World news in brief
£5bn settlement in Brazil mining disaster
Brazilian mining giant Vale signed a settlement deal yesterday to pay 37.7 billion reais ($7bn; £5.1bn) to the state of Minas Gerais, following the collapse of a dam two years ago that devastated the city of Brumadinho and killed more than 270 people. The settlement is one of the largest ever in the country, Minas Gerais officials said in a statement. The rupture of the dam at Vale’s iron ore mining complex on 25 Jauary 2019 unleashed a destructive torrent of mining waste, burying the equivalent of 300 soccer pitches under thick mud. Eleven people are still missing.
“We know that we have a long way to go and we remain firm in our purpose,” Vale’s chief executive, Eduardo Bartolomeo, said in a statement. About 30 per cent of the total will go to Brumadinho, with funding for the families of victims, environmental projects and job creation. Some of the settlement money will also finance projects across the state, including public transport improvements and new infrastructure.
McKinsey agrees to pay over £400m for opioid crisis
The global consulting firm McKinsey & Company agreed to pay nearly $600m (£439m) for its role in advising businesses on how to sell more prescription opioid painkillers amid a nationwide overdose crisis. “We deeply regret that we did not adequately acknowledge the tragic consequences of the epidemic unfolding in our communities,” McKinsey Global managing partner Kevin Sneader said in a statement yesterday, noting the company cooperated with investigations. “With this agreement, we hope to be part of the solution to the opioid crisis in the US.”
Most of the money is in a $573m settlement reached with 47 states, the District of Columbia and five US territories, but the company said it had deals with a total of 49 states. Washington’s attorney general announced a separate $13.5m deal and West Virginia announced a $10m settlement with the New Yorkbased company. AP
Norway won’t give Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to over-65s
Norway will not offer the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 to individuals over the age of 65, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) said yesterday, making it the latest European country to restrict its use. Roughly 135,000 individuals in Norway have received their first coronavirus vaccine, with 35,000 having received their second jab, from vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer, the agency said.
However, the FHI has said it will not be administering AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine to people in older age groups, highlighting the smaller number of participants above the age of 65 in the trial conducted by the British-Swedish drug maker. This move follows that of health officials in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Poland, who have advised against its use for those over the age of 65, citing a lack of data on its efficacy in older people.
Russian dies on live-stream after drinking 1.5 litres of vodka
A Russian man has died during a livestream after drinking 1.5 litres of vodka. The man, named in local media reports as 60-year-old Yuri Dushechkin, was apparently offered money by a YouTuber in exchange for drinking alcohol or hot sauce on air. He is said to have died after consuming about 1.5 litres of vodka, with his body still visible to viewers as the livestream continued to record, according to Russian news website Readovka.
The security forces are investigating the incident, which took place last Thursday in the city of Smolensk in western Russia. Mr Dushechkin’s cause of death has not yet been officially confirmed. Russian Senator Alexey Pushkov, chair of the Federation Council’s Commission on Information Policy, condemned the incident on Twitter. He said the council is due to meet on 11 February to discuss legislation to make “thrash streaming” illegal.
India threatens to jail Twitter employees
The Indian government has threatened to punish employees of Twitter with fines and jail terms of up to seven years for failing to suspend hundreds of accounts that were deemed critical of the Modi administration. After months of protests by farmers in India, the government has issued a series of orders demanding Twitter block accounts tweeting under the hashtag #ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide, arguing
that the phrase is inflammatory and could lead to further violent unrest.
Twitter did move to make more than 250 accounts inaccessible to India-based users following directions from the IT ministry on Monday, but reversed the move after about six hours following a major public outcry. The suspended accounts included the investigative news magazine The Caravan. The social media site told the government it would not be complying with the directive on the basis that the accounts and tweets in question either constituted “free speech” or were “newsworthy”.