Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
App helping to fuel share-buying frenzy allows ‘limited buys’ after a $1bn cash injection to safeguard trades
Shares in companies including videogame retailer GameStop soared again on Friday, as an army of small investors taking aim at Wall Street regained access to amateur share trading platform Robinhood.
The app, weaponised by activist small investors to trap hedge funds in a “short squeeze” that has cost them $20bn on paper by some estimates, had suspended buying of stocks such as GameStop, cinema chain AMC and BlackBerry on Thursday.
The 48-year-old reportedly told police she was worried she would be forced to move out of the flat she shared with her mother
A Japanese woman who said she hid her mother’s corpse in a freezer in her apartment for a decade told police she feared eviction if the death was discovered, according to reports.
Yumi Yoshino, 48, was held “on suspicion of abandoning and hiding a female body” found on Wednesday inside the freezer in a Tokyo apartment, police said.
Saad Aljabri, once a top aide to the former heir to the throne, has said he will fight the ‘recycled corruption allegations’
Saudi state-owned companies have sued the country’s former intelligence chief in a Canadian court, alleging he stole billions of dollars, according to documents obtained by the news agency Agence France-Presse.
The 10 subsidiaries of Tahakom Investment Co – which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund – said in the civil suit filed in Ontario superior court that Saad Aljabri committed a “massive fraud” totalling at least US$3.47bn.
Thousands join rallies in Warsaw and other cities after delayed ban finally becomes law
Thousands have protested for a third consecutive night in Warsaw and other parts of Poland after the country’s rightwing government implemented a court ruling imposing a near-total ban on abortion.
The New Zealand foreign minister’s moko has become international news, but beyond an identifier, our tatau are a link to ancestors, a vessel for our cultures’ stories, and a tribute to those who have gone before
Shortly before my interview with six Europeans at a roundtable in Germany, I gently covered my hand tattoo with a skin-toned foundation.
I knew that without the proper context, they would stereotype me in the western sense and presume me either a criminal or at least uneducated or unprofessional. A perception of tattooing common on that side of the world.
Nigerian farmers win claim for compensation in The Hague after 13-year battle
A Dutch court has ordered Shell Nigeria to compensate farmers for major oil spills they say caused widespread pollution.
On Friday an appeals court in The Hague rejected Shell’s argument that the spills were the result of sabotage, saying not enough evidence had been provided.
MC Fioti’s ‘vaccine anthem’ remix celebrates coronavirus inoculation with music video shot at biomedical research centre
Leandro Aparecido Ferreira laid bricks and flipped burgers for a living until becoming one of Brazil’s most famous funk musicians.
This year, the 26-year-old – whose stage name is MC Fioti – has added a new and unexpected string to his bow: as an unlikely champion of science and vaccinology in a country being pounded by coronavirus.
The prospect that former president Donald Trump was ready to strike up on his own and split off from the Republican party appears to be receding, at least according to this report from Newsweek’s Jacob Jarvis. He writes:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump met in Florida yesterday, and it was discussed that Trump would back Republican candidates for 2022.
“President Trump committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022,” McCarthy said in a statement.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has told CNN he does not having any regrets over voting not to certify all of November’s election results, but also claimed that he was not attempting to overturn the election result – a statement that appears to contradict his earlier position. Manu Raju, CNN’s Chief Congressional correspondent, writes:
In the aftermath of pro-Trump rioters storming the Capitol seeking to stop the January 6 certification of Biden’s win, the first-term Missouri Republican senator has faced a barrage of criticism over his decision to contest the results of Pennsylvania. But Hawley has said he has “no” regrets, telling CNN: “I was very clear from the beginning that I was never attempting to overturn the election.”
Yet before 6 January 6, Hawley didn’t rule out the possibility that Congress could throw out the electoral results and keep Trump in office.
Commission president says company legally obliged to use UK plants to help deliver on order
Ursula von der Leyen has said it is “crystal clear” that AstraZeneca is bound by its contract to deliver coronavirus vaccine doses produced in the UK to the EU to make up for a shortfall in production in Belgium.
The European commission president dismissed the arguments of AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soirot, that the British government had a first claim on doses produced in Oxford and Staffordshire.
The Hebron-based activist spurned violence in his campaign against illegal settlements in the West Bank but still faces jail
The conviction of a longtime proponent of nonviolence from the beleaguered city of Hebron reveals Israel’s intolerance of any Palestinian resistance to its settlements, violent or nonviolent.
