Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
More than 140 rights groups call for repeal of 1973 Helms amendment widely misinterpreted as total ban on funding abortion services overseas
Joe Biden is being urged to clarify a longstanding US law restricting overseas aid that has been misinterpreted by successive administrations as an outright ban on funding abortion for any reason.
As the US president marked his first 100 days in office on Friday, more than 140 human rights and global health organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International US and the Global Justice Center, signed a letter asking him to confirm that US aid can be used for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger.
The largest airplane ever to take flight has made its second voyage, soaring above California's Mojave desert. Stratolaunch's massive carrier aircraft, nicknamed 'Roc', is designed to transport hypersonic vehicles and facilitate easy access to space.
The company was founded by the late billionaire and Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen in 2011, and sold to private ownership in late 2019 after Allen's death.
AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, has mounted a robust defence of the drugmaker’s Covid-19 vaccine efforts, and said the business should be proud of what it has done for the world and is doing its “very best” to produce more, as the company faces legal action from the EU over delivery shortfalls, and shipments to poorer countries have also been delayed.
The company generated $275m (£197m) in revenues from the Covid vaccine it developed with Oxford University in the first three months of the year and shipped 48m doses to 120 countries through the global vaccine-sharing initiative Covax, 80% of which went to low and middle-income countries. In total, it has supplied more than 300m vaccine doses to more than 165 countries so far this year.
The new administration has signalled a sharp break in foreign policy from the Trump era – but how is that playing globally?
At the opening of Joe Biden’s online climate summit last week, Europe’s relief was was palpable: “It is so good,” gushed the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, “to have the US back on our side.”
During a speech at a drive-in rally in Duluth, Georgia, to mark 100 days in office, Joe Biden was briefly interrupted by protesters calling for an end to private prisons, a demand that Biden agreed to, saying that the US was 'working to close all of them'.
The president praised the conviction of Derek Chauvin, the police officer found guilty of killing George Floyd, and declared that 'America is on the move again, choosing hope over fear, truth over lies, light over darkness'. Georgia is a particularly important state for Biden after he became the first Democrat to win there since Bill Clinton in 1992
President promoted his $4tn plans to rebuild crumbling US infrastructure and expand the social safety net at drive-in rally
On his 100th day as US president, Joe Biden spontaneously lowered his black face mask, leaned towards the microphone and shouted: “Go Georgia, we need you!”
It was a fitting moment in a state that has more claim than most to be the ground zero of a potentially transformative presidency.
Legal team allege she is being held in worse conditions to other inmates due to the “Epstein Effect”
Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell have released a photograph of the British socialite, who is in a US prison facing sex trafficking charges, showing her with a bruised face.
Maxwell, 59, who is accused of procuring underage girls for the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to abuse, has been in jail since last year while awaiting trial. She denies the allegations. Since her arrest last summer, she has only been seen in court sketches during hearings.
Detectives do not believe the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the pop star and that the motive was the French bulldogs’ value
The woman who returned Lady Gaga’s stolen French bulldogs was among five people arrested in connection with the theft and shooting of the music superstar’s dog walker, Los Angeles police said Thursday.
Detectives do not believe that the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the pop star, the Los Angeles police department said in a statement. The motive for the 24 February robbery, investigators believe, was the value of the French bulldogs – which can run into the thousands of dollars.
Two US officials experienced symptoms similar to ones suffered abroad that were probably result of directed energy device
The White House has said it is investigating “unexplained health incidents” after a report that two US officials in the Washington area experienced sudden symptoms similar to the “Havana syndrome” symptoms suffered by American diplomats and spies abroad.
Astronaut and pilot of the command module Columbia during 1969’s Apollo 11 mission
On 20 July 1969, Michael Collins, who has died aged 90, became the most solitary human in the universe – even if he derided that categorisation as “phony philosophy”. He orbited the moon alone, inside Apollo 11’s command module Columbia, and out of touch with ground control for 48 minutes on each orbit. Meanwhile, and more famously, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were becoming the first men to set foot on that rock, some 240,000 miles away from Earth.
As the command module pilot, on $17,000 a year, Collins was, he later wrote half-jokingly, “the navigator, the guidance and control expert, the base-camp operator, the owner of the leaky plumbing – all the things I was least interested in doing”. He was also, thought Aldrin, probably Nasa’s best-trained command module pilot.
