Month: December 2020

Several European Union countries began vaccinating against COVID-19 Sunday.In Italy, a nurse, a university professor and a doctor were the first people to receive the initial vaccine dose at Rome’s Lazzaro Spallanzani hospital.In Spain, the vaccination began at Los Olmos nursing home in Guadalajara.In the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was among the first people inoculated, as vaccinations began nationwide.In Germany Saturday, 101-year-old Edith Kwoizalla, who lives in a retirement home, received the first of her two shots.In Hungary, it was a doctor, Arienne Kertesz from South Pest.In Slovakia, an infectious disease specialist was the first in line.The first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were limited to 10,000 doses in most EU countries. Each nation decides its own vaccination program, but all are vaccinating the most vulnerable first.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called it “a touching moment of unity” in a video celebrating the beginning of the rollout of the vaccine to nearly 450 million people.The vaccination in EU countries began as a new coronavirus variant, more contagious and more dangerous, spread internationally, adding emphasis to the World Health Organization’s warning that the current pandemic will not be the last.The warning came in a video message on Sunday by WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.The world must learn from COVID-19 and address “the intimate links between the health of humans, animals and the planet,” Tedros said in his remarks for the first International Day of Epidemic Preparedness.“For too long the world has operated on a cycle of panic and neglect,” he said. “We throw money at one epidemic and when it’s over, we forget about it and do nothing to prevent the next one.”Tedros said every country needs to invest in what he called the supply of care: the ability to avoid, detect and mitigate all kinds of emergencies.The new virus strain is 50% to 74% more contagious than its predecessors, according to a study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, raising fears of more hospitalizations and deaths in 2021 than in 2020.Effective Monday, U.S. authorities said passengers arriving from Britain must test negative for COVID-19 before departure. 
…

Italians began to receive COVID-19 vaccines Sunday after the first batch of nearly 10,000 doses arrived. Italians hope that the massive vaccination campaign will soon bring an end to lockdowns and return them to their normal lives.A 29-year-old nurse was the first to receive the vaccine at Rome’s Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases. Health workers at hospitals across the country were next.The government’s plan is for health staff and workers and elderly residents in nursing homes to be the first in line. Those over 80 will follow, then 60- to 70-year-olds, and those who suffer from chronic illnesses.Next will be the general population, starting with school staff, police forces and prison workers. With more than 50% of Italians now saying that they will get inoculated, and that number on the rise, the hope is that in nine months, Italy will reach herd immunity with 70% of the population vaccinated, a total of 42 million people.The country’s first allocated 9,750 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrived at the Salvo D’Acquisto military base late on Christmas night.  A van with the first batch of vaccines was escorted by police cars to the Spallanzani hospital in Rome.Italian soldiers loaded other boxes of the vaccine onto military cargo planes for distribution all over the country. Five planes took off from the military base of Pratica di Mare, near Rome.Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s special commissioner for the COVID-19 emergency, said that with the arrival of the first batch of the vaccine, Sunday would be a symbolic and emotional day.Arcuri said the first doses arrived after a long night. He said Italians are seeing the first ray of light, but the road is still a long one before day arrives. It is important, he added, for this symbolic vaccination to begin and this campaign will continue over the next months to lead the country out of this emergency.Italy is planning to set up pavilions in its artistic squares to dispense vaccines. The primrose-shaped pavilions were designed by architect Stefano Boeri who said his team had picked the flower, which heralds the arrival of spring, as the symbol of the campaign, whose slogan is “Italy is reborn with a flower.”There will be around 300 distribution sites in Italy, rising to 1,500 once the vaccination campaign is at its peak.Boeri, famous for designing Milan’s Vertical Forest skyscraper, said the pavilions would be powered with solar energy and built with recyclable materials such as timber and fabric. He did not charge for his work.More than 71,000 people have died in Italy since the start of the outbreak in February.
…

