The EU must quickly seal its external borders to stem the flow of migrants who are no longer welcome in the 27-member bloc, according to Slovenia’s interior minister, whose country currently holds the presidency of the EU Council.
Speaking at the ‘Sarajevo Migration Dialogue’ on Thursday, Interior Minister Ales Hojs said EU countries were preoccupied recently with the coronavirus pandemic, the fall of the government in Afghanistan, and now a migrant crisis on the Poland-Belarus border, which he said was a hybrid war waged by Minsk against the EU.
“All three have additionally contributed to the increase in numbers of illegal migrants moving towards Europe and the Balkans, destabilizing the European Union,” Hojs told reporters.
The Slovenian minister said the current situation was similar to the 2015 influx of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, when the EU admitted over one million people across its borders.
This time the situation is different, Hojs said, warning that “there is no more ‘refugees welcome.’”
“I believe that external borders must be secured, even with fences if necessary,” Hojs said, saying that he supported a plan for Brussels to finance the building of fences to reinforce the bloc’s borders.
He said it was important to strengthen cooperation and partnership across the EU in order to better manage migration and maintain security.
Thousands of migrants have been trying to cross the Belarus-Poland border in an attempt to reach the EU. They have been stranded at barbed-wire fencing with Polish border guards repelling their attempts to cross. Warsaw has accused Belarus of orchestrating the crisis to destabilize the EU and “weaponize” migration in an effort to have sanctions lifted.
A spokesperson for Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko claimed on Thursday that Germany agreed to open a humanitarian corridor for 2,000 refugees on the border.
Controversial psychologist and author Jordan Peterson claimed Western countries had no “moral right” to force developing nations to reduce pollution output, noting instead that improving their economies was key.
During an appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ show on Thursday, the Canadian professor noted that the focus of climate change policies should be on incentivizing the development of cheap energy in poorer polluter countries.
“The best long term solution is to try to make developing countries as rich as possible, and the best way to do that is not control their pollution output, but to help them develop the cheapest energy they can possibly manage as fast as they possibly can,” Peterson said.
The debate saw UK undersecretary for employment Mims Davies suggest that measures taken to tackle climate change should not come at the “expense of developing countries.” But Peterson countered that it “absolutely, 100% will be [at their expense].”
I don’t think we have any moral right in the West at all to do that.
He also criticized the recent COP26 climate change conference for failing to explore ideas on how best to improve national economies in the developing world, noting that he saw “very little of that sort of idea” coming out of the UN summit.
In the final hours of the two-week conference, China and India had intervened to soften the wording around the use of coal in the Glasgow Pact. The two countries demanded a change in the final text of the agreement that called for coal to be phased out, revising this to “phasing down unabated coal.”
The move prompted COP26 president and UK minister Alok Sharma to declare that China and India would have to “justify” their actions to countries that were more vulnerable to global warming effects. However, officials in both Beijing and New Delhi have countered that the criticism was unfair.
Greece will soon prohibit unvaccinated residents from entering a litany of public spaces, the country’s prime minister has announced, claiming its current Covid outbreak is largely fueled by those who haven’t received the jab.
Starting next week, the unvaccinated will be barred from entry to restaurants, cafes, theaters, bars, gyms and museums, among other indoor public places, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday, noting that a negative Covid-19 test will no longer be accepted as an alternative to proof of vaccination.
“This is indeed a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” he said as he announced the move in a televised address, adding “Greece is mourning unnecessary losses because it simply does not have the vaccination rates of other European countries.”
The new rules are set to take effect on Monday, and will require Greeks to present vaccine certificates to businesses and other indoor establishments to be allowed inside. Those attending religious services mark a rare exception, however, as they will only be asked to present a negative test in order to enter a church or other place of worship.
In a bid to encourage booster vaccinations among the elderly – a population much more vulnerable to Covid-19 – citizens over the age of 60 will be made to renew their certificate after a period of seven months.
