1.7mn more people in England told to shield from Covid-19 after checks by Oxford Uni algorithm

RT News says a new algorithm developed by researchers in England is advising another 1.7 million vulnerable people to ‘shield’ because they’re at higher risk from contracting Covid-19 – and some 820,000 will be bumped up the vaccination list.

The NHS is to send letters out to the cohort identified by scientists at the University of Oxford who are now being designated as more vulnerable to coronavirus.

Around 2.2 million people are currently advised to shield in England, many of whom were identified as being at particularly high risk from Covid because they suffer from specific cancers, have severe respiratory problems, or are on immunosuppression drugs.

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Cutting Covid top-up ‘will put 700,000 people into poverty’

The Guardian says government failure to maintain the £20 a week Covid top-up payment for universal credit will overwhelmingly hit the incomes of working and disabled people, and put more than 700,000 into poverty, according to a study by the Fabian Society.

Ministers have signalled that they will decide in early March whether to keep or scrap the temporary 12-month Covid payment – giving claimants just a month to plan for what could be a £1,050 a year cut in benefits.

The Fabians estimate that if the planned cuts to universal credit and tax credits go ahead it will put 760,000 people below the poverty line over the medium term. 

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Rishi Sunak urged to charge-up green investments in UK’s Covid recovery

CityAM says from the net-zero transition to air pollution and electric vehicles, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is being urged to ramp up green investment as part of the Covid recovery.

MPs on Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee have set out guidelines for how Sunak can introduce more ambitious environmental measures.

In the report, Conservative and Labour MPs criticise the government’s “ten point” climate change plan as ‘not going far enough’.

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French MPs approve bill to combat Islamist extremism

France24 says France’s National Assembly approved Tuesday a law to fight Islamist extremism and separatism in an attempt to tackle the root causes of jihadist violence – in response to a wave of attacks that has seen more than 250 people murdered since 2015.

The text would significantly expand the government’s powers to close religious organisations and places of worship if they are found to air “theories or ideas” that “provoke hate or violence”.

The legislation offers protection to moderate community leaders who are in danger of being toppled by an extremist “putsch”. It will also require all associations to commit in writing to uphold “republican values” – the liberal, Enlightenment values France holds dear – if they want to receive state subsidies.

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Italy’s Mount Etna spews lava as it erupts several times

TRT World says Mount Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, has belched smoke and ashes in a new eruption, but Italian authorities said it posed no danger to the surrounding villages.

“We’ve seen worse,” the head of the INGV National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology in the nearby city of Catania, Stefano Branco, told Italian news agency AGI.

Estimating that the eruption from Etna’s southeastern crater began late on Tuesday afternoon, Branco insisted that the latest burst of activity was “not at all worrying”.

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Oman’s coronavirus-related ICU patients double in 2 weeks

Arab News says the number of patients in intensive care units, with cases related to the highly transmissible coronavirus disease, doubled during the past two weeks, daily Times of Oman reported.

“We had 20 patients in ICU and today it touched 41 cases. This is a significant and disturbing increase,” Minister of Health Ahmed Al-Saeedi said, adding that the spread of the coronavirus was alarming.

“The closure of North Sharqiyah Governorate was due to a 100 per cent increase in intensive care cases in Ibra Hospital,” the minister said.

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UN warns of Myanmar violence, as protesters create gridlock

Aljazeera says Tom Andrews, the UNs’ special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, has said he is “terrified” of an escalation in violence in Myanmar as thousands of people on Wednesday stepped up their campaign against the military coup.

Protesters are calling for big rallies on Wednesday to shatter the army’s claims that it has widespread backing for the February 1 coup and that many people supported its move to seize power from civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was returned to office in a landslide in elections held in November.

The UN’s Andrews said that he had received reports of troop movements around the country and was worried the protesters were facing real danger.

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Republican groups censure party lawmakers who voted to Impeach, Convict Trump

VOA says State and local Republican groups in the United States are rebuking national lawmakers from their own party who voted to impeach or convict former President Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last month.

The Senate acquitted Trump on Saturday of a single charge of having incited the deadly January 6 attack on the seat of the U.S. Congress as that body was meeting to certify that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the November presidential election.

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