Yemen migrant vessel capsizes killing 42
At least 42 people have died after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the Horn of Africa country of
Djibouti.
The International Organisation for Migration said 16 children were among the dead.
Spokeswoman Yvonne Ndege added that 14 people survived. The smugglers involved in the operation have not yet been found.
Olivia Headon, the IOM’S spokeswoman in Yemen, has said the migrants were returning from Yemen because of the dire situation in the Arab world’s poorest country, which has been wrecked by war.
“They were so desperate to leave Yemen they put their lives back into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers,” she said.
Many people seek to make the voyage from Ethiopia and Somalia to Yemen and on to richer Gulf countries as they flee poverty and insecurity in search of work.
Washington DC: The US is recommending a “pause” in administration of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine to investigate reports of potentially dangerous blood clots.
In a joint statement, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said they were investigating clots in six women in the days after vaccination, in combination with reduced platelet counts.
More than 6.8 million doses of the J&J vaccine have been administered in the US.
US federal distribution channels, including mass vaccination sites, will pause the use of the J&J vaccine, and states and other providers are expected to follow.
The CDC’S Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices will meet today to discuss the cases.
Geneva: The United Nations’ health agency has urged countries to suspend the sale of live animals captured from the wild in food markets as an emergency measure, saying wild animals are a leading source of emerging infectious diseases such as coronavirus.
The World Health Organisation issued new guidance saying that animals – particularly wild animals – “are the source of more than 70% of all emerging infectious diseases in humans, many of which are caused by novel viruses”.
The coronavirus’s origins more than a year ago have been the source of intense speculation, much of it centred on the likelihood that it was carried by bats and passed to humans through an intermediary species sold as food or medicine in traditional Chinese wet markets.
The pandemic first appeared in the city of Wuhan, China.
Stuttgart: Twelve Germans have gone on trial accused of being part of, or supporting, a far-right group that plotted to carry out deadly attacks on Muslims with the aim of stoking civil unrest and overthrowing the government.
Members of “Group S” had allegedly hoarded firearms, axes and swords for the planned attacks.
Federal prosecutors accuse 11 members of the group of seeking to “rock and ultimately overturn the state and social order of the Federal Republic of Germany”.
The trial in the southwest city of Stuttgart is expected to last months.