While officials had hoped to hit a full vaccination figure of 70% for Greece’s population of 11 million by autumn, the number currently stands at about 62%, according to Reuters. As its weekly case counts continue to soar to record highs, the country reported 7,317 new Covid-19 infections and 63 deaths on Thursday, bringing the totals to more than 860,000 cases and some 17,000 fatalities since the pandemic kicked off in late 2019.
The new restrictions in Greece mirror similar policies implemented elsewhere in Europe, with Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia each imposing limits on public life for the unvaccinated. Though the Austrian government recently imposed a full lockdown for millions of residents who have not received the shot, some officials in that country are pushing for even harsher policies, including a national stay-at-home order on the jabbed and non-jabbed alike.
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France’s best-known book of words, Le Petit Robert dictionary, has caused a stir by including the non-binary personal pronoun as an alternative to the existing masculine and feminine terms.
While the annual update of the Petit Robert dictionary is often a topic of considerable debate in French media, the latest edition has caused quite the backlash, with some, including a cabinet member, accusing it of pandering to wokeism.
The word “iel,” a neologism combining the French words for he and she (“il” and “elle“), is described as the personal pronoun for a person of any gender. “Personal pronoun subject to the third person singular and plural, used to evoke a person of any gender. The use of the pronominal in inclusive communication,” the dictionary’s entry reads.
Striking out at the latest inclusion, François Jolivet, an MP in President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party took his protest to the Académie Française, the official guardians of the French language.
Describing the move as “wokeism,” Jolivet said in a letter to the Académie that the word “iel” had no place in the French language and claimed it would be a precursor to the rise of ‘woke’ ideology, which undermines the values of the Gallic nation.
Outspoken Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer also chimed in. “Inclusive writing is not the future of the French language,” he tweeted, sharing Jolivet’s letter. “Just as our schoolchildren are consolidating their basic skills, they don’t need to have this as a reference,” he added.
The head of Gaullist party Debout La France, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, further criticized Petit Robert’s “woke” addition. “Let’s defend our language against these ridiculous fanatics of deconstruction and let’s boycott the collaborators who give into them,” he tweeted.
Le Petit Robert has responded to the “lively debate” by claiming that the pronoun has been used increasingly in society in recent months and they chose to reflect this by adding it to their latest update. The publication also said that some have welcomed the addition.
France’s offensive against wokeism, which has been described by some as an Anglo-Saxon import, recently saw Blanquer vow to increase the teaching of ancient Greek and Latin languages. The education minister claims that the classical vernaculars respond to a demand for logos (language as a tool for reason), in a world where “a lack of reason is spreading like wildfire.”
Covid-19 variants keep emerging in different parts of the world, causing experts to ask how long the pandemic will last, and how effective the current methods of protection really are.
Since the pandemic started in 2019, people have referred to the disease which has paralyzed the world simply as ‘coronavirus’. Now, in 2021, when we talk about it, we mean not just the original variant, but also its numerous mutations.
In May, the WHO decided to label the key variants with Greek letters. Since then, the Delta variant has been proclaimed the predominant strain across the world, and now we have titles that look like codes to detail the differences between variants. Last month, the UK was put on high alert over a fast-spreading Delta AY.4.2 variant. This week, Norway reported finding one more version of the Delta strain – AY. 63. The country’s experts suggest it’s not more dangerous than the Delta mutation itself. Meanwhile, another Covid variant, discovered in France (B.1.640), brought the researchers an unpleasant surprise: they said they’d never seen mutations like it.
Professor David Dockrell, from the Center for Inflammation Research of the University of Edinburgh, described to RT the reasons for the constant mutation of the coronavirus. “The areas in the virus that are most likely to change are those that come into contact with what we call ‘selective pressures’ – or factors that make them need to change,” he explains. “So, a version of the virus which mutates and changes to give it a selective advantage to escape from the immune system is more likely to prosper and become a dominant strain.”
