International
Israel starts Covid vaccine jabs for children as young as 5
AFP
Israel rolled out Covid-19 vaccinations for children aged five to 11 on Tuesday, one of only a handful of countries to inoculate minors that young as it seeks to ward off another pandemic wave.
Over the summer, the Jewish state experienced an upsurge in coronavirus infections, fuelled by the Delta variant, and launched one of the earliest campaigns for booster shots.
As infections creep up again, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has pointed at a “children’s wave”, stating on Facebook that about half of the recently confirmed cases were among those below the age of 11.
Authorities had already begun immunising those aged 12 to 17 but decided to lower the age threshold in the wake of trials by Pfizer and recommendations from a panel of Israeli scientists.
Hours after the campaign to vaccinate younger minors officially launched on Tuesday, Bennett took his nine-year-old son David for a jab at a centre in the coastal city of Herzliya.
“I call on all Israeli parents to come and have their children vaccinated. It is safe and it safeguards our children,” Bennett said.
“It is important to get vaccinated so that children don’t get sick with corona and so that they won’t infect their parents.”
– Parents’ hesitation ‘normal’ –
Doses for younger children were already being distributed on Monday night.
Outside a clinic in Tel Aviv giving the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs to children late Monday, Heli Nave said hesitation among parents was “normal”.
She said “it is not an easy decision at all”, but the availability of data from the United States — which started immunising five-to-11-year-olds earlier this month — had convinced her.
“Right now during the epidemic, the best tool to protect our children is vaccination,” Nave said.
Another mother in Tel Aviv, 47-year-old Katy Bar Shalom, told AFP she was “excited” for her children to be among the first jabbed in the 5-11 age group.
“We know we need to be vaccinated in order to get back to normal,” she said.
Israel was one of the first countries to launch vaccines against the coronavirus last year thanks to a deal with Pfizer that gave it access to millions of doses in exchange for data on the vaccine’s efficacy.
More than 5.7 million of the country’s nine million people are now fully vaccinated.
Israeli experts recommended inoculating younger minors following a green light from US regulators.
International
Trump to sign over 200 executive orders, declaring National Emergency at U.S.-Mexico Border
Donald Trump will sign over 200 executive orders this Monday, including declaring a national emergency at the southern U.S. border and designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorists on his first day as president, according to U.S. network Fox News.
A senior administration official familiar with the executive actions Trump will sign, and who was authorized to inform the media according to Fox News, said that the president will sign multiple “omnibus” executive orders, each containing dozens of significant actions.
The source indicated that Trump will declare a national border emergency, order the U.S. military to work with the Department of Homeland Security to fully secure the southern border, and make it a national priority to eliminate all criminal cartels operating on U.S. soil. This version of the emergency declaration had previously been reported by CNN News and was also confirmed to The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
According to Fox News, Trump will close the border to all undocumented foreign nationals through a proclamation. He will also create task forces for national security protection, working with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other agencies to “completely eradicate the presence of criminal cartels.”
International
Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday the appointment of actors Sylvester Stallone (‘Rocky’) and Jon Voight (‘Midnight Cowboy’), as well as actor and director Mel Gibson (‘Braveheart’) as special ambassadors to the “very problematic” Hollywood.
“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.
“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.
Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.
Meanwhile, Gibson attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of having “the IQ of a fence.”
The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.
International
Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan
Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.
The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).
The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”
This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.
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