World

In this November 20, 2016, file photo, then-US President-elect Donald Trump, right, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani pose for photographs as Giuliani arrives at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse in Bedminster, N.J. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)<br />Voting technology maker Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit on Thursday against three Fox News hosts and Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani for promoting false claims that the company was involved in fraud in the November presidential election. The complaint filed in New York State Court names the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox Corp., the Fox News Network and Fox hosts…

(FILES) In this file photo Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin speaks during the House Judiciary Committee’s markup of House Resolution 755, Articles of Impeachment Against President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on December 12, 2019. – Democratic Party impeachment managers requested former president Donald Trump on February 4, 2021 to testify in his impeachment trial over the attack on the US Capitol last month. “I write to invite you to provide testimony under oath, either before or during the Senate impeachment trial, concerning your conduct on January 6, 2021,” chief impeachment manager Jamie Raskin wrote in a letter…

A cannabis seedling is seen at the Government Pharmaceuticals Organisation (GPO) medicinal marijuana greenhouse outside Chon Buri, south of Bangkok on October 8, 2020. (Photo by Mladen ANTONOV / AFP) Thirty years’ jail for smoking a joint after a football game? Tunisia has seen calls for reforms to dictatorship-era drug laws after a court handed down heavy sentences to three young men. Tunisians have taken to social media to demand changes to the law after the court in the northern city of Kef issued the sentence last month. A fourth man, arrested when he got back to his car, was…

Health workers hope governments can combat vaccine misinformation, but people in many African countries won’t take their rulers’ word for it JOHN WESSELS AFP/File Conspiracy theories, mistrust and patchy communication have contributed to a flourishing of scepticism about Covid-19 vaccines in African countries, experts say, posing potential dangers to future immunisation campaigns. Anti-vaccine sentiment, often fed by rumours spread on social media, is already thriving in the West. But a similar dynamic is at play across Africa, according to public health experts on the continent, with people warier of Covid-19 jabs than they would be of other vaccines. “There’s a…

Police detain people during a protest against a court decision ordered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny jailed for nearly three years, in downtown Moscow on February 2, 2021. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP) Russia on Wednesday defended its crackdown on protesters demanding the release of opposition figure Alexei Navalny as his allies vowed to continue putting pressure on the Kremlin. Protest monitors said that more than 10,000 people were detained at recent nationwide rallies in support of President Vladimir Putin’s loudest critic, who was handed a prison term on Tuesday. The verdict spurred Navalny’s supporters onto the streets of…

A woman clatters pans to make noise after calls for protest went out on social media in Yangon on February 3, 2021, as Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi was formally charged on Wednesday two days after she was detained in a military coup. (Photo by STR / AFP) The world’s longest internet shutdown — affecting more than a million people for 19 months in one of Myanmar’s ethnic conflict zones — has come to an end, according to a mobile operator based in the region. The internet in parts of Myanmar’s troubled northern states of Rakhine and Chin…

Ethiopian refugees who fled fighting in Tigray province are pictured at the Um Rakuba camp in Sudan’s eastern Gedaref province, on November 19, 2020. – Sudan — one of the world’s poorest countries, now faced with the massive influx — has reopened the camp, 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the border. It once housed refugees who fled Ethiopia’s 1983-85 famine that killed over a million people. (Photo by ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP) United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern in a statement Tuesday about the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, saying “urgent steps” must be taken. The Security Council…

(Photo by Douglas MAGNO / AFP) European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday that coronavirus vaccines from Russia and China could be approved for use in the bloc if they “show all the data”, lawmakers told AFP. Her remarks came as the EU faces criticism over a slow vaccination roll-out across the 27 nation bloc as supply shortfalls have hampered deliveries. Some European leaders have now expressed willingness to consider using Russia’s Sputnik V virus after trial results showed it was 91.6 percent effective. “If the Russian producers, the Chinese producers open their books, show transparency, show all…