News in Brief

Date: 27 May 2020 - 21:47

News ID: ۷۸۹۹۸

PARIS (Dispatches) -- The French government on Wednesday banned treatment of Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, a controversial and potentially harmful drug that U.S. President Donald Trump has said he is taking preventively. The move came after two French advisory bodies and the World Health Organization warned this week that the drug, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, had been shown to be potentially dangerous in several studies. The urgency of the coronavirus outbreak has prompted some doctors to prescribe the drug despite a lack of research to demonstrate its efficacy against the virus. British medical journal The Lancet has reported that patients getting hydroxychloroquine had increased death rates and irregular heartbeats, adding to a series of other disappointing results for the drug as a way to treat COVID-19. Trump and others have pushed hydroxychloroquine in recent months as a possible coronavirus treatment.

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BERLIN (AP) -- The European Union’s top diplomat has called for the bloc to have a "more robust strategy” toward China amid signs that Asia is replacing the United States as the centre of global power. EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell told a gathering of German ambassadors that "analysts have long talked about the end of an American-led system and the arrival of an Asian century.” "This is now happening in front of our eyes,” he said. Borrell said the pandemic could be seen as a turning point in the power shift from West to East, and that for the EU the "pressure to choose sides is growing.” He said the 27-nation bloc "should follow our own interests and values and avoid being instrumentalised by one or the other.” But while China’s rise was "impressive,” Borrell said current relations between the Brussels and Beijing weren’t always based on trust, transparency and reciprocity.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has received an invitation from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take part in a summit on the coronavirus vaccine, but no decision has been made yet on participation, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
On June 4, the British government will hold the Global Vaccine Summit 2020 to mobilize resources needed to ensure universal availability of the vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Russia said on Wednesday 161 people with the coronavirus had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide death toll to 3,968. Officials reported 8,338 new cases on Wednesday, pushing Russia’s overall case tally to 370,680.

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BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian authorities have banned Montenegro’s national carrier from operating flights out of Belgrade after the small nation’s government excluded Serbia from a list of countries with which Montenegro will reopen its borders after declaring an end to its coronavirus outbreak. The Serbian Civil Aviation Directorate said Montenegro Airlines planes cannot land at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport as of Wednesday. The aviation agency said unrestricted travel between the two countries has been "seriously violated” by Montenegro’s decision to ban Serbs from entering Montenegro. The flight ban comes amid deepening tensions between the former Balkan allies, which existed as one state before Montenegro split off through a 2006 referendum. Montenegro Airlines planned to resume flights to the Serbian capital on June 1. Air Serbia, still has plans to fly to two destinations in Montenegro starting June 7.

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ABUJA (Reuters) -- The Nigerian military are unlawfully detaining boys and men at a rehabilitation centre for alleged members of the Takfiri militant group Boko Haram, Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday. In the latest allegations of rights abuses since Boko Haram began its insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast, Amnesty criticized Operation Safe Corridor, a program that receives financial and technical support from the European Union, Britain, the United States and the UN International Organization for Migration. "For almost everyone held (at Safe Corridor) to date, it amounts to unlawful detention,” Amnesty said of the program which is based in Gombe state and aims at reintegrating former militants into their communities. "Many people there are not former fighters who committed crimes, much less were charged or convicted of any crime,” it said in a report that also listed alleged rights abuses by Boko Haram and criticized conditions at other military detention centers.

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BERLIN (Reuters) -- The number of anti-Semitic crimes committed in Germany rose last year by 13%, Interior Minster Horst Seehofer said on Wednesday, laying the blame squarely on right-wing radicals. Overall, the number of politically motivated crimes rose by 14% last year to 41,177, more than half of which were committed by far-right radicals. Crimes, mostly vandalism, committed by left-wing militants jumped by 23%, said Seehofer. There have been several high profile attacks in the last year. In February a racist gunman killed nine migrants near Frankfurt before killing his mother and himself. In June 2019, pro-migrant politician Walter Luebcke was found shot dead at close range at his home in Hesse state. A far-right radical confessed to the crime, though later retracted his statement. Police have also warned that thousands of protesters at rallies opposing lockdown measures against the coronavirus are in large part driven by far-right sympathizers.