The European Union is set to warn the international community that global markets are too dependent on the dollar and is looking for ways to reduce Europe’s vulnerability to US sanctions and other financial risks, challenging the currency’s dominance just days before Joseph Biden is inaugurated as president
According to a draft European Commission document that has been made available to the Financial Times, the EU must also find ways to enhance the role of the euro in light of the lessons learned from the pandemic. The document states that “global financial markets are too dependent on the US dollar”.
Russian peacekeepers escorted another convoy with refugees who returned to Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia, more than 49,600 refugees in total have returned to their homes, the Russian Defence Ministry said. It is noted that 177 refugees were taken by buses from Yerevan to Stepanakert in a day.
“A total of 49,638 refugees have already returned to their places of permanent residence in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Russian peacekeeping contingent is ensuring the safe return of citizens to their places of permanent residence, providing humanitarian aid and restoring civilian infrastructure”, – the statement reads.
Concerns about the safety of Pfizer and BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for the elderly are growing in Norway after 29 people died after receiving an injection of the drug, Bloomberg reports. The Norwegian Agency for Medicines (NoMA) said the deaths were linked to a Pfizer vaccine as no other vaccines were available in the country before Friday. It clarified that all those who died after vaccination had serious underlying diseases and were at least 75 years old. A total of about 42,000 people in Norway have already received at least one dose of the vaccine, Bloomberg notes.
In the UK, the number of Covid-19 cases increased by 41,346 in 24 hours and 1,295 people died, according to the country’s Ministry of Health. A day earlier, 55,761 cases were reported, with 1,280 people dying. In total, the coronavirus has been confirmed in more than 3.35 million people in the country since the pandemic began and more than 88,500 have died. Since 4 January, England has imposed a national lockdown, the third as severe as the first.
Specialists from Egypt’s Ministry of Health and Population are conducting clinical trials of a Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, as a matter of priority. This was announced on Saturday by assistant minister Mohammed Hasani, Al-Watan reported. “Clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine are now underway in the Ministry of Health’s research committee,” he revealed. – The Russian vaccine is a research priority at the moment, especially as its characteristics are very similar to AstraZeneca’s product from a manufacturing point of view.”
The first case of a new strain of coronavirus from South Africa has been detected in Denmark. This is reported by the publication Berlingske, citing the State Institute for Infectious Disease Control. The more infectious variant of the virus has been detected on the island of Zeeland, the most populous island of the archipelago. A man who had recently flown in from Dubai was found to be infected with it. According to Alan Randrup Thomsen, Professor of Experimental Virology at the University of Copenhagen, the new mutation COVID-19 has appeared at a very bad time in Denmark. “From an epidemiological point of view, this is a very bad time for this type of virus to come to us because it has some of the characteristics of the British strain. And we do not want to exacerbate the situation we are already in,” Thomsen said.
Repeat mayoral elections for Boryspil and Brovary in the Kiev region, and Novhorod-Siversky in the Chernihiv region, where previously leading candidates died of complications caused by the coronavirus, will be held on Sunday, 17 January. According to the Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine, elections will also be held for 40 local, 11 township and 40 village councils.