A soft snow fell as a clutch of visitors equipped with a Geiger counter wandered through the ghostly Ukrainian town of Pripyat, frozen in time since the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986.More than three decades after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster forced thousands to evacuate, there is an influx of visitors to the area that has spurred officials to seek official status from UNESCO.”The Chernobyl zone is already a world-famous landmark,” guide Maksym Polivko told AFP during a tour on a recent frosty day.”But today this area has no official status,” the 38-year-old said of the exclusion zone where flourishing wildlife is taking over deserted Soviet-era tower blocks, shops and official buildings.That could change under the government initiative to have the area included on the UNESCO heritage list alongside landmarks like India’s Taj Mahal or Stonehenge in England.Officials hope recognition from the U.N.’s culture agency will boost the site as a tourist attraction and in turn bolster efforts to preserve aging buildings nearby.The explosion in the fourth reactor at the nuclear power plant in April 1986 left swathes of Ukraine and neighboring Belarus badly contaminated and led to the creation of the exclusion zone roughly the size of Luxembourg.Ukrainian authorities say it may not be safe for humans to live in the exclusion zone for another 24,000 years. Meanwhile, it has become a haven for wildlife with elk and deer roaming nearby forests.Dozens of villages and towns populated by hundreds of thousands of people were abandoned after the disaster, yet more than 100 elderly people live in the area despite the radiation threat.In Pripyat, a ghost town not far from the Chernobyl plant, rooms in eerie residential blocks are piled with belongings of former residents.’The time has come’Polivko said he hoped the upgraded status would encourage officials to act more responsibly to preserve the crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure surrounding the plant.”All these objects here require some repair,” he said.It was a sentiment echoed by Ukrainian Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko, who described the recent influx of tourists from home and abroad as evidence of Chernobyl’s importance “not only to Ukrainians, but of all mankind.”A record number of 124,000 tourists visited last year, including 100,000 foreigners following the release of the hugely popular Chernobyl television series in 2019.Tkachenko said obtaining UNESCO status could promote the exclusion zone as “a place of memory” that would warn against a repeat nuclear disaster.”The area may and should be open to visitors, but it should be more than just an adventure destination for explorers,” Tkachenko told AFP.The government is set to propose specific objects in the zone as a heritage site before March, but a final decision could come as late as 2023.After the explosion in 1986, the three other reactors at Chernobyl continued to generate electricity until the station finally closed in 2000. Ukraine will mark the 20th anniversary of the closure Tuesday.Tkachenko said the effort to secure UNESCO status was a new priority after work on a giant protective dome over the fourth reactor was completed in 2016.With the site now safe for 100 years, he said he hoped world heritage status would boost visitor numbers to 1 million a year.It’s a figure that would require an overhaul of the local infrastructure and overwhelm a lone souvenir kiosk on the site selling trinkets such as mugs and clothing adorned with nuclear fallout signs.”Before, everyone was busy with the cover,” Tkachenko said of the timing of the heritage initiative.”The time has come to do this.”
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Trade talks between Britain and the European Union continued into the night Saturday ahead of the latest make-or-break deadline, as the Royal Navy readied armed ships to patrol U.K. fishing waters in case of a no-deal Brexit.Negotiations in Brussels were to continue Sunday, the day that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen have set as a deadline to decide whether any trade deal is still possible.”Talks are continuing overnight, but as things stand the offer on the table from the EU remains unacceptable,” a U.K. government source said. “The prime minister will leave no stone unturned in this process, but he is absolutely clear: Any agreement must be fair and respect the fundamental position that the U.K. will be a sovereign nation in three weeks’ time.”A senior EU source, echoing von der Leyen’s words Friday, said: “The defense of the single market is a red line for the European Union. What we have proposed to the United Kingdom respects British sovereignty. It could be the basis for an agreement.”Four 80-meter (260-feet) British ships have been placed on standby, part of increased contingency planning on both sides of the English Channel, and evoking memories of the Cod Wars with Iceland over fishing rights in the North Atlantic in the 1960s and ’70s.Johnson said on Friday it was “very, very likely” the talks would fail, and that Britain would revert to World Trade Organization (WTO) terms with its largest single trading partner.European leaders have also been told the chances of a deal are slim, with both sides at loggerheads over rules to govern fair competition and fishing rights in British territorial waters.FILE – Trucks queue along the A16 motorway to board ferries to reach England, near Calais, France, Dec. 9, 2020. British-EU trade talks were teetering Dec. 12, 2020.Deal or no deal, Britain will leave the EU single market and customs union on the evening of December 31, more than four years after a landmark referendum on membership of the bloc.’Robust enforcement’As the talks limped on, hardline pro-Brexit Conservative MPs sought assurances from Johnson that the navy should be deployed to protect British waters.Lawmaker Daniel Kawczynski said it would help “prevent illegal French fishing” when EU access ends, stoking nationalist fervor but sparking criticism even within the Tory ranks.But another Conservative, Tom Tugendhat, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, tweeted in French that the whole process posed “a real and present risk of poisoning relations” between France and Britain.And Tobias Ellwood, a former British army captain who now heads Parliament’s defense select committee, said confrontations in the channel would only be welcomed by Britain’s enemies.”We’re facing the prospect of our overstretched Royal Navy squaring up to a close NATO ally over fishing rights,” he told BBC radio. “This isn’t the Elizabethan times anymore. It’s global Britain,” he added, referring to the country’s new post-EU foreign policy.”We need to be building alliances, not breaking them apart,” he added.The river-class patrol vessels of the Fishery Protection Squadron — the Royal Navy’s oldest front-line squadron with a history dating back more than 500 years — already enforce U.K. and EU fisheries law.The Ministry of Defense confirmed it has conducted “extensive planning and preparation” for a range of post-Brexit scenarios from January 1 and has 14,000 personnel on standby to help with the transition.Planning difficultiesWTO terms would mean tariffs and quotas, driving up prices for businesses and consumers, and the reintroduction of border checks for the first time in decades.That has already raised the prospect of heavy traffic clogging roads leading to seaports in southern and southeast England, as bureaucracy lengthens waiting times for imports and exports.Transport companies have also warned that EU member Ireland could see import volumes shrink in the event of new customs procedures for goods routed through Britain.”As an industry we’re looking to plan ahead but there’s so many unknowns it becomes difficult,” said Road Haulage Association director Martin Reid.