A fast-food eatery at Pompeii has been excavated, helping to reveal dishes that were popular for the citizens of the ancient Roman city who were partial to eating out.Pompeii Archaeological Park’s longtime chief, Massimo Osanna, said Saturday that while about 80 such fast-foods spots have been found at Pompeii, it is the first time such a hot-food-drink eatery — known as a thermopolium — was completely unearthed.A segment of the fast-food counter was partially dug up in 2019 during work to shore up Pompeii’s oft-crumbling ruins. Since then, archaeologists kept digging, revealing a multisided counter, with typical wide holes inserted into its top. The countertop held deep vessels for hot foods, not unlike soup containers nestled into modern-day salad bars.Plant and animal specialists are still analyzing remains from the site, with its counter frescoed with a figure of an undersea nymph astride a horse. Images of two upside-down mallards and a rooster, whose plumage was painted with the typical vivid color known as Pompeiian red, also brightened the eatery and likely served to advertise the menu.Another fresco depicted a dog on a leash, perhaps not unlike modern reminders to leash pets. Vulgar graffiti were inscribed on the painting’s frame.A fresco depicting two ducks and a rooster on an ancient counter discovered during excavations in Pompeii, Italy, is seen in this handout picture released Dec. 26, 2020.Valeria Amoretti, a Pompeii staff anthropologist, said “initial analyses confirm how the painted images represent, at least in part, the foods and beverages effectively sold inside.” Her statement noted that duck bone fragment was found in one of the containers, along with remains from goats, pigs, fish and snails. At the bottom of a wine container were traces of ground fava beans, which in ancient times were added to wine for flavor and to lighten its color, Amoretti said.”We know what they were eating that day,” said Osanna, referring to the day of Pompeii’s destruction in 79 A.D. The food remains indicated “what’s popular with the common folk,” Osanna told Rai state TV, noting that street-food places weren’t frequented by the Roman elite.One surprise find was the complete skeleton of a dog. The discovery intrigued the excavators, since it wasn’t a “large, muscular dog like that painted on the counter but of an extremely small example” of an adult dog, whose height at shoulder level was 20 to 25 centimeters, Amoretti said. It’s rather rare, Amoretti said, to find remains from ancient times of such small dogs, discoveries that “attest to selective breeding in the Roman epoch to obtain this result.”Also unearthed were a bronze ladle, nine amphorae, which were popular food containers in Roman times, a couple of flasks and a ceramic oil container.Successful restaurateurs know that a good location can be crucial, and the operator of this ancient fast-food eatery seemed to have found a good spot. Osanna noted that right outside was a small square with a fountain, with another thermopolium in the vicinity.Pompeii was destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which is near present-day Naples. Much of the ancient city still lies unexcavated. The site is one of Italy’s most popular tourist attractions.Human remains were also discovered in the excavation of the eatery.Those bones were apparently disturbed in the 17th century during clandestine excavations by thieves looking for valuables, Pompeii authorities said. Some of the bones belonged to a man, who, when the Vesuvius volcano erupted, appeared to have been lying on a bed or a cot, since nails and pieces of wood were found under his body, authorities said. Other human remains were found inside one of the counter’s vessels, possibly placed there by those excavators centuries ago.
…

Italy reported 261 coronavirus-related deaths Saturday against 459 the day before, the health ministry said.The daily tally of new infections increased by 10,407 from 19,037 the day before, taking the total number of cases since Italy’s epidemic began to 2,010,037. Heath Agency: British Coronavirus Variant Found in Traveler to SwedenHealth Agency official Sara Byfors told a news conference the traveler, who was not identified, had kept isolated after arrival to Sweden and that no further positive cases had so far been detectedItaly Thursday became the eighth country in the world to exceed 2 million officially recorded cases.
 
The number of swab tests carried out in the past day was 81,285 from a previous 152,334, the health ministry said. The first Western country hit by the virus, Italy has reported 70,909 deaths since its outbreak came to light on February 21, the highest toll in Europe and the fifth highest in the world.
 
Patients in hospital with COVID-19 stood at 23,304, down by 98 from the day before.
 
The current number of intensive care patients decreased by two to 2,582, reflecting those who died or were discharged after recovery.
 
When Italy’s second wave of the epidemic was accelerating fast in the first half of November, hospital admissions were rising by about 1,000 per day, while intensive care occupancy was increasing by about 100 per day.
…

Hundreds of migrants were stranded Saturday in a squalid, burned-out tent camp in Bosnia as heavy snow fell in the country and winter temperatures suddenly dropped.Migrants at the Lipa camp in northwest Bosnia wrapped themselves in blankets and sleeping bags to protect against the biting winds in the region, which borders European Union member Croatia.A fire earlier this week destroyed much of the camp near the town of Bihac. The camp had been harshly criticized by international officials and aid groups as being inadequate for housing refugees and migrants.Despite the fire, Bosnian authorities have failed to find new accommodations for the migrants at Lipa, leaving about 1,000 people stuck in the cold, with no facilities or heat, eating only meager food parcels provided by aid groups.Migrants sit in a temporary shelter at the Lipa camp northwestern Bosnia, Dec. 26, 2020. Hundreds of migrants are stranded in a burned-out, squalid camp in Bosnia as heavy snow fell in the country and temperatures dropped.”Snow has fallen, subzero temperatures, no heating, nothing,” the International Organization for Migration’s chief of mission in Bosnia, Peter Van Der Auweraert, tweeted. “This is not how anyone should live. We need political bravery and action now.”Bosnia has become a bottleneck for thousands of migrants hoping to reach Western Europe. Most are stuck in Bosnia’s northwest Krajina region as other areas in the ethnically divided nation have refused to accept them. The EU has warned Bosnia that thousands of migrants face a freezing winter without shelter, and it has urged the country’s bickering politicians to set aside their differences and take action.’Living like animals’On Saturday, migrants crowded at the camp to receive water and food provided by Bosnia’s Red Cross as police sought to maintain order. Some migrants wore face shields to protect them from coronavirus.”We are living like animals. Even animals are living better than us!” said a man from Pakistan who identified himself only by his first name, Kasim. “If they not help us, we will die, so please help us.”A migrant wraps himself in a blanket while walking through the snow at the Lipa camp northwestern Bosnia, near the border with Croatia, Dec. 26, 2020.Plans to relocate the migrants temporarily to a closed facility in central Bihac have prompted protests by residents.Left without a solution, migrants put down cardboard on the floor and set up improvised barriers for privacy inside the only standing tent at the Lipa camp. Some people held their wet feet above the small fires that migrants lit outside to warm up, while others wrapped up tightly in blankets for warmth. Many migrants were wearing sneakers despite the snow.To get to Croatia, migrants often use illegal routes over a mountainous area along the border. Many have complained of violence and pushbacks by the Croatian police.
…

A wave of COVID-19 has engulfed prisons in Belarus that are packed with people in custody for demonstrating against the nation’s authoritarian president, and some of the protesters who contracted the coronavirus while incarcerated accuse authorities of neglecting or even encouraging infections.Activists who spoke to The Associated Press after their release described massively overcrowded cells without proper ventilation or basic amenities and a lack of medical treatment.Kastus Lisetsky, 35, a musician who received a 15-day sentence for attending a protest, said he was hospitalized with a high fever after eight days at a prison in eastern Belarus and diagnosed with double pneumonia induced by COVID-19.FILE – Kastus Lisetsky is pictured in Minsk, Belarus, Dec. 18, 2020. Lisetsky, 35, who was sentenced to 15 days in prison for attending a protest, was hospitalized with a high fever after eight days in custody and was diagnosed with double pneumonia.”Humid walls covered by parasites, the shocking lack of sanitary measures, shivering cold and a rusting bed — that was what I got in prison in Mogilev instead of medical assistance,” Lisetsky told the AP in a telephone interview. “I had a fever and lost consciousness, and the guards had to call an ambulance.”Lisetsky said that before he entered prison, he and three bandmates were held in a Minsk jail and had to sleep on the floor of a cell intended for only two people. All four have contracted the virus. Lisetsky must return to prison to serve the remaining seven days of his sentence after he’s discharged from the hospital.He accused the government of allowing the virus to run wild among those jailed for political reasons.”The guards say openly that they do it deliberately on orders,” Lisetsky said.Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko dismissed the coronavirus early during the pandemic, rejecting the fear and national lockdowns the new bug had caused as “psychosis” and advising citizens to avoid catching it by driving tractors in the field, drinking vodka and visiting saunas. His attitude has angered many Belarusians, adding to the public dismay over his authoritarian style and helping fuel the post-election protests.30,000 detainedMore than 30,000 people have been detained for taking part in protests against Lukashenko’s August reelection in a vote that opposition activists and some election workers say was rigged to give Lukashenko a sixth term.Police have repeatedly broken up peaceful protests with clubs and stun grenades. The alleged vote-rigging and the brutal crackdown on demonstrations have prompted the United States and the European Union to introduce sanctions against Belarusian officials.FILE – Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya holds a picture of Belarusian opposition activist Nina Baginskaya as she speaks during the Sakharov Prize ceremony at the European Parliament in Brussels, Dec. 16, 2020.Opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who placed second in the presidential election and was forced to leave the country after she challenged the official results giving Lukashenko 80% of the vote, urged foreign leaders and international organizations to intervene to help stem the coronavirus outbreak in Belarus’ prisons.”In the center of Europe, inmates are being deliberately infected with coronavirus,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press. “They move the infected people from one cell to another, and the cells are overcrowded and lack ventilation. It’s an atrocity. It can only be assessed as abuse and torture.”Thousands infectedAuthorities haven’t released the number of prisoners with COVID-19, but rights activists say that thousands of protesters tested positive after they were detained.”The horrible condition of Belarus’ penitentiary system has contributed to an outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons, but the authorities haven’t even tried to improve the situation and have put thousands of activists on that conveyer,” Valiantsin Stefanovic, vice chairman of the Viasna rights center, said.FILE – Protesters carry a wounded man during clashes with police after the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 10, 2020. A wave of COVID-19 has spread through Belarusian jails packed with people imprisoned for taking part in protests.Journalist Artsiom Liava, 44, said he got infected last month while awaiting a court hearing in a jail cell intended to accommodate 10 but housing about 100 inmates. Liava was detained while he was covering a protest in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, for the independent Belsat TV channel.”First, fellow inmates and then me stopped feeling the prison stench,” he told The Associated Press. “All of us had a fever, strong cough and were feeling feeble, but they weren’t giving us even hot water.”Liava said that after receiving a 15-day sentence, he was moved to different jails and prisons in Minsk and nearby towns as authorities struggled to house inmates in overcrowded detention facilities. He said he witnessed similar conditions in all of them — cellmates coughing or experiencing difficulty breathing, and prison wardens neglecting them.”It was like a mockery. Doctors weren’t responding to pleas and complaints,” Liava said. “It was forbidden to lie down during daytime and mattresses were folded up. We all felt exhausted, but we were forced to stay seated on iron beds in the basement without any access to fresh air.”The journalist said he didn’t get a single dose of medicine during his stint behind bars. The day after he left prison, Liava said, he tested positive for COVID-19, and a CT scan showed that his lungs were badly affected.”Prison doctors should be prosecuted for negligence. They put our lives in danger by refusing us [basic] medical treatment,” said Liava, who had a strong cough and was breathing with difficulty while speaking to the AP.FILE – A man wearing a face mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus holds an old Belarusian national flag during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Nov. 22, 2020.180,000 casesBelarus has reported more than 180,000 confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, but many in the ex-Soviet republic of 9.4 million people suspect authorities of manipulating statistics to hide the true scope of the country’s outbreaks.Ihar Hotsin, a doctor working at a top oncology hospital in Minsk, was detained when he joined a rally of medical workers opposing the crackdown on demonstrations. He said he and four of his colleagues who were arrested all contracted the virus in custody.Hotsin, 30, believes he got infected at the prison in the city of Baranovichi where he was held in a 12-square-meter (129-square-foot) cell with about 80 other inmates.”Five doctors from our hospital were detained, and all five tested positive for COVID-19 after being released,” Hotsin said. “We must cry out loud about an outbreak of COVID-19 in jails overcrowded with political prisoners.”
…

