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'There is no honour in seeing Arabs rush towards normalisation during its presidency,' Maliki said [File: Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters] Palestine was meant to chair Arab League meetings for next six months, but FM Riyad al-Maliki has declined the position. Palestine has quit its current chairmanship of Arab League meetings, the Palestinian foreign minister said on Tuesday, condemning as dishonourable any Arab agreement to establish formal ties with Israel. Palestinians see the deals that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed with Israel in Washington a week ago as a betrayal of their cause and a blow to their quest for...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed plans for fans to return to watch live sport events in England from 1 October will not go ahead. The plans were placed under review after a rise in coronavirus cases. The UK's Covid-19 alert level has moved to 4, meaning transmission is "high or rising exponentially".

Over the weekend, a Pacifica resident captured video of a mountain lion — possibly a juvenile — crouched in his yard apparently watching children playing on their bikes outside.The big cat can be seen lying at the end of the resident's walkway, peering between the slats of a picket fence gate. Upon hearing something from the doorway of the house (the video has no sound), the cat looks back, gets up, and then jumps over the fence in a different direction, and ends up hiding underneath a car — just like a house cat! The uploader of the video,...

Britain’s US trade deal is in jeopardy if the UK endangers Northern Ireland peace over Brexit, US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said. “We can’t allow the [1998] Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” Biden said on Wednesday (16 September). “Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period,” he added. Biden spoke out during a visit by British foreign secretary Dominic Raab to Washington. The Democrats’ concern comes after the UK threatened to...

A Michigan prosecutor will not pursue felony charges over a homeowner who displayed a toilet with a sign reading “Place mail in ballots here.” Ingham County election clerk Barb Byrum (D) reported the Lansing-area display to police, saying taking illegal possession of absentee ballots is a felony, according to The Associated Press. However, county prosecutor Carol Siemon (D) said the display appeared to be “an effort to make a humorous political statement” rather than any intention to violate the law.

Hollywood’s unions have announced that they have reached an agreement on pandemic protocols with major studios that will allow the broad resumption of production of films and television after six months of stagnant sets and widespread unemployment. The Directors Guild of America, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Basic Crafts unions and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists on Monday jointly announced the deal reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after months of planning and negotiating. The deal includes mandatory and comprehensive use of personal...

Scientists discovered an undescribed species of truffle, thanks to bonobos, who savor the mushrooms. Credit: Alexander Georgiev ================================================================================== Mushroom-munching bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have introduced scientists to a new species of truffle. Commonly used by Congolese communities to bait traps for small mammals, Hysterangium bonobo is also savored by bonobos, an endangered species of great ape. Scientists say the truffle hints at vast reserves of undescribed fungal diversity in the region. "Truffles aren't just for gourmet chefs—they're also for our closest relatives," said Matthew Smith, an associate professor in the University of Florida department of plant...

United States Postal workers who deliver mail in some of Chicago’s more violent neighborhoods are threatening to halt their services after a mail carrier was shot in the city’s South Side earlier this month. The carrier, a 24-year-old woman, was left critically and injured after being shot multiple times at 91st Street and Ellis Avenue while delivering mail on September 10. Police said the worker did not appear to be the target and had been caught in the crossfire during a drive-by. Chicago’s WSL-TV reported that she was the second mail carrier wounded by gunfire on that route. Another mail...

The man who killed Beatles musician John Lennon in 1980 says that he deserved to be put to death for the “despicable act,” according to multiple reports. Mark David Chapman said he deserved the death penalty while responding to questions from a parole board last month. The board later denied his parole for the 11th time. “I assassinated him .. because he was very, very, very famous and that’s the only reason and I was very, very, very, very much seeking self-glory. Very selfish,” Chapman said, according to a transcript obtained by multiple outlets on Monday. “I deserve zero, nothing....

A Portsmouth woman is demanding an apology from American Airlines after she said she was forced off her flight home because her 2-year-old son would not wear his mask. Rachel Starr Davis said she was in tears as she tried to get her son Lyon to wear a mask while the airline staff threatened to remove her from her flight to Manchester from Charlotte, North Carolina last week. She said airline staff and the captain had passengers get off the plane and then re-board without Davis, her son and her mother April when Lyon would not wear the mask. "I...

