Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Almost 80 million people are refugees or internally displaced, with the number doubling in the past decade
The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes has doubled over the past decade to almost 80 million, according to the UN refugee agency.
A 9 million rise in the number of those forced to flee in 2019, fuelled by conflict in Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso, means that one in every 97 people around the world – about 1% of all humanity – is now displaced, according to numbers in UNHCR’s annual report, published on Thursday.
Conservationists say clearance of Bugamo reserve for plantation is blow to biodiversity and country’s reputation on wildlife
Conservationists have branded a decision by the Ugandan high court to allow swathes of forest to be cleared for a sugarcane plantation “an unforgivable shame for all people”.
Work to clear 900 hectares (2,223 acres) of Bugoma Forest Reserve, in Hoima, began last month after the court ruled that the land, leased by Hoima Sugar Company Ltd, lay outside the protected area of the forest. The court ordered the National Forestry Authority (NFA), which manages it, to vacate the land and remove the military officers who had been guarding it. The NFA has appealed the decision.
Extensive surveillance measures introduced around the world during the coronavirus outbreak have widened and become entrenched, digital rights experts have said, three months after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.
The measures have often been billed as temporary necessities rushed into place to help track infections, but governments have been accused of denting civil rights with the widespread use of techniques such as phone monitoring, contact tracing apps, and physical surveillance such as CCTV with facial recognition.
The hospitalisation of Honduras president with Covid-19 and pneumonia Wednesday has drawn attention to another country struggling under the pandemics strain as cases rise sharply in the capital, AP reports.
President Juan Orlando Hernández announced late Tuesday that he and his wife had tested positive for the virus. Just hours later he was hospitalised after doctors determined he had pneumonia.
From March to 7 June, Honduras confirmed 6,327 coronavirus infections. In the 10 days since, it added 3,329 more, a surge that has come after the government began a gradual reactivation of the economy.
The full story on Australia’s unemployment rate now:
Australia lost a further 227,000 jobs between April and May, resulting in a total loss of 835,000 jobs in seasonally adjusted terms since March and a 0.7% jump in unemployment to 7.1%.
Justice department says ‘recent actions’ by China towards its territory indicate landing station could expose US communications to spying
The US government wants a high-capacity undersea data cable system proposed by Google and Facebook to bypass Hong Kong, citing potential national security concerns following China’s moves to exert greater control in the territory.
The Pacific Light Cable Network, pending approval by the federal communications commission (FCC), should connect the US, Taiwan and the Philippines but not go through Hong Kong as planned, a US Justice Department committee has recommended.
Damaging revelations may disrupt Trump’s anti-China re-election strategy, but will it change any votes?
The conventional Washington wisdom before Wednesday afternoon was that it was hard to imagine anything that would still have the capacity to shock us about Donald Trump and his presidency.
Then John Bolton’s memoir leaked, with recollections of his time as national security adviser that appeared to have gone beyond parody and just kept travelling.
Hong Kong delegate to top Chinese legislative body says people who breach new law could be sent to mainland if Beijing ‘thinks it necessary’
China’s proposal to take charge of “serious” breaches of the new national security law in Hong Kong will sabotage the city’s autonomy, its rule of law and freedoms and threaten its unique status as an Asian financial hub, analysts say.
China’s parliament passed a plan in late May to impose a national security law on Hong Kong to target “acts and activities” that it sees as threatening national security, including secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference.
The sudden spike in cases has also struck a number of current and former senior politicians
Argentina’s president Alberto Fernández has gone into voluntary isolation amid growing concerns over a surge of coronavirus infections, including several cases among the country’s political elite.
The decision to quarantine the president – whose popularity is riding high on his no-nonsense response to the pandemic – was taken due to the “significant increase in the circulation of the virus,” presidential doctor Federico Saavedra said in a statement on Wednesday.
Documents say Ara Zobayan was trying to climb out of clouds
Crash killed NBA legend, his daughter and seven others
The pilot of the helicopter that crashed in thick fog, killing Kobe Bryant and seven other passengers, reported he was climbing when he was actually descending, federal investigators said in documents released on Wednesday.
Ara Zobayan radioed to air traffic controllers that he was climbing to 4,000 feet to get above clouds when, in fact, the helicopter was plunging toward a hillside where it crashed northwest of Los Angeles. The report by the National Transportation Safety Board said Zobayan may have “misperceived” the pitch of the aircraft, which can happen when a pilot becomes disoriented in low visibility. Experts said shortly after the crash that the path of the flight indicated Zobayan had lost his bearing.
Asma al-Assad among dozens targeted in campaign to deny regime revenue and support
The Syrian first lady, Asma al-Assad, has been named in the first round of new US sanctions that are certain to intensify pressure on the embattled regime and its backers as the country’s crippled economy continues to wither.
