The government is set to scrap its plans to force healthcare workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19, according to reports
On Monday, Health Secretary Sajid Javid will convene ministers to discuss the impact of a vaccine mandate for healthcare professionals and social care workers, according to the Telegraph.
The paper reported that the government is now in favor of a U-turn on the vaccine mandate, amid warnings that some 80,000 healthcare workers could be pushed out of a job after they rejected their Covid jabs.
A senior government source told the Telegraph that the emergence of the Omicron variant had changed the government’s thinking.
“Omicron has changed things. When we first introduced the policy, it was delta that was the dominant variant. That was very high risk in terms of how severe it was,” the source said.
“For omicron, while it is more transmissible, all the studies have shown it is less severe. That has changed the conversation about whether mandatory jabs are still proportionate.”
Multiple government sources said ministers were now in favor of scrapping the vaccine mandate, the Telegraph reported.
Speaking on Monday, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke told Sky that the government was considering the change.
“We do recognise those realities and that does open a space where we can look at this again,” he told Sky.
Javid had already suggested that he was prepared to change tack, telling a parliamentary committee that the mandatory jabs policy was being kept “under review.”
The vaccine mandate for staff is due to be implemented from April, making February 3 the last day workers can be inoculated with their first jab to be fully vaccinated by the spring deadline.
It is already a legal requirement for care home staff to be fully vaccinated. When the mandate came into force in November, an estimated 40,000 people lost their jobs over the policy. The review may allow these people to return to work in the sector, according to the Telegraph.
Vaccine hesitancy among NHS staff was well reported when the inoculation campaign began in late 2020 and early 2021. In February 2021, then-health secretary Matt Hancock begged BAME health workers to get the jab, amid data which suggested vaccine uptake among black staff was half the NHS’s average.
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January 30, 2022 at 11:13PM
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Power failure hit HMAS Adelaide during aid mission to Tonga, after Covid-19 outbreak onboard
Australia’s Department of Defence has confirmed that the country’s largest warship had a power failure while on a mission, after problems were reported by the local media.
The HMAS Adelaide was affected while delivering humanitarian aid to the Pacific island nation of Tonga and is expecting civilian specialists to arrive and “conduct an assessment of the affected systems,” the Defence Department said on Monday.
The statement comes after ABC News, Australia’s national broadcaster, revealed that the ship remains “crippled” after days of repair work failed to resolve the power situation.
The Royal Australian Navy asset is “still experiencing issues with external communications,” while repair teams work “in hot and difficult conditions” to restore the ship, ABC News quoted the captain’s status update as saying.
Warships cost a lot of money because, in battle, they’re not supposed to have a single a point of failure. Redundancy is built in bow-to-stern and port-to-starboard. HMAS Adelaide’s “total power failure" is therefore of considerable concern. #auspolhttps://t.co/cvP4OqJN47
The news raised some questions about the state of the Australian military. Independent Senator Rex Patrick, who represents South Australia, said the ship’s reported “total power failure” was of “considerable concern” to him, since military hardware is supposed to have redundancy of all systems to remain viable in battle.
The Defence Department denied the claim that the ship’s backup power system failed too. The broadcaster reported problems with backup systems, citing sources onboard the HMAS Adelaide. The military said the ship’s essential functions, like freezers, were operational, as was air conditioning in “most areas of the ship.”
HMAS Adelaide is a Spanish-built Canberra-class landing helicopter dock and the largest ship in the Royal Australian Navy. Earlier this month, she was dispatched to Tonga to deliver humanitarian aid in the wake of the January 14 underwater volcanic eruption and tsunami in Tonga.
While en route, an outbreak of Covid-19 happened on board, with 23 infections reported by the Defence Department last week. The government of Tonga allowed the ship to dock on Wednesday and offload 40 tons of relief cargo despite concerns over the disease. The docking permit was conditioned on the ship sailing off immediately afterward.
In the status report cited by ABC News, Captain Stuart Watters wrote that personnel affected by Covid-19 “are being provided with medical care and being supported,” while “a number of people who were originally identified as infectious have been cleared to return to duty after completing quarantine.”