That’s how it works: The part of the virus many of the immune responses (or antibodies, T-cells etc.) are responding to is called the spike protein (or the S-protein). So, the virus tries to change it in order to survive.
“We know that a variety of different viruses are able to mutate and change when exposed to the selective pressure of the immune system, whether it would be the human immune system or other species in which these viruses have evolved,” Prof. Dockrell says. “And of course, we’ve seen it most clearly with HIV, which is particularly good at changing and evolving. It does something called ‘reverse transcription’ – it copies material in the reversed direction from DNA to RNA.”
Covid is still seemingly running faster than humanity’s efforts to curb it, but Prof. Dockrell has some good news. “The coronavirus – and viruses like it – are not as able to make these changes. They are going to do it to some extent, but they are not going to be as successful as retroviruses and HIV.”
And the other major thing to say: When the viruses make changes, there’s always what we call ‘a fitness cost’. Many of the potential changes that the virus could make will actually not favor its survival. So there are only a certain number, potentially, of changes that the virus can make, before it starts affecting its fitness.
Now, unfortunately, we are still in a phase where Covid19 can continue to evolve and change. It’s not time to panic, though, because across the world various ways to adapt the current anti-Covid strategies are already in place. First of all, people should keep getting vaccines – maybe receiving slightly altered booster doses, Prof. Dockrell suggests, “in a way, that we, after all, have to do with influenza, by providing a seasonal influenza vaccine and changing it every year.”
“And maybe we have to keep changing some of the treatments like these new monoclonal antibodies against the virus, because they also may be limited by the emergence of a mutation of the virus evolving the S-protein,” he adds.
Sounds promising – but won’t it become a never-ending race against constantly emerging mutations?
Hopefully not. According to Prof. Dockrell, there are parts of viruses that scientists call ‘conserved areas’. With time, vaccines and monoclonal antibodies will target these areas, which the virus finds very hard to change. “Clearly, the direction of travel is to develop either vaccine responses that affect more different kinds of virus, or these ‘monoclonal antibodies’ that we could use to prevent or treat infection, that they will target more conserved areas and therefore will be less limited by the ability of these virus to evolve and change,” he concludes.
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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.
The annual migration of red crabs has brought traffic to a standstill on an Australian island. Apart from the epic journey, the species is also notorious for eating its own young.
Tens of millions of crustaceans are swarming Canberra-governed Christmas Island, which is almost a thousand miles northwest of the Australian mainland. Parks Australia, a government body in charge of wildlife conservation on the island, has deployed its staff to manage traffic, rake crabs off roads and provide advisories to local residents regarding road closures. Authorities are well-prepared to deal with the epic crab march as it repeats every year, usually in October and November. There are even special bridges and tunnels in place, built over and under busy roads so as to minimize the number of crabs crushed by cars. The sight of millions of these creatures making their perilous trek has become one of Christmas Island’s main tourist attractions.
The exact timing of the red crabs’ journey from forest to ocean is defined by rainfall and lunar phases. The march is led by male crabs, which are later joined by females. On reaching the ocean, they mate and spawn, with each female capable of producing as many as 100,000 eggs. However, most of the young crabs never make it back to the forest as they end up being eaten by fish and whale sharks for whom this is a veritable feast. To make matters worse, the crab larvae that do make it to the beach are often devoured by returning adult crabs of the very same species, hence one of their names – the cannibal crab.
France has imposed a curfew on its overseas territory of Guadeloupe and is sending extra police to the island, citing days of “violence,” unrest and vandalism in response to harsh pandemic restrictions.
“Given the ongoing social unrest and acts of vandalism, the prefect of Guadeloupe has decided to establish a curfew starting today from 6pm to 5am,” Alexandre Rochatte, who represents the archipelago as prefect, said on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, the French Interior Ministry noted that 200 French police officers and gendarmes would be shipped into Guadeloupe in the coming days to crack down on the “violence” and “restore republican order.”