The law, known as the Caesar Act, came into effect on Wednesday, placing anyone who does business with 39 named individuals and regime entities in the cross hairs of the US Treasury. The sanctions are the toughest yet imposed on Bashar al-Assad and are set to be the centrepiece of a pressure campaign that also targets his government’s two major backers, Iran and Hezbollah.
Donald Trump was willing to halt criminal investigations to “give personal favors to dictators he liked”, according to a new book written by his former national security adviser John Bolton.
Chechen leader and Moscow deny sending hitman after journalist’s expletive-laden TV tirade
Georgia has thwarted a plot to assassinate a journalist who made an expletive-laden attack on Vladimir Putin on live television last year, the Georgian prime minister said.
“Georgian secret services have foiled a very serious crime,” Giorgi Gakharia told journalists on Tuesday.
Locals say the Sepik river region must be protected from ‘exploitation and destruction from outsiders’
Chiefs from 28 haus tambarans – “spirit houses” – representing 78,000 people along Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik river have formally declared they want a proposal for the country’s largest ever mine halted.
PanAust, an Australian-registered miner ultimately owned by the Chinese state-owned Guangdong Rising Assets Management, has proposed building a gold, silver and copper mine on the Frieda river, a tributary to the Sepik.
VBS Mutual collapsed in 2018 with £100m of debts allegedly looted in ‘pattern of racketeering’
A number of people have been arrested by police investigating one of South Africa’s most notorious corruption scandals, the looting and collapse of VBS Mutual Bank.
VBS, which held the savings of many disadvantaged people and local municipalities, collapsed with more than £100m in debts in 2018. Much of the money had been siphoned into private bank accounts and some spent on property or luxury cars, investigators found.
Unusually high temperatures in region linked to wildfires, oil spill and moth swarms
A prolonged heatwave in Siberia is “undoubtedly alarming”, climate scientists have said. The freak temperatures have been linked to wildfires, a huge oil spill and a plague of tree-eating moths.
On a global scale, the Siberian heat is helping push the world towards its hottest year on record in 2020, despite a temporary dip in carbon emissions owing to the coronavirus pandemic.
‘Balikpapan Seven’ accused of promoting West Papua independence movement at Indonesia rallies
Seven Papuan activists have been found guilty of treason and sentenced to up to 11 months in prison for their involvement in anti-racism rallies in West Papua last year, a verdict that has been condemned by human rights groups.
The men, known as the “Balikpapan Seven”, were convicted over protests that were sparked last summer by a viral video in which Papuan students were called “monkeys” and subjected to other racist taunts. Thousands of people took part in the rallies, some of which turned violent.
We risk development priorities becoming secondary to other foreign policy interests, at a time when they’re needed most
The merger of the Department for International Development (DfID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) runs the very real risk of putting an abrupt end to the UK’s “superpower” status in international development.
Gone will be DfID’s clear articulation of purpose — the reduction and eventual elimination of global poverty — which has been a powerful motivating, unifying, and guiding force.
Record label announces ‘the most unfortunate, sorrowful news’ about singer from boyband TST
Kim Jeong-hwan, known as Yohan in the Korean pop group TST, has died aged 28.
TST’s record label, KJ Entertainment confirmed the news, saying: “We are sad to relay the most unfortunate, sorrowful news. On June 16, TST member Yohan left this world. The late Yohan’s family is currently in deep mourning.” The cause of death has not been announced.
Around 11,000 mink at a farm in Denmark will have to be culled after they were found to be infected with the coronavirus, the country’s authorities have said.
The outbreak is the first in Denmark, the world’s biggest producer of mink skins, but comes shortly after the virus was found at 13 mink farms in the Netherlands, where about 570,000 mink have been ordered culled.
If you’re planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the next few weeks, be warned: you will have to pass through a special disinfectant tunnel to get to the Russian president.
Putin’s official spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has confirmed a report by Russian state television that three airport-style tunnels have been built for the president: one at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, where he has reputedly being doing much of his work during the pandemic, and two at the Kremlin.
Another statue went down in Richmond, Virginia last night - this time from the Howitzers Monument which was erected in 1892 to commemorate a Richmond Civil War artillery unit.
Activists have been demanding not just reforms to policing in the US, but a deep-seated change in police culture. A report this morning by Jesselyn Cook and Nick Robins-Early for the Huffington Post website illustrates exactly why some people see this as a necessary goal. They’ve been studying the places they describe as “the dangerous online fever swamps of American police”:
This police media ecosystem is not necessarily a broad representation of what most cops believe. But inside this echo chamber, which has thousands of users and readers, extremist views dictate the narrative. Wild misinformation and bigotry are rampant, with people who claim to be current and former officers posting debunked falsehoods and racist stereotypes about protesters.