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Barbados, a former British colony, will next week ditch Queen Elizabeth as head of state, breaking its last remaining imperial bonds with Britain nearly 400 years since the first English ship arrived at the Caribbean island. Barbados casts the removal of Elizabeth II, who is queen of Barbados and 15 other realms including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Jamaica, as a sign of confidence and a way to finally break with the demons of its colonial history.
Source: reuters.com
DART probe, the size of a car, will slam into the Dimorphos ‘moonlet’ at more than 24,000 kilometres per an hour in an attempt to knock it off course.
Source: aljazeera.com
France and Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema has been found guilty of conspiring to blackmail a fellow French footballer with a sex tape. A judge handed Benzema a one-year suspended jail term and ordered him to pay a €75,000 (£63,000; $84,000) fine. Benzema, 33, was one of five people put on trial last month over an attempt to extort Frenchman Mathieu Valbuena. The case dates back to June 2015, when the two footballers were at a French training camp.
Source: bbc.com
Anti-apartheid legend Nelson Mandela liked hearty, simple meals, like oxtail stew. It was a favourite dish of South Africa's first black president and now fills ravioli served in his former home, which has been transformed into a boutique hotel. Mandela lived there for eight years before moving to another home around the corner with his third wife Graca Machel. He arrived shortly after his release from prison in 1990, and promptly set about meeting the neighbours, general manager Dimitri Maritz said.
Source: france24.com
The United Arab Emirates has held talks with the Taliban to run Kabul airport, going up against Gulf rival Qatar in a diplomatic tussle for influence with Afghanistan's new rulers, according to four sources with knowledge of the matter.
Source: reuters.com
A further 700,000 people could die of Covid by March in Europe and parts of Asia, the World Health Organization has warned. The death toll already exceeds 1.5 million in the 53 countries of what the WHO terms as its Europe region. The WHO warned of "high or extreme stress" in intensive care units in 49 of the nations by March 2022.
Source: bbc.com
Syria’s military said Israeli warplanes attacked army positions in the country’s central region early Wednesday, leaving two civilians dead and seven people wounded — six of them soldiers.
Source: apnews.com
A manuscript co-authored by Albert Einstein, offering a rare insight into the legendary physicist’s thinking leading up to his general theory of relativity, was sold in an auction on Tuesday for $13.17m. Auction house Christie’s had estimated the value of the manuscript at between $2.25m and $3.38m.
Source: aljazeera.com
Francisca Susano, who was believed to be the oldest living person in the Philippines and probably in the world, died on Monday at 124 years old, according to the local government of her hometown. The city government of Kabankalan in Negros Occidental said Lola Iska, as she was affectionately called, died at around 6:45 p.m. Susano was born on Sept. 11, 1897, which was before the country became independent from Spanish rule.
Source: cnn.ph
Two refitted former U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats intended to bolster the Ukrainian navy have arrived at the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa, the Ukrainian navy said on Tuesday. The two new boats are part of a package of assistance to Ukraine that has been worth over $2.5 billion since 2014, the year Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists seized a swathe of eastern Ukraine.
Source: reuters.com
Prime Minister Jean Castex, who is fully vaccinated, tested positive for the virus after returning to France from a visit with ministers in Brussels, his office confirmed to CNN. On his return from Belgium, Castex learned his 11-year-old daughter had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV. The Prime Minister then also tested positive and is self-isolating. His Belgium counterpart, Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, along with four other ministers, are now self- isolating following their meeting.
Source: cnn.com
Parents in southern Mexico say they are being threatened by a gang after their children's nursery won 20m pesos ($950,000; £710,0000) in a lottery. The nursery has just over two dozen pupils and their parents were put in charge of administering the prize. Soon after their win was made public, they received threats from an armed group, which demanded that they use the money to buy weapons for the gang. The families say they had to flee their village and have been living rough.
Source: bbc.com
Authorities on the Spanish island of La Palma ordered residents of three coastal towns to stay indoors on Monday after a new stream of lava crashed into the ocean, sending thick clouds of potentially toxic gases high into the sky. A third tongue of lava from the Cumbre Vieja volcano, which has been erupting for two months, reached the water around midday (12:00 GMT) a few kilometres north of where two previous flows hit the sea.
Source: reuters.com
Albert Einstein's handwritten notes for the theory of relativity are being auctioned in Paris on Tuesday, expected to fetch millions of euros. The manuscript contains preparatory work for the physicist's signature achievement, the theory of general relativity, which he published in 1915. Christie's expects it to reach between $2.3 million to 3.4 million. The 54-page document was handwritten in 1913 and 1914 in Zurich, Switzerland, by Einstein and his colleague and confidant, Swiss engineer Michele Besso.
Source: france24.com
Indian tech hub Bangalore has been inundated by floodwater after torrential downpours that have killed scores of people across the country's south in the past few weeks. Lakes dotted around the city have overflowed after three days of ferocious rain, submerging roads and flooding homes. At least 30 people have been killed after flash floods around southern India in recent days, according to local media reports.
Source: france24.com
Octopuses, crabs and lobsters are capable of experiencing pain or suffering, according to a review commissioned by the UK government, which has added the creatures to a list of sentient beings to be given protection under new animal welfare laws. Vertebrates, animals with a backbone, are already classified as sentient in new animal welfare legislation currently under debate in the United Kingdom.
Source: cnn.com
In a rock concert-like atmosphere, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that his government will build an oceanside “Bitcoin City” at the base of a volcano. Bukele used a gathering of Bitcoin enthusiasts Saturday night to launch his latest idea, much as he used a an earlier Bitcoin conference in Miami to announce in a video message that El Salvador would be the first country to make the cryptocurrency legal tender.
Source: apnews.com
Residents on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro on Monday found the corpses of at least eight people in a mangrove after a sustained gunbattle with local police. The bodies were found near a complex of slums called Salgueiro, in the city of Sao Goncalo, a poor and violent region that is part of metropolitan Rio. Locals told media outlets that they believed other bodies would be found.
Source: reuters.com
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