Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Secretary of state Antony Blinken also announces aid to help rebuild Gaza as he begins Middle East trip
The US will reopen a mission in Jerusalem to manage diplomatic relations with Palestinians, which had been downgraded by the Trump administration, the US secretary of state has said.
On a trip to the Middle East designed to shore up last week’s ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, Antony Blinken also announced the Biden administration would ask Congress for $75m (£53m) in aid for Palestinians, including $5.5m in immediate aid for rebuilding Gaza. He had earlier pledged at a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the US would not allow Hamas to benefit from those funds.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced that the US would reopen its consulate in Jerusalem after it was downgraded by the Trump administration, and will provide an additional $75m to help rebuild Gaza. Speaking alongside the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, he also promised to ‘continue to rebuild’ the US’s relationship with Palestinians, and repeated comments from Biden that both Israelis and Palestinians should ‘enjoy equal measures of freedom, opportunity, and democracy, to be treated with dignity’
A case that could undermine the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and a punitive Texas law are the culmination of a decades-long push
The anti-abortion movement in the US is emboldened and optimistic after the supreme court announced it would hear a direct challenge to laws underpinning the right to abortion in the US, and Texas enacted a law intended to ban abortion after six weeks.
The high court decision to take up the case and the Texas move come during the most hostile year for reproductive rights in the nearly half-century since pregnant people won the constitutional right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy in the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade.
Mass vaccination of children against Covid-19 moved a step closer as Moderna became the second manufacturer to announce successful trial results, showing its vaccine can stop transmission in people aged 12 to 18.
Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine has already been given emergency approval for adolescents aged 12 to 15 in the US by the regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), after its trials were said to show better efficacy even than in participants aged 16 to 25. It has begun a trial in young children, from six months to 11 years old.
The US secretary of state has arrived in Jerusalem at the start of a Middle East tour aimed at shoring up the Gaza ceasefire. In a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Antony Blinken said the US 'fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against attacks' such as those by Hamas. A ceasefire was called after 11 days of fighting in which 250 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and 12 people died when Hamas rockets struck Israel.
Netanyahu spoke positively of his relationship with the US as well as a common ideal of recognising Israel as a Jewish state.
This contemporary western about a young Texan fugitive who flees south of the border is handsomely shot but didactic
Just north of the border between the United States and Mexico, the Greer family – patriarch Bill (Frank Grillo), mom Monica (Andie MacDowell), and grown sons Lucas (Alex MacNicoll) and Jackson (Jake Allyn) – work the land as ranchers. They raise cattle, ride horses and, being red-blooded Texan types, play sports – in Jackson’s case well enough that he’s got a chance to go pro as a baseball player. They also spend the odd evening riding the range with a vigilante militia group, rounding up immigrants who may have crossed the border illegally, to “help” the border patrols. On one such night, Jackson joins his dad and big brother, even though they try to keep him out of this sort of thing so he can get out of Dodge and become a sports hero – and what do you know, the dumb lug ends up shooting and killing a boy (Alessio Valentini) just a little younger than himself. In the back no less.
Ashamed, distraught and worried that his father will try to take the rap for him, Jackson confesses to local Texas Ranger Ramirez (venerable character actor George Lopez), but then bolts across the border to Mexico on his trusty horse Sundance. Soon, the fugitive is learning some life lessons and about what Mexico is really like, and he becomes a hired hand for a nice middle-class family. A flirtatious friendship blooms between him and the family’s pretty daughter, Victoria (Esmeralda Pimentel), while he tries not to get caught by the dead kid’s dad Gustavo (Jorge A Jimenez) and a skeevy people-trafficking “coyote” (Andres Delgado), who are out to get him.
At least 15 states are trying to ban schools from teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. The reactionary movement stretches back to the 1920s and the KKK
On 25 May 2020, a man died after a “medical incident during police interaction” in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The man was suspected of forgery and “believed to be in his 40s”. He “physically resisted officers” and, after being handcuffed, “appeared to be suffering medical distress”. He was taken to the hospital “where he died a short time later”.
It is not difficult to imagine a version of reality where this, the first police account of George Floyd’s brutal death beneath the knee of an implacable police officer, remained the official narrative of what took place in Minneapolis one year ago. That version of reality unfolds every day. Police lies are accepted and endorsed by the press; press accounts are accepted and believed by the public.
European Union leaders have agreed to impose economic sanctions on Belarus. They have also called on their airlines to avoid the former Soviet republic's airspace, while authorising work to ban Belarusian airlines from European skies and airports. 'Belarus used its control over its airspace in order to perpetrate a state hijacking, therefore the safety and security of flights through Belarus airspace can no longer be trusted,' said the head of the bloc's executive, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
With the Tokyo Olympics just weeks away, the US State Department has issued a “Level 4” warning against traveling to Japan, that’s now struggling through another surge in Covid cases.
A new wrinkle two months before Olympics. US State Department advises travelers not to visit Japan. https://t.co/Hrnfkwzayz
A Tokyo medical organization has joined calls to cancel Japan’s Olympic games this summer, citing a surge in #COVID19 cases in the country.
“Japan will bear the maximum responsibility” for deaths caused by the games, it said.
