Coronavirus vaccine could be made compulsory for NHS staff, minister says

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi tells Sky News the measure is being considered to help stop the virus spreading in hospitals.

COVID jabs could be made compulsory for NHS staff, the vaccines minister has told Sky News.

Nadhim Zahawi said the government is considering making coronavirus vaccines compulsory for healthcare workers to help stop the spread of the virus in hospitals.

He told Trevor Phillips on Sunday: “It would be incumbent on any responsible government to have the debate, to do the thinking as to how we go about protecting the most vulnerable by making sure that those who look after them are vaccinated.

“There is precedent for this – obviously surgeons get vaccinated for hepatitis B. So it’s something we are absolutely thinking about.”

A senior Labour frontbencher warned that “threatening” NHS staff would be less effective than working with those who had doubts about the jab.

Shadow Commons leader Thangam Debbonaire said: “Given we have got a recruitment crisis in parts of the NHS, I think it’s far more important we try and work with staff rather than against them.

“Threatening staff, I don’t think is a good idea.”

………………………………………………………………

China easing birth limits further to cope with aging society

BEIJING (AP) — China’s ruling Communist Party said Monday it will ease birth limits to allow all couples to have three children instead of two in hopes of slowing the rapid aging of its population, which is adding to strains on the economy and society.

The ruling party has enforced birth limits since 1980 to restrain population growth but worries the number of working-age people is falling too fast while the share over age 65 is rising. That threatens to disrupt its ambitions to transform China into a prosperous consumer society and global technology leader.

A ruling party meeting led by President Xi Jinping decided to introduce “measures to actively deal with the aging population,” the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said they agreed that ”implementing the policy of one couple can have three children and supporting measures are conducive to improving China’s population structure.”

Leaders also agreed China needs to raise its retirement age to keep more people in the workforce and improve pension and health services, Xinhua said.

Restrictions that limited most couples to one child were eased in 2015 to allow two, but the total number of births fell further, suggesting rule changes on their own have had little impact on the trend.

Couples say they are put off by high costs of raising a child, disruption to their jobs and the need to look after elderly parents.

China, along with Thailand and some other Asian economies, face what economists call the challenge of whether they can get rich before they get old.

The Chinese population of 1.4 billion already was expected to peak later this decade and start to decline. Census data released May 11 suggest that is happening faster than expected, adding to burdens on underfunded pension and health systems and cutting the number of future workers available to support a growing retiree group.

The share of working-age people 15 to 59 in the population fell to 63.3% last year from 70.1% a decade earlier. The group aged 65 and older grew to 13.5% from 8.9%.

The 12 million births reported last year was down nearly one-fifth from 2019.

About 40% were second children, down from 50% in 2017, according to Ning Jizhe, a statistics official who announced the data on May 11.

Chinese researchers and the labor ministry say the share of working-age people might fall to half the population by 2050. That increases the “dependency ratio,” or the number of retirees who rely on each worker to generate income for pension funds and to pay taxes for health and other public services.

Leaders at Monday’s meeting agreed it is “necessary to steadily implement the gradual postponement of the legal retirement age,” Xinhua said.

It gave no details, but the government has been debating raising the official retirement ages of 60 for men, 55 for white-collar female workers and 50 for blue-collar female workers.

The potential change is politically fraught. Female professionals welcome a chance to stay in satisfying careers, but others whose bodies are worn out from decades of manual labor resent being required to work longer.

The fertility rate, or the average number of births per mother, stood at 1.3 in 2020, well below the 2.1 that would maintain the size of the population.

China’s birth rate, paralleling trends in other Asian economies, already was falling before the one-child rule. The average number of children per Chinese mother tumbled from above six in the 1960s to below three by 1980, according to the World Bank.

Demographers say official birth limits concealed what would have been a further fall in the number of children per family without the restrictions.

The ruling party says it prevented as many as 400 million potential births, averting shortages of food and water. But demographers say if China followed trends in Thailand, parts of India and other countries, the number of additional babies might have been as low as a few million.

……………………………………………………………

Who is Naftali Bennett, Israel’s potential prime minister?

Former defence chief and Netanyahu ally officially parts ways with Israeli PM, announces bid to become prime minister.

Naftali Bennett has moved a step closer to replacing Israel’s veteran prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bennett is a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur who made a name in politics with right-wing, religious-nationalist rhetoric.

