Six In The Morning Friday 16 April 2021

 

Iran starts enriching uranium at 60%, its highest level ever

The announcement is likely to raise tensions as Iran negotiates with world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi says Tehran has started 60 percent uranium enrichment at Natanz nuclear facility, days after an explosion at the site that Tehran blamed on Israel.

“We are now getting nine grams [almost a third of an ounce] per hour,” Ali Akbar Salehi of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said on state television, after Tasnim news agency reported that production was under way at the Natanz nuclear facility.

Spreading faster, hitting harder – why young Brazilians are dying of Covid

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

Fri 16 Apr 2021 10.00 BST

Highly transmissible variant and behavioural factors blamed as intensive care units fill with younger patients

One month after Michel Castro’s premature brush with death, the coronavirus infection has receded but the nightmares persist.

In them the 31-year-old father relives the spine-chilling scenes he witnessed as his Covid-hit body battled for survival in a Rio ICU. The six-month-old baby who appeared to be suffocating right next to him. The man urinating blood after his kidneys failed. The unnerving bleep-bleep-bleep of machines warning doctors that yet another life was on the line.

“It was agony. When you closed your eyes – God forgive me – but it was as if you were in hell,” said Castro, a systems analyst and devout Christian who fell ill in early March as Brazil was thrust into the deadliest month of a coronavirus disaster that has killed more than 365,000 people.

Portugal reaps benefits of a prolonged COVID-19 lockdown

Portugal is preparing to loosen virus restrictions as most of the Europe Union grapples with new COVID-19 cases and brings back curbs on what people can do

Via AP news wire

While most of the Europe Union grapples with new surges of COVID-19 cases and brings back curbs on what people can do, Portugal is going in the other direction.

Starting Monday, the Portuguese will be able to go to restaurants, shopping malls and cinemas. Classes will resume at high schools and universities. Schools for younger children are already open, as are café and restaurant esplanades.

After becoming the world's worst-hit country by size of population in January, Portugal has seen the pandemic ebb significantly during a lockdown that authorities began loosening four weeks ago.

Pakistan blocks social media platforms amid protest crackdown

Sites including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will be unavailable until Friday afternoon in the country. The move comes amid fears that a radical group could use social media to perpetuate violent protests.

Pakistan placed a temporary ban on several social media websites on Friday.

Platforms that will be unavailable include Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, YouTube and Telegram.

The Interior Ministry directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block the platforms until 3 p.m. (11:00 GMT).

"Social media has been blocked for a few hours so that troublemakers can not use it during Friday prayers congregations," an official told dpa.

In crisis-hit Lebanon, Hezbollah opens supermarkets for eligible shoppers

The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has launched a chain of supermarkets that are stocked with Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian products at reduced prices that are accessible with a party-issued card. It’s a welcome initiative in a country crippled by a financial crisis and food shortages. But critics say it’s yet another bid by the powerful Shiite movement to win loyalty by providing services in a weak state and oversee a parallel economy.

As the people of Lebanon grapple with a series of acute economic, social and political crises, accompanied by high inflation and food shortages, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement recently opened several supermarkets in its various strongholds in Beirut, the Bekaa region and the country’s south, in a bid to quell public anger. Food in Lebanon is not just overpriced but often impossible to find.

Rich nations had vaccine options after AstraZeneca and J&J faced clot reports. Others may not have that luxury

By Nimi Princewill, CNN

Updated 0548 GMT (1348 HKT) April 16, 2021

It was nothing short of a miracle when it became clear that scientists had developed several effective vaccines against Covid-19 in less than a year. Announcements last week from European Union and British drug regulators finding a possible link between AstraZeneca's Covid-19 shot and rare blood clots, however, have been a real low point in the pandemic.

This isn't only because developed countries, like those in Western Europe, had purchased a large number of AstraZeneca doses to dig their way out of the pandemic but, more consequentially, because so much of the developing world was relying on this one vaccine to do the same.

The double blow is that a picture is emerging that the AstraZeneca vaccine -- which appears to have caused a very rare, sometimes fatal, condition of severe clotting with low blood platelet counts -- may be affecting younger adults more than the elderly. Developing countries, in general, have significantly younger populations than their wealthier counterparts.