Six In The Morning Monday 15 February 2021

 

Myanmar: troops and police forcefully disperse marchers in Mandalay

Protests against military coup continue despite overnight internet blackout and extra soldiers deployed

Michael Safi and a Guardian reporter in Yangon

@safimichael

Mon 15 Feb 2021 12.34 GMT

Troops have joined police in forcefully dispersing marchers in the city of Mandalay in northern Myanmar, as protests against the military coup continued despite the deployment of extra soldiers in some areas and an eight-hour internet blackout overnight.

Images and reports from the city on Monday showed police and soldiers using rubber bullets and slingshots to disperse protesters. A student union in the city said several people had been injured.

Myanmar resurfaced online at about 9am local time on Monday after an internet-monitoring service showed a dramatic fall in connectivity from midnight. There were fears the blackout might be used as cover for mass arrests or violence.

Former Russian journalist accused of treason doesn’t know his alleged crime

‘I spent three months trying to dig up something on myself, but I haven’t remembered any crimes’

Tom Balmforth

A former Russian newspaper journalist accused of treason says state investigators have still not told him exactly what his alleged crime was, over six months after his arrest.

Ivan Safronov, 30, covered military affairs as a reporter before starting work at Russia’s space agency last May. He was detained last July and is being held in prison, accused of passing military secrets to the Czech Republic.

Mr Safronov, whose treatment has provoked an outcry among some Russian journalists, faces up to 20 years in jail. He denies treason.

Libya clutches at new hope 10 years after its revolution

The North African nation has been split since a revolution unseated dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. But a truce has held, and hopes are high for a new unity government.

Over the past few years, the way that Libyans have celebrated the anniversary of their February 17 revolution has been more of an indication of what went wrong rather than a joyous commemoration of the end of over four decades of dictatorship.

For more than six years, the country has been split between east and west, with the sides controlled by different authorities: the Libyan National Army led by rebel military commander Khalifa Haftar to the east, and, to the west, the internationally recognized Government of National Accord headed by Fayez al-Sarraj. 

Bolsonaro seeks Israeli anti-Covid nasal spray for Brazil

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Monday his government would seek emergency use authorization for an Israeli-developed nasal spray against Covid-19 that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a "miracle" treatment.

"EXO-CD24 is a nasal spray developed by the Ichilov Medical Center in Israel, with nearly 100-percent effectiveness -- 29 out of 30 -- against Covid in serious cases," Bolsonaro tweeted, two days after speaking on the phone with Netanyahu, who calls the Brazilian far-right leader a "good friend."

"A request to analyze this medication for emergency use will be sent shortly to (federal health regulator) Anvisa," Bolsonaro wrote.

Iran vows to limit nuclear inspections if partners fail to act

Iran said it will scale back its comprehensive international nuclear inspections next week if world powers fail to move.

Iran’s government will have no choice but to limit nuclear inspections starting next week if the other parties to a 2015 nuclear deal do not cooperate with it, according to its foreign ministry.

Foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said President Hassan Rouhani’s government is obliged by law to stop voluntarily implementing the Additional Protocol – which gives the UN’s nuclear watchdog more inspection authority – if US sanctions on Iran’s oil and banking sectors are not lifted by February 21.

CNN Exclusive: WHO Wuhan mission finds possible signs of wider original outbreak in 2019

By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN

Updated 1156 GMT (1956 HKT) February 15, 2021

Investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) looking into the origins of coronavirus in China have discovered signs the outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019 than previously thought, and are urgently seeking access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples from the city that China has not so far let them examine.

The lead investigator for the WHO mission, Peter Ben Embarek, told CNN in a wide-ranging interview that the mission had found several signs of the more wide-ranging 2019 spread, including establishing for the first time there were over a dozen strains of the virus in Wuhan already in December. The team also had a chance to speak to the first patient Chinese officials said had been infected, an office worker in his 40s, with no travel history of note, reported infected on December 8.