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Russia resumed construction on a gas pipeline to Germany on Friday, one year after the United States opposed the joint international project because of possible threats to Europe’s energy security, project managers said. Work on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was suspended in December 2019 after it became a source of conflict between Russia and the West. Nord Stream 2 is intended to double the annual gas capacity of the existing Nord Stream pipeline. In a statement, Nord Stream 2 officials confirmed construction had resumed under the Baltic Sea, saying “the pipelay vessel Fortuna will lay a 2.6-kilometer section of the pipeline in the German Exclusive Economic Zone in water depths of less than 30 meters.” Germany’s maritime authority notified shippers to avoid part of the Baltic Sea where the Nord Stream 2 will be built until December 31. Work on the 100-kilometer undersea pipeline is 90% complete. When finished, Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, which bypass Ukraine, will be responsible for the transfer of more than half of Russia’s total gas exports to Europe. Washington had criticized Europe for its overdependence on Russian energy and threatened sanctions against European partners in the pipeline project. The majority stakeholder in the project, Russian gas giant Gazprom, together with its European partners, Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper groups, the Dutch-British giant Shell, France’s Engie and Austria’s OMV, will spend about $11.5 billion on the project. Gazprom’s stock value rose 3.5% Friday on the Moscow stock exchange. 
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European Union leaders say the most likely outcome after months of fractious haggling with London is that Britain will leave the bloc at the end of the year without a trade and security deal — an upshot that will have serious economic repercussions on both sides of the English Channel and could poison relations between the EU and the British for years to come.During a short briefing at the end of an all-night summit in Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, told the EU’s 27 national leaders that there was a “higher probability for no deal than a deal,” according to officials.With a firm Sunday deadline for talks looming, Britain’s Boris Johnson echoed the EU president’s pessimism, saying a no-deal outcome from Brexit trade talks was “looking very, very likely.”The prime minister suggested a breakthrough in the deadlocked talks would need a “big offer, a big change” from the EU, but that he had “yet to see it.”But unlike the Europeans, Johnson sounded an upbeat note, adding: “It is looking very, very likely that we will have to go for a solution that I think would be wonderful for the UK, and we’d be able to do exactly what we want from January 1.”FILE – A man waves a British flag on Brexit day in London, Jan. 31, 2020.Some see limitless possibilitiesBritain’s Brexiters have long maintained that once free from the EU, the country’s commercial possibilities will be limitless and they can compensate for any losses by striking trade agreements with a host of other countries.It isn’t a view shared by much of British business nor the Bank of England, which has warned that leaving the EU without a deal could reduce Britain’s GDP next year by 6 percent.British businesses say a no-deal Brexit will cause massive disruption to trade, with exporters and importers facing new, burdensome border checks, costly customs paperwork and higher prices. Restrictions on the number of British trucks allowed to enter the EU would mean an estimated two-thirds of British businesses would find it difficult to trade in the bloc at all, according to some haulage experts.British-manufactured cars exported to the EU would face tariffs of about 10 percent, dairy products 35 percent, and meat more than 40 percent. Nearly half of all foods consumed in Britain come from EU countries, and supermarkets are warning there will be less choice on their shelves and there will be inflationary price hikes if a deal eliminating tariffs and reducing trade barriers isn’t struck.Border disruption also will affect the importation of medicines from Europe, a major supplier for Britain, leading to shortages and, again, higher prices, Britain’s pharmacists have warned.Without a deal, it remains unclear to what extent British banks and financial institutions will be allowed to operate on the continent. Some international banks likely would shift some of their operations to EU countries.FILE – The Corentin-Lucas fishing boat arrives at the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, Dec. 10, 2020. Fishing rights are a sticking point in negotiations between the U.K. and the European Union about a post-Brexit trade deal.Key disputesMidweek, Johnson flew to Brussels for face-to-face talks with von der Leyen over a three-hour fish dinner. The two had “frank” discussions, according to officials, but failed to bridge the gap in two key areas — EU fishing access to Britain’s coastal waters and regulatory alignment.Of these, the bigger dispute involves regulatory alignment, with both sides at loggerheads over shared regulatory rules and competition, and safety standards to ensure businesses in Britain do not have an unfair competitive edge over their EU rivals. Lower standards mean lower costs and lower prices for finished goods, giving British manufacturers an advantage over continental competitors.Brussels insists that Britain should follow EU rules closely, including workers’ rights and environmental regulations. British officials have taken special offense with Brussels’ demand that Britain would have to comply with the bloc’s rules, even as they evolve, without having had any say in their development.Johnson has said the whole point of Brexit was to “take back control,” to break free from following EU common rules and to reassert national sovereignty. But EU officials say common rules are the price to pay for access to the bloc’s lucrative single market, the world’s largest free-trade bloc, and they note all trade treaties normally require agreed competition rules that can and do change over time.A no-deal exit by Britain when its transition period out of the EU ends on December 31 will also end cooperation on security and intelligence data-sharing. British police will lose access to the EU database of convictions, wanted suspects, DNA and fingerprints.“Workarounds for access to the databases would all involve more time and effort. And in this business, speed equals security, so loss of real-time connectivity makes us all less safe,” a former British national security chief, Peter Ricketts, warned Friday.Trucks queue in Dover, England, Dec. 11, 2020. The U.K. left the EU on Jan. 31, but remains within the bloc’s tariff-free single market and customs union until the end of the year.Plea for cooler headsSome EU leaders say they’re still holding out hope for a deal, but also insist sharp rhetoric on both sides needs to be reduced. Speaking in Berlin, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told reporters: “We need to try and dial down the language in terms of the division and differences of views and focus on the detail. There is a bigger picture here that goes beyond trade in a world that is changing and has a lot of risk.”He said: “The idea that the UK and EU cannot put a good, constructive, positive partnership in place in the context of that new relationship … I think that would be an enormous lost opportunity and both sides will be weaker as a result.”His call to drop vitriolic language was ignored by some British Conservative lawmakers. “Have our EU ‘friends’ no regard or respect for the UK and our nation’s sacrifices that permit them to live in freedom and prosperity today, safely away from the shadow of totalitarianism?” tweeted Imran Ahmad Khan, a Conservative MP from the north of England.“The EU’s contemptuous treatment of the UK makes it clear there cannot be a deal until it accepts the UK as a sovereign equal and awards us the respect and regard we merit,” Khan added.There will also be repercussions for the EU from a messy British exit, with member countries collectively suffering an estimated $40 billion in lost annual exports. But the impact will largely be borne across all 27 member countries, although Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are expected to take the biggest hit.France will lose an estimated $4 billion a year in diminished exports to Britain, according to some studies, with 30,000 French firms impacted, many in the wine and drink sector. Ireland could suffer a 6 percent reduction in its GDP next year in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) says action and money are needed to ensure coronavirus vaccines are available around the world as Western nations approve them.