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January 30, 2022 at 11:11PM
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The nation’s renewable energy sector is expected to grow further
China’s National Energy Administration has announced that 2021 was the fifth consecutive year that newly installed wind and solar farms across the country accounted for over 50% of additional power capacity.
Statistics show new solar farms added a record 54.9 gigawatts of power last year, which is 14% more than in 2020. Wind power capacity growth, however, declined by a third to 47.6GW after a record 71.7GW was installed in 2020. The decline was a result of a tariff subsidies phase-out for onshore wind farms.
The combined wind and solar farms installation volume of 102.5GW last year accounted for 58% of additional power capacity in the country, compared to 63% in 2020 and between 51% and 55% from 2017 to 2019.
“China may have resorted to stabilizing coal supply in the short term, and balancing competing energy goals is still challenging, but it does not mean it is diverting away from its long-term climate change goals,” Miaoru Huang, research director at energy and commodities consultancy Wood Mackenzie, was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.
She projected that the nation will add close to 120GW of new solar and wind capacity in 2022, up 20% from last year.
China aims to reach a total wind and solar capacity of 1,200GW by 2030, almost double the 635GW in place at the end of last year. It also plans to increase the contribution of non-fossil fuels to total energy consumption to 25% by 2030.
Deliveries more than doubled as energy crisis tightens grip
The amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) running from entry terminals to the European gas transmission system has reportedly set a new monthly record in January, hitting the highest for this month since records began in 2011.
Some 405 million cubic meters of gas were delivered to Europe as of January 28, marking an enormous increase of 110% compared to the annual average for this date over the past five years, according to data from the Gas Infrastructure Europe trade group, as quoted by TASS.
The capacities of re-gasification of LNG and further injections of the fuel into pipelines in Europe are currently loaded at 67.4% of the maximum, the group’s data shows.LNG stocks in European gas storage tanks are 5% above the five-year average, which is thought to be quite high for the end of January.
Earlier this week, the WSJ reported that more than two-dozen tankers loaded with LNG were en route from the US to Europe, lured by high prices in the region, with another 33 ships also likely to head to the EU.
The European energy crunch, which has sent gas and power prices soaring, was exacerbated when storage tanks in the EU dropped to their lowest seasonal levels in more than ten years. The decline was attributed to longer-than-usual maintenance at Norwegian fields and to Russia restocking its own inventories.
On January 27, the loading levels of gas reserves in underground storage facilities in Europe dropped to 39.22%, which is 15.6% less than the annual average for this date over the past five years. The storage tanks currently contain 42.34 billion cubic meters, 15.7 billion cubic meters less than in 2021.
Additionally, the latest speculation over probable military conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues fueling concerns about the supply of Russian gas. The US and Western allies have pledged to impose a new series of anti-Russian sanctions in the event of an invasion, the very idea of which has been repeatedly rejected by Moscow. The sanctions, reportedly, may target Russian energy sales.
US court shortens Netflix series star’s jail term following conviction for plotting to kill an activist
Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix series ‘Tiger King’, has had his 22-year sentence for plotting to murder an animal welfare activist reduced by 12 months, following a court ruling on Friday. The 58-year-old former manager of an exotic animal park in Oklahoma, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, had pleaded for leniency following his conviction for murder-for hire and violating federal wildlife laws.
“Please don’t make me die in prison waiting for a chance to be free,” Maldonado-Passage, who maintains his innocence, said during court proceedings, as quoted by AP news agency.
A court had heard that the former big-cat owner killed some of his animals, sold their cubs, and falsified wildlife records. He was charged with murder-for-hire after asking an undercover FBI agent to deal with his longstanding rival, animal welfare activist Carole Baskin. Recently, he announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, as well as some other illnesses that apparently make him even more vulnerable to coronavirus.
His attorneys told the judge that their client lacks proper medical care in prison, and his time behind bars is a “death sentence… that he doesn’t deserve.” They said they would appeal the resentencing and petition for a new trial.
Maldonado-Passage has been deprived not only of a fair trial, medical care and freedom of speech, but also “the most basic and important aspect of life – social interaction,” according to his defense. Prosecutors, on the other hand, told the judge on Friday that Joe Exotic had been found in possession of a contraband cell phone and unauthorized headphones in prison, as documented in a disciplinary write-up.
