Author: News Desk

France: A mayor in France stated that his town’s name would change to feminine for a year to promote gender equality. The decision was made by Mr. Bertrand Kern, the socialist mayor of Pantin, a town outside of Paris, in a video message posted on Twitter. “Pantin will for a year be called Pantine, equality between women and men” and the struggle to end “violence against women,” the mayor remarked. A noun can often be made feminine in French by adding an ‘e’ at the end. The mayor hoped it would be “a wake-up call for this equality between women…

China: The World Health Organization has criticised China’s “very narrow” definition of COVID deaths, claiming that official statistics from the country were not showing the true impact of the outbreak. The world’s most populous country has witnessed a steep rise in COVID-19 infections since Beijing abruptly lifted years of strict restrictions at the end of 2022. “We still do not have complete data,” WHO’s emergencies director, Mr. Michael Ryan, remarked. “We believe that the current numbers being published from China under-represent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, ICU admissions, and particularly deaths,” Mr. Ryan stated.…

United Kingdom: Prince Harry claims attention after his controversial Netflix documentary on a new memoir “Spare”, which is scheduled to be released later this month amid an ongoing dispute within the British royal family, claims the tabloid. 38-year-old Mr. Harry claims that Mr. William called his wife Ms. Meghan Markle “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive” during a disagreement in the kitchen of his London home before pushing him to the ground as the pair continued to argue, as per the report. The latest information regarding the troubled relationship between the brothers comes as their father King Charles gets ready for his…

United States: The Amazon CEO Mr. Andy Jassy has announced that the company aims to shed more than 18,000 jobs as it cuts costs. According to the CEO, the layoff decisions will largely impact the company’s e-commerce and human resources organizations. The cuts amount to around 6 percent of the firm’s roughly 300,000-strong corporate workforce. “We are working to support those who are affected and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support,” Mr. Jassy remarked in the statement. The tech giant’s boss further added that “Amazon has weathered uncertain and…

United States: The Republican leader Mr. Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly failed in his bid to be an elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives. The House adjourned without a speaker since it had failed to choose a leader after a first-round vote. In the first two ballots to decide the next speaker, 19 Republicans opposed Mr. McCarthy, leaving him 15 votes short of the 218 needed to win. In the third vote, Mr. McCarthy lost one more supporter, which strengthened the concerns that he would fail to unite his caucus. The Democrat Mr. Hakeem Jeffries received more votes than…

United States: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will let retail pharmacies sell abortion pills in the US for the first time, the agency announced even if more states want to outlaw pharmacological abortion. “Under the Mifepristone REMS Program, as modified, Mifeprex and it is approved generic can be dispensed by certified pharmacies or under the supervision of a certified prescriber,” the agency noted. The regulatory adjustment may increase access to abortions as President Mr. Joe Biden’s administration struggles with how best to defend abortion rights following the landmark Roe v. Wade decision’s overturning by the Supreme Court and the…

Australia: Twitter appears to be experiencing some sort of outage throughout Australia. Some users reported that it takes a long time for posts to load, while others discover that the app is completely unresponsive and displays an error message that instructs users to reload their feed. There were more than 1000 reports of website outages on the Australian website Down Detector. Twitter users have claimed that the issue affects both the website and the app. Just after 7 AM, Down Detector posted the initial report of the outage, which is still visible. What caused the abrupt outage in Australia is…

United States: The US astronaut Mr. Walter Cunningham, the last surviving member of the first Nasa mission to ever broadcast live TV from orbit, has died at the age of 90. Mr. Cunningham joined NASA’s human spaceflight program as a member of its third astronaut class in 1963, making him one of the agency’s earliest members. The US astronaut was selected to pilot Apollo 7, the first crewed mission of the NASA program that went on to land humans on the moon for the first time. The US space agency confirmed Mr. Cunningham’s death, and stated that “the astronaut was…

Spain: According to new environmental regulations in Spain, tobacco manufacturers will be responsible for the costs associated with cleaning up millions of cigarette butts. Spain has taken drastic steps to cut the cost of cleaning up discarded butts in response to a European Union directive aimed at reducing pollution from single-use plastics. Tobacco corporations might also be forced to foot the bill for the installation of public receptacles in an attempt to convince users not to throw away their cigarette butts, as per the new regulation. According to the statement, “Spain’s administration has yet to calculate how much tobacco companies…

China: The Chinese government has claimed that travel restrictions imposed by several countries on Chinese arrivals are politically motivated and has warned that it may retaliate. The countries that imposed restrictions on passengers from China include the US, UK, India, Japan, and several European nations. “We believe that the entry restrictions adopted by some countries targeting China lack scientific basis, and some excessive practises are even more unacceptable,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mr. Mao Ning remarked. “We firmly oppose the attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity,” Mr.…