News in Brief

Date: 11 July 2022 - 21:40

News ID: ۱۰۴۶۰۹

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that’s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States. Scientists say the variant – called BA.2.75 – may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It’s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5. “It’s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,” said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “But it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase.” Whether it will outcompete BA.5, he said, is yet to be determined. Still, the fact that it has already been detected in many parts of the world even with lower levels of viral surveillance “is an early indication it is spreading,” said Shishi Luo, head of infectious diseases for Helix, a company that supplies viral sequencing information to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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SYDNEY (AFP) -- Australia’s black, red and yellow Aboriginal flag began flying permanently above Sydney’s Harbour Bridge Monday, a symbolic victory for indigenous communities after a years-long fight. Over 177,000 people signed an online petition asking for the flag to be flown 365 days a year over the famed 1,149-metre (3,770-foot) long coathanger-shaped hunk of steel. Until now, the bridge had been festooned with the Australian and New South Wales state flags. After a public outcry, that proposal was scrapped and the Aboriginal flag will fly instead of the New South Wales flag. Indigenous Australians have inhabited the land for an estimated 65,000 years. The arrival of British settlers in 1788 signaled the start of two centuries of disentitlement and discrimination. The persecution of Indigenous peoples has been braided into Australia’s history, beginning with the decimation of the population after colonization and continuing through policies such as the forced removal of children. Australia’s 2021 census showed the number of people identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders grew by 25 percent since the last count five years earlier -- reaching 812,728 people in a population of almost 26 million.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon has agreed to testify in the Capitol riot hearings, days before he was to face trial for defying a subpoena from the committee investigating the attack on Congress, U.S. media reported Sunday. Bannon was among dozens of people called to testify on last year’s assault on the Capitol aimed at shutting down Congress over former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims that Joe Biden won the 2020 election due to voter fraud. Investigators believe Bannon and other Trump advisors could have information on links between the White House and the mob that invaded the Capitol on the day it was due to certify Biden as winner. Although he was not a White House employee or official Trump aide, Bannon’s attorneys had previously claimed he was protected by presidential executive privilege and did not have to cooperate with the committee. The attack, which left five people dead, succeeded in delaying the joint House-Senate election certification session for several hours.

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MADRID (AFP) – An autopsy has been carried out on in Spain on former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died last week in Barcelona, at the request of one of his daughters who suspects foul play, her lawyers said Monday. The results of the autopsy are not yet available, a spokesperson for Tchize dos Santos’ lawyers said. A Barcelona court authorized the post-mortem on Friday, the day of his death, a court spokeswoman said. Dos Santos, who ruled Angola between 1979 and 2017, had lived in Barcelona since April 2019. The 79-year-old was taken to hospital and placed in intensive care after suffering a cardiac arrest on June 23. His 44-year-old daughter -- whose full name is Welwitschia dos Santos -- swiftly demanded the hospital retain his body “until an appropriate autopsy is carried out.” She said in a statement on Saturday there were “a series of signs” that her father’s death occurred under “suspicious circumstances”. Tchize has filed a legal case in Spain against the former Angolan president’s widow, Ana Paula, and his personal physician for “attempted murder”.

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PAMPLONA, Spain (AP) — A tense fifth bull run at Pamplona’s San Fermín Festival left three people gored and three others with bruises on Monday, a Spanish Red Cross spokesman said. It was the first run with gorings in the festival so far this year. There are three more daily runs before it finishes Thursday. Red Cross worker José Aldaba told Spanish National Television that one man was gored on the street, while two others were pierced by a bull´s horn inside the bullring at the end of the run. Festival organizers said one of the runners gored was Australian and the other two were Spaniards. None was in serious condition. Television images showed one bull repeatedly tossing and butting one runner against the wooden barriers on the edge of the ring and then goring another in the back of the leg. The spectacle lasted just over three minutes as hundreds of runners, mostly men, ran frantically ahead and alongside six fighting bulls as they charged through the cobblestone streets of this northern city.