The 49-year-old, who has made pitches to far-right voters throughout his career, leads the Yamina party, which has called for Israel to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

A firebrand politician who has not shied away from controversy, Bennett is ultra-liberal on the economy and takes an aggressive line against Iran.

He shares this ideology with Netanyahu and has served in several of the Likud leader’s governments. In recent years, however, the two have become increasingly opposed.

On Sunday, Bennett said he would join a governing coalition that could end Netanyahu’s 12-year rule.

He agreed to join centrist Yair Lapid in a coalition to remove the prime minister. Lapid has offered to share power, letting Bennett serve the first term rotating as prime minister.

A former special forces commando, Bennett is the son of US-born parents and lives with his wife Galit and four children in the central city of Raanana.

He entered politics after selling his tech start-up for $145m in 2005, and the next year became chief of staff to Netanyahu, who was then in opposition.

After leaving Netanyahu’s office, Bennett in 2010 became head of the Yesha Council, which lobbies for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

He then took politics by storm in 2012 when he took charge of the far-right Jewish Home party, which was facing annihilation.

He increased its parliamentary presence fourfold, while making headlines with a series of incendiary comments about the Palestinians.

In 2013, he said Palestinian “terrorists should be killed, not released”.

He has courted controversy on several occasions, once stating that the West Bank is not under occupation because “there was never a Palestinian state here”, and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could not be resolved but must be endured.

Beyond holding the defence portfolio, Bennett has served as Netanyahu’s economy minister and education minister.

He re-branded Jewish Home as Yamina (Rightward) in 2018, and was part of Netanyahu’s coalition which collapsed the same year.

But he was not asked to join a Netanyahu-led unity government in May last year – a move seen as an expression of the prime minister’s personal contempt towards him, despite their shared ideology.

In opposition and with the coronavirus pandemic raging in 2020, Bennett dampened his right-wing rhetoric to focus on the health crisis, moving to broaden his appeal by releasing plans to contain the virus and aid the economy.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

………………………………………………………………

Press freedom watchdog calls for release of Zimbabwean journalist

Detention of New York Times freelancer Jeffrey Moyo shows ‘Zimbabwe continues to violate the right to press freedom’, says Committee to Protect Journalists.

A press freedom watchdog has called on Zimbabwean authorities to immediately release a local journalist who was remanded in custody on accusations of violating the country’s immigration laws to facilitate a reporting trip by two foreign colleagues.

Global African Family Meeting

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Friday the “baseless” charges against Jeffrey Moyo, a New York Times freelancer who has also worked for other international media outlets, including The Globe and Mail, should be dropped.

Moyo, 37, was arrested on Wednesday in the capital, Harare. His lawyer, Doug Coltart, told the CPJ Moyo was charged with violating Section 36 of the Immigration Act for allegedly presenting false information to immigration officials to help two New York Times journalists enter the country.

According to Coltart, the two colleagues – Christina Goldbaum and Joao Silva – who arrived in the southern city of Bulawayo from South Africa on May 5 were deported on May 8 because they allegedly did not have proper accreditation from the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC).

“Four days into their trip, the visiting journalists were ordered to leave after immigration officials advised them and Mr. Moyo that official notice of their accreditation credentials had not been received from the necessary authorities,” the New York Times reported.

The newspaper quoted Coltart as saying that Moyo was subsequently arrested along with a ZMC official because immigration officials are “now saying those accreditation cards were fake”.

In a statement on Facebook, the ZMC said that the two New York Times reporters had applied for clearance to work in the country but their application was denied by the responsible authorities.

“However the two had proceeded to come to the country anyway,” it said. “The accreditation card numbers and receipts representing proof of payment for accreditation they produced were clear forgeries.”

Moyo has denied the allegations, according to his lawyer.

Calling for his release, Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, said the journalist “should never have been detained, let alone charged”.

“The fact that he was arrested, and his New York Times colleagues forced to leave the country, shows that Zimbabwe continues to violate the right to press freedom and the public’s right to know.”

The New York Times said in a statement: “We are deeply concerned by Jeffrey Moyo’s arrest and are assisting his lawyers to secure his timely release.”

It described Moyo as “a widely respected journalist” with many years of reporting experience in Zimbabwe. “His detainment raises troubling questions about the state of press freedom in Zimbabwe,” it added.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Zimbabwe 130th out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index.

Moyo on Thursday appeared in the magistrate’s court in Bulawayo, along with his co-accused, ZMC official Thabang Manhika. An initial request for bail was denied, with another ruling expected on Monday.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

………………………………………………………………

Several killed as roadside bomb targets minibus in Afghanistan

The vehicle was bringing staff and students to Alberoni University in northern Afghanistan, the interior ministry says.

