India in deadlock with farmers

Farmers shout slogans at a protest site during a nationwide strike against the newly passed farm bills at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border in Ghaziabad, India, yesterday. India’s government on Saturday failed to break a deadlock with farmers protesting over agricultural reforms and will meet again today, the agriculture minister and union leaders said.SD-Agencies

Biden picks Becerra to lead pandemic response

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration’s coronavirus response.

Separately, