A gunman injured two civilians, one of them fatally, and two police officers before being shot dead by security forces near Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Sunday morning, Israeli police said.
The civilian victims were taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. One, who was in his 30s, succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. The other, a 46-year-old, is said to have suffered moderate injuries. Two police officers were hurt by shrapnel.
Two civilians were critically and seriously wounded this morning, Sunday, and two policemen were lightly wounded in a shooting attack in the area of the Chain Gate near the Western Wall and the entrance to the Temple Mount. pic.twitter.com/MRN6MLckj3
In a video clip shared on social media and purportedly filmed at the scene, multiple gunshots could be heard amid agitated shouting. Security officers could then be seen standing around what appears to be a dead body. Witnesses speculated it was that of a “terrorist.”
Scenes and sounds of shooting in the Old City of Jerusalem captured on Live Cam. Initial reports are attack is near the Temple Mount area 2 Israelis wounded one apparently seriously the terrorist has been neutralised pic.twitter.com/UKWSOqCu8D
— ElBluemountain MossadDolphin 🇮🇱🐬🇮🇱🐬🇮🇱 (@EBluemountain1) November 21, 2021
The gunman, whose identity was not immediately disclosed, was killed during the incident. Police said he had used a homemade submachine gun.
French President Emmanuel Macron has dismissed the possibility of locking down unvaccinated people in France, claiming the move would not be necessary because of the success of the Covid-19 ‘health pass’.
Speaking to La Voix du Nord newspaper in an interview published on Thursday, Macron said there was no need for France to follow Austria’s lead by locking down its unvaccinated citizens.
“Those countries locking down the non-vaccinated are those which have not put in place the [health] pass. Therefore, this step is not necessary in France,” Macron claimed.
The president’s health pass, which was the target of much criticism when it was introduced, requires people to provide proof of vaccination or a recent negative test before undertaking certain normal activities.
The ‘Pass Sanitaire’ is required if citizens wish to go to restaurants, cafes, cultural venues, or cinemas. It’s also required to take long-distance trains, among other activities.
Austria has led the way by starting a partial lockdown of the unvaccinated amid a surge in Covid-19 cases. The Czech Republic will follow suit next week, while Germany decided on Thursday to introduce similar measures in areas where Covid incident rates exceed the threshold.
Earlier in November, Macron made the continued use of the Covid health pass for over 65s dependent on getting a booster jab.
Some 20,366 new infections were registered in the last 24-hour recording period. Case numbers have risen steeply in recent weeks.
People around the world will need to get a jab against Covid-19 once a year, at least when it comes to the Pfizer vaccine, BioNTech’s CEO Ugur Sahin said in an interview on Sunday, as he praised the quality of its booster shot.
In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper on Sunday, Sahin said he considers the vaccine, co-developed by his company, to be “very effective.”
When asked whether people should be worried about the “breakthrough infections” – in which those vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine still developed Covid-19 symptoms – he dismissed such concerns, saying that the jab offers a “90 percent protection” against cases that require intensive care in those aged over 60.
A “very high” level of protection against severe illness lasts for up to nine months, the BioNTech CEO maintained. He said this level starts decreasing “from the fourth month,” however. To maintain the protection, Sahin strongly pushed for booster shots, arguing that they would not just restore levels of antibodies but would potentially help “to break … chains of infection.”
He also encouraged doctors to be “as pragmatic as possible” when it comes to greenlighting vaccination and “not to send people home unvaccinated even though they could be vaccinated without any problems.”
In the future, people might need to get booster shots once a year, the BioNTech CEO believes. He said that he expects protection from a booster shot to “last longer” than the initial immunity one acquires after getting two doses of the vaccine.
“Subsequent … vaccinations may only be needed every year – just like [with] influenza,” he said. Currently, the German Federal Center for Health Education – an agency subordinated to the Health Ministry – recommends a booster shot six months after one gets the second dose of a vaccine. It also says that “booster vaccination makes sense after a minimum interval of about four months.”
Sahin’s interview comes days after it was revealed that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are making a combined profit of $65,000 every minute – all thanks to their Covid-19 jabs. That is according to estimates made by the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA) – a coalition demanding wider access to vaccines.
The PVA estimated that the three companies are to earn a total of $34 billion in combined pre-tax profits this year alone, which roughly translates into more than $1,000 a second and $93.5 million a day.
PVA has slammed the three companies over their refusal to allow vaccine technology transfer despite receiving a combined $8 billion in public funding. Such a move could increase global supply and save millions of lives as well as drive down prices, the coalition said.
“Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritize the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low-income countries out in the cold,” said Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa.
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An object lurking in the outer region of our solar system may well be the elusive Planet 9, a leading British astronomer has suggested after digging through the telescope archives of 250,000 point sources.
