Covid: Archbishops call for daily prayer after 100,000 UK deaths
BBC News says the Church of England’s archbishops have urged the public to reflect on the “enormity” of the pandemic after the official number of coronavirus deaths in the UK passed 100,000.
In an open letter, they called on people to join a daily “prayer for the nation”.
The PM said he was “deeply sorry for every life lost” and said he took “full responsibility”, adding: “We truly did everything we could.”
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AstraZeneca CEO: ‘Britain will hit its vaccine targets’
CityAM says, CEO of AstraZeneca Pascal Soriot is confident the UK will hit its vaccine rollout targets and has confirmed AZ will not reconsider its pre-agreed contract with the UK in the face of supply shortages in the EU.
Speaking to Italian news site Repubblica, Soriot said the UK will have succeeded in vaccinating 28 to 30 million people, adding: “The Prime Minister has a goal to vaccinate 15 million people by mid-February, and they’re already at 6.5 million, so they will get there.”
The CEO also gave a thumbs up for the one-dose strategy being used by the UK at the moment in order to offer more people protection from the coronavirus over a shorter period of time.
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Calls for third lockdown grow as France’s new Covid-19 hospitalisations rise sharply
France24 says the number of people hospitalised in France for COVID-19 rose by more than 1,000 over the last two days and the number of patients in intensive care units for the disease exceeded 3,000 for the first time since Dec. 9.
A growing number of medical experts have called for a third lockdown in France while the government rolls out the vaccine, but French media reported that President Macron was trying to avoid such a measure.
Macron hopes a 6 p.m. curfew put in place 10 days ago will be enough to rein in the surge in new infections prompted by the emergence of more contagious variants of the virus.
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Tehran to use Russian, Chinese, Indian & own vaccines, while US jabs are rejected due to ‘lack of trust’ – Iranian FM to RT
RT News says Iran won’t be using US vaccines due to a mix of public health and political concerns, instead, relying on Covid-19 jabs from its allies and a homemade immunization said FM Mohammad Zarif.
Zarif told host Oksana Boyko that the Russian jab against the coronavirus will be both “used and produced” in the country. On Tuesday, Iran became yet another nation to register Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
“We will get the Russian vaccine; we will get the Chinese vaccine, and we’re in close touch with all of them. We will get the Indian vaccine,” said Iran’s top diplomat, who is currently on an official visit to Moscow. Iran’s own vaccine has gone through Phase 1 human clinical trials.
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Lebanese protesters break lockdown: ‘Death by COVID-19 is better than starvation’
Arab News says the closure and curfew period in Lebanon has been extended for two more weeks to contain the spread of Covid-19 prompting people in Tripoli, Beirut, and Sidon to take to the streets.
The protests were spontaneous, considering that the neighbourhoods from which they started are poor, where the residents work for daily wages.
Minister Ramzi Musharrafieh said on Tuesday that “230,000 families in Lebanon benefit from aid and have been receiving 400,000 Lebanese pounds ($263) per month since the beginning of the crisis.” He added that “25 per cent of the Lebanese people do not need aid.”
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Israel: Military revising operational plans for Iran attack
Aljazeera says Israel’s military is refreshing its operational plans against Iran and any US return to the 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran would be “wrong”, a top general warned.
Israeli Lieutenant-General Amir Kohavi made the remarks on Tuesday in an address to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.
“A return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, or even if it is a similar accord with several improvements, is bad and wrong from an operational and strategic point of view,” Kohavi said.
The comments were an apparent signal to US President Joe Biden to tread cautiously in any diplomatic engagement with Iran.
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Judge bars Biden from enforcing 100-day deportation ban
TRT World says a federal judge has barred the US government from enforcing a 100-day deportation moratorium that is a key immigration priority of President Biden.
The judge said the Biden administration had failed “to provide any concrete, reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on deportations.”
His order is an early blow to the Biden administration, which has proposed far-reaching changes sought by immigration advocates, including a plan to legalise an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the US illegally.
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Trump Impeachment Trial Advances Over Stiff Republican Resistance
VOA says most Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted against holding an impeachment trial for former President Trump on whether he incited insurrection in the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, signalling that he likely has enough votes to secure an acquittal.
The vote was 55-45 in favour of proceeding with a trial, but only five Republicans joined all 50 Democrats. A two-thirds vote is required for conviction, which would require 17 Republicans to turn against Trump, assuming the Democrats vote as a bloc after hearing the case against him when the trial starts in earnest February 9.
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