During Friday’s COVID-19 briefing at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus applauded the fact Britain was already vaccinating its citizens and that Canada, the United states and others would not be far behind. He said to have safe and effective vaccines for a virus that was completely unknown a year ago is an “astounding scientific achievement.”
The WHO chief noted it would be an even greater achievement to ensure all countries have equal access to those vaccines. Tedros said the U.N. agency has worked hard over the past year to secure political commitments from world leaders for equal access to vaccines and he said he wants to see those commitments translated into action.  
He said the WHO needs $4.3 billion to procure vaccines for the world’s neediest countries and urged donors to help fill a funding gap.  
The director-general said the organization is working with its partners to ensure developing countries have infrastructure in place to deliver vaccines to their populations. Through its COVAX vaccine cooperative and the 189 countries participating, Tedros said the WHO has secured nearly a billion doses of three potential vaccines.  Americans Await Final Approval of First COVID-19 Vaccine as Deaths Reach Record HighUS Food and Drug Administration widely expected to authorize emergency use after special panel votes to recommend approval   But Tedros said closing the funding gap is crucial to ensuring the entire world is protected.
“We have all seen images of people being vaccinated against COVID-19. We want to see these same images all over the world, and that will be a true sign of solidarity,” he said Friday.
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Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, announced Friday that beginning Monday, the self-isolation period after contact with confirmed COVID-19 carriers will be shortened from 14 to 10 days in the nation.
At her COVID-19 news briefing in Edinburgh, Sturgeon also said that the four-day reduction in the self-isolation period would apply to travelers returning from high-risk countries. She said the new policy was based on recommendations from Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
She said the chief medical officers in all four jurisdictions – Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have agreed to the reduction.
In an interview with the Associated Press, British Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries said the new policy was based on studies conducted by the SAGE and a separate advisory group on emerging respiratory virus threats. Harries said those studies found people were least likely to transmit COVID-19 at the end of their infection.  
She said reducing the self-isolation period would allow a “reasonable balance” between managing the risk to the public and intruding on people’s lives.
Sturgeon reported 1,001 new cases of COVID-19 over the past 24-hour period. It was the first time in about two weeks that the daily rate was over 1,000. But that number was the result of nearly 25,000 test results, reflecting a positivity rate of less than five percent — which is considered a good sign.
The first minister also announced that non-essential shops across much of western Scotland — including Glasgow — have reopened for the first time in three weeks, She urged people to follow rules, avoid crowded shops, and shop alone or in small groups.
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Turkish exporters say they have become a casualty of what analysts describe as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aggressive foreign policy. Turkey’s relations with its Saudi partners suffer as a result of Ankara’s push to exert its influence in the Mediterranean and in Africa. Exporters say they are being shut out of Middle Eastern markets — prompting Turkey to start changing its approach.Turkish companies like industrial boilermaker Erensan are paying a heavy price for Turkey’s strained relations across the Middle East and North Africa, says Erensan’s CEO Ali Eren.”We shifted, so to speak, from the Middle East,” said Eren. “With Saudi Arabia also not good relations, Egypt not good relations, so we shifted a little bit to the East to Indonesia for example and to Bangladesh which turned out to be good markets for us as well. But it’s not automatically done because we have to work first to get into the market.” FILE – Couple walks along Istiklal Street at the popular touristic neighbourhood of Beyoglu after a partial weekend curfew started during the COVID-19 outbreak in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 21, 2020.Reports of a Saudi trade boycott has hit Turkey’s massive textile industry, which supplies many of the big international brands. Egypt has sided with Saudi Arabia in a growing, bitter rivalry.International relations expert Emre Caliskan at the University of Oxford says Turkey sees Riyadh as thwarting its efforts to penetrate North African markets.”Turkey wants to be an economic player in the region. Turkey has an export orientated economy,” said Caliskan. “So whenever Turkey started have a better relationship with some countries this could be Morocco and Algeria. They always found a country trying to position itself towards Saudi Arabia.People wearing masks for protection against the spread of coronavirus, walk in the Spice Market, or the Egyptian Bazaar, in Istanbul, Nov. 17, 2020.”The Turkish leadership and the Saudis felt the need to reassess the situation and to be able to start a dialogue in their interest as you said, maybe it could be the start of a normalization of relations with Cairo, why not?,” he said.With Ali Eren’s boiler business is still counting the cost of Turkey’s regional isolation, Eren welcomes talk of a rapprochement.”Egypt has been a loss for us, but we are not worried it’s going to come back on us again because politics change,” said Eren.For exporters like Eren who are also reeling from the pandemic, repairing ties with the Saudis cannot come soon enough.
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British health officials are warning that people with a “significant history” of allergic reactions should not receive the new coronavirus vaccine that was rolled out in a mass vaccination program Tuesday, pending investigation of two adverse reactions.  Britian is the first western country to begin the mass vaccinations, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London.Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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European Union leaders reached a hard-fought deal Friday to cut the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by the end of the decade compared with 1990 levels, avoiding a hugely embarrassing deadlock ahead of a U.N. climate meeting this weekend.Following night-long discussions at their two-day summit in Brussels, the 27 member states approved the EU executive commission’s proposal to toughen the bloc’s intermediate target on the way to climate neutrality by mid-century, after a group of reluctant, coal-reliant countries finally accepted to support the improved goal.Five years after the Paris agreement, the EU wants to be a leader in the fight against global warming. Yet the bloc’s heads of states and governments were unable to agree on the new target the last time they met in October, mainly because of financial concerns by eastern nations about how to fund and handle the green transition.But the long-awaited deal on a massive long-term budget and coronavirus recovery clinched Thursday by EU leaders swung the momentum.Large swaths of the record-high 1.82 trillion-euro package are set to pour into programs and investments designed to help the member states, regions and sectors particularly affected by the green transition, which are in need of a deep economic and social transformation. EU leaders have agreed that 30% of the package should be used to support the transition.
