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The pledge to bring in the refugees was part of a campaign promise by Canada's new prime minister, Justin Trudeau. That promise helped sweep him to power in October's election. Initially, the government wanted to bring in all 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of this year. That ambitious plan had to be scaled back because of the sheer scale and speed of the operation.

Instead, 10,000 Syrians are now due in Canada by the end of this month. Most of them are being sponsored by private groups and citizens. Canada is the only country that allows the private sponsorship of refugees — it's mandated in the country's immigration law.

Sponsors must commit to being responsible for the refugee for one year. It requires providing financial help during that time — about $24,000 US — and help finding housing, employment and schools for children. The Canadian government will provide health care, travel expenses and language classes.

Applications to sponsor Syrian refugees have been pouring in since early September, when a photo appeared of a lifeless 3-year-old boy whose body had been swept ashore at a Turkish beach. Alan Kurdi's parents had applied to Canada for asylum, but the request was turned down.

Resettlement workers say most Canadians have embraced the idea of bringing in the Syrians. Churches, universities and whole communities have been pitching in to raise money and find housing and employment for the refugees.

But the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have led to questions about whether there is a security risk because the government is moving so quickly.

All the Syrians to be resettled in Canada will have been chosen by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Most are currently living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The refugees will go through various levels of screening, including by Canadian immigration and security officials, before getting on a plane to Canada.

Most of the refugees will be women, children, elderly people, families and those with injuries or medical conditions. Canadian officials say unaccompanied young men will have to wait, for now.

He conceded defeat and will resign as leader of the party, but said he'll remain in parliament as a lawmaker.

Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, as Harper's Conservatives will now officially be designated, have 99 seats.As the crowd chanted his name, Trudeau said the Liberals won because "we listened.""We beat fear with hope, we beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together," he said. "Most of all we defeated the idea that Canadians should be satisfied with less, and that better isn't possible. My friends, this is Canada, where better is always possible."

The son of Pierre Trudeau and scion of Canada's first, nascent political dynasty, the 43-year-old surged into the lead in recent weeks, largely on the back of anti-Conservative sentiment that saw Harper's party lagging as Canadians went to the polls.Before the grueling, 78-day electioneering cycle began, many dismissed the younger Trudeau as trading off of his father's achievements and the famous family name. But pundits in Canada have praised his campaign and the way he has led the Liberals to what transpired to be a sweeping victory.

Mr Cameron said it was time to be "more assertive about our liberal values, more clear about the expectations we place on those who come to live here and build our country together and more creative and generous in the work we do to break down barriers".

He said: "It's our values that make this country what it is, and it's only by standing up for them assertively that they will endure.

In Britain, men are not frightened of women's success; it is celebrated proudly."

His choice for prime minister, Mr Cottarelli, an ex-IMF economist, appears to have failed to secure support from major political parties and may not even bother to be sworn in.

He appears to have suspended his own efforts to form an interim administration and could instead be giving Five Star and The League a second chance, says BBC Rome Correspondent James Reynolds.

Investors are once again worried about the stability of the eurozone should Eurosceptic parties form the next government.

The costs of servicing Italy's debt have risen, but the BBC World Service economics correspondent, Andrew Walker, says we are not yet near the levels of financial stress that were evident in the peak of the eurozone financial crisis in 2011-12.

It follows criticism over the clarity of government advice to date.

The number of people who have died with coronavirus in the UK has now reached 1,019, with a further 260 deaths announced on Saturday.

There are now 17,089 confirmed cases in the UK.

In the letter being sent to 30 million households at an anticipated cost of £5.8m, Mr Johnson writes: "From the start, we have sought to put in the right measures at the right time.

In his letter, Mr Johnson describes the pandemic as a "moment of national emergency", urging the public to stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives.

He also praises the work of doctors, nurses and other carers as well as well as the hundreds of thousands of people who have volunteered to help the most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, new powers, including fines of up to £5,000, to enforce guidelines on people staying at home and businesses staying closed came into force in Northern Ireland on Saturday evening.

The maximum fine will be reserved for businesses but individuals could face a fine of up to £960 if they do not comply.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma also announced insolvency rules would be changed to allow firms greater flexibility as they faced the coronavirus crisis.