The new variant of the coronavirus circulating in Britain has been detected in Sweden after a traveler from Britain fell ill on arrival and tested positive for it, the Swedish Health Agency said on Saturday. Health Agency official Sara Byfors told a news conference the traveler, who was not identified, had kept isolated after arrival to Sweden and that no further positive cases had so far been detected.
 
The new variant is thought to be more transmissible than others currently circulating.
 
Sweden imposed travel restrictions earlier this month on passengers from Britain amid concerns over the variant. Similar measures have been taken by several other countries in the EU and across the world.
…

George Blake, who died Saturday in Moscow aged 98, was a British Cold War spy and Soviet double agent who spent half his life in Russia after dramatically escaping jail in London.The last surviving member of a notorious generation of British defectors, Blake was seen as one of the West’s most damaging traitors and claimed to have betrayed hundreds of agents to the KGB.   The bearded spy, however, trod a very different path to becoming a Soviet agent than that taken by the establishment insiders of the infamous Cambridge spy ring: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Anthony Burgess, all recruited while at the British city’s prestigious university.Born George Behar in the Netherlands in 1922 to a Dutch mother and Egyptian Jewish father, who was a British subject, he led a peripatetic youth that took him through Cairo and into the Dutch World War II resistance before joining Britain’s MI6.  Ex-British Double Agent Says Russian Spies Must Save World

        A former British intelligence officer who once worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union said Russian spies now have "the difficult and critical mission" of saving the world, according to a statement released Friday.

George Blake has lived in Russia since his escape from a British prison in 1966.

Conversion to communism  Blake — a practicing Calvinist Protestant — said he willingly offered to work for the KGB after witnessing the bombing of innocent civilians by U.S. forces during the Korean war, when he spent a harrowing period as a North Korean captive.”I viewed communism as an attempt to create the kingdom of God in this world. The communists were trying to do by action what the church had tried to achieve by prayer,” Blake told one interviewer.”I came to the conclusion I was no longer fighting on the right side.”After returning to London from captivity, Blake’s first major coup for his new handlers was the exposure of a secret tunnel to spy on Soviet communications in East Berlin.At the same time as he was becoming enmeshed ever deeper in his perilous work, handing over troves of secret information to the Russians, he married a woman named Gillian, who knew nothing of his double life, and they went on to have three sons. Soon he moved to Berlin where he claimed to have betrayed all of the “maybe 500, 600” agents operating for the British in Germany. Later Blake repeatedly denied accusations that those he gave up were executed by the Soviet secret police. “I said to them I will only give you this information if you can assure me these people will not be executed,” he said.Escape to the USSR  Eventually, however, the tide turned on the traitor and the net finally closed when information from a turncoat Polish intelligence officer unmasked Blake.Summoned to London for questioning, he admitted that he was a Soviet agent and was sentenced at a closed trial in 1961 to an unprecedented 42 years in prison. But just five years into his sentence in 1966, Blake clambered up a rope ladder and over the wall of London’s high-security Wormwood Scrubs jail to freedom with the help of an Irish petty thief and two anti-nuclear campaigners whom he had met inside. Smuggled by his co-conspirators to the border with East Germany, he walked across the Iron Curtain and turned his back on the West for the last time. In Moscow, Blake was celebrated as a hero with a string of medals and the rank of colonel from the KGB, and a flat in the center of the Soviet capital. He married a Russian woman Ida after his first wife divorced him and had one son with her. Eventually he was also reconciled with his British children.Blake, however, came to realize that communism in Russia did not live up to his hopes and he watched the system — and finally the Soviet Union — disintegrate. Disappointment  “One of the main things, which to me was a disappointment, was that I believed that a new man was born here,” he told The Times newspaper. “I realized very quickly that this was not so. They were just ordinary people like everyone else and that the same human passions, and greed and ambitions, which governed the lives of most people also governed their lives.”In 1990 he published his autobiography entitled “No Other Choice”.Blake lived out the final years in a wooden dacha on the edge of Moscow — with his eyesight and hearing failing, he seemed a relic of another era.While he kept his opinion of the rampant consumerism of modern Russia to himself, on his 90th birthday he was hailed by ex-KGB agent President Vladimir Putin as one of “a constellation of strong and courageous people, brilliant professionals.”In rare interviews, Blake insisted he had no regrets, despite the failure of the system that he dedicated his life to.”I think it is never wrong to give your life to a noble ideal, and to a noble experiment, even if it doesn’t succeed,” he said. 
…