His critic and apparent target, Carole Baskin, who owns a tiger sanctuary in Florida, was also present in court and said she continued to get “vile, abusive and threatening communications.” With the man now having an even larger group of supporters, some of whom gathered during the proceedings on Friday, he “continues to harbor intense feelings of ill will toward me,” she told the judge.
During a recorded meeting in 2017, Maldonado-Passage offered money for Baskin to be “capped” at a mall parking lot, with his attorneys later claiming his intentions had been misinterpreted. In January 2020, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison, convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill Baskin. Exotic’s defense alleged “sentencing manipulation,” and last year an appeals court ruled his jail time should be shortened because of a term calculation mistake.
His supporters were confident that he would be granted clemency when Donald Trump was leaving office, but he didn’t make it onto the pardoned list.
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January 29, 2022 at 12:43AM
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Zoran Milanovic earlier announced Croatia would recall all troops from NATO deployments in the region in case of a Russia-Ukraine war
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic accused his Prime Minister Andrey Plenkovic of behaving like a "Ukrainian agent" on Friday, two days after the latter apologized to Kiev over the head-of-state’s comments on NATO deployments.
In a televised address on Tuesday, Milanovic said Zagreb would withhold its troops from Eastern European NATO contingents if the situation on the Ukraine-Russia border spirals into a full-blown conflict.
On Wednesday, Plenkovic dismissed the president’s statement as “nonsense,” claiming that the Croatian contingent stationed in Poland had already returned and apologized to the Ukrainian people.
Milanovic, the commander-in-chief, hit back in an interview with Zagreb’s RTL TV, suggesting that Plenkovic’s loyalties appear to be misplaced.
Let him apologize. He acts like a Ukrainian agent, and I act like a Croatian president. That’s a huge difference.
Asked if he feels the need to apologize, Milanovic said, “No way. I think the prime minister is an ordinary poltron who goes where he doesn’t belong... All I’m interested in is the Croatian interest,” he added.
In his statement on Tuesday, the president accused the US of agitating the geopolitical situation in the region amid a Russian military buildup near Ukraine’s border. “This has nothing to do with Ukraine or Russia. It has to do with the dynamics of American domestic politics.”
Milanovic claimed he is trying to steer Croatia clear of a potentially disastrous conflagration involving Russia. The Croatian leader said Ukraine must start solving “the problem” it has with the “separatists” in the country’s east through negotiations, noting that Moscow has not recognized the breakaway republics.
He added that Kiev should “not constantly confront the thermonuclear and hypersonic power, Russia. It is not Serbia. Whoever encourages them to do so is a dangerous charlatan, and there are many in Europe.”
Milanovic’s comments on NATO have earned him a place on Kiev’s “Peacemaker” database for “anti-Ukrainian activity,” and he’s been accused of justifying “Russian aggression.” He told RTL TV that he’s “neither a Ukrainian enemy nor a Russian friend” but is rather focused on the wellbeing of his own country.
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January 28, 2022 at 05:54PM
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Report based on anonymous sources alleges that Moscow hadsmoved medical materials needed to “treat casualties” near the border
Citing “three US officials,”Reuters has reported that Russia is allegedly moving blood supplies and other medical materials closer to its frontier Ukraine. The anonymous individuas cited by the agency have claimed that this was one of the “concrete indicators” showing whether Moscow is poised to launch an invasion.
“The disclosure of the blood supplies” by unidentified US officials “adds another piece of context to growing US warnings that Russia could be preparing for a new invasion of Ukraine,” Reuters pointed out.
Blood supplies have a short shelf life, typically around 14 days when refrigerated.
Two of the officials cited in the report told Reuters that the blood supplies were shipped “within recent weeks,” but did not provide a specific timeline.
The report came on the same day that top Pentagon official, Joint Chiefs of Staff chair General Mark Milley, warned that the impact of a potential invasion would be “horrific” and lead to heavy casualties, considering the forces that Russia allegedly “has arrayed” near Ukraine. He claimed that the alleged Russian military buildup at the border with Ukraine was “larger in scale and scope” than anything seen since the end of the Cold War.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, meanwhile, noted that according to the US assessment, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet made up his mind on whether to invade Ukraine and has “multiple options” available, “including seizure of cities and significant territories but also coerce acts and provocative political acts, like the recognition of breakaway territories.”
