Colonel assassinated
IRAN - Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say that one of its officers,
Colonel‘ Sayad Khodai, was killed in a rare assassination in Tehran, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. Two people on a motorcycle opened fire on Khodai, as reported by an informed source. Khodai was said to be ‘one of the defenders of the shrines’, this is in reference to military personnel or advisers which Iran says fight on its behalf to protect Shi’ite sites in Iraq or Syria against groups such as Islamic State.
EUROPE - European countries will be told to prepare a vaccination plan to tackle the unusual monkeypox outbreak, it was claimed. EU officials are set to publish a risk assessment, which will advise all member States to draw up an inoculation strategy to control the spread of the tropical virus.
No monkeypox vaccine exists, but the smallpox vaccine, which was routinely offered to Britons until the virus was eradicated more than four decades ago, is 85 per cent effective at stopping a monkeypox infection.
UK health chiefs have immunised close contacts of the 20 monkeypox patients who have been detected since May 6 and have used the vaccine in previous incidents. The strategy, known as ring vaccination, involves jabbing and monitoring anyone around an infected person to form a buffer of immune people to limit the spread of a disease.
It comes as experts warn nations could bring in travel restrictions to control the spread of the illness if the World Health Organisation (WHO) declares the outbreak an emergency. But the vaccine, called Imvanex and made by Denmark-based drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, has not been authorised for use against monkeypox in Europe or the UK.