France on Saturday received its first batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which were delivered to the Paris hospital pharmacy network.Inoculations are planned to begin in two nursing homes Sunday, the same day the rest of Europe is set to begin vaccinations.France has reported more than 2.6 million COVID-19 infections and over 62,500 deaths. French health officials said they recorded the first case of the new COVID-19 variant that has led to new lockdowns in Britain and global travel restrictions on British residents.The first batch of Pfizer-BioΝTech vaccines also arrived in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, on Saturday and is being stored at a military-run facility. The country, like the rest of Europe, will begin injections on Sunday in nine hospitals across the country.On Saturday, Russia approved its main coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, for use in people over 60 years old, Russian media quoted the health ministry as saying.According to Russian official data, the country crossed the 3 million mark of infections on Saturday, with over 29,200 new cases and 560 death in the previous 24 hours.COVID-19 infections in Japan’s capital, Tokyo, recorded a new daily high on Saturday.Japan, like France and some other countries, has also reported cases of the new coronavirus variant. Japan’s health ministry said five people who arrived between Dec. 18 and Dec. 21 tested positive for coronavirus and were sent to quarantine straight from the airports. Officials said further analysis showed they had contracted the new variant of the coronavirus.British authorities have said the new coronavirus variant appears more contagious and may have led to a spike in COVID-19 cases, leading countries around the world to restrict travel from Britain.U.S. authorities announced Thursday that passengers arriving from Britain must test negative for COVID-19 before departure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the new requirement is effective beginning Monday.In another development Friday, Pope Francis said in his Christmas message that COVID-19 vaccines must be available to all and called on political and business leaders to “promote cooperation, not competition” in the distribution of them.In Israel, the government announced it would impose its third nationwide lockdown beginning Sunday to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The new restrictions will last for two weeks.Health officials in China’s northeastern port city of Dalian are testing millions of residents after seven new coronavirus cases were reported there in the previous 24 hours. Authorities there have ordered anyone except essential workers to stay home.South Korea, Japan and Indonesia recorded their highest daily increases in coronavirus cases Friday as a third wave of COVID-19 hit the countries.
…