The move comes after nearly a week of heated protests over local Covid-19 policies – which include mandatory vaccinations for healthcare staff and other ‘essential’ workers, among other things. Demonstrators have torched cars and erected burning barricades in the streets, while doctors, firefighters and other professionals have walked off their jobs in protest, according to Reuters.
Barrages incendiées et affront*ments cette nuit en #Guadeloupe où la grève générale illimitée, enclenchée contre le pass sanitaire et l’obligation vaccinale exprime désormais une colère plus large contre les problématiques sociales, économiques et environnementales de l’île. pic.twitter.com/gXToww1gXZ
In footage circulating online earlier this week, men purported to be protesting firefighters were seen soaking police with a water hose hooked up to a nearby fire hydrant. Officers quickly shut off the spigot.
A firefighter sprinkles the gendarmes during the evacuation of a dam in #Guadeloupe where an unlimited general strike began today against the health pass and compulsory vaccination under penalty of suspension but also to denounce other problems of the territory . pic.twitter.com/lDtDkMx4YZ
As in mainland France, residents are also required to present proof of vaccination, a negative PCR test or show they recently recovered from the virus in order to enter a number of public establishments, including restaurants and museums.
Those policies have proven unpopular for many locals, with trade unions launching indefinite strikes in protest over the past week, joined by other residents in street demonstrations.
A cleaner for Israel’s defense minister has been accused of espionage after allegedly offering to place malware on his boss’ household computer for an Iran-linked hacking group.
In a statement on Thursday, the Shin Bet security service said that Omri Goren, a housekeeper for Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and a former bank robber according to Israeli media, corresponded with an unnamed person over social media shortly before his arrest.
Goren reached out earlier this month to “a figure affiliated with Iran and offered to help him in different ways, in light of his access to the minister’s home,” the statement read, according to the Times of Israel.
It is understood that Goren offered to spy and place malware on Gantz’s computer on behalf of a hacking group, reportedly called ‘Black Shadow’ and associated with Iran, Tel Aviv’s perennial enemy. It is also said that he provided photos of Gantz’s residence to prove he had access.
A Central District prosecutor filed espionage charges against Goren on Thursday. If convicted, the accused could face a sentence of between 10 and 15 years, according to the Times of Israel.
The 37-year-old Lod resident has previously served four prison sentences, the most recent of which was for four years. Goren was found guilty of five crimes between 2002 to 2013, two of the convictions were for bank robbery.
The Shin Bet said they would review their processes for staff background checks “with the goal of limiting the possibility of cases like this repeating themselves in the future.”
Speaking on Kan public radio, Gal Wolf, the attorney representing Goren, suggested his client had intended to extract money from the Iranians without carrying out any spying.
China has accused the Philippines of breaching its territory, saying two supply ships were blocked by Beijing’s coast guard as they approached a disputed shoal. Manila protested over the run-in, citing its own claim to the area.
The two Philippines vessels “trespassed” into waters near the Nansha island chain – also known as the Spratly Islands – on November 16, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijan told reporters on Friday, noting that they entered the area “without China’s consent.”
“Chinese coast guard vessels performed official duties in accordance with law and upheld China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime order,” Zhao said, adding that the area is now “generally tranquil” and that the two countries are in communication about the encounter.
The comments from Beijing come just one day after Manila first publicized the incident, with the Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin claiming Chinese vessels fired water cannon on the two supply boats and forced them to abandon their mission near a disputed shoal in the Spratlys. He called on China to “back off” and “take heed” of Philippines claims to the region.
While both countries regard the Ayungin shoal – alternatively referred to as the Second Thomas or Renai Jiao shoal – as their own territory, The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration settled the dispute in the Philippines’ favor in 2016. However, despite that ruling, as well as the fact that Manila has maintained a presence on the shoal since 1999, Beijing has not abandoned its claims to the area.