A roadside bomb hit a minibus carrying university lecturers and students in Afghanistan’s northern Parvan province, killing at least four people and wounding 11 others, officials said.

Interior ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said the minibus was targeted on Saturday in the provincial capital of Charikar while transferring the group to Alberoni University in the neighbouring Kapisa province.

Kapisa provincial police spokesman Shayeq Shoresh said the bomb was set off by remote control.

Some of the wounded were in critical condition, said Hamed Obaidi, a spokesman for the ministry of higher education.

Afghanistan’s TOLO News reported that the attack took place at about 3:15pm (10:45 GMT).

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Previous deadly attacks on the Kabul University in November last year were claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) group.

Large swaths of war-ravaged Afghanistan have been littered with bombs and landmines. Many have been planted by fighters to target military convoys, but they often kill civilians instead.

Saturday’s attack comes weeks after the remaining 2,500 to 3,500 US troops officially began leaving the country.

They will be gone by September 11 at the latest. The pullout comes amid a resurgent Taliban, which controls or holds sway over half of Afghanistan.

Under an agreement signed by the Taliban and the US last year, Washington was to pull out troops in exchange for Taliban security guarantees and for the group to start peace talks with the Afghan government.

However, in recent months, violence in the country has soared.

Three weeks ago, a bomb attack outside a school in the capital Kabul killed 68 people, most of them students, and wounded 165 others.

Nearly 1,800 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first three months of 2021 during fighting between government forces and Taliban fighters, the United Nations said last month.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

……………………………………………………………

US faces ‘difficult questions’ on Egypt ties after Gaza ceasefire

Advocates question Joe Biden’s promise to take a rights-based approach to foreign policy amid Egypt-led mediation.

US President Joe Biden is facing renewed scrutiny over the United States’ relationship with Egypt – and his promise to stand up to rights abuses committed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government – in the wake of 11 days of deadly violence in the Gaza Strip.

Washington this month relied heavily on Egyptian mediators, who shuttled between Tel Aviv and Gaza to reach and maintain a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian faction Hamas, which governs the besieged Palestinian territory.

In so doing, the Biden administration has been confronted with lingering questions over its promise to take a “human rights centred” approach to Egypt, which has long served as an interlocutor in the Israel-Palestine conflict as one of the few countries that engages with both Israel and Hamas.

The US president had previously said there would be “no more blank checks” for el-Sisi, whom he called his predecessor Donald Trump’s “favorite dictator”, but some rights advocates say Biden has already fallen short of that commitment.

“Once again, we see that nothing has changed,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a Washington, DC-based think-tank.

“[Antony] Blinken did not meet with a single civil society representative during his stop in Cairo,” she said of the US secretary of state’s visit to the Egyptian capital last week in support of the ceasefire.

“He said no more about human rights than [former Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and the Trump administration before him.”

‘Strategic partnership’

In two calls between Biden and el-Sisi this month – the first since Biden took office in January – the US president “thanked Egypt for its successful diplomacy”, according to a readout from the White House. “President Biden underscored the importance of a constructive dialogue on human rights in Egypt,” the statement added.

On Wednesday’s visit to Cairo, Blinken also affirmed the US’s “strategic partnership” with Egypt.

He told reporters he had a “lengthy discussion and exchange on human rights” with the Egyptian leader, who came to power in a 2013 military coup that overthrew President Mohamed Morsi. El-Sisi was most recently re-elected in 2018, running virtually unopposed after his main challenger was arrested and several candidates dropped out citing intimidation.

Seth Binder, the advocacy officer at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), said the Biden administration’s expression of gratitude “misread” the situation and sent the wrong message to Cairo.

“The Egyptians are doing this out of their own interest,” he told Al Jazeera. “We don’t need to bend over backwards to try to congratulate them on doing what’s in their interests.

“We can still work with them on brokering a ceasefire, and at the same time pressure them and continue to centre human rights in the relationship.”

El-Sisi’s ‘usefulness’

For el-Sisi, the timing of the Gaza mediation has been “Manna from heaven”, said Michele Dunne, director and a senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East programme.

It increased the Egyptian leader’s relevance as the Biden administration sought to focus its foreign policy on other parts of the Middle East and the world, and allowed el-Sisi “to demonstrate his usefulness”, Dunne told Al Jazeera.

