In first departure from Biden administration, Ducklo says he has ‘embarrassed and disappointed’ colleagues
White House deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo has resigned, the day after he was suspended for issuing a sexist and profane threat to a journalist inquiring about his relationship with another reporter.
In a statement on Saturday, Ducklo said he was “devastated to have embarrassed and disappointed my White House colleagues and President Biden”.
Continue reading...Calls of ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty’ pinged back and forth in the chamber but once McConnell said no the die was cast
If the denouement of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial had been a Hollywood film, stirring music would have struck up around the time Congressman Joe Neguse explained why he thinks the floor of the US Senate is “sacred”.
Related: Trump’s acquittal seals his grasp on the Republican party
Continue reading...Harrison, who defended contestant who attended ‘old south’ party, says he is ‘deeply remorseful … [for] excusing historical racism’
Chris Harrison, the host of the hit reality series The Bachelor, said on Saturday he was “stepping aside” from ABC’s hit franchise for a “period of time”, following comments in defense of a current contestant caught up in a racism storm.
The contestant, Rachael Kirkconnell, appears to have liked social media posts featuring the Confederate flag while photos have also emerged purportedly showing her at an “old south”-themed college party several years ago, according to reports.
Continue reading...Health minister says officials ‘really concerned’ about deaths in south-east region Nzerekore
Four people have died of Ebola in Guinea in the first resurgence of the disease in five years, the health minister said on Saturday.
Remy Lamah told AFP officials were “really concerned” about the deaths, the first since a 2013-16 epidemic – which began in Guinea – left 11,300 dead across the region.
Continue reading...Health minister says officials ‘really concerned’ after three deaths from the infectious disease
Guinea has entered an Ebola “epidemic situation” with seven cases confirmed, including three deaths, a leading health official in the west African nation has said.
“Very early this morning, the Conakry laboratory confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus,” Sakoba Keita said after an emergency meeting in the capital.
Continue reading...Ancient Egyptian site in Abydos apparently dates back to beginning of the first dynastic period
American and Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed what could be the oldest known beer factory at one of the most prominent archaeological sites of ancient Egypt, a top antiquities official said on Wednesday.
Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the factory was found in Abydos, an ancient burial ground located in the desert west of the Nile River, more than 450km (280 miles) south of Cairo.
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Lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin has taken the floor again to push back against some of the comments from Michael Van der Veen.
Raskin noted that the arguments from Donald Trump’s team have been very inconsistent.
Michael Van der Veen, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, leveled a series of serious accusations (without evidence) against the House impeachment managers.
Van der Veen accused the managers of having “fabricated evidence” and committed “fraud” in its presentations during the impeachment trial.
Continue reading...Tunisian navy had to end rescue effort early due to bad weather but pulled one body from the water
One migrant is dead and 22 others are missing after their boat sank in the Mediterranean sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Tunisian navy has said.
Bad weather interrupted rescue operations around 100 kilometres (62 miles) north-west of Lampedusa, the navy said on Saturday, adding that the body of one migrant had been pulled from the water, while 22 were missing.
Continue reading...At least 60 injured in explosions at Islam Qala crossing that consumed 500 natural gas and fuel trucks
A fuel tanker exploded on Saturday at the Islam Qala crossing in Afghanistan’s western Herat province on the Iranian border, injuring at least 60 people and causing a massive fire that consumed more than 500 trucks carrying natural gas and fuel, according to Afghan officials and Iranian state media.
Two explosions at the border crossing were powerful enough to be spotted from space by Nasa satellites. One blast erupted around 1.10pm Afghan time (8.40am GMT), the next around a half hour later at 1.42pm local (9.12am GMT).
Continue reading...Literary canons have real-world effects – they steal limelight from everyone else. We can challenge them by drawing attention to how they work
I feel sheepish to admit how deeply affected I was when I encountered the research of Gauri Viswanathan, a professor in English at Columbia University in New York City. In Masks of Conquest: Literary study and British rule in India, she traces the history of English back to when it was first systematically taught as a secular discipline. I ask my students: where do you think English was first taught as a discipline? “England?” someone will always guess, realising it seems so obvious there must be a trick.
And yes, they’re right. It’s a trick.
Continue reading...Paint thrown and bangs heard after Bangkok’s Democracy Monument draped in red cloth
Youth activists protesting against laws forbidding insult to Thailand’s powerful king briefly clashed with police on Saturday after draping Bangkok’s Democracy Monument in red cloth.
Protesters threw paint at police and several small bangs were heard during a standoff near a city shrine after the demonstration had moved from Democracy Monument and the main leaders had called for it to disperse.
Continue reading...Junta suspends rules restraining security forces as nationwide protests continue
Myanmar’s junta has suspended laws constraining security forces from detaining suspects or searching private property without court approval and ordered the arrest of well-known backers of mass protests against the coup.
The announcements came on Saturday, the eighth day of country-wide demonstrations against the 1 February takeover and detention of the elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, which halted an unsteady transition to democracy that began in 2011.
