Myanmar military ruler addresses nation as protests intensify
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing says the military will hold an election and hand over power to the winning party.
Myanmar’s new military ruler has said the army will hold a new election and transfer power to the winner, as protests against last week’s coup continued to grow.
Addressing the country on live television for the first time since the February 1 putsch, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on Monday called on the public to prioritise facts and not feelings and repeated the claim that there were irregularities in November’s election that were ignored.
Oxford Covid vaccine has 10% efficacy against South African variant, study suggests
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine offers as little as 10% protection against the Covid variant first seen in South Africa, researchers have suggested.
Scientists who conducted a small-scale trial of the vaccine’s efficacy said it showed very little protection against mild to moderate infection, though they expressed hope that – in theory – it would still offer significant protection against more serious infection.
The disappointing results came as lab tests on the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine found it may still provide substantial protection against the variant. Scientists at the University of Texas medical branch collected antibody-containing blood plasma from 20 people who recently had two shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.
Gay Chechens returned to country by Russian authorities after fleeing torture, LGBT group says
Rights charity alerted to pair after receiving panicked phone call with screaming heard in the background
Two gay men are in "mortal danger" after they were returned to Chechnya after fleeing to Russia to escape torture, an LGBT rights group monitoring the region has warned.
Salekh Magamadov, 20, and Ismail Isayev, 17, were apprehended by Russian police at a house in Nizhny Novgorod, to the east of Moscow, the Russian LGBT Network said.
The charity added it had helped the men flee to Russia last year to escape the police in their home region.
Donald Trump and the impeachment trial dividing America
Donald Trump's impeachment trial is set to begin this week in the US Senate. In rural Pennsylvania, support for the former US president still runs deep.
Thick snow covers the fields along the road to Piketown, Pennsylvania. A frosty atmosphere has gripped the countryside. Months after the federal election, large banners in support of former US President Donald Trump still hang from verandas or cling to the facades of small houses dotted along the road in the small town. Wooden Trump signs are stomped into the snow as if to mark the territory and to say: It's not over.
Piketown is only a 20-minute drive from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's state capital. Yet, when one crosses into Harrisburg, the political landscape quickly changes from deep red to bright blue. The phenomenon can be found all across the United States: The political divide between blue Democrats and red Republicans is mirrored in the geographical lines that run between urban and rural.
China blocks Clubhouse app that briefly created platform for taboo topics
A rare uncensored app that had attracted Chinese internet users to freely discuss taboo topics, including the mass detention of Uighurs, democracy protests in Hong Kong and the concept of Taiwanese independence appeared to have been blocked on Monday night.
Authoritarian China deploys a vast and sophisticated surveillance state to scrub the internet of dissent and prevent citizens from accessing international social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in what is often known as the “Great Firewall.”
But the Clubhouse app had for a brief while side-stepped the censors and drawn crowds of Chinese internet users — but appeared to quickly fall foul of the censors.
Covid: South Africa halts AstraZeneca vaccine rollout over new variant
South Africa has put its rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on hold after a study showed "disappointing" results against its new Covid variant.
Scientists say the variant accounts for 90% of new Covid cases in South Africa.
The trial, involving some 2,000 people, found that the vaccine offered "minimal protection" against mild and moderate cases.
But experts are hopeful that the vaccine will still be effective at preventing severe cases.
No comments:
Post a Comment