INDONESIA: Villagers in Indonesia’s Aceh province on Friday discovered a stranded boat carrying 81 Rohingya Muslims, including children, who had left a refugee camp in Bangladesh, officials said.

More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar to camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when the military launched a clearance operation in response to attacks by a rebel group.

Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and the burning of thousands of homes.

Groups of Rohingya have attempted to leave the crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh and travel by sea in hazardous voyages to other Muslim-majority countries in the region.

M.Ilyas, a Rohingya on the stranded boat, said they had headed initially to Malaysia but were refused entry because of concerns over the coronavirus.

He said their boat’s engine broke down in Indian waters, and local fishermen there helped them continue their trip.

The engine broke down again, and the boat, carrying 49 women, 21 men and 11 children, ran aground on Idaman island in Aceh, Indonesia’s northernmost province, he said.

Local villagers reported the stranded boat to authorities, Adek said. Salmidin, a police officer, said local authorities, including the coronavirus task force, are working together to process the Rohingya.

“It is an empty island and we do not know their condition, whether they are free from COVID-19 or not. We are trying to examine them now,” Salmidin said.

Myanmar has denied citizenship to most Rohingya Muslims since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. They are also denied freedom of movement and other rights including education.

Authorities in Myanmar say the Rohingya migrated illegally from Bangladesh, even though many of their families have lived in Myanmar for decades.

In September, almost 300 Rohingya were found on Ujung Blang beach in Aceh province after months at sea.

ABUJA: Nigeria’s government said on Friday it was suspending Twitter’s operations indefinitely, two days after the social media giant deleted a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari’s account for violating its rules.

Twitter was still working in Africa’s most populous country soon after Friday’s statement, which triggered immediate criticism from rights groups and analysts about freedom of expression.

Nigeria’s information ministry said Twitter was “suspended, indefinitely,” because of “persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.

When asked about the decision, ministry special assistant Segun Adeyemi told AFP: “I can’t answer technicalities… operations will be suspended indefinitely.”

The ministry also announced the suspension on its own Twitter account though it gave no details on when the decision would take effect or what form the suspension would take.

“The announcement made by the Nigerian Government that they have suspended Twitter’s operations in Nigeria is deeply concerning,” the company said in a statement. 

“We’re investigating and will provide updates when we know more.”

The ministry did not give details about what activities were threatening Nigeria.

But Twitter on Wednesday deleted a remark on Buhari’s account for violating regulations, after he referred to the country’s civil war in a warning about recent unrest in the southeast.

The 78-year-old president, a former general, referred to those “misbehaving” in recent violence in the southeast, where officials blame separatists for attacks on police and election offices.

Minister of Information Lai Mohammed on Wednesday accused Twitter of ignoring violent messages from a separatist leader and also referred to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s support for the #EndSARS protests last year in Nigeria against police brutality.

Friday’s decision was swiftly denounced by rights groups.

“This repressive action is a clear attempt to censor dissent & stifle the civic space,” Human Rights Warch researcher Anietie Ewang said on Twitter.

‘Muzzling freedom of expression’

Amnesty International called for Nigeria to immediately reverse the “unlawful suspension”. 

“This is the height of muzzling the freedom of expression that can only happen in dictatorships,” Bulama Bukarti, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said on Twitter.

“It will go down in history as one Buhari’s biggest mistakes and PR disasters.”

Nigeria in 2019 had announced it would tighten regulations on social media to fight fake news and disinformation, but the proposal sparked concerns over freedom of expression.

Several countries including China and Turkey have come under fire for putting restrictions on social media platforms like Twitter.

In February Twitter condemned Myanmar’s move to block access to its platform as part of a crackdown on social media, days after a coup that saw Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders jailed.

The European Medicines Agency is expected to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid jab for 12- to 15-year-olds on Friday. It is already authorised in the EU for those over 16.

BERLIN: Germany will start offering coronavirus jabs to children over the age of 12 from June 7, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday.

