Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
War cabinet papers reveal PM’s concern French ally would pre-empt joint announcement
Winston Churchill believed a disgruntled general Charles de Gaulle intended to pre-empt the allies’ announcement of victory in Europe by 24 hours but felt unable to pressure him to change his plans, according to British war cabinet documents released free online by the National Archives during the lockdown.
VE Day will be celebrated for the 75th time on Friday 8 May but Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in north-west Europe, and the Soviet high command had actually received the German surrender in the French city of Reims on 7 May 1945 at 2.41am.
Fake social media accounts also used to support Ron Paul’s presidential bid and the Occupy movement
Iran’s state broadcaster experimented with using fake social media accounts to influence the outcome of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and other western elections, according to a report from Facebook released on Tuesday.
The Iranian network, one of eight to be suspended for so-called “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” by the social media giant in April, points to efforts by state-linked groups to try to use Facebook to influence foreign democratic contests years before Russia’s alleged campaign against the 2016 US presidential contest.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is taking the lead in pressing a hard line against Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic, AFP reports.
Pompeo, in an interview Sunday on ABC, said there was “enormous evidence” that the new coronavirus came out of a Wuhan lab - not a wet market, as most scientists suggest.
Spain and Italy, two of the European countries hardest hit by coronavirus, are beginning to emerge from lengthy and strict lockdowns as Russia and Afghanistan reported their biggest one-day rises in new infections.
Literary star Guzel Yakhina shocked by emotional ‘cabin fever’ response to dramatisation
The Russian novelist Guzel Yakhina had learned to live with the persistent buzz of controversy surrounding her bestselling debut novel,Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes.
Her coming-of-age story of a young woman deported to Siberia during the Stalin-era purges of wealthier peasants, or kulaks, had been picked over for its portrayals of Soviet repressions and national identity in the largely Muslim region of Tatarstan ever since it was published in 2015.
Spain has ruled out any early reopening of its tourism sector and Germany is set to extend a travel warning for all leisure trips outside the country until mid-June, casting further doubt on when would-be holidaymakers will be able to venture abroad again.
With airline fleets mostly grounded, cross-border train traffic slashed and many EU countries, including France, requiring all arrivals bar their own citizens to formally justify their journey, leisure travel within Europe is at a near standstill.
Zdenêk Hřib says there is ‘risk to my life’ as magazine alleges he was poisoning target
The mayor of Prague has said he is under police protection from a “risk to my life”, with one Czech investigative outlet reporting he had been targeted in a Russian poisoning plot.
Zdeněk Hřib confirmed on Monday that police had placed him under protection several weeks ago after identifying a threat against him, but declined to say whether had been been targeted by Russia or reveal the nature of threat.
A Russian aid shipment sent to Italy in late March as Rome struggled to contain the coronavirus outbreak has raised questions about the Kremlin’s motives, amid cracks in EU solidarity.
Russia, which has cultivated good relations with Italy in recent years, was one of the first countries to come to the rescue during the early stages of Italy’s outbreak. It dispatched 122 military doctors, personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and mobile disinfection machines on cargo planes from Moscow.
17 Arm, advised by Malcolm Rifkind, Ken Macdonald and others, is financing claim by Alexander Tugushev
A firm advised by a former Conservative foreign secretary and a former chief prosecutor is funding a large-scale legal action in the English courts by a convicted Russian fraudster once banned from Britain.
The firm, 17 Arm, which is advised by Malcolm Rifkind, Ken Macdonald and other establishment figures, is financing the legal claim by Alexander Tugushev against a Russian billionaire in an expensive and lengthy court battle.
Police in Russia's southern city of Krasnodar stopped traffic on a busy road to allow a family of ducks to cross safely. In a video that has gone viral on Russian social media, police are seen moving a traffic sign to stop the flow of cars and guide the ducks to the side of the road. The incident reportedly happened near a police checkpoint that was set up to enforce restrictions on movement in the city due to the coronavirus pandemic. The ducks reportedly made it safely to their destination — a pond a few hundred metres away.
Journalists at Vedomosti warn paper is in danger of becoming ‘another controlled media outlet’
Journalists at the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti have rebelled against their new management after the paper’s editor was accused of banning criticism of constitutional amendments backed by Vladimir Putin and the use of data from an independent pollster.