On 6 January, Issa Amro, a UN-recognised human rights defender, and the founder and coordinator of Youth Against Settlements, a Hebron-based group, was convicted in an Israeli military court near Ramallah on six counts. He was first put on trial in 2016 on 18 charges dating back to 2010, including incitement, insulting a soldier and participating in a march without a permit. He had been taking part in a peaceful protest calling for the reopening of Shuhada Street, the former commercial centre of Hebron. The delay in bringing him to trial was probably due to his high profile and support from human right groups in Israel and around the world.
Camilo Catrillanca, 24, was shot during a vehicle chase
Case highlights treatment of largest indigenous group
A Chilean police officer has been jailed for killing a Mapuche farmer during a vehicle chase in a case that cast a harsh spotlight on the country’s treatment of its largest indigenous group.
Move comes after UK says people with status can move to Britain and eventually settle
China has announced it will no longer recognise the passports of British national overseas citizens just hours after the UK launched its scheme to give passport holders a path to residency as political freedoms decline in Hong Kong.
“From 31 January, China will no longer recognise the so-called BNO passport as a travel document and ID document, and reserves the right to take further actions,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters, according to AFP.
‘Women’s bodies are not political bargaining chips’ says UNFPA director, as US funding restored after Trump era
The decision by US president Joe Biden to refund the UN population fund, UNFPA, offers “a ray of hope for millions of people around the world”, said the agency’s executive director.
Dr Natalia Kanem said the announcement on Thursday would have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
Brexit risks exacerbating poverty issues, says human rights envoy after two-month investigation
The European Union is “not fit for purpose” in the task of reducing poverty in Europe and Brexit risks exacerbating the problem, the UN’s special envoy on human rights has said after a two-month investigation.
Prof Olivier De Schutter, who was given access to senior officials across the bloc’s institutions, said the EU’s “constitutional framework” was driving a race to the bottom in corporation and income tax and salary levels.
A new women-led initiative in Afghanistan is working to break down the barriers to help both victims and perpetrators
Nabila felt her diesel-drenched clothes stick to her skin, her lungs filling with fumes, hot panic rising.
It hadn’t been the first time an argument with her husband had escalated: he’d been beating her throughout their 30-year marriage, even tying her to a tree in the garden outside their small home in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, leaving her freezing in the winter cold.
In an interim analysis of a phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the UK, the vaccine has shown 89% efficacy, with 27% of participants in the trial – almost 4,000 people – older than 65. That trial suggested 95.6% efficacy against the original coronavirus and 85.6% efficacy against the more recent UK strain. Those results were based on the first 62 cases of Covid-19 identified among volunteers, with 56 cases among those given a placebo against just six in those given the vaccine.
Another Covid vaccine, trialled in the UK and bought by the government, has been shown to be nearly 90% effective and work against the UK and South African variants of the virus.
Stanley Erck, CEO of Novavax, has said numbers show 'dramatic demonstrations' of the new vaccine's ability to develop an immune response against different strains of Covid-19.
The UK vaccines taskforce has bought 60m doses of the Novavax vaccine which will be manufactured on Teesside in the UK
The poorest countries are missing out on adequate doses of vaccines – and the health implications should concern us all
Nine months ago world leaders were queueing up to declare any Covid-19 vaccine a global public good. Today we are witness to a vaccine apartheid that is only serving the interests of powerful and profitable pharmaceutical corporations while costing us the quickest and least harmful route out of this crisis.
I am sickened by news that South Africa, a country whose HIV history should have taught us all the most appalling life-costing consequences of allowing pharmaceutical corporations to protect their medicine monopolies, has had to pay more than double the price paid by the European Union for the AstraZeneca vaccine for far fewer doses than it actually needs. Like so many other low- and middle-income countries, South Africa is today facing a vaccine landscape of depleted supply where it is purchasing power, not suffering, that will secure the few remaining doses.
You don’t have to be a redditer or a big investor to enjoy these Hollywood blockbusters that double as the perfect educational resource
The GameStop debacle has put the stock market on everyone’s radar this week – even those who rarely pay it any attention. Many are depicting the incident as a David-and-Goliath battle between small investors gathering on Reddit message-boards and Wall Street powerbrokers finding themselves unexpectedly on the back foot at their own game. Billions of dollars are in the balance.
Along with such major news events, though, come the instant internet experts. Let’s face it: most of us understand diddly squat about the stock market and rely on Hollywood to inform us about an industry that it portrays as a place in which, to quote from the tyrannical, fictional Gordan Gekko: “lunch is for wimps”.