The European Medicines Agency is expected to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid jab for 12- to 15-year-olds on Friday. It is already authorised in the EU for those over 16.

“Children and young people aged 12 and over will have the chance to book a vaccine appointment from June 7,” Merkel said after talks with Germany’s regional leaders.

Those willing will be offered at least their first of two shots by the end of August, she added, roughly in time for the new school year.

“The main message to parents is: there will be no compulsory vaccinations,” Merkel told reporters. 

Schools would not require pupils to be vaccinated, she said. “And it would be totally wrong to think you can only go on holiday with a vaccinated child.”

Inoculating children is seen as a key step towards achieving herd immunity in the fight against the pandemic. 

Canada and the United States have already started vaccinating over-12s.

But experts have also expressed reservations, pointing out that children rarely suffer from severe Covid and that vaccine supply is still tight.

Merkel urged patience, saying not everyone would get an appointment for their child right away.

Germany’s STIKO vaccine regulator is due to give its recommendations for over -12s shortly after the Pfizer jab is approved.

The agency has already signalled it intends to recommend the jab only for children in risk categories, such as those with underlying medical conditions.

All over -12s will still be allowed to get jabbed regardless, similar to the AstraZeneca vaccine which is officially recommended only for people over 60 inGermany but is open to anyone who has consulted with their doctor.

After a much-criticised slow start, the coronavirus inoculation campaign in Europe’s top economy has kicked into high gear in recent weeks.

More than 40 percent of adults have now had their first jab, and 15 percent are fully vaccinated.

The accelerated pace, along with rapid testing and widespread shutdowns, has helped break a third coronavirus wave and allowedGermany to relax restrictions.

“This is a great success,” Merkel said. But she called on Germans not to ditch precautions such as social distancing, mask wearing, and airing out rooms. 

Deliveries have increased slightly since then but, according to the European Commission, the company is set to provide only 70 million doses in the second quarter.

AstraZeneca’s contract signed with the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, on behalf of member states foresaw an initial 300 million doses for distribution among all 27 countries, with an option for a further 100 million.

The doses were expected to be delivered throughout 2021.

But only 30 million were sent during the first quarter.

Deliveries have increased slightly since then but, according to the European Commission, the company is set to provide only 70 million doses in the second quarter.

It had promised 180 million.

EU lawyer Rafael Jafferali told the court that the company now expects to deliver the total number of doses by the end of December, but he added that “with a six-month delay, it’s obviously a failure.”

His main argument is that AstraZeneca should have used production sites in the bloc and the U.K. for EU supplies as part of a “best reasonable efforts” clause in the contract.

He said that 50 million doses that should have been delivered to the EU went to third countries instead, “in violation” of their contract.”

Jafferali has said that the company should use all four plants listed in their contract for deliveries to the EU.

He also accused the company of misleading the European Commission by providing data lacking clarity on the delivery delays.

“The information provided by AstraZeneca did not allow us to fully understand the situation before mid-March 2021,” he said.

The EU has insisted its gripes with the company are about deliveries only and has repeatedly said that it has no problems with the safety or quality of the vaccine itself.

The shots have been approved by the European Medicines Agency, the EU’s drug regulator.

While the bloc insists AstraZeneca has breached its contractual obligations, the company says it has fully complied with the agreement, arguing that vaccines are difficult to manufacture and it made its best effort to deliver on time.

Lawyers for the company will address the court later Wednesday.

As part of an advanced purchase agreement with vaccine companies, the EU said it invested 2.7 billion euros ($3.8 billion), including 336 million (USD 408 million), to finance the production of AstraZeneca’s serum at four factories.

The long-standing dispute drew media attention for weeks earlier this year amid a deadly surge of coronavirus infections in Europe, when delays in vaccine production and deliveries hampered the EU’s vaccination campaign.

Cheaper and easier to use than rival shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, the AstraZeneca vaccine developed with Oxford University was a pillar of the EU’s vaccine rollout.