He said a range of measures to boost the supply of personal protective equipment, such as face masks, to protect frontline NHS staff, were also being introduced.

Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, is self-isolating after he developed coronavirus symptoms. He is said to be experiencing mild symptoms but has not been tested for Covid-19

The government’s crisis communications strategy could not be going worse if it was being led by the last speaker of a dead language, with Typhoid Mary on bass. People are still clearly extremely confused by what the advice is. Never have bullet points been more called for, and you’d think someone as obsessed with the second world war as Johnson is would know that an effective Ministry of Information was inextricably linked to the success of the war effort.

Of course, we are not the only nation to be conducting an interesting social experiment to determine what happens if you elect a clinical narcissist to run a country which later turns out to be facing grave danger. At this stage, the US’s experiment appears to be going rather worse, and you certainly wouldn’t rule out Donald Trump judging November’s elections to be something that had better be suspended under the circumstances.

That the music should stop when Boris Johnson of all people is prime minister is the darkest of cosmic ironies. We are being asked to put our trust – our lives – in the hands of a man whose entire career, journalistic and political, has been built on a series of lies. It is the work of seconds to dredge up Johnson columns about radical population control, or Johnson buses about the NHS enjoying vast savings from the EU. Who knows which of these, if any, he ever really believed

Politicians, scientists and commentators greeted the prime minister’s U-turn on Monday night, when he ordered a UK-wide lockdown, as a belated but welcome decision to join the rest of Europe, and much of the world, in a necessary strategy.

The mystery is why it took so long

Last week Ireland, which shares a land border with the UK, struggled to understand Downing Street’s hesitation. “Boris Johnson is gambling with the health of his citizens,” said the Irish Times.

“The Brits were doing their own thing and it looked like we were going to have to live with it. They got there in the end.”

It was a variation of an observation attributed to Winston Churchill about America doing the right thing after exhausting all other options.

Foreign observers had become accustomed to Johnson’s breezy pronouncements on Britain steering its own course during Brexit showdowns last year but they winced at hearing the same tone in the context of a global health emergency.

Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, the city hardest hit by Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, flew his two daughters out of the UK, deeming them safer at home.

“When I saw what the English government was thinking about this problem, I decided to bring them back, because I think that even if we are at the centre of the epidemic, probably they are more secure here than in England, because I don’t understand why the government didn’t decide in time to protect their citizens,” he told Sky News.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is adamant that New Zealand will complete four weeks of lockdown — two full 14-day incubation cycles — before letting up. She has, however, given the Easter Bunny special dispensation to work this weekend.

this heavily tourism-reliant country — it gets about 4 million international visitors a year, almost as many as its total population — did the previously unthinkable: It shut its borders to foreigners March 19.

Two days later, Ardern delivered a televised address from her office — the first time since 1982 that an Oval Office-style speech had been given — announcing a coronavirus response alert plan involving four stages, with a full lockdown being Level 4.

A group of influential leaders got on the phone with her the following day to urge moving to Level 4.

“It’s inevitable that we will have to shut down anyway, so we would rather it be sharp and short.”

On March 23, a Monday, Ar­dern delivered another statement and gave the country 48 hours to prepare for a Level 4 lockdown. “We currently have 102 cases,” she said. “But so did Italy once.”

From that Wednesday night, everyone had to stay at home for four weeks unless they worked in an essential job, such as health care, or were going to the supermarket or exercising near their home.

From the earliest stages, Ar­dern and her team have spoken in simple language: Stay home. Don’t have contact with anyone outside your household “bubble.” Be kind. We’re all in this together.

there has been a sense of collective purpose. The police phone line for nonemergencies has been overwhelmed with people calling to “dob in,” as we say here, reporting others they think are breaching the rules.

The response has been notably apolitical. The center-right National Party has clearly made a decision not to criticize the government’s response — and in fact to help it.

After peaking at 89 on April 2, the daily number of new cases ticked down to 67 on Monday and 54 on Tuesday. The vast majority of cases can be linked to international travel, making contact tracing relatively easy, and many are consolidated into identifiable clusters.