Possible evidence of a mysterious planet up to 10 times bigger than Earth, with a distant orbit around the Sun, has been unveiled by professor of astrophysics at Imperial College of London, Michael Rowan-Robinson. Aiming to prove – or rule out – the existence of another big planet beyond Neptune, the UK scientist decided to conduct a new analysis of data collected by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) in 1983.
The astronomer has looked through some 250,000 point sources detected by the telescope, which took a far-infrared survey of 96% of the sky. Having analyzed the data, keeping in mind the hypothetical planet’s size and distance, “at the very limit of the survey,” he singled out a moving object that the satellite picked out on three occasions.
The candidate for Planet 9 would be up to five times the mass of Earth, according to the IRAS data. Its orbital distance would be some 225 times farther than that of our planet, equaling about 33.7 billion kilometers (20.9 billion miles) from the Sun.
If the enigmatic object is indeed rotating around the Sun at such a distance, it would be extremely cold and not much sunlight would be reflected by it, making it even more elusive and harder to find. While the latest study is not a clear detection, it could be valuable as guidance for where exactly to search for the new planet, the astronomer concluded.
“Given the great interest of the Planet 9 hypothesis, it would be worthwhile to check whether an object with the proposed parameters and in the region of sky proposed, is inconsistent with the planetary ephemerides,” he wrote in the preprint paper, accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A debate on the possible existence of an undiscovered planet in our solar system has been ongoing for decades. With no concrete evidence found, there has been speculation about its presence, mainly based on the gravitational clustering of objects in the system’s outer reaches. Several years ago, a suggestion was put forward that a group of icy objects that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune in the Kuiper Belt are possibly under the gravitational influence of a larger mysterious body, possibly Planet 9. The claim was based not on observation, but on modeling.
Currently, the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun is Neptune. In the last century, Pluto, discovered in 1930, was regarded as the ninth planet, but a controversial vote at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006 formally excluded it from the solar system’s ‘planets’, and reclassified it as a dwarf planet.
Truckers and other motorists have been trapped in a four-mile-long traffic jam on the outskirts of the Dutch city of Rotterdam amid a protest against the government’s Covid measures.
According to local media, as many as 200 activists blocked the gates of a major port in the city’s harbor on Thursday. For several hours, they prevented any vehicles from driving in and out of the cargo hub, which, in turn, led to massive traffic congestion on the highway leading to the port. Police engaged in negotiations with the protesters, who eventually relented and left the site later in the evening.
The group behind the protest action is reportedly Dockers United, who are staunchly opposed to government Covid policies. The organization’s biggest concern is that authorities could soon make it mandatory for employees to have a vaccination or recovery certificate to enter the workplace, which, as the group argues, would be tantamount to excluding people from society on an “unconstitutional basis.” They are also generally unhappy with the curbs introduced by the Dutch government, with ‘Don’t normalize what’s not normal’ being a translation of one of their slogans.
In fact, the Dutch government did announce earlier this month that it was working on introducing a ‘corona pass’ for the workplace, though it isn’t clear yet when this measure will be rolled out and how strict it will be.
Meanwhile, on Friday the EU country logged its highest-ever number of new Covid cases within 24 hours, with that figure reaching 23,591. Medics say they are working at capacity.
Amid the spike, the Dutch prime minister imposed a partial lockdown last Saturday, which requires bars, restaurants, cafes and supermarkets to close at 8pm, while shops selling non-essential goods are to shut by 6pm. Public gatherings are banned altogether.
“Catastrophic and famine-like conditions” hang over Afghanistan’s farmers and herders, whose needs continue to worsen with the onset of winter, UN humanitarians said on Friday.
Amid a surge in Covid-19 cases, Gibraltar has canceled official Christmas events and “strongly” discouraged people from hosting private gatherings for four weeks. Gibraltar’s entire eligible population is vaccinated.
The government of Gibraltar recently announced that “official Christmas parties, official receptions and similar gatherings” have been canceled, and advised the public to avoid social events and parties for the next four weeks. Outdoor spaces are recommended over indoor ones, touching and hugging is discouraged, and mask wearing is advised.
“The drastic increase in the numbers of people testing positive for Covid-19 in recent days is a stark reminder that the virus is still very prevalent in our community and that it is the responsibility of us all to take every reasonable precaution to protect ourselves and our loved ones,” Health Minister Samantha Sacramento said.
Gibraltar, a tiny British Overseas Territory sharing a land border with Spain, has seen an average of 56 Covid-19 cases per day over the last seven days, up from fewer than 10 per day in September. The rise in cases, described by the government as “exponential,” comes despite Gibraltar having the highest vaccination rate in the world.
More than 118% of Gibraltar’s population are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, with this figure stretching beyond 100% due to doses given to Spaniards who cross the border to work or visit the territory every day. Masks are still required in shops and on public transport.