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With a chaotic and costly no-deal Brexit three weeks away, leaders of both the European Union and United Kingdom saw an ever liklier collapse of trade talks Thursday, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson even spoke of a “strong possibility” of failure. Both sides told their citizens to brace for a New Year’s shock, as trade between the U.K. and the European mainland could face its biggest upheaval in almost a half century.  Johnson’s gloomy comments came as negotiators sought to find a belated breakthrough in technical talks, where their leaders failed three times in political discussions over the past week.  Facing a Sunday deadline set after inconclusive talks between EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Johnson on Wednesday night, both sides realized their drawn-out four-year divorce might well end on bad terms.  FILE – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 9, 2020.”I do think we need to be very, very clear: There is now a strong possibility — a strong possibility — that we will have a solution that is much more like an Australian relationship with the EU,” Johnson said, using his phrasing for a no-deal exit. Australia does not have a free trade deal with the 27-nation EU. “That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing,” Johnson added. On the EU side, reactions were equally pessimistic.  “I am a bit more gloomy today, as far as I can hear,” Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said at an EU summit where von der Leyen briefed the 27 leaders on her unsuccessful dinner with Johnson. FILE – Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven speaks during a news conference updating on the coronavirus situation, at the government headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Nov. 3, 2020.”She was not really confident that all difficulties could be resolved,” said David Sassoli, president of the EU parliament that will have to approve any deal brokered.  A cliff-edge departure would threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs and cost tens of billions of dollars in commerce. To prepare for a sudden exit on January 1, the EU on Thursday proposed four contingency measures to make sure that at least air and road traffic would continue as smoothly as possible for the next six months. It also proposed that fishermen should still have access to each other’s waters for up to a year, to limit the commercial damage of a no-deal split. The plans depend on the U.K. offering similar initiatives. The move was indicative of how the EU saw a bad breakup as ever more realistic. FILE – Fishermen empty a fishing net aboard the Boulogne-sur-Mer based trawler “Nicolas Jeremy” in the North Sea, off the coast of northern France, Dec. 7, 2020. French fishermen net a quarter of their northeastern Atlantic catch in British waters.Johnson warned that “yes, now is the time for the public and businesses to get ready for January 1, because, believe me, there’s going to be change either way.” For months now, trade talks have faltered on Britain’s insistence that as a sovereign nation it must not be bound indefinitely to EU rules and regulations — even if it wants to export freely to the bloc. That same steadfastness has marked the EU in preserving its cherished single market and seeking guarantees against a low-regulation neighbor that would be able to undercut its businesses.  After Johnson’s midnight return to London, reactions were equally dim there.  U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the Sunday deadline was a “moment of finality” — though he added “you can never say never entirely.”  FILE – British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab speaks at a press conference at the State Department in Washington, Sept. 16, 2020.In four years of talks on the U.K.’s departure terms and a future trade relationship, such self-imposed deadlines have been broken repeatedly since Britain voted to leave the EU.  January 1 is different because the U.K. has made the 11-month transition since its January 31 official departure legally binding.  “There are big ideological, substantive and policy gaps that need to be bridged,” said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe managing director for the Eurasia Group. “They’re so far apart and the time is so limited now.” A no-deal split would bring tariffs and other barriers that would hurt both sides, although most economists think the British economy would take a greater hit because the U.K. does almost half of its trade with the bloc. Months of trade talks have failed to bridge the gaps on three issues — fishing rights, fair-competition rules and the governance of future disputes. While both sides want a deal, they have fundamentally different views of what it entails. The EU fears Britain will slash social and environmental standards and pump state money into U.K. industries, becoming a low-regulation economic rival on the bloc’s doorstep — hence the demand for strict “level playing field” guarantees in exchange for access to its markets. 
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Turkish exporters are being shut out of Middle Eastern markets because of growing pushback by Saudi Arabia and Egypt in response to what some describe as Turkey’s aggressive foreign policy. But with a COVID-ravaged economy, Ankara is looking for a diplomatic reset, as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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The head of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) has warned that 270 million people face starvation around the globe. WFP Executive Director David Beasley spoke Thursday at a ceremony held virtually as he accepted the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the agency.“This Nobel Peace Prize is more than a thank you. It is a call to action,” Beasley said. “Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse, 270 million people are marching toward starvation.” He also said, “Out of that 270 million, 30 million depend on us 100% for their survival.”Instead of the traditional Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Beasley accepted the prize in Rome, headquarters of the WFP. He said the world had the wealth and resources to tackle global hunger.“We stand at what may be the most ironic moment in modern history. On the one hand, after a century of massive strides in eliminating extreme poverty, today those 270 million of our neighbors are on the brink of starvation. That’s more than the entire population of western Europe. On the other hand, there’s $400 trillion of wealth in our world today. Even at the height of the COVID pandemic, in just 90 days an additional $2.7 trillion of wealth was created and we only need $5 billion to save 30 million lives from famine. What am I missing here?” Beasley said.In 2019, the WFP provided assistance to almost 100 million people in 88 countries. The Norwegian Nobel committee said in addition to combating hunger, the WFP had contributed to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected places and was a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict over its 60-year history.The WFP’s regional director for Eastern Africa, Michael Dunford, said the organization was delighted to win the prize after a tough year.“This has been a tremendous boost,” Dunford said. “2020 as you know has been one of the most difficult years. COVID has been yet another shock in addition to some of the worst flooding in eastern Africa, in addition to a locust plague of biblical proportions, and unfortunately, and this is the biggest concern, conflict and insecurity in so many of the countries that we’re operating in.”Dunford says the prize is a tribute to the WFP staff who risk their lives “…working in some of the most difficult locations in the world, in sub-offices deep in the field, be it either in Somalia or in South Sudan. And really, people who have to put their lives on the line to be able to support people who cannot feed themselves.”The World Food Program has also coordinated medical logistics during the coronavirus pandemic. The WFP executive director warned that a failure by the international community to address the needs of those affected by the outbreak would cause what he called a “hunger pandemic” that would dwarf the death toll caused by the virus.WFP staff are expected to travel to Oslo at a later stage to deliver the traditional Nobel lecture. The remaining Nobel awards for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics have also been moved online.The ceremonies are held annually on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his will. 
