HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland on Thursday paused the use of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for younger males due to reports of a rare cardiovascular side effect, joining Sweden and Denmark in limiting its use. Mika Salminen, director of the Finnish health institute, said Finland would instead give Pfizer’s vaccine to men born in 1991 and later. Finland offers shots to people aged 12 and over. “A Nordic study involving Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark found that men under the age of 30 who received Moderna Spikevax had a slightly higher risk than others of developing myocarditis,” he said.

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PARIS (AFP) - Poland’s top court has challenged the supremacy of European Union law in a landmark ruling, widening the diplomatic rift between Warsaw and Brussels. Defying a key tenet of European integration, the Constitutional Tribunal on Thursday declared some articles in EU treaties “incompatible” with its national legislation and unconstitutional. The court also warned EU institutions not to “act beyond the scope of their competencies” by interfering with Poland’s judiciary, which has been a major bone of contention with Brussels.

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VIENNA (The Guardian) -Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, is under investigation over claims that government money was used in a corrupt deal to ensure positive coverage in a tabloid newspaper, prosecutors have announced. A statement from prosecutors said raids had been carried out in several locations, including at two government ministries, as part of the investigation, the latest legal headache for Kurz and his rightwing People’s party (ÖVP). The finance minister, Gernot Blümel, confirmed a raid had taken place at his ministry and Austrian media reported that the chancellery was also one of the locations targeted.
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NEW DELHI (Al-Jazeera) - Assailants have fatally shot two teachers in Indian Kashmir in the third attack within a week targeting civilians in the disputed Himalayan region, police said. Authorities blamed the rebels fighting against Indian rule for the attack in the outskirts of Srinagar, the region’s main city, on Thursday, with the administrative head of the region, Manoj Sinha, saying “a befitting reply will be given to the perpetrators of the heinous terror attacks on innocent people.”
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - At least 623,000 people have been affected by widespread flooding in South Sudan since May, with many forced to flee their homes, the United Nations said. Rivers broke their banks following heavy rains, deluging houses and farms in eight of the country’s 10 states, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a briefing note on Thursday. Jonglei and Unity states are the worst hit, representing 58 percent of those affected, the emergency-response agency said. Aid workers are using canoes and boats to reach stranded populations, with more than two-thirds of the affected areas now facing the risk of hunger as food prices shoot up, recording a 15-percent jump since August, it added.