The nascent slowdown reflected “a triumph of science and leadership,”

“Other countries have had a gradual ramp-up, but our approach is exactly the opposite,” he said. While other Western countries have tried to slow the disease and “flatten the curve,” New Zealand has tried to stamp it out entirely.

The government won’t be able to allow people free entry into New Zealand until the virus has stopped circulating globally or a vaccine has been developed

with strict border control, restrictions could be gradually relaxed, and life inside New Zealand could return to almost normal.

Ardern has said her government is considering mandatory quarantine for New Zealanders returning to the country post-lockdown. “I really want a watertight system at our border,”

Though experts say the move would cost billions of dollars and degrade the carriers’ capabilities, Trump has repeatedly returned to the topic in the years since, forcing Navy officials to put on their best game face in public pronouncements about the president’s off-the-wall comments.

A favorite object of Trump’s expertise remains the wall he is attempting to build along the southern border

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers have spent months constructing prototypes and convincing the commander in chief to abandon impractical, expensive and constantly changing demands.

During meetings to discuss hurricane response, the president has asked why the government doesn’t just drop a nuclear bomb on hurricanes before they make landfall. Despite the fact that nuking a hurricane would be banned by treaty, would spread radioactive fallout along the hurricane’s path and would do nothing to actually stop the storm, an administration official reportedly told the president, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”

he repeatedly pushed advisers to consider whether the United States could purchase Greenland from the government of Denmark. When news of his plan leaked and the Danish prime minister publicly responded that Greenland was not for sale, Trump publicly pouted by abruptly canceling a planned meeting with her.

Officials spend time and resources that should be directed toward addressing actual problems instead of studying Trump’s worst ideas and convincing him to back down.

We now have a Space Force, a new branch of the armed services that cost billions to establish and serves no discernible purpose that wasn’t already being handled elsewhere.

Trump’s obsession with the trappings of military pomp eventually got him the Fourth of July gathering he’d long sought, even if the tanks he wanted to parade down the Mall ended up merely parked there instead.

most concerning is the obvious issues these flights of fancy raise about Trump himself and his fitness for public office of any kind, let alone the presidency. Those questions have been apparent throughout his term, as when he claimed that windmills cause cancer (they don’t) or that the F-35 stealth fighter is literally invisible (it’s not)

The president of the United States has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. He believes he knows more than anyone in the room when in fact he knows less. He can’t admit a mistake, even when doing so would be the smartest way out of the holes he invariably digs for himself.

Those traits were harmful enough when the country was riding high on relative peace and prosperity. During a global pandemic and a disastrous economic downturn, they can prove catastrophic.

It's pitted the Sunni power, Saudi Arabia, against the Shia power, Iran - with both sides backing different players to wield influence.

But with this stunning resignation, many Lebanese will now fear that their country is firmly in the crosshairs of the two regional superpowers.

There APPEARS to be an investigation into Trump's business ties to Russia:

It took 18 days for the Trump White House to oust Flynn after being notified by the Justice Department that Flynn wasn't telling the truth about his conversations with Russia's ambassador:

Trump's day President Trump with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster at 10:30 am ET, while White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer holds his press briefing at 1:30 pm ET. Why the light schedule for Trump? NBC's Hallie Jackson notes that the president is doing prep for his upcoming overseas trip, which starts next Friday, per a senior White House official.

“Elections always offer the possibility of a new democratic beginning, an opportunity to embark on a new phase,” he said. “I trust that from now, Catalonia will enter a phase based on dialogue and not confrontation, in cooperation and not imposition, in plurality and not unilateralism.”

Many municipal and state health officials and lawmakers blame Bolsonaro's government for undermining their efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus. And the country's National Council of Health Secretaries (CONASS) has asked the federal government to adopt stricter measures to support hospitals and enforce social distancing.

"The health system in Brazil is on the verge of collapse," Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria told CNN's Becky Anderson during a recent interview. "There is no national coordination to combat the pandemic in Brazil. It would be important for the President and the governors to send the same message to the population, but this unfortunately, doesn't happen in Brazil.

He has made disobeying health guidance a point of pride, congratulating agricultural workers at an event last week for not staying home "like cowards."

