Coronavirus: anger in Germany at report Trump seeking exclusive vaccine deal
MPs and ministers criticise display of ‘self-interest’ and accuse US president of electioneering
German ministers have reacted angrily following reports US president Donald Trump offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusive rights to a Covid-19 vaccine.
“Germany is not for sale,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told broadcaster ARD, reacting to a front page report in Welt am Sonntag newspaper headlined “Trump vs Berlin”.
The newspaper reported Trump offered $1bn to Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure the vaccine “only for the United States”.
Syrian women still gravely suffering nine years on: ‘Husbands refrain from having a sexual life with them. They just leave them’
‘As women, we have been severely affected by the crisis,’ pregnant 16-year-old tells The Independent
Maya OppenheimWomen’s Correspondent
“Things are getting much worse than before in our village,” Amira* says. “Women’s circumstances have worsened a lot. Our husbands are constantly nervous and tense. They often curse us and use physical violence against us. They hit us, as well as being very violent during sex.”
The pregnant 16-year-old, whose life has been dominated by war, lives in a village in the al-Qamishli area in northeastern Syria with her two children. Amira says women have been some of the hardest hit by the Syrian conflict.
“As women, we have been severely affected by the crisis,” Amira, who is in her third month of pregnancy, adds. “We have a lot of anxieties and miseries. Men don’t even think about us. They just want us to be pregnant again and again, and we can’t refuse to be pregnant as we are terrified of being divorced.”
Top 10 most dangerous viruses in the world
Bird flu, Ebola and Zika - there seems to be news on a new dangerous virus almost every day. But so far, experts are saying that Zika itself isn't as bad as HIV, Ebola and these other eight viruses.
1. The most dangerous virus is the Marburg virus. It is named after a small and idyllic town on the river Lahn - but that has nothing to do with the disease itself. The Marburg virus is a hemorrhagic fever virus. As with Ebola, the Marburg virus causes convulsions and bleeding of mucous membranes, skin and organs. It has a fatality rate of 90 percent.Saudi Arabia detains hundreds of government officials
Anti-corruption body announces arrest of 298 people, will press charges for crimes such as bribery and embezzlement.
Hundreds of government officials, including military and security personnel, have been detained in Saudi Arabia on charges involving bribery and exploiting public office.
The announcement late on Sunday by Saudi's National Anti-Corruption Commission (Nazaha) also said that investigators would bring charges against those currently held in custody.
Satoshi Uematsu: Japanese man who killed 19 disabled people sentenced to death
A Japanese man has been sentenced to death for a stabbing rampage in 2016 which resulted in the death of 19 disabled people at a care home.
Satoshi Uematsu said people with disabilities who were unable to communicate well had no human rights, said broadcaster Kyodo.
The 30-year old had once worked in the care facility, located near Tokyo.
The case is one of Japan's worst mass killings and has shocked people in a country where violent crime is rare.
INVISIBLE CENSORSHIP
TikTok Told Moderators to Suppress Posts by “Ugly” People and the Poor to Attract New Users
Sam Biddle, Paulo Victor Ribeiro, Tatiana Dias
THE MAKERS OF TIKTOK, the Chinese video-sharing app with hundreds of millions of users around the world, instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. These same documents show moderators were also told to censor political speech in TikTok livestreams, punishing those who harmed “national honor” or broadcast streams about “state organs such as police” with bans from the platform.
These previously unreported Chinese policy documents, along with conversations with multiple sources directly familiar with TikTok’s censorship activities, provide new details about the company’s efforts to enforce rigid constraints across its reported 800 million or so monthly users while it simultaneously attempts to bolster its image as a global paragon of self-expression and anything-goes creativity. They also show how TikTok controls content on its platform to achieve rapid growth in the mold of a Silicon Valley startup while simultaneously discouraging political dissent with the sort of heavy hand regularly seen in its home country of China.
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