Regional News

Starting April 24 France will order a strict 10-day quarantine for all travellers coming from Brazil in a bid to prevent the spread of a coronavirus variant first found in the South American county. Also, only people residing in France or holding a French or European Union passport will be allowed to fly to the country.

The same measures will also gradually be put in place by April 24 for people returning from Argentina, Chile and South Africa, where the presence of other coronavirus variants were detected, the prime minister's office said.

Over 3 million people have died from Covid-19 globally since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, though the true number is believed to be significantly higher due to overlooked and possible government concealed cases. The 2-million-death-mark was reached in January of 2021. There is now an average of 12,000 deaths per day.

On Saturday 17 April at 15:00 BST, starting with a minutes silence nationwide, the Ceremonial Funeral for his Royal Highness Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh was held.

In attendance were only 30 of the closest family members due to UK CoronaVirus restrictions.

HRH Prince Philip, 1921-2021. The grandfather of a nation.

The Czech Republic announced Saturday that it was expelling 18 Russian diplomats who it has identified as spies in a case related to a huge ammunition depot explosion in 2014.

"There is a reasonable suspicion that Russian secret agents of the GRU service were involved in the 2014 explosions of an ammunition dump in the Czech village of Vrbětice. The Czech Republic has consequently expelled 18 Russian diplomats.", wrote Prime Minister Andrej Babis on Twitter.

Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has been sentenced to one year in prison. The sentence was handed down on Friday. The reason is the media entrepreneur's role in the mass protests in the Chinese special administrative region, in which an estimated 1.7 million people took part in the summer of 2019. It is the first time Lai has been sentenced to prison.

China's economy has largely overcome the Covid-19 crisis and started the new year with record growth. According to the Beijing statistics office, the second-largest economy grew by 18.3 percent in the first three months compared to the first quarter of last year. This is the biggest jump since quarterly evaluations began a good 30 years ago.

The unusually strong growth can be explained by the fact that the Chinese economy slumped sharply last spring due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time, the world's most populous country came to an almost complete standstill for several weeks.

Liberal congressional Democrats unveiled a proposal Thursday to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court from nine to 13 — a move Republicans have blasted as "court-packing" and which has almost no chance of being voted on after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she "has no plans to bring it to the floor."

"We are not packing the Supreme Court, we are unpacking it," Jerrold Nadler said at a news conference in front of the Supreme Court.

The US has announced sanctions against Russian entities and expelled 10 Russian diplomats in response to a hacking attack and election interference.

President Joe Biden's executive order "sends a signal that the United States will impose costs in a strategic and economically impactful manner on Russia if it continues or escalates its destabilising international action," the White House said.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 1 million people have died from Covid-19 in Europe, the World Health Organization announced on Thursday.

The WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge warned that the situation remains "serious," with about 1.6 million new cases reported each week in the region.

Denmark has removed the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from its vaccination program, saying it is not needed because the country has already reached "such an advanced point" in its vaccine rollout.

The Danish Health Authority said studies had shown a higher than expected frequency of blood clots following doses, affecting about one in 40,000 people.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday the withdrawal of all United States troops from Afghanistan by September 11, after two decades of fighting militants. The US would miss a May deadline for a pull-out agreed with the Trump administration's Taliban last year.

"It's time to end this forever war," said Biden.

An Egyptian court ordered the vessel's Japanese owner, Shoei Kisen Kaisha, to pay $900 million in compensation due to losses inflicted when the Panamanian-flagged Ever Given prevented marine traffic from transiting through the vital global trade waterway.

Shoei Kisen Kaisha said insurance companies and lawyers were working on the compensation claim and refused to comment further.

UK Club, the protection and indemnity insurer for the Ever Given, said Tuesday that they had responded to a claim from the Suez Canal Authority for $916 million and questioned its basis.

The Federal Constitutional Court said that a policy to freeze rents in Berlin for the next five years to combat soaring living costs was unlawful in a ruling published on Thursday morning.

The capital’s “Mietendeckel” law or rent cap “violates the Basic Law and is thus ruled void”, the court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe said in a blow to millions of tenants.

France suspended all flights from Brazil on Tuesday amid mounting fears over the particularly contagious Covid variant that has been sweeping the South American country.

"We note that the situation is getting worse and so we have decided to suspend all flights between Brazil and France until further notice," Castex said, drawing scattered applause from lawmakers.

Castex noted that travelers from Brazil already needed to test negative for the virus before their departure and upon arrival in France, and also quarantine for 10 days.

Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith announced they would move production on their runaway slave thriller "Emancipation" out of Georgia in protest over the state's controversial new voting restrictions. This is the first film to pull its production out of the state because of the legislation.

“At this moment in time, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” said Smith and Fuqua in a joint statement Monday.

Johnson & Johnson has announced Tuesday it will "proactively delay the rollout of our vaccine in Europe" after six women in the US developed a rare disorder involving blood clots.

