Chinese government officials reached out to industry executives, seeking to understand how badly companies in the US and Europe would be affected if China imposed restrictions on rare-earth exports, the Financial Times reported, citing sources involved in the consultations. Additionally, Beijing reportedly asked how long it would take the US …
Read More »NATO ready for peace with Moscow…or confrontation, Stoltenberg claims after ordering funding boost for troops on Russian border
Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the organization told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo on Tuesday that it was open for dialogue with Moscow, but also prepared for hostilities. In comments quoted in the Russian media, he insisted that “we need to send a clear signal to Russia… If they …
Read More »Take 2: Facebook once again shuts down Israeli anti-immunity passport group accused of sabotaging national vaccination
The group is one of many in Israel that stands accused of spreading misinformation about vaccines against Covid-19 and causing a slowdown in the pace of immunization in the country. Israel has vaccinated some 43 percent of its population with at least one shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but some …
Read More »South Africa to share 1 million AstraZeneca Covid vaccine doses with continent as study says jab ineffective against local variant
Anban Pillay, the deputy director-general at the Department of Health, told Reuters on Tuesday that it is not true that Pretoria had tried to send 1 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine back to the Serum Institute of India, where it was manufactured, but confirmed the country would offload the …
Read More »The Hague court sides with activists, tells Dutch government to IMMEDIATELY lift ‘illegitimate’ curfew
In a statement, The Hague declared that the government’s use of the Extraordinary Powers of Civil Authority Act – an emergency act which allows the state to bypass the legislative process to impose a curfew in “very urgent and exceptional circumstance” – was not justified in this case during the …
Read More »Axios memory-holes Fauci’s remarks contradicting VP Harris on ‘non-existent’ vaccination plan under Trump
The claim that the Biden administration had to start from scratch on a national vaccination strategy because their Republican predecessors left them nothing to work with came up last month, first as a CNN ‘scoop’ and later as the official position of the new government. Some commenters saw it as …
Read More »China outpaces US as Europe’s largest trade partner in 2020
According to the data published by the European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat, the 27-nation bloc’s imports from China hit €383.5 billion ($465.6 billion) in 2020, increasing by 5.6 percent year-on-year. Exports were up 2.2 percent to reach €202.5 billion ($245.9 billion). At the same time, trade with the US – …
Read More »‘Tsunami of disinformation’: UK battles for BAME Covid-19 vaccine trust, translating jab information into 20 languages
Speaking on Tuesday, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News that the government is battling fake news, which appears to be disproportionately impacting vaccine uptake among ethnic minority groups. There is a tsunami of disinformation, misinformation, which we have a unit across government that is dealing with the technology platforms …
Read More »Russian tennis sensation Aslan Karatsev beats Grigor Dimitrov to make Australian Open semifinals – and he could face Djokovic next
The 27-year-old Russia, who reached the main draw of the tournament for the first time by winning three qualification matches in Doha, has been in stunning form in Melbourne, thrilling fans and pundits with his solid game throughout the tournament so far. The world number 114 got off to a slow …
Read More »Russian activist Navalny back in court for third day of defamation trial after calling WWII veteran a ‘corrupt lackey’ & ‘traitor’
Navalny has been in court for the last two Fridays, and both hearings were adjourned at the end of the working week after long, drawn-out sessions with multiple interruptions. The activist was charged in June 2020 after a Twitter post in which he called Artemenko a “corrupt lackey.” The veteran, …
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