The Trump Administration, which forced families to separate at the border, also made migrant parents leave without their children according to a new Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report.
The agency watchdog found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) knowingly deported parents who had asked to be allowed to take their children back, the Associated Press reports.
That contradicted assertions by senior DHS officials that parents were choosing to leave their children in the U.S. to stay with family or for other reasons while they were deported in 2017 and 2018 as the administration sought to enforce a hard-line approach to immigration enforcement.
The findings, issued by Trump-appointed Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, provide new insight into a policy that became a significant political crisis for the previous administration and a continuing challenge for the current one, which is working to reunite children who remain separated even now.
EU’s 27 heads of state call for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich
EU leaders triggered new economic sanctions against Belarus and punitive measures against its national airline as a dissident taken from a “hijacked” Ryanair flight was paraded on the country’s television news apparently confessing to crimes against the state.
China has vehemently denied a Wall Street Journal report citing US intelligence materials that said several members of staff at a key virus laboratory in Wuhan had fallen ill shortly before the first patient with Covid-like symptoms was recorded in the city on 8 December 2019.
Foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said it was “completely untrue” that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) became sick in autumn 2019. The report, based on “previously undisclosed” US intelligence, said the said the lab workers staff had become sick “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness”.
Members of George Floyd’s family, and others who lost loved ones to police encounters, have joined crowds in Minneapolis for a march that was one of several events planned nationwide to mark the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s death.
Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday for the rally in front of the courthouse in downtown Minneapolis where a month ago former policeman Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering the black man by kneeling on his neck.
Iran has provided no information about cause of explosion in Isfahan that injured at least nine workers
A complex that houses a factory that makes Iranian drones has suffered a major explosion days after Israel had claimed that Iran was providing drones to Hamas in Gaza.
The blast at the weekend injured at least nine workers at the petrochemical factory in Isfahan. The Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (Hesa), which produces a variety of aircraft and drones for Iranian and pro-Iranian forces, is located in the complex owned by Sepahan Nargostar Chemical Industries.
US secretary of state also reaffirms Biden administration supports a two-state solution
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has pledged the Biden administration will deal with “the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza” and will seek “equal measures of security” for Israelis and Palestinians as a ceasefire after 11 days of conflict held throughout the weekend.
More than 240 people in Gaza, including at least 66 children, and a dozen in Israel were killed during the violence, marking the first major diplomatic crisis for the Biden administration.
Joe Biden’s administration increases pressure on government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed to end human rights abuses
Senior Ethiopian officials may face restrictions on their travel to the US, as Washington increases pressure on the government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed amid growing global concern about atrocities and famine caused by conflict in the northern region of Tigray.
Though visa restrictions are likely to target only a small number of individuals, the move signals President Joe Biden’s administration is shifting to a more direct strategy to force Ahmed to end continuing human rights abuses in Tigray and allow free flow of much-needed humanitarian aid.
Hibbing, the birthplace of the musician, is paying tribute with a year of special events
Bob Dylan’sdebut 1962 single began: “I got mixed-up confusion; man, it’s a-killin’ me”. It hasn’t yet – he turns 80 on Monday, and the pre-eminent custodian of American roots music, with its storytelling and protest traditions, is set to be celebrated by a public avalanche of events, programmes and tributes.
The occasion will be marked in his birthplace of Hibbing, Minnesota – where, inspired by the sounds of country and blues music drifting up from the south on AM radio, he wrote in his high-school yearbook that his ambition was to join Little Richard. St Louis county, in which Hibbing sits, has issued a proclamationdeclaring a “Year of Dylan Celebration”.
The pair’s split has been the subject of fevered press scrutiny – and claims of Bill’s links to Jeffrey Epstein has fed the frenzy
The announcement that Bill and Melinda Gates were to divorce was amicable enough, suggesting a smooth split between the famous couple who turned a billion-dollar software fortune into a driving force for global philanthropy.
A year ago, Christopher Martin took an allegedly counterfeit bill. The police were called, and shortly after, Floyd would be dead
Christopher Martin lived above a bricked grocery store in south Minneapolis, with a maroon awning and bold red signage that reads Cup Foods. So when a cashier’s position came up last year, he took it without thinking.
He quickly learned the regulars’ orders by heart, their specific tobacco preferences, their favored snacks. The job was more than just a paycheck. “A family, community base,” he remembered. “A lot of jokes and laughs.”
Health agency says the rates of myocarditis are not higher than expected and no causal link has been found to mRNA jabs
Some teenagers and young adults who received Covid-19 vaccines have experienced heart inflammation, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group said, recommending further study of the rare condition.
In a statement dated 17 May, the CDC’s advisory committee on immunisation practices said it had looked into reports that a few young vaccine recipients, predominantly male adolescents and young adults, developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.
Ex-Republican senator’s April comments prompted outrage
Santorum said he misspoke but did not apologize for remarks
CNN has dropped former Republican US senator Rick Santorum as a senior political commentator after racist remarks he made about Native Americans at an event in April.
News of Santorum’s termination was first reported by HuffPost. A CNN spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that the network has parted ways with Santorum. No further comment on the firing was provided, though an anonymous CNN executive told HuffPost that “leadership wasn’t particularly satisfied with that appearance. None of the anchors wanted to book him.”