"The emergence of new variants, which combine both the potential to be more transmissible and the absence of broad and articulated mitigation and suppression measures, are highly worrisome," the study's authors wrote, urging Brazil to encourage behaviors that limit the viral spread.

"The data showing the prevalence of this variant in several states and its ample spread throughout the country, as well as the challenges presented due to its high level of transmission, reinforce the immediate need to adopt non-pharmaceutical measures in order to reduce the speed or its spread and the increases in cases."

"This is what viruses do: They evolve, they get stronger. The only way to stop it is to contain its spread, which is why we need restrictive measures -- there is no other solution. Even if the Government decrees a national lockdown, we need the population to adhere. The action of each one of us will impact everyone as a whole," Naveca said.

Hope could be on its way, in the form of vaccines. But Brazil's vaccination rollout was slow in comparison to other countries, including others in the region, like Chile and Mexico.

Since then, roughly 4% of Brazil's 211 million citizens have received at least one vaccine dose, according to data from the Brazilian Health Ministry, and 2.3 million have had two doses.

"Pfizer says this very clearly on the contract, 'we are not responsible for any collateral side effects' - if you turn into an alligator it's your problem," Bolsonaro said in December. "If you become Superman, or grow a beard as a woman, or a man's voice becomes high pitched, they say they have nothing to do with that."

"I thank you for this meeting and we recognize Pfizer as a great world company," Bolsonaro said, during an excerpt of the meeting posted to his official Twitter account. "We would like to close these deals with you, even more given the aggressiveness of this virus in Brazil."

"The story in Brazil can be and will be repeated elsewhere if we stop implementing the measures as we need to implement them," he said. "Countries are going to lurch back into third and fourth surges if we're not careful."

"Unfortunately, I don't think we've learned our lesson," Molina said. "We [health workers] are tired, exhausted and are getting sick. We feel powerless. We need a more coordinated action if we're going to keep this from happening again.

When McKerrow learned the names of his coworkers who had been killed, he felt his life had irrevocably changed: "I had one of those moments—and it wasn't the first time I'd had at that day—where I could see the demarking line between my old life and my new life."

To report on the aftermath of the shooting, Hutzell had immediate practical issues to address. The office was a crime scene, so the staff operated out of a cramped college newsroom for months.

Despite these obstacles, in the two years since the shooting, the Capital Gazette staff have done what they vowed to do: put out a damn paper, every day.

Democrats effectively succeeded in running out the clock on this year's legislative session by depriving the Republicans of a quorum needed to pass the bill in a late-night session

Among other steps, the bill makes mail-in voting more difficult, bans after-hours and drive-through voting that helped Black and Latino voters in the Houston area cast their ballots in 2020. It prohibits early voting on Sundays -- a popular practice for Black churches -- before 1 pm and makes it easier to overturn an election.

"When you are pushed to extremes you respond to that with extreme(s)," Moody said on CNN's "New Day" on Monday.

Some Democrats may see hope in the fact that Manchin was angry and disappointed that Republicans used the filibuster to kill off the bipartisan January 6 commission. But he has so far given no indication that he will temper his desire for bipartisan action.

More evidence of Republican efforts to build on Trump's election fraud lies are causing some Democrats to wonder how much longer it will be politically feasible for Biden to pursue deals with a Republican Party that appears bent on locking them out of power.

"Let's be clear. If 10 Republican Senators cannot even vote for a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection, 10 Republican Senators will not vote for anything meaningful to improve the lives of the American people. We must abolish the filibuster & act now," Sanders wrote.

If the infrastructure deal fails, that event may come to be seen as the moment when a more partisan White House approach became inevitable.

Missing from the rollout was a plan to cancel student debt, which disproportionately affects Black students, or address the issue of reparations, federal repayments that relatives of Tulsa victims say could restore what was erased. White House officials have said that, as with the broader issue of reparations for Black Americans, the president supports a study of the issue.

Mr. Biden’s visit to Tulsa was a somber one. Before he delivered remarks, Mr. Biden met privately with survivors of the massacre, each between the ages of 101 and 107, whom he mentioned throughout his speech.