Britain became more isolated Monday as additional countries imposed bans on British commercial airline flights, automobile journeys and cross-Channel trains and freight because of rising international alarm over a more infectious coronavirus strain that has flared in London and southern England.Countries imposing travel bans include France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, India and Canada.  In all, more than 40 countries have instituted bans on arrivals at their airports from Britain.U.S. politicians were also pushing to halt all flights from Britain to America. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged federal officials to ban or at least set stringent travel restrictions on Britons. He warned that the new, more easily transmitted strain could spread to New York from the half-a-dozen flights a day that land at JFK airport from Britain.On Sunday, France took the unprecedented step of completely shutting its borders to Britain, initially for 48 hours. That has prevented British freight drivers from accessing mainland Europe and deterred European cargo-handlers from dispatching goods to Britain, disrupting supply chains and raising the prospects of food and drug shortages in Britain over the Christmas holiday season.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a virtual news conference about increased travel restrictions amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, at 10 Downing Street, in London, December 21, 2020.In a press conference on Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Britons to remain calm, saying most supplies are coming in and out of the country as normal.  “I have just spoken to (French) President (Emmanuel) Macron, and we both understand each other’s problems and want to resolve the problems,” Johnson said, adding that he understood the anxieties of Britain’s neighbors but said there was little risk of a spread via truck drivers.  But one of Britain’s major supermarket chains warned the blockade could trigger shortages of fresh fruit and vegetables later this week. In a statement, Sainsbury’s said it expected shortfalls in fresh produce such as lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and citrus fruit, “all of which are imported from the continent at this time of year.” The French haulage ban caused chaos in the southern English County of Kent, where Britain’s busiest port, Dover, is located and where trucks were backed up on roads miles from the coast. About 6,000 trucks were scheduled to cross the English Channel to northern France on Monday.  All haulers were ordered by the government to stay away from Kent. Thousands of trucks already bound for the southrn coast were being redirected to an unused airport. Security guard the entrance to the ferry terminal in Dover, England, Dec. 21, 2020, after the Port of Dover was closed and access to the Eurotunnel terminal suspended following the French government’s announcement banning travel from Britain.Ministers downplayed the risk of food shortages. Transport Minister Grant Shapps said Britons would not notice supermarket shortages “for the most part.” But British ministers held urgent talks with their French counterparts to see if the ban could be lifted.  There were some signs that the French might rethink the blockade. French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari held out the prospect of the ban being reversed once Paris and the European Union agreed to a new “health protocol” to allow traffic to resume between Britain and France.  “In the coming hours, at European level, we will be putting in place a solid health protocol so that flows from the United Kingdom can resume. Our priority: protect our nationals and fellow citizens,” Djebbari tweeted. But French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said the major aim of the discussions around a protocol is to ensure that 2,000 French truckers stranded in Britain “could come over the border as soon as possible.” Officials from EU member states were briefed Monday by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control on the new coronavirus variant. They agreed the priority was to keep EU borders open and to ensure the repatriation of citizens and legal EU residents wishing to return from Britain, according to European diplomats. Freight-carrying trucks were still being allowed to travel Monday from Britain to Dutch and Belgian ports, and the French have been allowing unaccompanied freight in containers to be maneuvered back and forth. A member of the British Transport Police speaks with travelers at Waterloo Station in London, Dec. 20, 2020.An additional 33,364 Britons tested positive for the coronavirus Monday, following a record-breaking 35,928 new infections on Sunday. The new figures bring Britain’s total confirmed cases to 2,073,511, and its death tally to 67,616 — just 2,384 short of the country’s total civilian death toll in World War II. Johnson chaired a meeting of the British government’s Cobra emergencies committee Monday.  On Saturday, he announced strict pandemic restrictions on London and much of southern and eastern England. Downing Street played down the need to expand restrictions to the north of the country. Ministers hope the actions they have taken, which virtually cancel Christmas “as planned,” according to Johnson, for nearly 20 million Britons and prevents households from mixing in the newly locked-down areas, will be enough to curb the spread of the new strain. Britain’s chief scientific officer, Patrick Vallance, said it has become clear that the new variant is more easily transmitted but said there is no evidence it is any more lethal than other coronavirus strains. He also emphasized there is nothing to suggest that newly developed vaccines would not be effective against this new mutation.  But government advisers and independent experts have cautioned that more work is necessary to ensure that is the case.  The new variant of the coronavirus is concerning, said Danny Altmann, a professor at Imperial College London, but he believes widespread inoculation will control it in the end.  Writing in The Times newspaper, Altmann said, “As a professor of immunology who has spent the past 10 months working on detailed mapping of immunity to Sars-CoV-2, I feel we need to do careful experiments, but I am calm and retain total faith in these stupendous vaccines.” The new strain was confirmed December 13 in the county of Kent in southern England. Initial analysis by government scientists suggested it is “growing faster than the existing variants.”   The variant was initially found in a patient in September. Genome sequencing, which took nearly a month, indicated it was a new strain, but government scientists were not too worried, as mutations come and go.  But as infections continued to surge in November and December, scientists realized they were dealing with a more infectious version of the virus. The new variant includes up to 23 changes, including with the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter human cells that allow it to replicate. There have been many mutations in the virus since it emerged last year in Wuhan, China, with 4,000 mutations in the protein alone. Virologists say most mutations are insignificant and part of the expected evolution of the virus. 
 
