News in Brief

Date: 11 August 2021 - 21:12

News ID: ۹۳۲۹۲

BERLIN (The Guardian) - Nearly 9,000 people in Germany must be vaccinated again after a nurse administering the shot swapped the vaccine for a harmless saltwater solution. After dropping a vial of Pfizer vaccine in April, a German nurse replaced COVID-19 shots with saline and administered those to patients instead, Metro UK reported. But police found the nurse may have swapped out the vaccine multiple times. Local authorities said nearly 9,000 people vaccinated between March 5 and April 20 will need another shot to be safe, the public radio broadcaster NDR said.

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LONDON (Dispatches) -A British man has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of spying for Russia. German federal prosecutors said the man - named only as David S - worked at the British embassy in Berlin. He allegedly passed documents to Russian intelligence “at least once” in exchange for an “unknown amount” of money. He was arrested in Potsdam outside Berlin on Tuesday and his home and workplace have been searched. A spokesman for Germany’s foreign ministry quoted by AFP news agency said Berlin was taking the case “very seriously”, and said spying by “a close alliance partner on German soil is unacceptable”.

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WASHINGTON (Dispatches) - Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned over a barrage of sexual harassment allegations in a fall from grace a year after he was widely hailed nationally for his detailed daily briefings and leadership during the darkest days of COVID-19. The three-term governor’s decision, which will take effect in two weeks, was announced as momentum built in the Legislature to remove him by impeachment. It came after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women.

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LONDON (Bloomberg) - Brazil’s lower house rejected Jair Bolsonaro’s bid to change the country’s voting system, likely escalating political tensions after he argued that failing to do so would allow the 2022 election to be stolen from him. The president’s proposal would require a paper printout of each vote electronically cast. As a constitutional amendment, it needed backing by 308 of the 513 deputies, but the government received just 229 votes. By falling short, the constitutional amendment will be shelved.

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NEW YORK (Dispatches) - The World Health Organization has urged the 20 leaders with the power to overturn the “disgraceful” global imbalance in access to COVID-19 vaccines to reverse the tide before October. The WHO’s Bruce Aylward said the world should be “disgusted” - and asked whether the situation could have been any worse had there been an active effort to block the planet’s poor from getting vaccinated, AFP reported. The UN health agency has been increasingly infuriated by what it sees as the moral outrage of rich countries hogging vaccine supply while developing nations struggle to immunize their most vulnerable populations.