Category Archives: World News

Atlanta shootings: Democrats warn violence against Asian Americans at ‘crisis point’ – live

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The Georgia sheriff’s captain who said Robert Aaron Long was “having a really bad day” when he allegedly killed eight people has been removed as a spokesperson on the case, according to the WSB-TV news channel.

Nicole Carr, a journalist at WSB-TV, reported that Capt Jay Baker “will no longer be spokesperson” on the shootings case. According to Carr, the Cherokee County Sheriff department is also “evaluating what [Baker’s] future at the Sheriff’s Office looks like”.

NEW:Confirmed w Cherokee Sheriff that Cpt.Baker will no longer be spokesperson on spa shootings case,they’re evaluating what his future at the Sheriff’s Office looks like and consulting the D.A.’s office to see if they should hand their portion of case to GBI See you at 6 @wsbtv https://t.co/cI1sQHcrRV

Charles Hampton, deputy chief of Atlanta police, said officers are “working diligently to ascertain all the facts” in the spa shootings.

“We had four Asian females that were killed, and so we are looking at everything to make sure we discover and determine what the motive of our homicides were,” Hampton said during a press conference.

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European countries to resume AstraZeneca jabs after safety backing

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EMA says benefits outweigh risks but it is continuing to study possible link with very rare blood clotting disorder

Italy, France and several other countries will resume administering AstraZeneca jabs from Friday after Europe’s medicines regulator said the vaccine was “safe and effective” and its benefits outweighed its risks.

Germany and Portugal will resume on Monday, Spain and the Netherlands next week, while Sweden’s public health agency said it would take “a few days” to decide.

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‘Takes one to know one’: Putin-Biden spat escalates over ‘killer’ accusation

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Officials in Moscow go on offensive after Biden says Russian president will pay price for election meddling

Russian relations with the US have entered a new post-Trump period of smouldering hostility after Vladimir Putin shrugged off accusations from Joe Biden that he was a “killer”, saying: “It takes one to know one.”

The Russian president responded in characteristically icy fashion to Biden’s remark, which followed an assessment by US intelligence agencies that Moscow was continuing to meddle in American democracy and had tried to help Donald Trump win last year’s US election.

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Russia’s Eurovision entry to be investigated for ‘illegal’ lyrics

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Manizha’s song Russian Woman incites hatred towards men and should be banned from the contest, say critics

Russian investigators said they will examine the lyrics of the country’s entry to this year’s Eurovision song contest after it angered conservative groups who accused its Tajikistan-born singer of inciting hatred towards men.

Manizha Sangin, known as Manizha, is set to perform the song Russian Woman at Eurovision in the Netherlands in May. The song praises the strength of Russian women, urging them to be more independent and to resist sexist views on beauty, age and bearing children.

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China may need Britain more than it cares to admit | Jeevan Vasagar

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The value of British cultural capital in China makes the souring of relations all the more painful

When it is fully open later this year, the Londoner Macao hotel will be a kitsch recreation of tourist Britain, with a facade modelled on the Houses of Parliament, actors in bearskin hats performing the changing of the guard, and an English fried breakfast served at a restaurant called Churchill’s Table.

The new casino resort in China is one of the more tacky examples of the country’s fondness for British culture. Alongside the US and the Gulf, China is a crucial overseas market for English Premier League football broadcast rights. Britain’s heritage attractions, private schools and designer brands are immensely popular with China’s elite. The UK is also a favoured destination for higher education: numbers of Chinese students at UK universities soared by 56% from 2015 to 2019.

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The woman seeking to unseat Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene

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Democrat Holly McCormack is ready to take on the Trump devotee in 2022 – but it’s no easy task in a deep-red Georgia district

“I’m taking on the queen of Qanon: Marjorie Taylor Greene,” reads one tweet from Holly McCormack. “Retweet if you think Marjorie Taylor Greene is an embarrassment to our country,” says another.

America’s midterm elections may be 20 months in the future, but a campaign is already under way to unseat the extremist Republican congresswoman and Donald Trump devotee. In a rural district of Georgia that Taylor Greene won last November with three-quarters of the vote, effectively unopposed after her Democratic opponent quit the race, no one thinks it is going to be easy.

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US to send 4m AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Mexico and Canada

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Biden administration has come under pressure to share vaccine, which has been authorized in other countries but not yet in US

The United States plans to send roughly 4m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine that it is not using to Mexico and Canada in loan deals with the two countries.

Mexico will receive 2.5m doses of the vaccine and Canada will receive 1.5m doses, the official said.

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Lack of skin-to-skin care for small and premature babies hits survival rates

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Life-saving techniques fall out of favour on maternity wards in developing countries over Covid fears

Small and sick babies are at increased risk of dying due to disruptions in care caused by coronavirus, a survey of health workers across 62 mainly developing countries has found.

Every year, 2.5 million babies die within 28 days of birth, and more than 80% of them have low birth weight. A technique for premature and small babies known as kangaroo mother care (KMC), involving early prolonged skin-to-skin contact with their mothers and breastfeeding, can help reduce mortality.

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‘Women-only’ housework questions on Italian Covid form spark ridicule

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Health authority in Lombardy withdraws questionnaire for patients after sexism complaints

A health authority in Italy’s Lombardy region has come under fire after distributing a questionnaire to recovering Covid-19 patients that included questions about cooking and housekeeping aimed solely at women.

The questionnaire, issued by the ASST Rhodense health authority in Milan and intended to capture the lingering symptoms of coronavirus, was being given to patients invited back to hospitals for check-ups.

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Firefighters should not face charge of raping girl, French court rules

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Accused will face lesser offence of sexual assault in ‘Julie’ case that has sparked protests across France

France’s highest court has ruled that firefighters accused of raping a girl when she was aged between 13 and 15 should be charged with the lesser offence of sexual assault.

