Byneset, Norway | AFP | Russia plans to test missiles off Norway this week in an area where NATO is carrying out its biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War, NATO’s chief said Tuesday, downplaying the situation. “We were notified last week about the planned Russian missile …
Read More »Gun violence sends 75,000 US youths to emergency rooms in 9 yrs: study
Washington, United States | AFP | Some 75,000 youths under the age of 18 were sent to US emergency rooms due to gun violence from 2006 to 2014, at a cost of some $2.5 billion, researchers said Monday. That’s the equivalent of around 8,300 cases per year, according to the …
Read More »NASA spacecraft breaks record for coming closest to Sun
Tampa, United States | AFP | NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which launched earlier this year, has set a new record for becoming the closest human-made object to the Sun, the US space agency announced Monday. “The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles (42.73 million kilometers) from the …
Read More »A ‘deal for nature’ to rescue wildlife: WWF chief
Paris, France | AFP | The global population of fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals has declined 60 percent since 1970, according to the WWF’s “Living Planet” report released Tuesday. WWF director general Marco Lambertini tells AFP what went wrong and what’s at stake. – How bad is it? – …
Read More »Quake rattles New Zealand as Harry and Meghan visit
Wellington, New Zealand | AFP | A 6.1 magnitude earthquake rattled parts of central New Zealand Tuesday, where British royals Meghan and Harry are on tour, but officials said it caused no major damage. The quake was felt in Wellington during a session of parliament, prompting lawmakers to stop deliberations …
Read More »Top S. Korea court orders Japanese firm to pay for forced labour
Seoul, South Korea | AFP | South Korea’s top court on Tuesday ordered a Japanese steel giant to pay compensation over forced wartime labour, a decision likely to further strain ties between the two neighbours. South Korea and Japan are both democracies and US allies faced with an increasingly assertive …
Read More »Trump says US planning ‘tent cities’ for migrants
Washington, United States | AFP | President Donald Trump said Monday his administration was planning to build tent cities for thousands of Central American migrants making their way through Mexico to the United States. The announcement during a Fox News interview came as the Pentagon announced it was deploying 5,200 …
Read More »Merkel on the spot after painful regional vote
Frankfurt am Main, Germany | AFP | German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a bitter political reality on Monday after the parties in her fragile coalition suffered heavy losses in a key regional election and a junior partner made threats to quit. Sunday’s blow for Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) …
Read More »Group of Jewish leaders to Trump: you are part of the problem
Washington, United States | AFP | A group of Pittsburgh Jewish leaders wrote an open letter to President Donald Trump Sunday telling him he bears responsibility for a deadly shooting at a synagogue in the US city. A mostly elderly group of 11 people were gunned down in the bloody …
Read More »‘Tropical Trump’ Bolsonaro elected Brazil president
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | AFP | Former army captain Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil on Sunday, promising a fundamental change in direction for the giant Latin American country, the latest to take a turn to the far-right. Despite repulsing many with his open support of the torture …
Read More »
The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price