UNITED KINGDOM
Millions must be immunized
The nation must vaccinate 2 million people a week to avoid a third wave of the COVID-19 outbreak, a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has said. The kingdom has had more than 71,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus and has recorded more than 2.3 million cases of COVID-19 infections as of late Monday, according to a Reuters tally. “The most stringent intervention scenario with tier 4 England-wide and schools closed during January and 2 million individuals vaccinated per week, is the only scenario we considered which reduces peak ICU burden below the levels seen during the first wave,” the study said.
GERMANY
Right-wing threat grows
The nation is facing a growing threat of attacks by right-wing militants who deny the existence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its health risks, a senior security official said on Monday. “The apocalyptic thinking of conspiracy myth supporters is mixing with right-wing extremism,” Burkhard Freier, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in North Rhine-Westphalia state, told Tagesspiegel newspaper. This means that coronavirus deniers could also opt for “terror as a consequence,” Freier said.
PHILIPPINES
Manila bans travelers
Manila is to ban travelers from 19 countries and territories until the middle of next month as a measure to keep out a new variant of COVID-19, the Department of Transportation said yesterday. The regulation is to be in effect from midnight yesterday to Jan. 15, and covers Filipinos and foreigners arriving from the “flagged countries,” the department told reporters in a group text message.
HONG KONG
Teen activist sentenced
A 19-year-old democracy advocate was yesterday sentenced to three months in prison for insulting China’s national flag and three months for unlawful assembly, but told that he would only serve four months behind bars. Tony Chung (鍾翰林), who led the now-disbanded Studentlocalism, was the first public political figure prosecuted under the territory’s National Security Law. He was convicted earlier this month for throwing the flag to the ground during scuffles outside Legislative Council in May last year. He is also awaiting trial on secession charges. Meanwhile, relatives of 10 people accused of fleeing the territory by speedboat in August yesterday said that they had been told their family members pleaded guilty during a trial in Shenzhen on Monday. They were told the Shenzhen court would deliver its verdicts today.
UNITED STATES
Cop fired for shooting death
A white police officer in Columbus, Ohio, was fired on Monday for fatally shooting an unarmed black man last week in what the city’s police chief deemed an “unreasonable use of deadly force.” The dismissal of Adam Coy, a 19-year veteran, followed the recommendation of Chief Thomas Quinlan, who concluded that Andre Hill, 47, was the victim of an act of “senseless violence” when he was gunned down on Tuesday last week. Hill was shot to death in the garage of a house where he had been staying as a guest. Quinlan also faulted Coy for failing to immediately render medical aid to Hill and for not activating his body-worn camera at the outset of the confrontation.
UNITED STATES
Georgia voter purge halted
A federal judge on Monday ordered two Georgia counties to reverse a decision removing thousands of voters from the rolls ahead of Tuesday next week’s runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate. The counties appear to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address data to invalidate registrations, the judge said. The bulk of the registrations that the counties sought to rescind, more than 4,000 of them, were in Muscogee County, which president-elect Joe Biden won in November, while 150 were from Ben Hill County, which President Donald Trump won, Politico reported.
AUSTRALIA
Pair rescued after long trek
A father and son have been rescued in Queensland’s outback after their car became bogged in floodwaters, forcing a 12-hour trek for help. A 10-year-old boy and his father were among a group whose car became stuck near Mount Isa on Sunday night, RACQ LifeFlight Rescue said. The three others in the group set off to get help, walking 50km to reach a police station on Monday night. A rescue helicopter found the father and son sitting on the roof of their car and they were flown to Mount Isa airport.
GERMANY
Mourning swan halts trains
A swan mourning the death of its companion on a railway track held up 23 trains for almost an hour and had to be removed by firefighters using special equipment, Kassel police said on Monday. Two swans had strayed onto the track area of the high-speed line between Kassel and Gottingen on Wednesday last week, and one died, likely after getting caught in the overhead power cables, they said. Its companion sat beside the body, resisting attempts by officials to lure it away and temporarily closing the line to traffic. The surviving swan was later released onto the Fulda River.
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where