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Spanish officials say at least two people are dead and 17 others injured after a fire broke out in an abandoned warehouse believed to be occupied by squatters just north of Barcelona.Firefighters and emergency services officials in the city of Badalona say the fire broke out late Wednesday in the warehouse in an industrial area. It was brought under control early Thursday, but firefighters were trying to stabilize the three-story structure before conducting a thorough search, for fear it would collapse.Emergency responders say they could account for about 60 people who had been in the building at the time but say many more fled on their own. It was believed more than 100 squatters occupied the building and were asleep when the fire started. The cause is not known, but one of the survivors told a Spanish newspaper he believed a candle was responsible.Badalona Mayor Xavier Garcia Albiol told reporters at the scene the building had been known to be occupied by squatters for years. Local and regional media reports say many of the squatters were undocumented immigrants from Africa.Badalona is a large, coastal Barcelona suburb of about 220,000, the fourth-largest city in Spain’s Catalonia region.
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Britain’s Conservatives say the left and liberals dominate the arts, museums, broadcasting and the universities, turning them into political echo chambers. They mean to reverse that, fearing they are being outflanked in a broader cultural war roiling the country, one that has only been inflamed by rancorous divisions over Brexit and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.The latest furious skirmish has focused on an unlikely target — the country’s National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. The storied charity manages around 300 stately homes and castles as well as other places of historic interest acquired over the years from impoverished aristocratic families.Among them Chartwell in Kent, the country home of Winston Churchill for four decades, Cliveden, the home to a Prince of Wales, two dukes, an Earl, and finally the Astor family, and the water-meadow along the River Thames at Runnymede, west of London, the site of the signing in 1215 of the Magna Carta, which an assembly of rebellious English barons forced on King John.FILE – “Cliveden” the thames side Mansion of Lord and Lady Astor at Taplow, Bucks, England on July 22, 1938.Castle Ward in Northern Ireland, another National Trust property, was one of the backdrops for the filming of the blockbuster TV series Game of Thrones.And until recently the National Trust, founded in the late nineteenth century and funded by the government and from the subscriptions of members, was synonymous with genteel afternoon teas, strolls in ornate gardens in period settings and quiet family days-out, all far from the cut-and-thrust of political controversy.Troubled historyBut that changed when in September the National Trust published a weighty report detailing the historical links of 93 properties with the slave trade and British imperial rule.The inclusion of Churchill’s home Chartwell drew the ire especially of the country’s culture minister Oliver Dowden and other ruling Conservatives.FILE – The Churchill family turns out in force to welcome former President Harry S. Truman and first lady Bess Truman to Chartwell, the former British Prime Minister’s English countryside estate,June 24, 1956.Churchill’s role as minister for the colonies in the 1920s, his participation in the partition of Ireland as well as his decision as wartime prime minister to limit aid to Bengal during a disastrous 1943 famine were all cited in the report. None of that quieted the outcry from Conservatives, nor their anger that the home of the Victorian-era author Rudyard Kipling was listed because “the British Empire was a central theme and context of his literary output.”“Churchill is one of Britain’s greatest heroes,” Dowden complained. “He rallied the free world to defeat fascism. It will surprise and disappoint people that the National Trust appears to be making him a subject of criticism and controversy,” he added.Other Conservatives criticized the conflation of slavery with colonialism, saying it revealed the political motivations of the National Trust and was an effort to defame and diminish towering historical figures and great families and to rewrite British history.In its report exploring how the previous owners of the properties profited from slavery and were involved in colonial expansion, or oversaw British imperial rule across a swathe of the globe, the National Trust noted: “These histories are sometimes very painful and difficult to consider. They make us question our assumptions about the past, and yet they can also deepen and enrich our understanding.”PoliticsThe charity’s executives insist they are not taking partisan political sides and that the information about how foreign conquest and slavery profits enriched plantation-owning families and imperial overlords, allowing them to build stately homes and lavishly furnish them, can be utilized for education purposes.They want visitors to the properties to get a fuller, more accurate history, not a sanitized version, they say.Historian Peter Mitchell, a research fellow at Britain’s Sussex University, agrees. He has praised the trust for trying to contextualize, explain and for asking uncomfortable questions. Writing in the Guardian newspaper, he said: “The treatment the National Trust has received for daring to understand its mission as to help us understand history, rather than supply us with fantasy, is a warning to all historians.”But Conservative critics say the National Trust should focus on the upkeep of the buildings and land it manages. The battle has raged on for months now.This week, Common Sense, a group of more than 60 Conservative lawmakers, revealed it is seeking a meeting with Britain’s charity commissioner, to discuss the charitable status of organizations which they claim have “denigrated British history and heritage,” including the National Trust. The group argues charities are being hijacked by “elitist bourgeois liberals colored by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the ‘woke agenda.’”The request for a meeting follows a recent warning by the commissioner, Tina Stowell, a Conservative peer, that those “tempted to use charities as another front on which to wage broader political struggles should be careful.”On campusConservative cultural warriors are also targeting Britain’s public universities, which they see as bastions of the left and they criticized a recent report by the universities’ representative body, UK’s universities, calling for an end to “curricula that are based on Eurocentric, typically white voices.” They have fulminated, too, against the so-called no-platforming of controversial speakers, generally Conservatives, at some universities, who find themselves barred from speaking because of their views.Britain’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden outside Downing Street in London, Britain, Nov. 4, 2020.In the past few weeks the culture minister, Oliver Dowden, has warned a London museum it might lose state funding, if it removes a statue of a merchant and slave trader from its grounds. And the Department for Education has instructed schools not to teach pupils about “extreme political stances” such as the “desire to overthrow capitalism,” and to refrain from teaching “victim narratives that are harmful to British society.”Some Conservative commentators have called for even more forward-leaning action. Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley has urged the ruling Conservatives to “march through the cultural institutions,” saying it should use the “purse strings” to change the cultural political balance.But some Conservative lawmakers worry that cultural warfare can be carried too far and that it carries electoral risks, limiting its utility as a political strategy. Polling data suggests older Britons do worry about the country turning more multicultural and remain fearful of a dilution of what they see as British identity. But younger votes don’t.Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself has been cautious. In his speech to a virtual conference of Conservative party members in October, he devoted little time to the culture wars, limiting his remarks to a short passage criticizing those who “want to pull statues down, to rewrite the history of our country … to make it look more politically correct.” A full-scale, no-holds-barred culture war would undermine the image of a “global Britain,” which Johnson has been promoting.Easier this year, he considered appointing two highly Conservative journalists, Charles Moore, a biographer of Margaret Thatcher, and Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail tabloid, to chair respectively the BBC and the country’s broadcasting regulator, only to back down.