"The safety and well-being of the people who use our products is our number one priority. We are aware of an extremely rare disorder involving people with blood clots in combination with low platelets in a small number of individuals who have received our Covid-19 vaccine. The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are reviewing data involving six reported US cases out of more than 6.8 million doses administered. Out of an abundance of caution, the CDC and FDA have recommended a pause in the use of our vaccine," the company said. "In addition, we have been reviewing these cases with European health authorities. We have made the decision to proactively delay the rollout of our vaccine in Europe. We have been working closely with medical experts and health authorities, and we strongly support the open communication of this information to healthcare professionals and the public."

India's Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has approved use of Russia's Sputnik V Coronavirus vaccine. India is said to produce 750 million doses of the Russian vaccine.

"India, the world’s 2nd most populous nation, became the 60th country to register #SputnikV after positive results of local Phase 3 clinical study. Sputnik V is now authorized in 60 countries with a population of over 3 [billion] people," the Sputnik V official Twitter account wrote.

The federal government has said "emergency brake" measures to combat rising case numbers are legally mandated in all federal states, replacing a patchwork system. The change needs to be approved by the Bundestag.

If approved, the new system means that any region in any state with a high Covid-19 case incidence will be legally required to implement a uniform set of rules set out by the federal government.

The hard lockdown in Austria's capital of Vienna has been extended until at least May 1, Vienna Mayor Michael Ludwig announced on Monday. While Covid-19 infections have decreased in the past weeks, the city's hospitals are at capacity with a new record of 611 patients in the ICU as of Monday.

The measures include a 24-hour curfew, closure of all non-essential shops and mandatory FFP2 masks in all rooms where more than one person is present.

The leaders of Germany's biggest conservative party will support Armin Laschet to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor candidate at the next election.

CSU's Markus Söder told the party leadership meeting that he was against a hasty decision, and called for talks with the CDU at the end of the week.

North Korea will not attend the upcoming Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the North's Olympic Committee announced, saying it "decided not to participate in the 32nd Olympic Games during the general assembly to protect our athletes from the global health crisis situation related to the coronavirus as proposed by committee members."

The country, which has a history of no transparency, claims that it has not had any confirmed cases nor deaths related to Covid-19.

The French parliamentarians voted by a majority for a ban on domestic flights on routes that can be covered by train in less than two and a half hours. Flights from Paris to Lyon or Bordeaux could thus soon be a thing of the past.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire had already voiced such ideas in May 2020, when state aid for AirFrance-KLM was decided. The weekend's vote picks up on these plans and aims to help reduce CO₂ emissions permanently - even if the air travel industry picks up again after the global pandemic. The ban is part of a broader climate law that aims to reduce French carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

India reported 142,879 new daily cases on Sunday. This new trend makes the outbreak in the country the fastest growing outbreak worldwide. The country is experiencing a vaccine shortage, even though it's the world's largest manufacturer of Coronavirus vaccines.

A group of archaeologists led by Zahi Hawass have discovered a 3,000-year-old Egyptian city, named "The Rise of Aten." The city, which is the largest ancient city found, dates back to the reign of the ninth king of the 18th dynasty King Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from 1391 and 1353 BCE.

“Within weeks, to the team’s great surprise, formations of mud bricks began to appear in all directions,” Hawass said. “What they unearthed was the site of a large city in a good condition of preservation, with almost complete walls, and with rooms filled with tools of daily life.”

The closures would go into effect April 12, roughly a month after some 100 of the island's 858 public schools were authorized to reopen for the first time in a year amid the pandemic. The announcement was praised by some health experts, teachers and parents who worried about an increase in infections and had warned that reopening schools was a rushed decision. Health Secretary Carlos Mellado said that while no COVID-19 breakouts were identified at any of the schools, the move is necessary given the recent spike in cases.

French President Emmanuel Macron is closing the elite French university École Nationale d'Administration, or Ena for short, as he announced on Thursday. The elite cadre school is to be replaced by the Institute of Public Service (ISP).

The aim of the reform is to make the French civil service "more efficient, more transparent and more benevolent", according to sources close to the president. In addition, more young people from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds are to be recruited for the civil service. The "social lift" works "less well today than it did 50 years ago", Macron had complained at the beginning of this year.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday that the B.1.1.7 Covid-19 variant is now the most common strain in the United States.

"Based on our most recent estimates from CDC surveillance, the B.1.1.7 variant is now the most common lineage circulating in the United States," Walensky said

The Kremlin has threatened military intervention in eastern Ukraine. In the event of a flare-up of fighting, Russia will not stand idly by and watch a possible "human catastrophe", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Interfax agency.

Russia will take measures to protect its citizens, he added. Peskov also said there was a concentration of Russian troops in the region because the country's security was at stake.

Alexander Van der Bellen, the president of Austria, has received his first dose of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine on Friday, he announced on Twitter, adding it was "just a little prick".

"I hope there will soon be enough vaccine so that everyone who wants to can get vaccinated. Because every vaccination counts and is a contribution to normalization - so that we can hopefully soon meet again without worrying, sit together and chat," he added.

The prominent activist Nathan Law left the country nine months ago because he faces political persecution in Hong Kong, Now he has been granted political asylum in Britain.

The 27-year-old former opposition MP reported on Twitter that his application had been approved after four months of consideration. "The fact that I am being sought under the National Security Act shows that I face severe political persecution and am unlikely to be able to return to Hong Kong without risk."