President Biden pledges 500m more vaccine doses to developing world
The US is to donate 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine to developing nations from next year.
President Joe Biden made the pledge at a virtual Covid-19 summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, promising an "arsenal of vaccines".
The additional jabs will see the total US commitment on vaccine sharing exceed one billion jabs.
Experts say some 11 billion doses are required to vaccinate at least 70% of the global population.
The World Health Organisation has set a minimum target of 40% vaccine coverage in every country by the end of 2021.
Second line of defence: Taiwan’s civilians train to resist invasion
On a quiet workday morning last week, air raid sirens rang out across Taiwan. The eerie wailing horn would be the first warning to the island’s 23.5 million residents of an incoming attack by their neighbour across the Taiwan Strait, the People’s Republic of China.
On the streets of the capital, Taipei, people carried on with their day, just as they did when an earthquake drill on Friday told them to “stop, drop and hide” in mass text alerts, and just as they do when China sends dozens of air force planes screeching towards Taiwan.
The world is becoming increasingly familiar with Beijing’s claim over Taiwan as a breakaway province, and its pledge to one day “unify”, by force if necessary. Taiwan’s population has lived with the threat day in and day out, but as the danger grows, experts warn the public is not ready.
Top aide to Ukrainian president survives assassination attempt seen as a warning to Zelensky
A key aide to Ukraine’s president escaped an assassination attempt near Kiev on Wednesday – an attack that is already being interpreted as a warning to Volodymyr Zelensky, currently thousands of miles away in the United States.
At least 12 bullets were fired in the direction of Serhiy Shefir’s Audi shortly after 10am.
The 57-year-old escaped unhurt, but his driver was seriously wounded. The gunman remains at large.
Are US Republicans finally waking up to the climate crisis?
Climate change denial has been rampant in conservative America, but something is shifting. A growing movement is advocating for climate action — in its own fossil fuel-friendly way.
In February, 25 Republican lawmakers got together in Utah, to meet youth party members and environmental groups and brainstorm a conservative approach to tackling the climate crisis. But it was something of a clandestine meeting, with some politicians only attending after organizers promised they would stay anonymous.
That's how sensitive this subject still is in the Republican Party post-Trump. The former president called human-caused climate change "a hoax," withdrew from the Paris Agreement and railed against water-conserving showerheads that failed to keep his hair perfect.
Island-hopping: Genetics reveal how humans settled remote Pacific
Easter Island's famous megaliths have relatives on islands thousands of miles to the north and west -- and so did the people who created them, a study said Wednesday.
Research showed that over a 250-year period separate groups of people set out from tiny islands east of Tahiti to settle Easter Island, the Marquesas and Raivavae -- archipelagos that are thousands of miles apart but all home to similar ancient statues.
"These statues are only on those islands that are closely connected genetically," the study's lead author Alexander Ioannidis of Stanford University told AFP.
Afghanistan: Ex-Bagram inmates recount stories of abuse, torture
Hajimumin Hamza walks through a long, dark corridor and carefully inspects the area as if he has never seen it before. Today, the 36-year old bearded man in a black turban and a traditional two-piece garment is a guide to fellow Taliban fighters in the place whose name he would rather forget. His eyes stop at a solitary chair standing on the pathway.
“They used to tie us to this chair, our hands and feet, and then applied electric shocks. Sometimes they used it for beatings, too,” Hamza says, recounting the torture he underwent during his captivity in Bagram prison between 2017 and the onset of the fall of Kabul last month, when he managed to escape.
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