She noted the Egyptian president this time embraced the political benefit of serving as a mediator with Hamas, compared with the 2014 Gaza war, in which he treated Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and supported Israeli aggression.

“I’m sure that Sisi hopes that his usefulness on dealing with Hamas and perhaps his usefulness in helping with humanitarian relief in Gaza will get him a pass on human rights and other issues in US-Egyptian relations,” Dunne said.

The most recent round of engagement comes as el-Sisi has contended not only with the stated position of the Biden administration, but also with US legislators who have become increasingly critical of US military assistance to Egypt, which totals $1.3bn annually.

Pressure on Biden

In recent years, Congress has regularly passed legislation requiring the State Department to certify Egypt is taking steps to meet human rights standards before the funds are released.

Last year, Congress passed a bill that conditions $75m of that aid on Cairo’s release of political prisoners and meeting other human rights standards – and does not contain a provision for a State Department waiver.

Some in the US have also questioned Egypt’s wider strategic significance, once considered a certainty given Cairo’s influence in the Arab world, control over the Suez Canal – an arterial trade route connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Sea – and its land border with the Gaza Strip.

Still, the Biden administration has shown it may not pursue a policy overhaul, dismaying rights advocates and some legislators by approving a $197m sale of missiles and related equipment to Egypt in February.

That came just a month before the State Department’s annual human rights report decried a laundry list of abuses in Egypt, including extrajudicial killings, torture, forced disappearances, crackdowns on journalists and political opponents, and violence against the LGBTQ community.

El-Sisi’s government has overseen a widespread arrest campaign against rights advocates, journalists, and other perceived critics – and approximately 60,000 Egyptians are still imprisoned.

US-based Egyptian rights activists also recently accused the Egyptian government of detaining their relatives in Egypt as a way to pressure them into silence – an accusation that el-Sisi has rejected, but which rights groups have raised serious alarm over.

“The current conflict has brought up uncomfortable questions and policy dilemmas that the Biden administration doesn’t want to deal with,” Dunne told Al Jazeera. “And they are going to be facing a lot of difficult decisions.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

……………………………………………………………

President Biden is slammed for singling out ‘elementary school-aged’ girl during speech and saying ‘she looks like she’s 19 years old’

Joe Biden has been slammed for ‘creepy’ remarks he made about a young girl during a speech at a Virginia military base on Friday.

The Commander-in-chief, 78, went off-script to point out the ‘elementary school- aged’ girl as he delivered an address at Joint Base Langley-Eustis ahead of Memorial Day.

‘I love those barrettes in your hair, man,’ the President said to the girl, who was sitting at the side of the stage

‘I tell you what, look at her, she looks like she’s 19 years old, sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed,’ Biden bizarrely continued.

The girl’s mother had reportedly introduced Biden to the stage prior to his speech. Her full name and aged have not been publicly released.

Footage of Biden’s odd remarks was shared to The Post Millennial’s Twitter page, with many users perturbed by what they heard.

‘Your president people… there is a reason they don’t let him talk in front of cameras often..’ one stated.

‘Looks like she’s 19’: Biden remarks about girl at VA military base

A second person chimed in: ‘This would be front page news on the New York Times and the lead story on CNN for two weeks if Trump did this. And no, this isn’t whataboutism,’ one person remarked.

Another defended Biden, but did concede that there was media bias.

‘He’s socially awkward. He says it like he’s trying to be sweet. Innocent in his head meanwhile everyone else is like ‘Uhhh what??” the person wrote on Twitter.

‘[But I] Gotta agree with some comments here. If Trump said it then it would have been front page news. That’s how biased our news outlets are.’

The President’s press team have not addressed the remark.

Biden has a history of making eyebrow-raising remarks about girls and women.

Last year, during an event in Florida, Biden told a group of underage female dancers: ‘I’m coming back and I want to see these beautiful young ladies, I want to see them dancing when they are four years older too!’

In 2019, he told a 10-year-old girl: ‘I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking.’

He has also been photographed over the years kissing and touching young girls and women during public events.

Biden has a history of making eyebrow-raising remarks about girls and women.

Last year, during an event in Florida, Biden told a group of underage female dancers: ‘I’m coming back and I want to see these beautiful young ladies, I want to see them dancing when they are four years older too!’

In 2019, he told a 10-year-old girl: ‘I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking.’

He has also been photographed over the years kissing and touching young girls and women during public events.

………………………………………………………………