Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Islamist insurgents targeting victims as young as 11, according to Save the Children
Children as young as 11 are being beheaded in Mozambique as part of an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands and forced many more from their homes, a UK-based aid group has said.
Save the Children said it had spoken to displaced families who described “horrifying scenes” of murder, including mothers whose young sons were killed. In one case, the woman hid, helpless, with her three other children as her 12-year-old was murdered nearby.
Six-millennia-old skeleton of child also unearthed during dig in Judean Desert by Israeli archeologists
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed two dozen Dead Sea scroll fragments from a remote cave in the Judean Desert, the first discovery of such Jewish religious texts in more than half a century.
“For the first time in approximately 60 years, archaeological excavations have uncovered fragments of a biblical scroll,” the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement.
Harare’s drug dealers say business is booming as more young people, some at school, use mutoriro
Inside a tiny room in Kuwadzana, a township in Harare, Solomon Sigauke* and his friends talk animatedly about football and listen to loud music. The misty vapour from the crystal meth fills the room as they take turns on a fluorescent pipe.
Sigauke, 25, has no cigarette lighter so he is improvises, holding a burning candle while his friend Kudzo puffs the smoke from the burning substance, known locally as mutoriro. .
A Democratic senator has asked attorney general Merrick Garland to facilitate ‘proper oversight’ into concerns on the investigation
The FBI is facing new scrutiny for its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justice, after a lawmaker suggested that the investigation may have been “fake”.
Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator and former prosecutor who serves on the judiciary committee, is calling on the newly-confirmed attorney general, Merrick Garland, to help facilitate “proper oversight” by the Senate into questions about how thoroughly the FBI investigated Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.
Government appears to backtrack on decree after women take to social media to sing in defiance under #IAmMySong hashtag
Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education appears to be backtracking on a decision to impose a nationwide singing ban on schoolgirls.
In a letter to school boards last week, which was leaked to the media, Kabul’s Education Department said girls aged 12 and above would no longer be able to sing at public events, unless the events were attended solely by women. The letter also stipulated that girls couldn’t be trained by a male music teacher.
Russia’s Covid vaccines have proven effective against new variants of the coronavirus in trials, a scientist with Moscow’s consumer regulator has said, after the agency reported its first cases of a variant first detected in South Africa (see 10.02am).
Reuters has the story:
In fact, trials have already been done in Russia and we can say with confidence that the [Sputnik V and EpiVacCoriona] vaccines registered in Russia also work against new strains,” Alexander Gorelov, deputy head of research at Rospotrebnadzor’s Institute of Epidemiology, said on state television.
Gorelov gave no details on trials that had tested vaccines against variants first discovered abroad. Researchers conducting trials under the review ordered by Putin said on 27 February that results were looking strong when volunteers were re-vaccinated with Sputnik V against new mutations of the virus.
Public health experts in the US have called for access to vaccines to be widened to better cater for Latino migrants – among the groups hardest hit by Covid-19.
Zackary Berger and Kathleen Page, both associate professors at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Alicia Fernández, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, write:
Current vaccine priority algorithms are inequitable, particularly those that focus on age. Almost 90% of deaths among whites have been in people over 65, but, as CDC data clearly indicate, among Latinos and African Americans more than one-third of those dying of Covid-19 have been younger than 65. And although shared living spaces have undoubtedly fueled the rapid transmission of Covid-19 in immigrant communities, living in a crowded house does not qualify people for the vaccine.
As for essential workers, it’s one thing for a hospital employee to prove they are a healthcare worker, but another thing entirely for a day laborer getting paid in cash to show proof of occupation. Finally, while people all over the country are struggling with poorly designed websites and busy call centers, these approaches are particularly insurmountable for low-income Latino workers who lack the digital skills, language capabilities and time to overcome these barriers.
Eduardo Pazuello expected to depart after 10 months as coronavirus fatalities near 280,000
The Brazilian health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, is set to be sacked after an inglorious 10-month tenure during which more than 260,000 Brazilians have been killed by a coronavirus outbreak that his government stands accused of catastrophically mismanaging.
The HBO series arrives on Sky in the UK, but fails to dig deep and do more than regurgitate Mia and Dylan Farrow’s allegations against Woody Allen
Eight months after his relationship with not-quite-stepdaughter Soon-Yi was revealed in 1992, Woody Allen was accused of sexually abusing Dylan Farrow, his younger daughter with his partner Mia Farrow, when she was seven. Allen strongly denied all the allegations, as he has continued to do over the nearly 30 years since. But they fell on fertile soil. How could a man who could start an affair with his partner’s daughter not be capable of just about anything else, the argument went? A welter of publicity followed, claims (that no mother, especially one as devoted as Farrow, could possibly make such a thing up), counterclaims (that in fact she had done so, that Dylan was coached – which she denies, and that it was all an act of vengeance for the Soon-Yi affair), along with gossip and hearsay proliferated.
