through 14 southern and eastern US states, after the breach of its computer networks.
Census data from the US released last week showed the number of babies born in the country in 2020 dropped to the lowest level in more than four decades. The same day, Japan marked Children’s Day by announcing that the number of under-14s in the country had fallen for the 40th consecutive year to a record low.
It is not just in the rich world that the appetite for having children is falling. Also in 2020, China may have recorded its first overall population decline since a catastrophic famine in the late 1950s, the Financial Times has reported, citing unpublished census data.
Last year, the population of Europe’s fourth biggest economy dropped by the equivalent of a city the size of Florence. Yet the northern hamlets of Val d’Ultimo have found ways to buck the trend
As if having a baby wasn’t expensive enough, fathers of newborns in the mountain hamlets that make up Italy’s Val d’Ultimo have an additional cost.
In a revival of an ancient myth that white storks deliver babies, carved wooden storks carrying a newborn child in a sling are a common feature outside homes in the valley.
Italy plans to lift quarantine restrictions for travellers arriving from European countries, including Britain and Israel, as early as mid-May to revive the tourism industry, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Saturday.
After meeting Health Minister Roberto Speranza to discuss the easing of restrictions for countries where vaccination levels are high, Di Maio said, quarantine requirements may also be scrapped for those arriving from the United States from June.
Tourism is an important key to Italy’s restart, and we need to plan the summer well so that health, economy and work are not put in danger.
With Minister Roberto Speranza we had a first confrontation on reopening measures to foreign tourists who want to visit our country this summer.
The German chancellor Angela Merkel said Europeans could forward to travelling this summer if coronavirus cases continue declining on the continent.
While the European Union is developing a vaccine certificate, valid throughout the 27-nation bloc, summer holidays should be possible again for people who haven’t had their shots against the virus, the chancellor said.
Merkel said that Germany also appears to have broken its most recent outbreak.
“Step by step, more will be possible in Germany, too, wherever the incidence drops, and that will hopefully be the case for all of Europe,” she said.
Attack in Afghan capital injures mainly female students coming out of school in Shia Muslim area
At least 40 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a bomb attack on girls leaving their school in a largely Shia Muslim neighbourhood in Kabul.
Residents said they heard multiple blasts just as girls were leaving classes at the Sayed ul Shuhada school in the Afghan capital to return home and break their Ramadan fast. Most of the victims appear to have been students.
Orthodox priest releases video statement on suppression of Tigray district
Ethiopian government forces and their allies are committing genocide in the country’s war-torn northern province of Tigray, the head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church has claimed in a videoed statement demanding urgent international intervention.
The appeal by Abuna [Patriarch] Mathias follows fresh allegations of ethnic cleansing, gang rapes, extrajudicial killings and other atrocities by soldiers loyal to Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who ordered an invasion of Tigray last November.
EU leaders have given short shrift to a proposal by Joe Biden and backed by the pope to waive Covid-19 vaccine patents as a way to increase supply, insisting that the White House should instead allow the export of doses and the key ingredients.
At a summit in Porto, a series of European leaders, including those who had previously appeared open to suspending intellectual property rights, said Biden’s idea was not a priority and expressed frustration at the US president’s attempt to claim the moral high ground.
Move paves way for Nika Melia’s release and end to political crisis that has gripped the country
The European Union said on Saturday it had posted bail for Georgia’s jailed opposition leader, Nika Melia, paving the way for his release and ending a protracted political crisis in the Caucasus country.
Melia, the chair of Georgia’s main opposition force, the United National Movement (UNM), was arrested in February in a violent police raid on his party headquarters, sparking protests and condemnation from the west.
Italian archaeologists believe most of Neanderthals were killed by hyenas then dragged back to den
Italian archaeologists have unearthed the bones of nine Neanderthals who were allegedly hunted and mauled by hyenas in their den about 100km south-east of Rome.
Scientists from the Archaeological Superintendency of Latina and the University of Tor Vergata in Rome said the remains belong to seven adult males and one female, while another are those of a young boy.