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by Ella IDE ROME, Italy (AFP) — Rescuers were searching Monday for two missing people among the rubble of collapsed buildings on the Italian island of Sicily, after seven people including a pregnant nurse died in a suspected gas explosion. The blast tore through four residential buildings on Saturday evening in the southern town of Ravanusa, with one survivor describing it “as if a bomb had gone off”. Around 100 emergency workers have been picking […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — The body of a man was pulled from a van trapped in floodwaters in northern Spain on Sunday, the second death linked to heavy rains which have caused rivers to burst their banks. Rescuers located the van in the Bidasoa river in the northern Navarra region on Saturday, a day after the 61-year-old was reported missing, a police spokesman said. Strong currents and poor visibility had prevented them from retrieving his […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — The UK has raised its Covid Alert Level due to the “rapid increase” in cases of the Omicron variant, the country’s four chief medical officers said on Sunday. The advisers said the public health risk assessment would move from level three to four — the second-highest level — which indicates “transmission is high and pressure on healthcare services is widespread and substantial or rising”. © Agence France-Presse
by Anastasia CLARK Agence France-Presse BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AFP) – A Russian rocket lifted off on Wednesday carrying a Japanese billionaire to the International Space Station, marking the country’s return to space tourism after a decade-long pause that saw the rise of competition from privately held US companies. Online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his production assistant Yozo Hirano blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0738 GMT, an AFP correspondent at the […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — Covid treatments using plasma taken from the blood of recovered coronavirus patients should not be given to people with mild or moderate illness, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. Convalescent plasma showed some early promise when given intravenously to people sick with Covid-19. But in advice published in the British Medical Journal, the WHO now says that “current evidence shows that it does not improve survival nor reduce the need for […]
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AFP) — Iceland on Monday raised the alert level for a possible eruption of its most active volcano after several small earthquakes were registered earlier in the day. Located in an uninhabited and remote area of central Iceland, the Grimsvotn volcano is situated under a massive glacier. Experts have been monitoring Grimsvotn for several weeks after its glacier lake burst, an event that could trigger a volcanic eruption. In the latest eruption in […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — The UK government has announced that those travelling into the country will need to show a negative coronavirus test pre-departure as it reintroduces Covid-19 restrictions due to the Omicron variant. From 0400 GMT on Tuesday, anyone travelling to the UK will have to show evidence of a negative lateral flow or PCR test taken within the last 48 hours before boarding a flight, the health ministry said late Saturday. This […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — France on Saturday said more than 50,000 people had tested positive for coronavirus in the past 24 hours, as Covid-19 cases rocketed despite millions receiving a vaccine booster shot. The country recorded 51,624 new daily cases of Covid, health authorities said. France has recorded an average of almost 41,000 new cases a day over the past week, compared to less than 28,000 a week ago. Some 694 people had been admitted […]
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) — Denmark’s health authorities said Sunday the country had seen a “concerning” jump to 183 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. The number represented a tripling of confirmed cases in 48 hours, from 18 confirmed and 42 suspected cases on Friday, according to data from the SSI public health institute. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) had previously tallied just 182 cases across all of the European […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — The UK government said late Wednesday it has ordered 114 million additional Covid-19 vaccine doses, from pharmaceutical giants Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, to bolster its jabs drive over the next two years. The orders — 60 million extra doses of the Moderna vaccine and 54 million more Pfizer-BioNTech shots — come as Britain expands its booster program following the emergence of the Omicron variant. The country has set a two-month target […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The WHO warned Wednesday that the world was creating toxic conditions for new Covid-19 variants like Omicron to emerge and then spread around the globe. The World Health Organization said the combination of low vaccination coverage across the planet, mixed with very low testing to track the virus, was a fertile breeding ground. The UN health agency stressed that measures to stop the globally-dominant Delta variant would also hinder Omicron. The […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Brazil’s health regulator on Tuesday reported the discovery of two “preliminary” cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant in a traveler from South Africa, where it was first detected, and his wife. Positive samples from the two Brazilians will now be sent for further laboratory analysis for confirmation, the Anvisa regulator said in a statement. If confirmed, they would be the first Omicron cases in Latin America. The passenger arrived at the […]
