Daily News Roundup

Thursday, November 1

Barbra Streisand says she isn’t afraid of losing fans through her latest album, which contains songs attacking US President Donald Trump.

The Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Tony award-winning artist is preparing for the release of Walls, which features a title track protesting the president’s plan to build a barrier between the US and Mexico reports an AP report carried by the ABC.

An already released song from the record, Don’t Lie To Me, targets Mr Trump’s alleged falsehoods.

In an interview with The New York Times, Streisand, 76, said the album “probably will turn a lot of people off”.

She told the newspaper: “Truth has always worked for me, so to see the truth defiled every day is very, very painful for me. I only can do what I can do. I probably will turn a lot of people off.

“I can only be true to me as an artist and if people like it that’s great, and if they don’t, they don’t have to buy it or listen to it. But me in real life is more important than me as the artist. As a citizen, that’s the role.”

Streisand, one of the most successful performers of her era across music, film and theatre, avoided tackling politics for the majority of her career.

But she said she decided to take on Mr Trump because his policies and actions would keep her up at night.

She said: “I would lie awake at night with Trump’s outrages running through my head, and I had to do another album for Columbia Records, so I thought, why not make an album about what’s on my mind? And that became the title of the first song.”

Streisand, the star of films including Funny Girl, The Way We Were and the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, revealed if the Democrats do not take the House of Representatives during this month’s midterm elections, she may move to Canada.

She said: “I’ve been thinking about, do I want to move to Canada? I don’t know. I’m just so saddened by this thing happening to our country. It’s making me fat. I hear what he said now, and I have to go eat pancakes now, and pancakes are very fattening.”

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A childcare centre in the United States is under fire after a video surfaced showing preschoolers punching each other in what appeared to be a “fight club” organised by teachers.

St Louis television station KTVI-TV obtained video taken at Adventure Learning Centre in December 2016, which shows small boys wearing oversized green Incredible Hulk fists punching each other, including in the head.

At one point a teacher jumps up and down in apparent excitement.

The only person seen trying to break up the fight is another toddler, who is ignored.

Local police and Missouri state inspectors investigated at the time, but no charges were filed.

Both teachers were fired and the centre was allowed to remain open.

ABC America reported that one of the teachers told investigators the fight was to help kids with “stress release”.

The video was captured by the 10-year-old brother of one of the participants, who was in an adjoining room.

He sent the video to his mother, who called the centre’s director.

The director stopped the fighting and both teachers were fired.

The daycare centre’s cameras captured over 30 minutes of fighting, KTVI reported.

St Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office declined to prosecute.

A statement on Wednesday cited poor judgment by the adult supervisors but “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any laws were violated”.

Spokeswoman Susan Ryan said there was no evidence that any of the children were injured.

But in the lawsuit filed in January, one of the mothers said her son “continues to suffer injuries to his body, as well as mental anguish”.

Missouri state regulators increased inspections after the incident and follow-up visits found other violations, but nothing that merited closing the centre, KTVI reported.

A spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services did not respond to phone and email messages, while a representative at Adventure Learning Centre declined to comment.

The mothers of two of the children are suing.

The case goes to trial in December

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Human bone fragments that could belong to a 15-year-old girl who went missing more than 30 years ago in the Vatican have been found, leading the lawyer for the missing girl’s family to urge Italian prosecutors and the Vatican to release more details.

The discovery of the bone fragments were found in an annex of Holy See’s embassy in Rome on Tuesday (local time), which raised immediate speculation over whether they belong to Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee whose fate remains one of the Vatican’s most enduring mysteries.

The ABC said news agency ANSA reported that prosecutors were focusing on whether the remains could be linked either to Orlandi, who disappeared in June 22, 1983, or another 15-year-old girl, Mirella Gregori, who went missing a month earlier in Rome, on May 7, 1983.

Orlandi disappeared after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome.

“We are asking Rome prosecutors and the Holy See by what means the bones were found and how their discovery was placed in relation to the disappearances of Emanuela Orlandi and Mirella Gregori,” lawyer Laura Scro said, adding that the Vatican statement ‘”provides little information”.

The Vatican said human bone fragments were found this week during renovations of a room annexed to the embassy and that Italian forensic experts had been approached by prosecutors to determine the age and gender of the body, and a possible date of death.

Experts said say that could be determined within the next 10 days if adequate DNA was extracted from the fragments.

The Orlandi and Gregori disappearances have never been formally linked.

The Orlandi disappearance is by far the higher profile, with its Vatican links and many twists.

Over the years, her case has been linked to everything from the plot to kill St John Paul II to the financial scandal of the Vatican bank and Rome’s criminal underworld.

This daily news roundup has been curated with stories from ABC News.