Vaccine inequity and hesitancy made the Omicron variant more likely, scientists say
Updated 1119 GMT (1919 HKT) November 28, 2021
Many of the world's richest countries have spent the past year hoarding coronavirus vaccines, buying up enough doses to vaccinate their populations several times over and consistently failing to deliver on their promises to share doses with the developing world. The World Health Organization said the approach was "self-defeating" and "immoral."
How settler violence is fuelling West Bank tension
As attacks on Palestinians worsen, we speak to farmers, settlers, Israeli human rights activists, and the mother of a three-year-old boy left injured in a raid
The assault was already under way when, having hastily collected her youngest child from a neighbour, Baraa Hamamda, 24, ran home to find her three-year-old son, Mohammed, lying in a small pool of blood and apparently lifeless on the bare floor where she had left him asleep. “I thought that’s it, he’s dead,” she says. “He won’t come back.”
Mohammed wasn’t dead, though he wouldn’t regain consciousness for more than 11 hours, having been struck on the head by a stone thrown through a window by an Israeli settler, one of dozens who had invaded the isolated village of Al Mufakara, in the West Bank’s rocky, arid south Hebron hills.
At about 1.30pm, settlers from the two outposts, Havat Maon and Avigayil – illegal even under Israeli law – which the Palestinian village sits uneasily between, advanced on the flock of a Palestinian shepherd from neighbouring Rakiz, throwing stones and stabbing sheep, killing six of them. More than a dozen of Al Mufakara’s 120 residents retaliated with stones in an attempt to repel the settlers. But the settlers, several armed, rapidly entered the village and, as women barricaded themselves and their children in their homes, left a trail of smashed windows, an overturned car, shattered windscreens, punctured water tanks, slashed tyres, vandalised solar panels – and six injured Palestinians, including Mohammed.
Omicron: Netherlands detects 13 cases of new Covid variant from two South Africa flights
‘This could be the tip of the iceberg’ – a Dutch health minister said
Thirteen cases of the new Covid variant omicron have been detected in the Netherlands among passengers on two flights from South Africa.
Authorities at Schipol airport in Amsterdam had tested more than 600 passengers from the two flights that had arrived on Friday.
Some 61 cases of Covid in total were found – 13 (more than a fifth) of them the omicron variant, which is feared to be extremely contagious compared to previous variants.
However, experts do not yet know if the omicron variant causes more or less severe Covid compared to other variants.
The Bataclan TrialSalah Abdeslam and the Banality of Terror
By Britta Sandberg in Paris
The witness, François Hollande, walks quickly through the courtroom, past the light-colored, wooden benches where the co-plaintiffs and journalists are sitting. Past the huge glass box from which 11 of the 20 defendants are following the proceedings. The former French president doesn’t even look at them before stopping at a lectern at the front of the courtroom.
Behind Hollande to the left, just a few meters from him and separated by a pane of glass, sits Salah Abdeslam, 32, the only surviving member of the terror commando that descended on Paris on Nov. 13, 2015. Never before, it seems safe to say, have a representative of terror and a representative of the state come as close to each other as in this courtroom. It didn’t happen in the military tribunals in Guantanamo, nor in other terror trials.
Iraq: Court hearing resumes on marriage of 12-year-old girl
Despite the furore surrounding the case, legal scholars say many other child-marriage situations do not get the same level of attention.
A court has resumed hearing a case in which a judge was asked to formalise a religious wedding between a 12-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, raising concerns across Iraq.
It was not clear whether a verdict would be given on Sunday.
The court, located in Baghdad’s Kadhamiya district, adjourned the case last week as demonstrators rallied in front of the court, chanting and holding banners with slogans such as: “Child marriage is a crime against children,” and “No to child marriage”.
Covid: Australia woman charged after setting fire in quarantine hotel
A 31-year-old woman in Australia has been charged with arson after a fire destroyed part of a Covid-19 quarantine hotel in Cairns, Queensland.
It is alleged she lit a fire under a bed in the room she had been sharing with two children on Sunday morning.
More than 160 people were evacuated as fire took hold in the 11-storey Pacific Hotel. No-one was injured.
It came as Australia confirmed two cases of the new coronavirus variant which is prompting new restrictions.
Omicron was first reported by South Africa, and has been classified as "of concern" by the World Health Organization (WHO) with early evidence suggesting a higher re-infection risk.
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