DAILY NEWS AND UPDATES

China launches Mars probe in space race with US                        China launched a rover to Mars on Thursday, a journey coinciding with a similar US mission as the powers take their rivalry into deep space. The two countries are taking advantage of a period when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned for a short journey, with the US spacecraft due to lift off on July 30. It is a crowded field. The United Arab Emirates launched a probe on Monday that will orbit Mars once it reaches the Red Planet.   But the race to watch is between the United States and China, which has worked furiously to try and match Washington's supremacy in space. The Chinese mission is named Tianwen-1 ("Questions to Heaven") in a nod to a classical poem that has verses about the cosmos. It launched on a Long March 5 -- China's biggest space rocket -- from the southern island of Hainan. Chinese authorities have yet to confirm the success of the lau...

Why did the UK ban Huawei 5G and what will it cost? The British government has banned Chinese telecom giant Huawei from its 5G network. Culture secretary Oliver Dowden told the House of Commons that UK mobile providers will be prevented from buying Huawei 5G equipment after December 31 under a revised telecommunications bill that the government will table for a vote in the fall. Dowden also announced that providers with Huawei kit in their networks must remove it by 2027. This decision has been weeks in the making, and will likely further damage the relationship between London and Beijing, although Washington is likely celebrating it. Acknowledging the geopolitical nature of this decision, Dowden said that the UK wants “a modern and mature relationship with China based on mutual respect.” (The UK also seeks a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.) Initial responses from anti-Huawei British lawmakers have been critical, and Beijing is likely to retaliate. Why did the UK ban Huawei? Huawei...

Johnson says Britain was not influenced by Russia in Brexit vote LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson rejected on Wednesday any suggestion that Britain's vote to leave the European Union had been influenced by Russian interference. A day after a report by parliament's intelligence and security committee said the government had failed to try to find out whether Russia had meddled in the Brexit vote, Johnson's government doubled down on its refusal to launch a review. Instead, the government said it had taken measures since the review, which was completed in March last year, and would bring forward legislation to counter "hostile state activity" to deal more effectively with the espionage threat. "The people of this country didn't vote to leave the EU because of pressure from Russia or Russian interference - they voted because they wanted to take back control," Johnson told parliament, describing the criticism as being led by those lawmakers...

Joe Biden says Trump is 'first racist president' of US - despite slave-owning predecessors            Joe Biden called Donald Trump the “first” racist elected as United States president, despite several owning slaves. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s comments on Wednesday came during an online campaign event organised by the Service Employees International Union, when one participant complained about Mr Trump’s alleged racism over Covid-19. Mr Biden then blasted Mr Trump over “his spread of racism,” citing his use of phrases such as “the China virus” to decribe coronavirus. “The way he deals with people based on the colour of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening,” said Mr Biden. “No sitting president has ever done this.” “Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president,” he continued. “We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed. They’ve tried to get elected president....

Leo Messi ‘assessing’ his situation at Barcelona after La Liga struggles Leo Messi is assessing his future with Barcelona, according to veteran Spanish football journalist Graham Hunter. The Argentine has been linked with a shock move away from the Catalan club, which has gone through a few difficult years both domestically and in Europe. Messi was highly critical of his club after they were dethroned as La Liga champions by rivals Real Madrid. The disappointment followed shock Champions League exits to the like of Liverpool in dramatic circumstances in recent years. Messi, who labelled Barcelona ‘weak’, have failed to kick on since the appointment of Quique Setien. ‘ He pointed his finger really strongly at the management of the team and management of the club,’ said Hunter to Off The Ball. ‘He said there needs to be global self-criticism, meaning everybody at the club needs to look at their performance. ‘He knows absolutely clearly that there aren’t enough high-quality players or hig...

Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly Gush Over Their Instant Connection in First Joint Interview  Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly were meant to be -- at least in Fox's eyes. The couple give their first joint interview on Wednesday's upcoming episode of Lala Kent and Randall Emmett's podcast,  Give Them Lala ... With Randall.  Fox and Kelly, whose real name is Colson Baker, met on the set of their upcoming movie,  Midnight in the Switchgrass , which Emmett directed. As Fox recalls, she signed on to the movie before Kelly was cast -- but once she found out they would be co-stars, she knew "something was going to come from that."  "I was like, 'Who is going to play this role?' And he was like, 'Oh, we just got Machine Gun Kelly,' and immediately, I was like, 'Uh oh,'" Fox remembers.  "Really?" Emmett asks the actress.  "Yeah, because I knew -- I could feel that some wild s**t was going to happen to me from that meeting, but...

Fossil fuels are getting a big boost in pandemic stimulus packages  With governments spending trillions of dollars to prop up the global economy, they could have grabbed the opportunity to accelerate the transition to clean energy. Countries could have prioritized stimulus funding for, say, energy efficient building retrofits over coal-fired power plants. But so far, like after the 2008 financial crisis, recovery packages have significantly favored fossil fuels. Across the G20 countries, for every dollar of stimulus funding committed to clean energy, $1.50 goes to airlines, oil companies, and other fossil fuel-reliant industries, according to a new dataset of stimulus measures compiled by more than a dozen climate research outfits. The analysis provides the most detailed picture yet of how far off-track the world is from a green recovery, by looking at the strings attached to individual funding streams. Unconditional fossil fuel funding has no strings; conditional means access to t...