In a blistering opinion article published on the newspaper’s website on Thursday, the editorial staff said the new editor had undermined trust by massaging headlines about the Russian state energy company Rosneft and blocking a recent column critical of the same company and its boss, Igor Sechin.
Embassy denies Czech claims it changed address because it bore murdered politician’s name
The Russian embassy in Prague has said it will not take an address on Boris Nemtsov Square after the plaza in front of the building was renamed to honour the Russian opposition politician who was murdered in 2015.
Czech media reported last week that the embassy had changed its official address in order to avoid the reference to Nemtsov, a critic of Vladimir Putin who was gunned down in sight of the Kremlin.
The Trump administration and Russia are blocking efforts to win binding UN security council backing for a global ceasefire to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 150,000 lives worldwide.
American and Russian crew touch down in Kazakhstan after months on International Space Station
The three-person crew of the International Space Station returned to Earth on Friday morning, arriving back to a world that has been radically transformed by coronavirus in the time they were away.
Space travel is often a journey into the unknown, but for Americans Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, and Russian Oleg Skripochka, their return to Earth may bring more surprises than the time they spent in orbit. The trio’s landing capsule touched down on the Kazakh steppe in the early hours of the morning.
Households across the UK are now taking to their gardens, doorsteps, balconies and windows to applaud for the frontline workers fighting the coronavirus.
It will be the fourth “clap for carers” event in the UK, becoming a staple for Thursday nights in lockdown.
Leaders of the G7 group of major industrialised nations have agreed the rapid development of a coronavirus vaccine is crucial in dealing with the outbreak.
First Secretary of State Dominic Raab deputised for the UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson at the virtual summit, which also discussed the particular risk coronavirus poses for developing countries.
US reports 25,000 new infections;WHO chief hopes US will remain a ‘friend’; almost 700 test positive on French aircraft carrier. Follow the latest updates
The New York Times is reporting that a pork factory in Smithfield, South Dakota is the new centre of the coronavirus pandemic in the US. This week, the paper reports:
The Smithfield plant became the nation’s largest single-source coronavirus hot spot. Its employees now make up about 44 percent of the diagnoses in South Dakota, and a team of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has traveled there to assess how the outbreak spiraled out of control. Smithfield is the latest meat processing facility to close in the face of the coronavirus.
A Japanese MP has been expelled from his party after it was revealed he had visited a club in a Tokyo red light district, two days after the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, declared a state of emergency in an attempt to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Takashi Takai, a 50-year-old lower house member for the Constitutional Democratic party of Japan, admitted he had visited Sexy Cabaret Club in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district on 9 April, media reports said, despite government requests that people refrain from visiting bars, restaurants and clubs as part of efforts to reduce personal contact by 70-80%.
Takai submitted a letter of resignation after media reported his visit to the club, but the party rejected it and expelled him instead, Kyodo news agency said.
The Slovak government will release a plan next Monday on when and how shops will reopen after forced closures due to the spread of the new coronavirus, Prime Minister Igor Matovic said on Tuesday.
Reuters reports him as saying that Slovakia aims to protect the 70% of the economy that is running from being affected by the spread of the virus and the reopening of retail will be cautious.
The European commission is urging EU states to coordinate as they begin to ease lockdown measures, warning that failure to do so could result in new spikes of the coronavirus epidemic.
Several EU states have announced plans or have already begun to relax restrictions imposed to contain the outbreak, as pressure grows to revive their battered economies.
It is time to develop a well-coordinated EU exit strategy. The exit strategy should be coordinated between the Member States, to avoid negative spillover effects.
The coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented global surge in digital surveillance, researchers and privacy advocates around the world have said, with billions of people facing enhanced monitoring that may prove difficult to roll back.
Governments in at least 25 countries are employing vast programmes for mobile data tracking, apps to record personal contact with others, CCTV networks equipped with facial recognition, permission schemes to go outside and drones to enforce social isolation regimes.
Saudi Arabia and Russia reach truce after collapse in demand caused by coronavirus
The world’s largest oil producers have agreed a historic deal to cut global oil production by almost 10% to protect the market against the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Members of the Opec oil cartel and its allies have agreed to withhold almost 10m barrels a day from next month after the outbreak of Covid-19 wiped out demand for fossil fuels and triggered a collapse in global oil prices.