…

Relations between Israel and Turkey could be on the verge of a breakthrough, with a Turkish presidential adviser confirming bilateral talks and that full diplomatic relations could be restored by March. Relations between the once close allies all but collapsed with Turkey withdrawing its ambassador in 2017, amid escalating tensions.FILE – Mesut Casin, a foreign relations adviser to the Turkish presidency. (Dorian Jones/VOA)”If Israel comes one step, Turkey maybe can come two steps,” the Turkish presidential adviser on foreign affairs, Mesut Casin, said in reference to ongoing talks with Israel.”If we see a green light, Turkey will open the embassy again and return our ambassador. Maybe in March, we can restore full diplomatic relations again. Why not.””Establishing peace and security is very important to Israel and Turkey. After Mavi Marmara, we don’t want another accident with Israel,” added Casin.FILE – Demonstrators march with a giant Palestinian flag May 31, 2018 at Istiklal avenue in Istanbul, to mark the 8th anniversary of a deadly raid on Turkish-registered Mavi Marmara.The Mavi Marmara was the largest of six vessels in a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians back in 2010. Pro-Palestinian activists seeking to break Israel’s economic blockade of the Gaza Strip were on board when Israeli forces stormed the vessel, killing nine Turkish nationals.Since then, Turkish-Israeli relations have never fully recovered despite intense mediating efforts by the United States to rebuild ties between its two key regional allies.U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and Israeli security forces’ crackdown on Palestinian protests saw Turkey and Israel withdrawing their ambassadors.Casin acknowledged the election of Joe Biden to the U.S. presidency as a boost to efforts to repair ties. “There are new perspectives with Biden; a lot of things will change,” he said.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoyed a close relationship with Trump, but a Biden presidency is predicted to be more challenging for Ankara.FILE – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks after a cabinet meeting, in Ankara, Turkey, Dec. 14, 2020.”Turkish-American relations are expected to enter a tough period, at least in the short run, considering the Biden administration’s sensitivity toward issues of democracy and human rights,” said Selin Nasi, an analyst on Turkish-Israeli affairs.”Given the anti-Turkish opinion prevalent in the U.S. Congress, Turkey might be hoping that Israel can neutralize the opposition and help Turkey win Washington’s ear again,” she added.Turkey and Israel did find recent common ground in the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed mainly ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. Israeli and Turkish drones and reported intelligence support from the two countries proved pivotal in Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenian forces backed by Iran.”It is harder to read Israel’s motivation [in improving ties with Turkey], Nasi told VOA. “Though, it is true that Turkey and Israel have convergent interests in the Middle East, particularly in terms of rolling back Iran’s power and influence.””At a time when Israel is normalizing her relations with several Muslim countries, adding Turkey to the list will improve her conciliatory image in the international arena,” she added.Much to gain for TurkeyTurkish presidential adviser Casin argues Israel has a lot to gain from normalization. “Turkey bought a lot of weapons from Israel. We can arrange this again,” he said, “Turkey’s and Israel’s defense industries can go ahead together.””Secondly, energy resources, They [Israel] discover oil and gas. OK, Israel is 8 million people. Where can they sell this oil and gas? The biggest market is Turkey, and Turkey will be via a pipeline, the corridor to the European Union market.”A significant repercussion from Israeli and Turkish tensions is Israel allying itself with Turkey’s regional rivals, Egypt and Greece. The three countries are developing cooperation based on energy and defense, a move that observers say is a reaction to Turkey’s increasingly robust stance in the region.Egypt, Greece are important ties for IsraelAnalysts suggest Israel will likely be careful not to jeopardize its recent deepening ties with Egypt and Greece.A potentially more significant stumbling block to Israeli-Turkish rapprochement is Ankara’s backing of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.”From Israel’s point of view, Turkey should stop agitating about the status of Jerusalem, and drop support for whom they consider as terrorists,” said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.” Turkey has to cut its ties with Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood.”Erdogan, who likes to present himself as a defender of global Muslim rights, remains in the forefront of opposing Israel’s diplomatic efforts to secure Jerusalem’s international recognition as its capital. At the same time, Ankara’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood is a central plank of Turkish diplomacy in the region.Turkey ready to make concessionsInternational relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University suggests Ankara is ready to make concessions. “Ankara will lessen their support,” Bagci said. “Turkey has promised not to support so openly the Muslim Brotherhood. When Ibrahim Kalin [Erdogan’s spokesman] visited Brussels, he probably made promises on similar lines. This is why there is a higher expectation Turkey is making reforms, not to support the Muslim Brotherhood.”But ultimately, any improvement in ties will need to overcome the animosity between Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “There is the bad blood between the two leaders, Erdogan and Netanyahu,” said Bagci.Both leaders routinely exchange insults, which observers say plays well with their electoral bases. With Israel likely set for new elections, analysts say it is unlikely there will be an announcement of any breakthrough before the expected poll outcome.
 
…

In a story that shocked Britain and Vietnam, two human traffickers were found guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese who died in the back of a truck crossing from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Britian in October 2019.  Some of the dead were as young as 15 years old. According to reports, the victims died when the oxygen level in the truck’s hold began to fall. Some tried in vain to escape, while others reportedly sent frantic farewell messages to loved ones. The dead mostly came from Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces in north-central Vietnam, a poor area of the country. Each likely paid up to $40,000 to be smuggled to Britain, according to The Guardian newspaper. According to The Guardian, the migrants “planned to work in Britain’s nail bars and restaurants; some hoped to get work as bricklayers.” “This is an unimaginably tragic case: 39 vulnerable people desperate for a new life were driven to put their trust in a network of unscrupulous people smugglers,” said Russell Tyner, a prosecutor in the Organized Crime Division, according to the Reuters news agency. “They died through lack of oxygen, desperately trying to escape from the container. Some were able to express their last words to their families on their mobile phones when they knew their situation was hopeless.” Guilty verdictsAfter a 10-week trial at Britain’s Central Criminal Court in London, Eamonn Harrison, a 24-year-old truck driver from Northern Ireland, and Gheorghe Nica, 43, from Essex, were found guilty of 39 counts of manslaughter, in addition to one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. “The men who were found guilty today made their money from misery,” said Ben Julian Harrington, chief constable of Essex police, Reuters reported. Sentencing will take place at a later date. Mimi Vu, an independent anti-trafficking and slavery expert based in Vietnam, told The Guardian she did not think the guilty verdicts would do much to stem the tide of human trafficking.  “It’s like cutting off a fingernail, when to really address the problem, we need to cut off the heads, which are sitting in Prague, Berlin, Moscow, and other European cities where the ethnic Vietnamese organized crime groups that direct the smuggling and trafficking trade are based,” she said. 
 
