News Burst 11 February 2022 – Get The News!

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• France Soir: “Luc Montagnier is dead”.

• The Paris authorities on Thursday issued an order prohibiting Canada-style ‘Freedom Convoy’ demonstrations over the weekend. The ban will run from February 11 to 14. The edict came as thousands of motorists took to the road on Wednesday and headed in the direction of Paris to demonstrate against government’s Covid policies – in particular the vaccination pass. “The stated objective of these demonstrators is to ‘block the Capital’ – by obstructing road traffic in the streets of Paris to promote their demands, before continuing their journey towards Brussels on Monday February 14,” a press release from the police headquarters read. The authorities will impose heavy penalties for those who are “obstructing or hindering a road open to public traffic.” The misdemeanor carries a penalty of two years’ imprisonment and a fine of €4,500 ($5,150).

• Speaking to Moscow news agency RIA Novosti, Vladimir Chizhov explained that, since gas prices are on the rise, Gazprom’s European customers do not want to commit to buying more gas. If there is no demand, there will be no supply, he said. “Of course [Gazprom] is not obliged. Besides, it is already providing some extra supplies of ‘blue fuel’ to Europe, which is, apparently, still not as much as some would have preferred,” the Russian diplomat said in an interview. “If the winter was more severe and the stores of energy were depleting quicker, then, of course, the European companies would still buy more gas, regardless of the high prices. But as for now, the winter is mild, so there’s no extra demand and consequently no extra supply.”

• The US is planning to introduce Covid-19 vaccines designed for children from six months to five years old, as soon as they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The initial plan is to roll out 10 million doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech. According to a document published online by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if it is approved, all facilities will be able to receive the first shipment as soon as February 21, which is a federal holiday. The second and third shipments of the vaccine for children are scheduled for February 23 and 25 respectively, or approximately one week after CDC authorization.

• The president of the Russian Ski Association, Elena Vyalbe, has declared a boycott against Norwegian media after news outlet NRK published a provocative article saying Russian athletes shouldn’t have been cleared to compete at the Beijing Games. “I have announced a boycott of the Norwegian mass media. They came to me after the sprint races, I told them everything that I think. I will not talk to them anymore,” Vyalbe said. “They have violated all thinkable and unthinkable laws. Neither I nor my athletes have ever reminded them about disqualifications of their athletes, which were many. Why don’t we talk about them?” Vyalbe fumed.

• Police in the Canadian capital, Ottawa threatened the Freedom Convoy protesters on Wednesday with fines, arrests, and seizure of their trucks if they do not stop their “mischief.” The truckers demand an end to vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 restrictions in Canada. Anyone blocking the streets or assisting others in doing so, directly or indirectly, may be guilty of that offense and may be arrested without a warrant, they said. Those arrested may be denied bail, and their property – including trucks – may be seized and forfeited. “You must immediately cease further unlawful activity or you may face charges,” police said.

• Mullah Abdullah Sarhadi, the recently-appointed Taliban governor of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, has reportedly closed off the area surrounding the remnants of the Buddhas of Bamiyan to tourists and set up a dig in search of mythical treasures rumoured to be buried there. Hamid Naweed, a local art historian, told the outlet that Sarhadi may be looking for ancient gold treasure like the kind found in the tombs of Tillya Tepe in the late 1970s. “According to the rumour, there was possibly a princess that was buried in Bamiyan with all of her jewellery, but it has not been confirmed by any archaeologist,” Naweed, a former professor at Kabul University and specialist on the Buddhas of Bamiyan, said.

• On Tuesday, the protesters throughout New Zealand, largely inspired by similar demonstrations in Canada, arrived at the parliament building, where they erected tents and blocked streets outside in protest against compulsory vaccination and COVID-19 restrictions. Police have arrested 120 people at the convoy protest on Parliament grounds on Thursday amid vaccine mandate demonstrations, Wellington District Commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell said.

