Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Protests follow ruling that law allowing abortion of malformed foetuses is incompatible with constitution
Thousands of people marched in cities across Poland on Saturday in the third straight day of protests against a near-total ban on abortion, with some promising further action in the coming days.
The protesters were reacting to Thursday’s ruling by Poland’s highest court that an existing law allowing the abortion of malformed foetuses was incompatible with the constitution.
Police in Warsaw clashed with protesters during demonstrations against a constitutional tribunal ruling that imposes a near-total ban on abortion. Tens of thousands of people rallied across Poland on Friday, defying the country's tight coronavirus restrictions
Indonesia reported 4,070 new coronavirus infections on Saturday, taking the total number of cases to 385,980, official data from the country’s Covid-19 taskforce shows.
It also reported 128 new deaths, taking the total to 13,205, and 4,119 people recovered from the virus on Saturday, bringing the total to 309,219.
Wales’ firebreak lockdown should bring the R value - the number of people each coronavirus case infects - below one, health minister Vaughan Gething has said.
Gething told BBC Breakfast the 17-day period would be followed by a set of national measures to control the spread of Covid-19.
Barrett previously recused herself from cases because her father worked for Shell but has failed to commit to doing so in future
Amy Coney Barrett is poised to make critical rulings on whether oil and gas companies will be held accountable for the effects of the climate crisis once she is confirmed to the supreme court, even though she has acknowledged in the past that she has a conflict of interest in cases involving Royal Dutch Shell.
Friend of Maltese journalist recounts her battles against corruption for young readers
Her death brought thousands of people on to the streets of Malta and led to the resignation of a prime minister. Now the life of the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has inspired a book for children.
Written and illustrated by her friend Gattaldo, the designer, Fearless: The Story of Daphne Caruana Galizia is being released by a UK publisher this month to mark three years since the Maltese writer was killed by a car bomb in October 2017.
At least 400,000 people who fled Isis are still interred in the north of the country, fearing they are not wanted in postwar Iraq
On a midsummer morning six years ago, Ziad Abdulqader Nasir’s short walk to Friday prayers at Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri, one of Iraq’s oldest shrines, was abruptly interrupted by the arrival of stern men carrying guns.
Nasir and his neighbours were ushered inside, some of the newcomers set up cameras, and others sat the puzzled worshippers in neat lines on the carpet.
Evidence including footage of Frontex ship making waves near a migrant dinghy appears to contradict agency’s denial of involvement in pushbacks
The EU’s border agency has been accused of complicity in illegal and often dangerous pushbacks aimed at preventing asylum seekers crossing the Aegean Sea.
Even as evidence of an aggressive maritime campaign by Greece has emerged, Frontex has denied knowledge of, or involvement in, pushbacks. But new evidence, including video footage showing a Frontex ship manoeuvring dangerously near a crowded dinghy full of people and creating waves that drove them back, appears to contradict the EU agency.
MV Sofrana Surville barred from docking after officials in New Zealand said crew members on departing cargo ship might have new strain
Queensland health officials are working to determine the strain of Covid-19 infecting the crew of a cargo ship anchored off the Australian state’s Sunshine Coast.
The MV Sofrana Surville was blocked from docking in Brisbane after New Zealand warned it could be carrying a new strain of the virus.
Two dead on board T-6B Texan II aircraft with a house and cars on fire in ‘heavily populated’ area outside Foley, Alabama
A US navy training plane that took off from Florida crashed on Friday in an Alabama residential neighbourhood near the Gulf Coast, killing both crew on board, authorities said.
Zach Harrell, a naval air forces spokesperson, said both people in the T-6B Texan II training plane died. No injuries were reported on the ground.
Good journalists know balanced reporting is not as simple as providing both sides of the story. You have to squash falsehoods
Like the families of 1.14 million people worldwide, our family has lost people we love to Covid-19. They are people who would not have died were it not for this deadly, hyper-contagious virus. We are in a global pandemic that is at least 15 times more fatal than seasonal influenza.
When people argue otherwise it puts more lives at risk; more families will mourn. Covid-19 conspiracies are dangerous. In New Zealand those conspiracies were driven by arguments against lockdowns and misinformation about the seriousness of the virus.
After an asteroid encounter, scientists scrambled to minimize the loss of space rocks as the craft belched rubble
A Nasa spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week’s grab that it’s jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said on Friday.
The World Health Organization has warned of a ‘critical juncture’ of the pandemic, particularly in the northern hemisphere, and urged heads of state to take action to reduce the spread of Covid-19.