…

Germany’s foreign minister said Monday a coordinated response from the European Union (EU) is needed to prevent a new strain of the coronavirus from spreading outside of Britain, where it was recently discovered.Speaking in Berlin, Heiko Maas told reporters, many of them taking part virtually — that Germany does not have conclusive information on the new strain and is looking to the EU for guidance. He said meetings were taking place in Brussels on the issue.Several countries, including Germany, have halted air travel to Britain while France has banned trucks from entering for a period of 48 hours while the new variant is assessed. The variant was discovered in southern Britain more than a week ago, and initial reports indicated it spread more easily than the original strain.He said Germany will coordinate very closely among EU member states on the next steps, in particular on how these measures will be designed beyond the end of the month. Maas said it was very important that any regulation be applied in all EU countries and that it should be impossible to circumvent.Also, during the news conference, Maas reached out to Iran, urging the Islamic Republic not to waste the opportunity offered by the prospect of the United States returning to the nuclear non-proliferation deal during the future Biden administration.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas addresses the media in Berlin, Dec. 17, 2020.Maas said prior to the briefing, he had been on a video conference of other officials from the countries in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran nuclear agreement.Maas said that Iran should avoid taking any tactical steps that would make it hard for Biden to reverse President Donald Trump’s decision to quit the deal. The remaining countries that signed the agreement with Iran — Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia — have been trying to keep it from collapsing after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States in 2018.The agreement is aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, something Tehran maintains it doesn’t want to do. Complicating that, Iran is now in violation of most major restrictions set out in the agreement, including the amount of enriched uranium it is allowed to stockpile and the purity to which it is allowed to enrich the chemical element.Biden, who helped negotiate the deal as vice president, has expressed his desire to rejoin it. 
…

A Turkish court in the southeastern Kurdish city of Diyarbakir sentenced a former member of parliament Monday to more than 22 years in prison on terror-related charges. The court also issued an arrest warrant against Leyla Güven, 55, a former lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). The prosecutor in the case charged Güven with “establishing and managing an illegal organization” of which she was also a member in support of outlawed Kurdish militants, among 18 separate charges.  Other charges included “provoking the public to join illegal meetings and demonstrations,” and participating in “illegal” marches, which she refused to disband despite warnings. Güven was arrested in January 2018 after criticizing the Turkish military for its operation against a Syrian Kurdish militia group that Ankara has linked with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). She went on hunger strike in November of that year that lasted 11 weeks to protest the prison conditions of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. In January 2019, a Turkish court ordered her supervised release after her health seriously deteriorated.  
…

A German court is to hand down its verdict Monday on a deadly far-right attack in Halle last year that nearly became the country’s worst anti-Semitic atrocity since World War II.A bolted door at the eastern city’s synagogue with 52 worshippers inside marking Yad Vashem, the holiest day of the Jewish year, was the only thing that prevented a heavily armed assailant from carrying out a planned bloodbath, prosecutors say.After failing to storm the temple on October 9, 2019, the attacker shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop instead.During his five-month trial, far-right defendant Stephan Balliet, 28, has denied the Holocaust in open court — a crime in Germany — and expressed no remorse to those targeted, many of whom are co-plaintiffs in the case.”The attack on the synagogue in Halle was one of the most repulsive anti-Semitic acts since World War II,” prosecutor Kai Lohse told the court in the nearby eastern city of Magdeburg as the trial wrapped up.The prosecution has demanded life in prison for Balliet. His defense team has asked presiding judge Ursula Mertens only for a “fair sentence.”Lohse said Balliet had acted on the basis of a “racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideology” to carry out an attack against not only those he killed but “Jewish life in Germany as a whole.”The events that unfolded were like a “nightmare,” he added.”At the end of this nightmare, the perpetrator murdered two people and injured and traumatized numerous others.”During the trial, Balliet insisted that “attacking the synagogue was not a mistake, they are my enemies.”Dressed in military garb, he filmed the attack and broadcast it on the internet, prefacing it with a manifesto espousing his misogynist, neo-fascist ideology.The attack bore some of the hallmarks of two carried out and similarly live-streamed some months earlier in Christchurch, New Zealand, by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people. Balliet cited Tarrant as an inspiration.He has been charged with two counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in a case that has deeply rattled the country and fueled fears about rising right-wing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, 75 years after the end of the Nazi era.Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, called the attack “a very, very alarming moment in German history.””If that guy would have been able to get into a synagogue… it would have had a tremendous impact on German identity after the war and the fight against anti-Semitism,” he told AFP in an interview. “I hope and trust that the German court will do the right thing and make the right decision. Anti-Semitism is indeed a phenomenon that attacks the very democratic essence of Germany and I think that is the thing that is so important to protect.”The government’s point man against anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, called the trial “a good opportunity to bring about debate in society about anti-Semitism.”Crimes targeting Jews and their belief have risen steadily in Germany in recent years, with 2,032 offenses recorded in 2019, up 13% on the previous year.Meanwhile a string of far-right terrorist attacks have shocked Germany, including the assassination of pro-refugee politician Walter Luebcke at his home in June 2019 and the murder in the western city of Hanau of nine people of migrant origin in February.Baillet “described the fatal shots fired at his two victims in Halle without emotion” and appeared disappointed that he had failed in his attempt to enter the synagogue, psychiatrist Norbert Leygraf said of the defendant in an evaluation.He said Balliet suffered from symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia and autism preventing him from having “empathy with others” while feeling “superior to others.” 
…