The massacre was sparked by the arrest of Dick Rowland, 19, a Black shoe shiner who was accused of assault against Sarah Page, 17, a white elevator operator. As he toured the Greenwood Culture Center, the president was told that within 24 hours of that encounter, the mob that formed in the wake of Mr. Rowland’s arrest destroyed much of Greenwood. The case was later dismissed.

But the political response to the recent killings remains uncertain. Mr. Biden had vowed to secure passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act by May 25, the first anniversary of Mr. Floyd’s death. The bill would ban the use of chokeholds, impose restrictions on deadly force and make it easier to prosecute officers for wrongdoing. He missed that deadline, but lawmakers in both parties have expressed optimism that they will be able to reach a compromise on the legislation in the weeks ahead. Despite investigations, no one was ever convicted of crimes related to the Tulsa massacre. Mr. Biden has promised that his Justice Department will be a more active participant in helping to root out bias and bigotry in American police departments. The department has already begun “pattern or practice” investigations in Louisville, Ky., and Minneapolis, which are intended to examine excessive force, biased policing and other misconduct by officers.

President Biden said on Tuesday that he had directed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead Democrats in a sweeping legislative effort to protect voting rights, an issue that is critical to his legacy but one that sees little hope of success in a divided Senate.

Her foreign policy portfolio comes in addition to a host of other engagements, including, but not limited to: selling the American Rescue Plan, championing Mr. Biden’s infrastructure package, representing women in the work force, highlighting the Black maternal mortality rate, assisting small businesses, assessing water policy, promoting racial equity, combating vaccine hesitancy, and fighting for police reform.

Mr. Biden has focused on issues related to voting rights for much of his career, but he faces especially wrenching decisions when it comes to the voting rights legislation he has asked Ms. Harris to help shepherd through Congress.

Known as the For the People Act, the bill is the professed No. 1 priority of Democrats this year. It would overhaul the nation’s election system, rein in campaign donations and limit partisan gerrymandering. But after passing the House, it hit a wall of Republican opposition in the Senate.

One option for Democrats would be to ram the bill through on a partisan vote by further rolling back one of the foundations of Senate tradition, the filibuster. But at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, remains opposed to the idea, potentially scuttling it.

“I hear all the folks on TV saying ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’ ” Mr. Biden said. “Well, because Biden has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends,” a likely swipe at Mr. Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another moderate Democrat.

In March of 2020, for example, he forwarded a correspondence about the possible Covid-19 immunity of indigenous people harvesting guano (bat excrement), as well as an idea from a psychiatry professor about using the antibiotic minocycline to slow viral replication. He commented on an email from a Swedish psychiatrist, "There may be nothing to this, but we should at least be aware." And in April of that year, he told a persistent doctor with multiple ideas for possible antiviral agents, "You are not being ignored."

I find the emails about the funding of Fauci's agency particularly fascinating. Over the course of the messages, budget discussions transition from small funding increases to tremendous week-on-week growths in expenditures -- particularly when the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was empowered by Congress to dream bigger thanks to $1.532 billion in supplemental appropriations. To put a finer point on this group of emails: it was these bigger dreams and bigger trials that provided us with important answers and, ultimately, with the vaccines.

At other times, it feels like looking at the celebrity photos on the front pages of People magazine: "He felt that way, too?!"

Finally, in between the lines, we watch him manage this pandemic as a human. There are emails where he is clearly overwhelmed, forwarding media request after speaking request to his assistants at the Office of the Chief of Staff. (One has to wonder: who wouldn't be overwhelmed by this number of requests?)

There are emails where he is tremendously kind, thanking people for their service, telling staff to "stay well and safe" or complimenting folks on well-written papers and columns.

Again and again, he responds to concerned citizens, scientists and journalists with: "Thank you for your note." He pays attention both to people he knows -- apologetically telling Ralph Nader at 7 p.m. on a Sunday, "I receive over 1000 e-mails per day and even with staff screening, I do not see them for days." -- and to those he probably doesn't. There are times when he's funny, times when he's frustrated and times when he's clearly exhausted, admitting that he's simply too tired to make sense of something.

He is just like us -- or, at least, he's how most of us like to imagine ourselves to be, on our best days.