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Britain’s foreign minister said Thursday that negotiations on a trade deal with the European Union will reach a “moment of finality” this weekend, with both sides assessing chances of an agreement as slim.Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the Sunday deadline set by Britain and the EU for a decision was final, though he added, “You can never say never entirely.”European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a three-hour dinner meeting Wednesday in hope of unblocking stalled talks but came away saying the gaps between them were large.“We understand each other’s positions. They remain far apart,” von der Leyen said.They told their negotiators to keep talking but set Sunday as decision day.Without a deal, the bloc and Britain face a tumultuous no-deal split at the end of the month, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in losses.Britain left the EU on Jan. 31 but remains in its economic structures until the end of the year. That means a serious economic rupture on Jan. 1 that could be chaotic if there is no trade agreement. A no-deal split would bring tariffs and other barriers that would hurt both sides, although most economists think the British economy would take a greater hit because the U.K. does almost half of its trade with the bloc.Months of trade talks have failed to bridge the gaps on three issues: fishing rights, fair-competition rules and the governance of future disputes.While both sides want a deal, they have fundamentally different views of what it entails. The EU fears Britain will slash social and environmental standards and pump state money into U.K. industries, becoming a low-regulation economic rival on the bloc’s doorstep — hence the demand for strict “level playing field” guarantees in exchange for access to its markets.The U.K. government sees Brexit as about sovereignty and “taking back control” of the country’s laws, borders and waters. It claims the EU is trying to bind Britain to the bloc’s rules indefinitely.
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British health officials are warning that people with a “significant history” of allergic reactions should not receive the new coronavirus vaccine that was rolled out in a mass vaccination program Tuesday, pending investigation of two adverse reactions. Britain is the first western country to begin the mass vaccinations, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
Camera: Henry Ridgwell   Produced by: Henry Hernandez 
 
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Scientists are watching a giant iceberg in the southern Atlantic Ocean saying it appears to be on a collision course with South Georgia Island and could devastate wildlife there, including penguins, seals and albatross.   
 
Britain’s Royal Air Force, or RAF, Tuesday released video taken by an aircraft that flew last week over the 4,200-square-kilometer iceberg — roughly the size of the U.S. state of Delaware — and known as A68a. In the video, cracks and fissures can be seen on its surface, with a number of smaller ice chunks floating nearby.   
 
The British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC, reports the iceberg is now within 150 kilometers of the British Overseas Territory.
 
Researchers have spent weeks watching the iceberg on its potential collision course with the remote island off the coast of South America. A68a is about the same size as the island itself and has been floating in its general direction for more than three years since breaking off from the Antarctic peninsula in July of 2017.
 
Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey believe the iceberg is about 200 meters thick — relatively thin for an iceberg of its size — which would allow it to get close to the island before becoming stuck. Scientists fear it could crush marine life on the sea floor, and block penguins and seals off from their normal forage routes to feed their young. They say it could be there for as long as 10 years.
 
British officials say it could also be an obstacle to government ships conducting fishery patrols and surveillance around South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.   
 
The Antarctic Survey says a collision is still uncertain, as the currents could carry the iceberg past the island.
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Players have taken a knee, unfurled slogans and demanded tougher action only to find soccer — their working environment — remains infected with racism.
The tipping point might just have come, with elite players in Paris taking the extraordinary step of refusing to continue playing.
At the end of a year of striking gestures against racial injustice and discrimination, the Champions League produced one of soccer’s most powerful shows of solidarity against racism on Tuesday when players from Paris Saint-Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir left the field and didn’t return.
“The walk off by both Basaksehir and PSG together lays down a marker in Europe,” Piara Powar, executive director of the anti-discrimination Fare network, told The Associated Press. “Many players are fed up with half measures to tackle racism and are more prepared than ever to exercise their right to stop a match.”
The flashpoint came 14 minutes into the game when the fourth official — Sebastian Coltescu of Romania — was accused of using a racial term to identify Basaksehir assistant coach Pierre Webo before sending him off for his conduct on the sidelines. Webo is Black.
“You are racist,” Basaksehir coach Okan Buruk said to Coltescu.
An enraged Webo demanded an explanation from Coltescu, repeating at least six times: “Why you say negro?”
The exchanges were broadcast live around the world from soccer’s biggest club competition.
“Why when you mention a Black guy, you have to say ‘This Black guy?'” asked Basaksehir substitute Demba Ba, who is Black.
The Fare network helps UEFA prosecute discriminatory acts like Tuesday’s incident at the Parc des Princes.
“Our colleagues at the Romanian state anti-discrimination organization have confirmed it is racist in Romanian to refer to a player by using his race as an identifier,” Powar said. “There is no ambiguity. This incident shows the need for much better training of match officials. Unintentional racism is still racism.”
Racism at soccer games has typically come from the stands, but matches in countries such as France are being played without fans because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The high-profile incidents tend to highlight the inadequate responses, like in the Portuguese league in February.
Porto striker Moussa Marega tried to walk off the field after being the target of racist abuse from fans in a game against Guimarães and demanded to be substituted. But he faced attempts by his own teammates and opposing players to prevent him from leaving the field.
The referee then gave Marega a yellow card for refusing to continue in the game — the type of action that dissuades players from walking off.
The Romanian referee who was in charge of the game in Paris on Tuesday — Ovidiu Hategan — was in the same role for the 2013 Champions League game when Manchester City player Yaya Toure complained about the lack of action against monkey noises he heard from CSKA Moscow fans.
“If officials cannot set the standards by their own behavior,” Powar said, “they cannot be relied on to deal with racism on the pitch or in the stands.”
Referees have often been criticized for not leading players off the field, instead leaving them to take the decision themselves. England’s national team decided to continue playing a game in Montenegro last year after Callum Hudson-Odoi and Danny Rose were targeted with monkey chants.
The Champions League game in Paris will resume on Wednesday with a new refereeing team.
“The players walking off is a step in the right direction,” former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand said on Britain’s BT Sport television. “But it can’t just be left to them.”
