Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Andrés Manuel López Obrado claims the measure is only intended to avoid provocation
The Mexican president has claimed that a metallic barrier to wall off the presidential palace ahead of a planned women’s march is intended to avoid provocation and protect historic buildings from vandalism.
In a country where femicides rose nearly 130% between 2015 and 2020, critics said the decision to erect the three-metre-high (10ft) barriers was symptomatic of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s apathy toward the crisis of violence against women.
The predators, protected in the south, are widely blamed for attacks on livestock but some think coexistence is possible
“There have always been wolves. We humans have hunted and killed all the animals around us because we want everything for ourselves,” says Laura Serrano Isla, who tends her flock of 650 sheep near Burgos in north-west Spain.
“We think we rule the world but if we kill all the rest of the animals, the wolf will come for our livestock.”
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic could endanger progress made on gender equality, as women take on the lion’s share of childcare in lockdown and are more likely to work in at-risk jobs.
“We have to make sure that the pandemic does not lead us to fall back into old gender patterns we thought we had overcome,” Merkel said in a video message ahead of International Women’s Day on Monday.
Pope Francis urges Iraq’s Muslim and Christian religious leaders to put aside animosities and work together for peace during an interfaith meeting on Saturday in the traditional birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, the patriarch of both faiths. The pope met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, 90, spiritual leader of most of the world’s Shia Muslims, and travelled to the ruins of Ur in southern Iraq
India’s federal government has asked local authorities to prioritise vaccinations in several districts of eight states, including New Delhi, that have seen a spike in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
Reuters reports:
More than 60 districts across New Delhi, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Chandigarh, “continue to be of concern”, the government said.
“These districts are seeing a decrease in total tests being conducted, low share of (tests), increase in weekly positivity and low number of contact tracing of the COVID positive cases,” it added, citing a risk of transmission to neighbouring regions.
More than 1,000 people in north-east England have been checked for coronavirus in the first day of surge testing after a variant from South Africa was discovered in their area.
The BBC reports that everyone aged over 16 living in Stockton’s TS19 postcode area was being urged to get tested even if asymptomatic. The local council said the variant was “more infectious” and cases needed to be identified “as quickly as possible”. Early studies indicate that this variant could be much more resistant to vaccines than the original strain.
Catholic and Shia leaders strengthen dialogue between their faiths on first ever papal visit to the country
Two of the most influential faith leaders in the world reached across a religious divide on Saturday to promote peace and unity in a historic meeting.
Pope Francis, 84, the head of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, 90, the spiritual leader of most of the world’s Shia Muslims, talked for almost an hour during the first ever papal visit to Iraq, the pontiff’s first trip abroad since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Biden’s $1.9tn relief package struggles through Senate but majority leaders vows passage ‘however long it takes’
A fiery speech and last-ditch effort by Bernie Sanders to secure a place for a federal minimum wage hike in the $1.9tn coronavirus relief package appeared as good as doomed on Friday, following a day that saw the flagship legislation hit grinding delays in the Senate.
Senate leaders and moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin struck a deal late on Friday over emergency jobless benefits, breaking a nine-hour logjam.
The arrival of Covid-19 vaccines promises a return to more normal life – and has created a global market worth tens of billions of dollars in annual sales for some pharmaceutical companies.
Among the biggest winners will be Moderna and Pfizer – two very different US pharma firms which are both charging more than $30 per person for the protection of their two-dose vaccines. While Moderna was founded just 11 years ago, has never made a profit and employed just 830 staff pre-pandemic, Pfizer traces its roots back to 1849, made a net profit of $9.6bn last year and employs nearly 80,000 staff.
Poet, acclaimed for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, tweeted ‘this is the reality of black girls’
Amanda Gorman, the poet who won acclaim for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, has told of being followed home and accosted by a security guard who allegedly claimed she looked suspicious.
She said the incident, on Friday night, was emblematic of “the reality of black girls” in the US, in which “one day you’re called an icon” but the next day considered a threat.
The Dalai Lama, the 85-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader, was administered the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine on Saturday at a hospital in the north Indian hill city of Dharamshala.
After receiving the injection, he urged people to be brave and come forward to be vaccinated.
Christine Schraner Burgener says UN must put junta ‘on notice’ and stand with people of Myanmar
Myanmar security forces used teargas and stun grenades to break up protests in Yangon on Saturday as a meeting of the UN security council was urged to take action to stop the killing of civilians.
Archbishop of Canterbury says Henry Ndukuba’s comments that homosexuality should be ‘expunged’ are unacceptable
The archbishop of Canterbury has issued a rare public condemnation of a fellow Anglican primate who described homosexuality as a “deadly virus” which should be “radically expunged and excised”.
Justin Welby, who is the leader of the global Anglican church, said the comments made by Henry Ndukuba, the archbishop of Nigeria, were unacceptable and dehumanising.
Experts say ‘effect on turnout and on partisan outcomes is very muted’ and undermines Trump claim that mail-in voting cost him
Mail-in voting did not significantly increase turnout nor did it benefit Democrats in the 2020 election, a new study has found, undermining the talking point, advanced by Donald Trump and others, that mail-in ballots cost him the election.
Aid groups warn of collapsed health system as traumatised people displaced by Islamist insurgency in Cabo Delgado seek help
The insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province is causing a mental health crisis, with a quarter of the region’s population now displaced.
People are struggling with untreated trauma after witnessing extreme violence, including mass beheadings, said humanitarian groups concerned about the strain on those who have sheltered dozens of displaced people in their homes.
Expanding dairy herds have seen surplus male calves shipped to the continent for veal, but there is unease over welfare conditions
Irish authorities have announced plans to fly unweaned dairy calves from Ireland to other EU destinations from May, in an effort to address growing unease about the length of the journeys made by thousands of animals shipped each year to mainland Europe.
The Irish government has been subject to sustained scrutiny over live calf exports and the decision to experiment with flights, which will significantly cut travel time, comes as a European parliament committee of inquiry examines alleged failures across Europe in enforcing rules on protecting transported animals.
Another 30 injured in ‘cruel attack’ and death toll could rise
Ten people have been killed after a rickshaw loaded with explosives was detonated by al-Shabaab Islamists at a popular restaurant in Mogadishu.
The three-wheeler rickshaw, fitted to carry a load on the back, had been packed with explosives when it hit the restaurant near the capital’s port, said Somali police spokesman Sadik Dudishe.
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, told citizens to stop ‘whining’ about Covid, despite the virus having killed more than 260,000 people in the country.
The far-right populist made the inflammatory declaration on Thursday, as Brazil’s already dire Covid situation deteriorated and its average daily death toll rose above that of the United States.
‘Enough fussing and whining. How much longer will the crying go on?’ Bolsonaro asked supporters in the midwestern state of Goiás, where nearly 9,000 people have died.