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied having aggressive intentions but has warned of “military-technical measures” if it’s security concerns – such as the request that NATO does not expand into Ukraine or Georgia – are not addressed.
“If it is up to the Russian Federation, there will be no war,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday. However, he added, Russia “will not allow our interests to be brutally attacked or to be ignored, either.”
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January 28, 2022 at 03:49PM
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Top Pentagon general says “significant casualties” would be unavoidable if Russia invades Ukraine
Citing reports of the weaponry Russia has allegedly amassed on the Ukrainian border, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chair General Mark Milley has argued that if an invasion happens, it would “result in a significant amount of casualties.”
“Given the type of forces that are arrayed, the ground maneuver forces, the artillery, the ballistic missiles, the air forces, all of it packaged together. If that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant,”Milley said at a Pentagon news conference on Friday.
And you can imagine what it might look like in dense urban areas, along roads and so on and so forth. It would be horrific, it would be terrible.
Backing up Milley’s nightmare vision was Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, who declared that while Russian President Vladimir Putin had not set his heart on invading yet, he was capable of doing so, and there were “multiple options available,” such as “the seizure of cities and significant territories” by Moscow.
While Austin told reporters on Friday that President Joe Biden was not planning to deploy US troops to Ukraine for combat operations, he noted that all other options were “on the table.” Later that day, Biden revealed that American troops would be sent to Eastern Europe “in the near term.” Some 8,500 US troops had been put on “heightened alert” with a view to their possible deployment to Eastern Europe earlier this week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, has asked the US to tone down rhetoric that paints a picture of a near-certain invasion of Ukraine by Russia, even as Moscow insists it has no plans to attack its neighbor. Speaking to foreign journalists on Friday, Zelensky stated that “we are not seeing any greater escalation than it has been before.”
“From media coverage, it looks like we are at war already,” the Ukrainian president added, noting that “we don’t need this panic.”
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January 28, 2022 at 02:49PM
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White House trying to make sure economic warfare won’t disrupt the global money system
The US National Security Council and other senior officials from the Biden government have met with high-ranking executives from America's largest banks – including JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Bank of America – regarding what actions to take should the US choose to level sanctions against Russia, according to sources cited in a Bloomberg report on Friday.
The US and EU are considering a number of plans, including potentially targeting Russia’s ability to convert currency or sell its oil and gas to Europe, or even blocking Moscow’s access to the SWIFT payment system. These are all possibilities that, while hurting Moscow, risk raining down collateral damage on the US as well.
The banking system is thus wary of such moves, Bloomberg reported.
“We have been very clear that if Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States is looking at a range of options – with allies and partners – to deliver severe costs to the Russian economy,” a US Treasury spokesperson said in a written statement on Friday.
No invasion has occurred, despite a flurry of related predictions from both Washington and Kiev – over the past two and a half months – but threats to delist Moscow from SWIFT have persisted regardless.
However, a report from the German media earlier this month indicated western leaders had abandoned the threat to cut Russia off from the service, even as the US National Security Council insisted “no option is off the table.”
The German report instead suggested that Berlin and Washington were considering “targeted” sanctions against Russia’s largest banks as revenge for the long-awaited Russian invasion of Ukraine – a move Moscow insists is not happening, but which the US claims is certain.
Should Russia be cut off from SWIFT, it would be forced to cease exporting much-needed oil, gas, metals, and other goods to Europe, the vice speaker of Russia’s upper house of Parliament warned on Tuesday.
This possibility has Germany feeling distinctly uneasy, and the European Central Bank has asked its clients to consider how they might respond to sanctions against Russia.
Citigroup, the US bank with the most exposure to Russia, has taken steps to reduce that exposure, announcing it plans to wind down its retail banking operations in the country and focus solely on institutional clients. It is also the only US bank with operations in Ukraine.
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January 28, 2022 at 11:47AM
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