The president introduced his $1.8tn plan to invest in America, funded by raising the capital gains rate for the wealthy
As Biden took the podium, he brushed past a sparse, masked crowd. He fist-bumped and elbow-tapped lawmakers and members of his cabinet – greeting a crowd that was physically distanced, and ideologically divided.
Joe Biden argued that ‘America is on the move again’ in his first address to Congress, on the eve of his 100th day in office. The president, flanked by two women – Vice-President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – for the first time in US history, addressed the coronavirus pandemic, the 6 January assault on the Capitol, plans to raise the minimum wage, police reform, climate change and historic levels of investment in the country. Due to social distancing measures, only 200 people, mainly politicians, attended rather than the usual 1,600 guests
President pushes ambitious families and jobs plans, calling for a ‘blue-collar blueprint’ to rebuild America
Joe Biden argued that “America is on the move again” in his first address to Congress, where he unveiled a sweeping $1.8tn package for families and education and pitched his “blue-collar blueprint” to re-build America.
Flanked by two women – Vice-President Kamala Harris and House speaker Nancy Pelosi – for the first time in US history, the president gave his speech on the eve of his 100th day in office as the country continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Chile has designated pregnant women a Covid-19 vaccination priority and this week began issuing Pfizer doses to those with underlying health issues in their second or third trimesters.
Reuters reports:
Chile’s top public health official Paula Daza said women were being inoculated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine since more information existed about its safety for pregnant women.
An estimated 230,000 will be offered vaccines, with those with health conditions followed by those working in high-risk jobs such as the health and education sectors.
The coronavirus situation is improving in France, prime minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday.
As we reported earlier, president Emmanuel Macron will outline on Friday how restrictions will be progressively relaxed.
Joe Biden will also speak about gun violence during tonight’s speech, according to USAToday. On the presidential campaign trail, Biden pledged to reinstate the assault weapons ban and create a voluntary gun buyback program.
A White House official told the newspaper that Biden will talk about gun violence as an epidemic, which he has done in the past, and urge Congress to reinstate a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
The president’s plea appears to echo a similar one made by Obama at the State of the Union in 2013, two months after Sandy Hook, in which he told Congress victims of gun violence — many of whom were seated in the room — “deserve a vote.” Biden presided over the Senate chamber when a gun safety package failed to pass two months later.
Despite the uphill battle, Democrats are heeding the president’s call. Last week Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., reintroduced a bill to remove protections for manufacturers and sellers from consumer negligence lawsuits and allow victims of gun violence to pursue legal recourse. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a key Democrat leading gun control efforts, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week that he’s made calls to almost half the Republican caucus “asking them to keep an open mind.”
The Guardian’s voting rights reporter, Sam Levine, has an alarming story this morning on Republican efforts to make it harder to vote in Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office:
Even as attacks on voting rights have escalated in recent years, the Republican effort since January marks a new, more dangerous phase for American democracy, experts say.
Laura Italiano claimed she was forced to write a report about migrant children being given a copy of the VP’s book as part of a welcome kit
A reporter at Rupert Murdoch’s New York tabloid has resigned after she claimed she was forced to write an incorrect front page story about migrants and Kamala Harris.
The New York Post published an article on 23 April headlined “Kam on in”, which claimed migrant children were being given welcome packs that contained copies of the US vice-president’s 2019 children’s picture book, Superheroes Are Everywhere. A follow-up article claimed thousands of copies had been distributed.
Largest US employer could have saved 133 lives with policy as workers fear calling in sick could lead to firing, advocates say
More than 7,500 Covid-19 infections and 133 deaths could have been prevented if Walmart offered employees two weeks of paid sick leave, according to a report released on Wednesday.
The public health not-for-profit Human Impact Partners calculated the impact that better paid sick leave could have had for employees of Walmart, the largest employer in the US, using findings from the University of Wisconsin that universal sick leave could lead to a nearly 6% reduction in coronavirus infections and deaths for workers in Wisconsin.
The president’s handling of the Covid pandemic and the economic crisis have drawn praise but questions remain over issues such as immigration and the filibuster
Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office consisted largely of his administration’s rush to reverse Donald Trump’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic. Much of the national spotlight has fallen on how the new US president has addressed the crisis or which aides have been closely involved in coordinating the federal government’s responses.
After Congress ordered the US Marine Corps to fully integrate women into its west coast training battalions, the first 53 female recruits have become Marines