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday called for tougher COVID-19 restrictions as the nation set daily record for deaths from the virus and infection numbers continue to rise.Speaking in the Bundestag – the lower house of the German parliament – a sometimes-emotional Merkel told lawmakers the nation was in a decisive period of fighting the pandemic, with the second wave far more demanding than the first.  Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases reported Wednesday 590 deaths related to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours – more than 100 higher than the week-old previous record – and 20,815 new daily infections, compared with 17,270 a week earlier.Chinese-made COVID-19 Vaccine Nearly 90% Effective, UAE Says Gulf Arab state participated in late-stage clinical trial of vaccine developed by state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm Germany is gradually moving toward a tighter lockdown, at least for a limited period after Christmas, as new coronavirus cases remain high and continue climbing.  
This despite a partial shutdown that started in early November, in hopes of allowing a more normal Christmas holiday.While families will be allowed to gather for Christmas, Merkel is calling for all but the most essential shops to close from Christmas Eve until at least January 10, and for people to work from home and schools to remain closed during that time as well.The idea is to use the festive period to keep people at home and break the chain of infections. Merkel emphatically urged people to limit their social contacts whenever possible.  She said, “If we have too many contacts before Christmas and it ends up being the last Christmas with the grandparents, then we’d really have failed.”Merkel has consistently advocated decisive action but has often had to move more slowly because, in highly decentralized Germany, the country’s 16 state governments are responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions.Germany managed to avoid the high number of infections and grim death tolls seen in other large European nations early in the pandemic and continues to have a much lower overall fatality rate than countries such as Britain, France and Spain.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson heads to Brussels on Wednesday for dinner with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a last ditch attempt to avoid a tumultuous Brexit without a trade deal in three weeks’ time.With growing fears of a chaotic no-deal finale to the five-year Brexit crisis when the United Kingdom finally leaves the EU’s orbit on Dec. 31, the dinner is being cast as a chance to unlock the stalled trade talks.A British government source stressed that a deal may not be possible, as did EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. Ireland also signalled it was pessimistic about a deal.”The EU has to move,” Michael Gove, a senior minister in Johnson’s government dealing with Brexit issues, told Times Radio.While Gove refused to give odds on a deal, he said that often a one-on-one meeting between leaders could result in a breakthrough.”It is often around the table, when you have two political principals one-on-one, that you can often find a way through,” Gove told the BBC.Failure to secure a deal would snarl borders, shock financial markets and sow chaos through supply chains across Europe and beyond as the world faces the vast economic cost of the COVID-19 pandemic.The British pound was flat against the dollar at around 1.3369, after three straight days of losses. It stands around 1% off 2-1/2 year highs hit at the end of last week. Overnight implied volatility — a measure of expected price swings — rose to a new 8-1/2 month high of close to 25%.
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Human rights abusers will face asset freezes and travel bans under new legislation adopted by the European Union.The so-called Magnitsky laws, officially titled the EU Human Rights Global Sanctions Regime, would target those accused of crimes including genocide, torture, assassination and arbitrary detentions.The European Union officially adopts the legislation on December 10 — World Human Rights Day.Bill Browder, a financier at Hermitage Capital Management who has campaigned for similar legislation in countries around the world, said getting Europe on board is a major milestone.FILE – A woman holds a placard with a portrait of Sergei Magnitsky during an unauthorized rally in central Moscow December 15, 2012. The placard reads “Died fighting a system of thievery.”“You have 27 countries, and a number of these countries are countries that dictators and kleptocrats like to visit. They go to the south of France. They go to Sardinia. They go to Spain,” Browder told VOA.“So, there’s something there that they really covet. And so, if these laws, if the EU Magnitsky Act actually is implemented and implemented widely, I think it could have a dramatic impact on the behavior of human rights violators around the world.”The United States, Britain and Canada already have Magnitsky laws. They are named after Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail in 2009 after uncovering a $230 million tax fraud by state officials. He had been beaten by prison guards and denied medical treatment.Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is pictured at Charite hospital in Berlin, Oct. 15, 2020.“The main question we should ask ourselves is why are these people poisoning, killing and fabricating elections? And the answer is very, very simple: money. So, the European Union should target the money and Russian oligarchs, not just old oligarchs, but also new ones like this circle of Mr. Putin,” Navalny told MEPs November 27.Russian President Vladimir Putin denies involvement in Navalny’s poisoning.In addition to those responsible for Magnitsky’s death, there are numerous obvious targets for Europe’s new Magnitsky laws, said Browder.“The killers of [Washington Post columnist] Jamal Khashoggi, the … 19 Saudis, plus [Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed Bin Salman, should be added to this list. The Chinese officials involved in the Uighur genocide. The Chinese officials involved in the Hong Kong repression. The Lukashenko regime. The Burmese officials involved in the Rohingya genocide. Just to name a few.”Critics say it is still possible for individual EU member states to veto any measures proposed under the new law, and countries with warmer ties to the Kremlin such as Hungary and Cyprus could block any sanctions.