But the EU’s partnership with the firm quickly deteriorated amid accusations it favoured its relationship with British authorities.

While the U.K.made quick progress in its vaccination campaign thanks to the AstraZeneca shots, the EU faced embarrassing complaints and criticism for its slow start.

Concerns over the pace of the rollout across the EU grew after AstraZeneca said it couldn’t supply EU members with as many doses as originally anticipated because of production capacity limits.

The health situation has dramatically improved in Europe in recent weeks, with the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths on a sharp downward trend as vaccination has picked up.

About 300 million doses of vaccine have been delivered in Europe — a region with around 450 million inhabitants, with about 245 million already administered.

About 46 per cent of the EU population have had at least one dose.

In total, the European Commission has secured more than 2.5 billion of vaccine doses with various manufacturers.

It recently sealed another major order with Pfizer and BioNTech through 2023 for an additional 1.8 billion doses of their COVID-19 shot to share between the bloc’s countries.

Following Wednesday’s hearing, a second one is slated for Friday, with a judgment to be delivered at a date to be announced.

In addition to the emergency action, the European Commission has launched a claim on the merits of the case for damages for which a hearing hasn’t yet been set by the court.

WASHINGTON: Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care after they fell ill in November 2019, a month before Beijing reported the first patient with Covid-like symptoms, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The revelations come amid growing calls for a fuller probe on whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the Chinese laboratory. It also comes on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of investigation into the origin of Covid-19.

A US State Department fact sheet released by the Trump administration in January said that the researchers had become sick in autumn 2019 and displayed “symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”.

China reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) that the first patient with Covid-like symptoms was recorded in Wuhan on December 8, 2019.

“The US government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses,” the report read.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment.

One person said that it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.

Another person described the intelligence as stronger. “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,” he said, referring to the researchers.

Recently, Anthony Fauci, a top adviser to US President Joe Biden on the coronavirus pandemic said he’s “not convinced” the deadly virus developed naturally and has called for further investigations into where it emerged.

Fauci was asked during a Poynter event, “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking,” earlier this month about whether he was confident that Covid-19 developed naturally, Fox News reported.

“No actually. I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said.

“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” he added.

It is a reversal from his earlier position in which he dismissed theories that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Last Thursday, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a report claiming there is “significant circumstantial evidence” that the coronavirus originated from a leak at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that the US government “may have funded or collaborated” in the research that led to it.

“International efforts to discover the true source of the virus, however, have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the People’s Republic of China,” the Republicans wrote in the report.

Recently, findings in a report in an Australian daily has yet again reinforced the call that international investigators must dig deeper to rule out whether Covid-19 is a made-in-China bioweapon.

The controversy about Covid-19 origins has resurfaced after the Weekend Australian newspaper revealed that Chinese scientists were thinking about bioweapons, visualising a World War-III scenario.

The daily cited a Chinese government document that discussed the weaponisation of SARS coronavirus. Titled the Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, the 2015 paper was authored by Chinese scientists, Chinese public health officials and members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

China refused to give raw data on early Covid-19 cases to the WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic. Beijing has been accused of delaying access to international investigators for months after the initial outbreak, virtually guaranteeing that the lab had been deep-cleaned before any forensic analysis could be done.

Last month, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken launched a scathing attack against China for a lack of transparency during “the early stages” of the coronavirus pandemic and called for a more thorough investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

Blinken’s remarks came following the publishing of a joint inquiry by the World Health Organization and China in March.

The inquiry did not conclusively establish how or when the virus began spreading and did little to address Western concerns that the Chinese Communist Party bent the investigation to its advantage.

The WHO report determined that the possibility the virus came from a lab was “extremely unlikely,” noting there was “no record” any lab had closely related viruses.

The probe was criticised by the US, UK, and other governments over its limited access to “complete, original data and samples.”

The organization was also accused of being overly deferential to China throughout the course of the study, which was co-authored by 17 Chinese scientists — several of them from state-run institutions.