International

• Wednesday, December 30th 2020 - 07:59 UTC

  AstraZeneca vaccine not ready for EMA's approval during January

  

  The European Medicines Authority (EMA) will most likely not be able to approve the COVID-19 vaccine developed by drug maker AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in January, the watchdog’s Deputy Executive Director Noel Wathion said.

• Wednesday, December 30th 2020 - 07:58 UTC

  Controversial couturier and merchandising king Pierre Cardin dies aged 98

  

  French couturier Pierre Cardin, who made his name by selling designer clothes to the masses, and his fortune by being the first to exploit that name as a brand for selling everything from cars to perfume, died on Tuesday, aged 98.

• Tuesday, December 29th 2020 - 09:38 UTC

  Collapse of tourism industry because of Covid-19, has caused US$ 2 trillion loss to the global GDP

  

  International arrivals fell by 72% over the first ten months of 2020, with restrictions on travel, low consumer confidence and a global struggle to contain the COVID-19 virus, all contributing to the worst year on record in the history of tourism.

• Tuesday, December 29th 2020 - 09:35 UTC

  Oxford/Astra Zeneca will apply for full approval of its vaccine from Brazil's regulator on 15 January

  

  Brazil's Fiocruz biomedical institute will seek approval for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 with federal health regulator Anvisa on Jan. 15, one of the center's senior officials said on Monday.

• Tuesday, December 29th 2020 - 09:20 UTC

  Spain trying to prevent a hard border with Gibraltar; commuters will have a special document

  

  Cross-border workers who commute between Gibraltar and Spain will be exempt from border controls after Brexit even if no agreement on free movement is reached with Britain, Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said on Monday.

• Tuesday, December 29th 2020 - 09:20 UTC

  Spain creates registry of people refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19

  

  Spain will set up a registry of people who refuse to be vaccinated against the new coronavirus and share it with other European Union member states, although it will not be made public, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Monday.

• Tuesday, December 29th 2020 - 09:08 UTC

  Pfizer delay in shipments affects eight European countries

  

  Pfizer has postponed the delivery of new batches of its coronavirus vaccine to eight European nations including Spain, the Spanish health ministry said on Monday, a day after the European Union began its immunization campaign.

• Tuesday, December 29th 2020 - 09:01 UTC

  China censorship: four-year jail term for journalist who reported on the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan

  

  A Chinese court handed a four-year jail term on Monday to a citizen-journalist who reported from the central city of Wuhan at the peak of last year's coronavirus outbreak, on grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” her lawyer said.

• Tuesday, December 29th 2020 - 08:00 UTC

  Poisoned dissident Navalny, “Blockhead”, underpants, beards and consonants

  

  By Gwynne Dyer – Surely you don’t want to read about the new, faster-spreading variant of the coronavirus today, or the fourth Israeli election in two years, and I certainly don’t want to write about them. So here are a few matters of lesser import, culled from yesterday’s media.

• Monday, December 28th 2020 - 09:39 UTC

  Malvinas Veteran in tears after his Argentine military ID was sold on the UK eBay website

  

  By Heather Briley for MercoPress
  
  LONDON, UK – Almost forty years after the Falklands conflict the identity document of an Argentine soldier has been sold on the UK eBay website. It belongs to the director of the Malvinas Museum in Buenos Aires, Edgardo Esteban, 58. He expressed his dismay at the sale and was moved to tears that it had surfaced after all this time.