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The wedding ceremony and reception in February 2013 was a glitzy three-day affair at a ski resort near St. Petersburg, Russia.  The happy newlyweds were Yekaterina Tikhonova, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s youngest daughter, and Kirill Shamalov, the son of one of the Russian leader’s oldest friends. Among the wedding gifts received shortly after the nuptials was a sizable stake in petrochemical giant Sibur.   According to leaked emails unearthed by Russian investigative outlet iStories, a partner of the international investigative consortium Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Putin’s new son-in-law was able to buy petrochemical shares worth nearly $400 million for just $100.  The disclosure has prompted a wave of criticism from anti-corruption campaigners, who say the sweetheart deal is another example of Kremlin nepotism and how the Putin family and their associates and friends have enriched themselves during the Russian leader’s two-decade-long time in office.  “It’s simple,” tweeted Alexei Navalny, an opposition politician and anti-corruption activist. “Putin’s daughter gets married and the newlyweds receive the present of $380m.”After marrying Tikhonova, Shamalov bought the 3.8% stake in Sibur through a web of offshore companies, according to the investigation. In 2008, Shamalov become one of Sibur’s vice presidents.In a press statement, Dmitry Konov, head of Sibur’s board of directors, said, “The conditions for the sale of the shares in the deal were no different from those for a number of other managers. There were no exclusive conditions for KN Shamalov.” (KN are the first letters of Shamalov’s first name and patronymic)  In remarks to the RBC News website Tuesday, Konov said the real cost of the stake was far higher, including salary forfeited as part of the share acquisition deal and other unspecified conditions.FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks with Chairman of the Management Board of the Sibur company Dmitry Konov as they visit a plant in Tobolsk, Russia, Dec. 1, 2020. (Sputnik/Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin via Reuters)Private emails secured through a massive data breach also suggest the newlyweds went on a spending spree — buying a luxury mansion near Putin’s country residence on the outskirts of Moscow and a villa in the French resort of Biarritz. The furnishings were expensive — one carpet cost $65,000; some Japanese books cost $7,000, and a spa, around $350,000, according to the emails.  Kirill is the son of Nikolai Shamalov, a millionaire businessman who in the 1990s co-founded with Putin the Ozero community, a lakeside gated dacha (country house) cooperative near St. Petersburg. Many members of the Ozero cooperative assumed top positions in the Russian government and businesses after Putin became Russia’s president.A year after his marriage to Tikhonova, the younger Shamalov secured a large loan from Kremlin-linked Gazprombank to buy an even larger 17% stake in Sibur, making him Russia’s youngest billionaire at the age of 32. His brother was deputy chairman at Gazprombank at the time the loan was granted. He and Tikhonova divorced in 2018.Shamalov was among the officials and close associates of the Putin family who were sanctioned by Washington for alleged “malign” activities by Russia, including meddling in U.S. elections.Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov dismissed reports Tuesday about the “wedding gift.”“We still refrain from commenting on such publications,” he told reporters. “These rumors often have nothing to do with reality.”  Peskov dubbed the reports a smear campaign and said media investigations into Putin’s family are “lies that are unable to reach their goal.”  Reports of alleged financial enrichment by the Putin family and their associates have escalated in the past few months. One recent story alleged that former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, who is reportedly Putin’s girlfriend, received a $10 million annual salary on her appointment as head of a pro-Kremlin media outlet. She had no previous media or management experience.  OCCRP said deciding to publish the email was a difficult decision.  “In the first place, the authenticity of documents received from an unknown party may be in question. To verify the Shamalov archive, the emails were first structured and indexed by OCCRP’s data analysts. Reporters from IStories then spent nearly a year verifying them,” the outlet said.The email cache included more than 10,000 messages written and exchanged from 2003 to 2020. The emails cast light, OCCRP reporters said, on how the children and grandchildren of Putin associates and friends from St. Petersburg are amassing their wealth and power.  But what was accumulated was also lost. Following his divorce to Tikhonova, Shamalov reportedly gave up most of his Sibur shares. 
 
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Researchers at Britain’s Oxford University and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca published a study Tuesday showing their COVID-19 vaccine candidate to be “safe and effective” at fighting the virus.The peer-reviewed study was published Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet. The data showed the drug had an overall efficacy rate of 70.4%, higher than the 50% minimum set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Andrew Pollard speaks during a virtual press conference inside 10 Downing Street in London on Nov. 23, 2020.In an interview with reporters, Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said the difference in efficacy rates among the vaccines currently being reviewed will make little difference in the long term. He said what is important is getting vaccines to people and that they are protected.Pollard said the best way to do that is to have multiple vaccines available.“I think we have to not worry about these individual percentages. The important thing is who’s vaccinated, not people who are unvaccinated and waiting for a particular product. Personally, I’d be happy with any of these in my arm.”Pollard said that is why accessibility is a priority for Oxford/AstraZeneca. Unlike the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, their vaccine does not need to be kept at sub-freezing temperatures.He said even as regulators scrutinize the data concerning the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, it is already in production.“Manufacturing is happening in all corners of the world, and to make sure that if we do have products which can be used, that they can then be distributed where they’re needed using fridge temperatures to get them to the most vulnerable people in our societies.”
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Britain has vaccinated its first citizen against the COVID-19 virus.Ninety-year-old nursing home resident Margaret Keenan received the first of two doses of a vaccine jointly developed by U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.  The vaccination campaign, dubbed “V-Day” by Health Secretary Mark Hancock, began nearly a week after the government’s medical regulatory agency granted emergency approval for the vaccine, making Britain the first western nation ready to begin mass inoculations.The approval came weeks after Pfizer announced the vaccine had been shown to be more than 90% effective after its final clinical trial.Keenan, who will turn 91 next week, is among the thousands of nursing home residents and their caregivers, along with staffers with Britain’s National Health Service, that have been prioritized by officials to receive the first shots.Britain Makes Final Preparations for First Round of COVID-19 VaccinationsInitial batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine arrived in Britain Sunday, ahead of Tuesday’s first round of inoculations for health care workers and the elderly Britain received 800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine Sunday, the first of a total of 40 million it purchased from Pfizer.  Great Britain has a population of more than 66 million people. Delivery of the vaccine is complicated by the fact that it must be stored in super-cold refrigerators at temperatures below 70 degrees Celsius.Britain has recorded more than 61,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, one of the world’s hardest-hit countries and the worst affected country in Europe.The start of the coronavirus vaccination campaign in Britain comes as many other nations inch closer and closer to beginning their own inoculation efforts.The South Korean government announced Tuesday that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is one of a handful it has secured for its 44 million people.  The Health Ministry says it has pre-ordered 64 million doses of vaccines under development by Pfizer, British-based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, and U.S.-based drug makers Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, for 34 million South Koreans.Seoul says another 10 million people will receive vaccines developed by Pfizer, AstraZeneca and French pharmaceutical company Sanofi and secured through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX, the joint project between the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, an organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates to vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries.Feds Passed Up Chance to Lock in More Pfizer Vaccine Doses Pfizer’s vaccine is expected to be endorsed as soon as this week, with delivery of 100 million doses — enough for 50 million Americans — expected in coming monthsCanada announced Monday it would receive its first doses of the same vaccine by the end of December.Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that up to 249,000 doses of the vaccine would arrive this month, and 3 million are slated to be delivered early next year. Canada has a population of more than 37 million people.But as many countries prepare to inoculate their populations, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against mandatory vaccinations.While WHO officials are urging governments to persuade their citizens to get vaccinated, public health experts warn that a mandate may not be the right approach.”I think all of us who work in public health would rather avoid that as a means for getting people vaccinated,” WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual press conference Monday.  The world has more than 67.6 million total COVID-19 cases, including more than 1.5 million deaths. The United States leads the world in both categories, with 14.9 million total cases and more than 283,700 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.  
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