The initial vaccine campaign on the British outpost came to a conclusion in early spring 2021, with a large proportion of the population fully inoculated against Covid-19. It became one of the first places in Europe to reduce restrictions following a winter of lockdowns, in what was dubbed ‘Operation Freedom’.
Gibraltar is currently doling out booster doses to the over-40s, healthcare workers, and other “vulnerable groups,” and administering vaccines to children aged between five and 12.
Similarly well-vaccinated countries have also reported surges in Covid-19 infections recently. In Singapore, where 94% of the eligible population have been inoculated, cases and deaths soared to record highs at the end of October, and have since subsided slightly. In Ireland, where around 92% of the adult population is fully vaccinated, cases of Covid-19 and deaths from the virus have roughly doubled since August.
Australia’s government could be forced to spend tens of millions in payouts after receiving more than 10,000 compensation claims from people who suffered side effects and loss of income due to Covid-19 vaccines.
Under its no-fault indemnity scheme, eligible claimants can apply for compensation amounts between AU$5,000 (US$3,646) to AU$20,000 (US$14,585) to cover medical costs and lost wages as a result of being hospitalized after getting the shot. The scheme’s online portal is scheduled to be launched next month.
Official figures suggest, however, that over 10,000 people have already indicated their intention to make a claim since registration opened on the health department’s website in September. If each claim was approved, the government could face a bill of at least AU$50 million (US$36.46 million).
There were around 78,880 adverse events to Covid-related vaccination in Australia as of November 7, according to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which regulates national health products. The majority of side effects were minor, including headaches, nausea, and arm soreness.
Only people who experienced a moderate to significant adverse reaction that resulted in a hospital stay of at least one night are eligible for coverage under the government’s scheme. Those seeking $20,000 or less have to provide proof their claims are vaccine-related – although there has been no information as yet on exactly what evidence would be acceptable.
“Adverse events, even though they happen to a tiny proportion of people, for the people it does impact it’s really quite devastating,” Clare Eves, the head of medical negligence at injury compensation firm Shine Lawyers, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Among the adverse reactions covered are the blood clotting disorder “thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)” linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine and the “myocarditis and pericarditis” heart conditions associated with the Pfizer vaccine. Other reportedly accepted side effects are Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition, and immune thrombocytopenia (excessive bleeding due to low platelet levels).
Claims for over $20,000, including those for vaccine-related deaths, will be assessed by an independent legal panel of legal experts and compensation paid on its recommendations. Nine people have reportedly died after an adverse reaction to one of the three vaccines in the country.
Eves told the Morning Herald that her firm was representing a number of litigants over the vaccine side effects, including several who are not eligible for the scheme.
NEW YORK, Nov 19 (IPS) – A week has gone by since COP 26 with 197 Parties ended in the Scottish city of Glasgow on extended time last Saturday. Climate change which covers wide array of issues affecting all living beings engaged the people around the world for COP 26 in a way never experienced since COP1 was held in Berlin in 1995.
Australia’s Defense Minister derided a senior Chinese diplomat’s comments as “silly” and “comical,” after the latter dubbed Canberra’s trilateral nuclear-powered submarine pact with the US and UK a threat to peace.
During a television interview on Friday, Peter Dutton said acting Chinese Ambassador Wang Xining was “probably reading off a script from the Communist Party” when he warned that Australia would become the “naughty guy” if it procured the stealth-combat vessels through the AUKUS deal.
Wang, who is China’s most senior representative to the country after the previous ambassador’s term ended last month, told The Guardian on Thursday that Australia would be labeled a “sabre-wielder” rather than a “peace defender.” He said the Australian public “should be more worried” about the impact of the security pact their nation had made with the UK and the US.
There’s zero nuclear capacity, technologically, in Australia, that would guarantee you will be trouble free, that you will be incident free. And if anything happened, are the politicians ready to say sorry to people in Melbourne and in Adelaide?
However, Dutton “dismissed” the comments and countered that “most Australians [would] see through [their] non-productive nature.”
“We don’t see it from any other ambassador here in Australia. It’s quite remarkable,” the minister told the Nine Network, adding that “this type of diplomacy” was seen elsewhere in the world too.
“These provocative comical statements – it’s just so silly. It’s funny,” he added.
In September, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the deal to obtain at least eight nuclear-powered vessels as part of its new defense alliance. The pact angered not only China but also France, which claimed it had been “stabbed in the back” after Canberra unilaterally scrapped a multi-billion-dollar diesel-electric submarine contract with Paris.
Last weekend, Dutton had irked Beijing by stating that he could not conceive of a situation in which Australia would hesitate to support the US should armed conflict with China break out over Taiwan. Under its ‘One China’ policy, Beijing has pledged to reunify the island with the mainland.
Wang warned Australian politicians on Thursday not to do anything that would be “destructive to our relationship.”