• According to the World Health Organization, up to 10 billion of the 15 billion cigarettes sold daily are disposed of in the environment. The filters on these cigarette butts are really tough and won’t disintegrate for as much as 15 years. In 2021 a Mexican company called Eco Filter inaugurated a plant in Guadalajara dedicated to detoxifying and recycling huge quantities of cigarette butts collected by volunteers all over the nation. National Autonomous University biologist Leopoldo Benítez was working on his thesis and looking for something that could break down cigarette butts. He went on a field trip to Michoacán, where he spotted oyster mushrooms growing on a log. “The toxic substances in the cigarette butt are hydrocarbons, and the fungus produces enzymes that attack the bonds between carbon and hydrogen. So if we have a long chain, it gets broken down into simpler substances that the fungus can introduce into its metabolism without any problems. And that’s how it degrades all those chemical substances present in cigarette butts.”

• Thousands of pelicans migrate from Canada to Petatán Island on Lake Chapala, 250 kilometers west of Morelia, plays host to as many as 20,000 American white pelicans for six months every year from October to April. The town’s citizens have made their winged visitors feel welcome: they offer food to the birds and consider them a good omen. The huge birds can measure up to 1.75 meters in length and have a wingspan up to three meters wide. A local man who fillets fish, Enrique Martínez, estimated that one to two tonnes of fish offal were fed to the feathered visitors on a daily basis.

• Indian astronomers have created a new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that has identified around 60 potentially habitable planets out of the 5,000 planets we know about. According to the study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), planets highlighted by the algorithm have a high probability of being habitable. Named “Multi-Stage Memetic Binary Tree Anomaly Identifier” (MSMBTAI), the AI method is based on a novel multi-stage memetic algorithm (MSMA) that acts as a quick screening tool for evaluating habitability perspectives from observed properties. “Earth being the only habitable planet among thousands of planets is defined as an anomaly. We explored whether similar ‘anomaly candidates can be found using novel anomaly detection methods,” said Dr. Snehanshu Saha of BITS Pilani, Goa Campus.

• Newly surfaced reports have revealed that the body of a 70-year-old Italian woman was found inside her home near Lake Como, in northern Italy, two years after her death. Officials have identified the deceased as Marinella Beretta, and have revealed that her body was found sitting in a chair in her dining room after the Como fire brigade responded to complaints about trees in her garden, according to France24. It was reported that authorities responded to her home over concerns that trees in the area could be uprooted by recent strong winds. Beretta’s cause of death remains unknown but examiners believe she died sometime toward the end of 2019. No relatives of Beretta have come forward yet, and that local police are investigating to see if she had any surviving relatives. A 2018 report by the National Statistics Institute previously found that nearly 40% of Italians over the age of 75 live alone and do not have relatives, nor friends, to turn to in the case of an emergency.

• The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ruled on Thursday that internet giant Google had violated the country’s antitrust law with its non-transparent blocking regulations on YouTube. “The service determined that the rules for creating, suspending, blocking of accounts and circulation of users’ content on YouTube are opaque, biased and unpredictable,” the FAS said in a statement, adding that “such behaviour undermines users’ interests as well as curtails competition on adjacent markets.” In December, a turnover fine was imposed on a tech company in Russia: the court ruled to fine Google 7.2 billion rubles ($98Mln) for repeated failure to remove prohibited information. A few hours later, Meta was also slapped with a turnover fine of almost 2 billion rubles for similar violations.

• The US inflation rate hit an annualised rate of 7.5 percent over the past 12 months, its biggest rise since February 1982, Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures released by the Department of Labour on Thursday show. Economists have blamed the inflation bonanza on factors ranging from Covid bailouts and multi-trillion dollar federal spending plans to shortages of goods and workers caused by global supply chain disruptions and large-scale walkouts, combined with better-than-expected consumer spending numbers and a spike in wages in some industries. The inflation bump is believed to have played a major role in explaining Biden’s historically low approval ratings one year into his term. 

News Burst 11 February 2022

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