Continue reading...The Descent of Man, 150 years old this month, is a work of humanist brilliance – yet its errors, particularly on gender, now make for uncomfortable reading
“Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” That sentence is the sole reference to human evolution in Charles Darwin’s masterwork On the Origin of Species, which in 1859 set down the theory that explains how life on Earth has evolved. Darwin had entirely excluded humans from his scheme. That tease comes in the final chapter, almost like a post-credit scene in a superhero movie, as if to simply say: “To be continued…”
The sequel did come, in the form of The Descent of Man, published in February 1871. All of Darwin’s canon is worth reading (though the one about worms and vegetable mould is perhaps a bit niche), but The Descent of Man is my favourite, because it is the one where he holds humans up to the light. Darwin was a great writer, and the prose is typically grand:
Continue reading...Quake strikes at a depth of 60km in the Pacific off Fukushima but no tsunami warning has been issued
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake has taken place off the eastern coast of Japan, but no tsunami warning has been issued, Japanese authorities have said.
The quake on Saturday produced powerful shaking along parts of Japan’s eastern coast, and was felt strongly in Tokyo, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Continue reading...In tomorrow’s election, public services are a huge concern for the people as politicians debate independence
Much has changed in Poblenou over the past four years – not least the arrival of a pandemic that has devastated tourism and employment – but the people of the traditional working-class barrio in the north of Barcelona are struggling with a nagging sense of deja vu over Sunday’s regional election.
“All the talk is about independence but what most of us want from politicians is to solve social problems,” says Nuria Vallejo, a doctor working in the public sector who has lived in the neighbourhood for 20 years. “Number one is the health crisis, and then there’s the education system and questions of sustainability.”
Continue reading...Former European Central Bank chief to lead unity government as it tackles Covid and economic slump
The former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has been sworn in as Italy’s prime minister at the head of a unity government called on to confront the coronavirus crisis and economic slump.
Draghi, a respected figure at home and internationally, managed to convince almost all of the country’s main parties to support his government, with leaders from the far-right League and populist Five Star Movement (M5S) adopting more moderate, pro-European tones in recent days.
Continue reading...Mitsuko left Japan in 1960 for a new life in North Korea. Once there, she realised she – and hundreds of others like her – could never go back
It has been six decades since Mitsuko Minakawa boarded a ferry on the Sea of Japan coast, bound for a new life in North Korea. But the anguish of that sunny day in the spring of 1960 has never left her.
Two months earlier, Minakawa had married a Korean man, Choe Hwa-jae, a contemporary at Hokkaido University, where she was the only woman in a class of 100 students. Minakawa, then 21, and Choe were part of the mass repatriation of ethnic Korean residents of Japan – many of them the offspring of people who had been brought from the Korean peninsula by their Japanese colonisers to work in mines and factories.
Continue reading...Willie B Smith III’s lethal injection was called off after the US supreme court says state cannot proceed without pastor present
An Alabama inmate won a reprieve from a planned lethal injection after the US supreme court said the state must allow his personal pastor in the death chamber.
Thursday’s scheduled execution of Willie B Smith III was called off by Alabama officials after the justices maintained an injunction issued by the 11th US circuit court of appeals, saying he could not be executed without his pastor present in chamber.
Continue reading...Exclusive: US chains Walmart, Costco and Kroger selling Brazilian beef produced by JBS linked to destruction of Brazilian rainforest
Three of the biggest US grocery chains sell Brazilian beef produced by a controversial meat company linked to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, an investigation has revealed.
Food giants Walmart, Costco and Kroger – which together totalled net sales worth more than half a trillion dollars last year – are selling Brazilian beef products imported from JBS, the world’s largest meat company, which has been linked to deforestation.
Continue reading...Coronavirus R number falls below 1 in UK; Cuomo faces calls to resign amid allegations of hiding nursing home deaths; High-risk groups missed off UK’s vaccine priority list. Follow the latest updates live
The UK government has been accused of repeatedly ignoring concerns that the quarantine rules for incoming passengers will fail to halt the spread of new coronavirus variants in the country, unions revealed two days before the measures become law.
The GMB Union has said its members and airport staff had been telling the Home Office for the past fortnight that they were concerned that passengers from 33 designated high-risk countries were still being allowed to mix with other travellers and staff before entering hotel quarantine for 10 days at a cost of £1,750.
Related: Long-awaited quarantine hotels have 'failed at first hurdle', say unions
More than 800,00 people have died from coronavirus across Europe since the pandemic began in December 2019, according to an AFP tally Saturday based on official sources.
AFP reports:
As of Saturday, 1630 GMT, there were 800,361 deaths recorded in the 52 countries and territories that make up the continent - including Russia and Turkey - for 35,395,270 declared cases.
That puts the continent’s death toll ahead of Latin America and the Caribbean, which has 635,834 dead for 20,021,361 cases; of the United States and Canada’s 502,064 deaths for 28,312,719 cases; and Asia’s 247,730 deaths for 15,641,940 cases.
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