Dylan and her brother Ronan Farrow began speaking about the matter publicly themselves in 2014. This has disinterred old battle lines and occasioned new accounts from people who were close to the family at the time and from Moses, another of the Farrow children, which contradict either things they said at the time or the saintly mother narrative that seemed the most natural one. Meanwhile, doctors examined Dylan at the time and found no evidence to support Farrow’s contention, and Allen was investigated by the Yale New Haven hospital’s child sexual abuse clinic and the New York State’s social services department, who reached similar conclusions.
Scientists call it an unprecedented seismic event – but residents dread an imminent volcanic eruption
Icelanders are yearning for some undisturbed shut-eye after tremors from tens of thousands of earthquakes have rattled their sleep for weeks in what scientists call an unprecedented seismic event, which might well end in a spectacular volcanic eruption.
“At the moment we’re feeling it constantly. It’s like you’re walking over a fragile suspension bridge,” said Rannveig Gudmundsdottir, a lifelong resident in the town of Grindavik.
Female children are seen as an economic burden, and tough times are setting back progress by a generation, gender equality charity says
Thousands of adolescent girls across south-east Asia and the Pacific are being forced to leave school and get married instead as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a charity has warned, saying “a generation of girls could be lost”.
A new report by Plan International Australia highlighted the importance of secondary education for girls, and detailed the increased risk and long-term impacts of child, early and forced marriage in the region.
Police issued a warrant for the arrest of Terry Wright, 65, of Grants Pass, Oregon. The woman's detention on Thursday at a Bank of America in Galveston was captured by the officer’s body camera.
An arrest warrant was issued for Wright, who refused to wear a mask at a Texas bank, saying to a police officer: 'What are you going to do, arrest me?'
Police said they had obtained an arrest warrant on resisting arrest and criminal trespassing charges
Brother of Syrian man aims to force Moscow to investigate possible role of Wagner Group in his killing
The brother of a Syrian man killed by suspected Russian mercenaries has called on the authorities in Moscow to investigate the incident and the possible role played by the Wagner Group, a mercenary group run by one of Vladimir Putin’s close allies.
Video footage published by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta shows a group of six men torturing a Syrian detainee. The victim, Mohammed Taha Ismail Al-Abdullah, is believed to have deserted from President Bashir al-Assad’s army and then been captured.
Kremlin critic reveals on Instagram he has arrived in penal colony north-east of Moscow and has a ‘freshly shaven head’
The Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp in the Vladimir region of Russia north-east of Moscow known for its strict control of inmates, a message posted on the opposition politician’s Instagram account confirmed on Monday.
Navalny’s precise location had been unknown after his legal team said last week that he had been moved from the nearby Kolchugino jail and that they had not been told where he was being taken.
Canadian Energy Centre, funded by Alberta government, says Bigfoot Family ‘brainwashes’ youngsters and ‘peddles lies’
The animated film Bigfoot Family has come under fire in Canada – but not because of its stilted dialogue or confusing plot.
Instead, a government-funded lobbying group has targeted the movie – a fantasy epic featuring a human family whose father is Bigfoot – on the grounds that it “peddles lies” about the oil and gas industry.
Study of tree rings dating back to Roman empire concludes weather since 2014 has been extraordinary
The series of severe droughts and heatwaves in Europe since 2014 is the most extreme for more than 2,000 years, research suggests.
The study analysed tree rings dating as far back as the Roman empire to create the longest such record to date. The scientists said global heating was the most probable cause of the recent rise in extreme heat.
Fears Syrian government carrying out ‘degrading’ exhumations to erase identities and forensic evidence
Fadwa Hallak’s memory of what happened the day her husband died is blurry.
Ibrahim Rahawi was killed by shrapnel in either an airstrike or missile attack in 2015 during the siege of Aleppo – one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters of Syria’s long war.
Company’s financial chief has been rebranded ‘master of coin’ following £1bn bitcoin investment
Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla with a penchant for eccentric behaviour, has changed his job title to “technoking” of the electric car manufacturer.
In addition to Musk, who also retains his position as chief executive, the company’s financial chief, Zach Kirkhorn, has been rebranded as “master of coin”.
A sandstorm has combined with already high air pollution to turn the sky over Beijing an eerie orange. Air quality indexes recorded a “hazardous” 999 rating on Monday as commuters travelled to work through the thick, dark air across China’s capital and further west. Large-scale deforestation is considered a factor in the spring dust storms that are relatively common at this time of year and are usually attributed to winds blowing across the Gobi desert
Camps for refugees are growing as old rivalries between Fulani herders and Dogon farmers are exacerbated in Mali’s war on Islamist militants
Mopti used to be a stopover for tourists on their way to the fabled Timbuktu, or to see the homes of the Dogon people cut into the yellow cliffs of Bandiagara. The Malian city, which is known for its grand mosque and rock-salt markets, lies where the Niger and Bani rivers meet. When the rivers flood, the town is turned into a series of islands.
But the visitors and their cameras are gone, and the 4x4s that used to transport them replaced with those bearing logos of humanitarian organisations, as the Mali government struggles to root out a strengthening Islamist movement that has been expanding from the north of the country since 2015.