A woman known as Julie claims she was raped over a period of two years after being groomed by a firefighter in 2008, when she was a girl aged 13, and that he later introduced her to his colleagues. Three accused men have admitted having sex with her but say it was consensual. Seventeen others have not been charged.

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‘Judith never came home’: deadly fate of ‘disappeared’ women in Peru

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Policeman accused of sex trafficking, while 12,000 women and girls vanish in ‘shadow pandemic’

Judith Machaca was last seen on her way home from work in her home town of Tacna in southern Peru. The environmental engineering student had been working part-time at a mobile phone shop and would always send a message if she was going to be late.

The last text message from her phone was sent at 11pm on 28 November and the next day her distraught father reported the 20-year-old’s disappearance to the police. They sent him away, saying that she was probably with a boyfriend and would show up soon enough.

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‘We clap if none die’: Covid forces hard choices in Sierra Leone

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With medical resources diverted to the pandemic, years of progress in children’s healthcare are under threat

Nurse Magdalene Fornah was on duty at Freetown’s Connaught hospital when she heard that Sierra Leone had its first confirmed coronavirus case. It was five years after Ebola had killed about 4,000 people in the small country, ravaging the fragile health system. Soon after that initial case was announced last March, the UN estimated that 3.3 million people across Africa could die of Covid-19.

Like the rest of her medical colleagues, Fornah had no idea this nightmare scenario would not come to pass. “When I saw the first patients, I was scared,” she says.

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‘The best cops’: Indian state recruits its first transgender police officers

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The 13 new constables have overcome society’s prejudice to win a place at Chhattisgarh’s training academy

The top police officer in Chhattisgarh state, Durgesh Awasthi, has nothing but praise for his new recruits. He suspects, he says, some of them will prove to be “the best cops” the force has ever enlisted.

“They are sensitive, have a high emotional quotient and know not just how the other half lives but what it’s like being on the other side of the law,” said Awasthi.

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Coronavirus live news: England winter lockdown delays ’caused thousands of deaths’; Brazil daily cases top 90,000

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Delaying England’s winter lockdown ‘caused up to 27,000 extra Covid deaths’; John Magafuli, one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 sceptics, dies of ‘heart condition’; Brazil sees record daily case rise

India reported 35,871 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest in more than three months, with the worst-affected state of Maharashtra alone accounting for 65% of that.

Total infections have now risen to 11.47 million, the highest after the United States and Brazil. Deaths rose by 172 to 159,216, data from the health ministry showed.

Europe’s medicines regulator is under mounting pressure to clear up safety concerns over the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine as experts warned that arguably political decisions to pause it in many countries risked seriously delaying the continent’s already sluggish vaccination drive.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is due on Thursday to announce the findings of its investigation into cases of bleeding, blood clots and low platelet counts in 30 of the vaccine’s recipients that have led many European countries to suspend it:

Related: EU medicines regulator to report on AstraZeneca Covid vaccine safety

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Netherlands election: Mark Rutte claims fourth term with ‘overwhelming’ victory

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Exit polls suggest the prime minister’s VVD party increased its share of seats as it won a national ballot seen as referendum on handling of Covid crisis

Mark Rutte has claimed an “overwhelming” victory in national elections in the Netherlands, vowing to use a fourth term in office to rebuild the country after the coronavirus pandemic.

Following a dull campaign fought during the pandemic and seen as a referendum on the government’s performance during the crisis, exit polls suggested the VVD had won 35 of the Dutch parliaments 150 seats, two more than in the previous election.

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Twitter told to delete Russian opposition’s online news content

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Ban on Khodorkovsky-founded outlet follows Kremlin threat to block entire social network

Russia’s media watchdog has told Twitter to delete the account of an opposition news outlet following threats from Moscow to block the social network entirely if it did not remove “banned content” within a month.

The moves are part of a wider crackdown on social media and the opposition after protests supporting the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, which were organised via online platforms.

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Feeding cows seaweed could cut their methane emissions by 82%, scientists say

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Researchers found cows belched out 82% less methane after putting small amount of seaweed in their feed for five months

Feeding seaweed to cows is a viable long-term method to reduce the emission of planet-heating gases from their burps and flatulence, scientists have found.

Researchers who put a small amount of seaweed into the feed of cattle over the course of five months found that the new diet caused the bovines to belch out 82% less methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

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Older people more likely to catch Covid a second time

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Study finds under-65s have about 80% protection from virus for at least six months but over-65s only 47%

Older people who have recovered from Covid cannot assume they are immune from a second attack, according to a new study that shows the under-65s are much less susceptible to reinfection.

The study carried out in Denmark found that the under-65s had about 80% protection for at least six months from catching Covid a second time. But the over-65s had only 47% protection.

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Tanzania’s Covid-denying president, John Magufuli, dies aged 61

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Leader’s death follows two-week absence from public life that prompted rumours he had virus

Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli , one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 deniers, has died after a two-week absence from public life which prompted speculation that he had contracted the disease.

Related: Tanzania’s missing president is in Kenya with Covid, says opposition leader

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Canada: top female soldier quits over military’s failures on sexual misconduct

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Lt Col Eleanor Taylor says in resignation letter: ‘On the issue of addressing harmful sexual behaviour, we have lost all credibility’

One of the most senior female soldiers in Canada has resigned after a string of allegations of sexual misconduct among top brass, saying she was “sickened” by the military’s repeated failures to tackle the abuse.

In a letter sent to her superiors, Lt Col Eleanor Taylor announced her resignation late on Tuesday, in the latestblow to an institution already in crisis.

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