European leaders have increased restrictions as cases have continued rising. Wales has started a two-week ‘firebreak’ lockdown and Portugal’s parliament has passed a law making the wearing of masks mandatory in many outdoor situations
Bodies, which public prosecutor said appeared to be stowaways, discovered when container opened on Friday
Authorities in Paraguay have found at least seven badly decomposed bodies inside a shipment of fertilizer that left Serbia three months ago.
The container, which came via Argentina, was unloaded earlier this week at a port on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital, Asunción, and was collected by an agricultural company.
Stephanie Williams, the acting head of the United Nations mission in Libya, announced that rival forces in Libya had agreed a permanent nationwide ceasefire, including the departure of all foreign fighters and mercenaries from the country for a minimum of three months.
'This is a good day for the Libyan people,' she said as UN chief António Guterres asked nations to respect the 'fundamental step towards peace and stability in Libya'
Donald Trump seeks to score points from deal; Palestinians call it ‘a new stab in the back’
Israel and Sudan have agreed to work towards normalising relations in a deal brokered by the US that would make Sudan the third Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past two months.
Donald Trump sealed the agreement in a phone call on Friday with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his Sudanese counterpart, Abdalla Hamdok, and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional military council.
And now for a semi-regular feature when I’m blogging, entitled Fun With Polls and basically just a read-off of the averages from fivethirtyeight.com but nonetheless it paints a picture, less than two weeks out from election day.
Herewith, the current scores on the doors in the battleground states, both the ones everyone always thinks of and some – Georgia, Iowa, Texas – which really shouldn’t be close but with this Republican in the White House, are:
What you said about Texas, don’t worry about Texas. Texas is with us. [Democrats] want to take away your guns, your oil and your God. OK, that’s what they want. They want to take away your second amendment. They want to take away fracking and oil. They don’t care. They want to take it away they want to go to the Green New Deal. That’s not for Texas. Texas is not going to be losing the guns, and they’re not going to be losing their oil and they’re not going to be losing their religion or their God.
Following up the post below, Reuters has an eye-catching line about early voting and what it might say about turnout:
More than 50m Americans have cast ballots in the presidential election with 11 days to go, a pace that could lead to the highest turnout in more than a century, according to data from the US Elections Project.
The eye-popping figure is a sign of intense interest in the contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, as well as Americans’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to Covid-19, which has killed more than 221,000 people across the US.
Grrr....I'm getting emails from orgs cheering 50 million #earlyvote without saying where these data are coming from. All I ask for this free site is attribution. If you want to show appreciation, please donate to this charitable @UF election science fund https://t.co/xtN28Mq9Nn
The Attorney General has to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast, he’s got to appoint somebody, this is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election, and by the way we’re doing very well, we’re gonna win the election, we’re doing very well, if you look at all of what’s happening and all of the people that come in and don’t come in, you take a look all around the country and with Texas early voting. Those are our votes and we were doing well in Texas. I mean, I just got to report we’re doing great in Texas, but we’re doing great all over, but forget that, this has to be done early. So the attorney general has to act.
A study says coronavirus is on course to claim 511,000 by 28 February as cases surge in many states, particularly upper midwest
The United States on Friday was approaching a record for the number of new daily coronavirus cases, as a new study warned that the pandemic is set to cause half a million American deaths by February.
Covid-19 is on course to ravage states across the nation throughout the coming winter and more than 511,000 lives could be lost by 28 February next year, modeling led by scientists from the University of Washington found.
On Friday authorities confirmed Mas’ candidate, Luis Arce, won the presidential election – overcoming the ‘worst’ moment of their 25-year history
Two agonising weeks had passed since Evo Morales was driven from Bolivia and in his vice-president’s recently vacated chambers one of their party’s rising stars sat, crestfallen and drained.
“It hurts,” confessed Eva Copa, the 32-year-old senate president from Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (Mas), her voice breaking and tears filling her eyes as she pondered what some thought might prove a fatal blow to their pro-indigenous project. “What has happened will leave scars.”
Poland already has some of the most draconian abortion laws in Europe, and on Thursday a constitutional tribunal ruled that one of the few exceptions to the ban – cases of severe foetal impairment – should also be made illegal. These cases, which hardline Catholic anti-abortion activists have called “eugenic abortion”, made up almost all of the small number of abortions performed legally in Poland.
Facebook moderators working for one of the company’s Dublin-based contractors are being forced to go into the office, even as Ireland returns to its highest tier of Covid lockdown, after their employer categorised them as “essential workers”.
Staff with personal shielding requirements are exempt from the order, but those with high-risk family members at home have been told by the contractor, CPL, that they are still required in the office.