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Evidence is mounting that Sweden has beaten the coronavirus with herd immunity rather than a lockdown, according to a renowned expert on the spread of disease. Sweden’s infection rate has remained low and stable at a time when other European countries are facing a strong resurgence.

The far-left Newsweek just fired off around a thousand words falsely accusing Amy Coney Barrett of inspiring the dystopian feminist thriller The Handmaid’s Tale, and has been forced to retract it. L to the M to the A to the O. Of course, the fake news outlet didn’t retract-retract it. That would require ethics and integrity, and anyone in the media who engages in ethics and integrity will be booted from the club, so Newsweek just wrote the equivalent of “nevermind” at the bottom of its big lie and rewrote the big lie a bit.

Joe Biden has regressed to the point of reading cues out loud, giving hand signals to scroll up the text, and botching words as they appear on the screen. Election 2020 has seen its fair share of the comical and bizarre, of the heartening and debased. There is something to be learned from it all, I believe, even from a simple machine designed to facilitate clear communication to the general public. Once the prized, not-so-secret weapon of President ObamaÂ’s supposed rhetorical prowess, the teleprompter has become the conspicuous centerpiece of Joe BidenÂ’s third attempt to capture AmericaÂ’s highest office.Saving Obama...

(NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle, Christine Daniloff, MIT) Every exoplanet is special in its own way, but a newly discovered exoplanet 186 light-years away is an especially delicious treat. It's a smallish world around the same size as Earth, whipping around its star on an orbit that takes just 3.14 days. That's extremely close to the mathematical constant π (Pi), the number that describes the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. So, even though the exoplanet's official name is K2-315b, its discoverers have nicknamed it "π Earth." The discovery of the star has been several years in the baking....

At a lecture to peers this month, John Nkengasong showed images that once dogged Africa, with a magazine cover declaring it “The Hopeless Continent.” Then he quoted Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah: “It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity.” The coronavirus pandemic has fractured global relationships. But as director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nkengasong has helped to steer Africa’s 54 countries into an alliance praised as responding better than some richer countries, including the United States. A former U.S....

Actress and 'Defund the police' activist Alyssa Milano was quick to call cops when she believed an armed gunman was on her Bell Canyon property on Sunday morning. The call ignited a response that included seven Ventura County Sheriffs' vehicles, one K-9 unit, a police helicopter and one Los Angeles Fire Department team that sat down the street on standby. DailyMail.com has obtained exclusive photos showing the first responders coming to the aid of the 47-year-old at her five bed, six bath, 8,000 square foot, $2.5 million home in the upscale gated community that sits just 20 minutes north of...

The national page for the Black Lives Matter movement has updated several sections of their website, including the removal of a page that features a paragraph about the disruption of the 'Western nuclear family.' The grassroot organization - that works mostly in local, chapter-based, groups - removed several pages from their about section in the cleanup, according to an archive of their website. Included in the removal was the site's 'What We Believe' page and pages providing biographies of the national chapter leadership and co-founders. Internet archives suggest that the website was updated on September 17.

Sweden has beaten coronavirus by refusing to shut the country down and achieving herd immunity, according to an expert. The Scandinavian nation was the only country in Europe not to introduce strict lockdown measures at the start of the pandemic. But scientists believe that this may have helped it avoid a second wave of Covid-19 as it continues to record its lowest number of cases since March - with just 28 infections per 100,000 people.

The Canadian woman charged with sending a ricin-laced letter to President Trump apparently tweeted a hashtag supportive of killing the commander-in-chief less than two weeks ago. Pascale Ferrier, of Quebec, was arrested Sunday at the border crossing between Fort Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York, after allegedly mailing a letter addressed to Trump containing the highly toxic substance, according to CBC News. She was carrying a gun at the time of her arrest at the Peace Bridge crossing, CNN said.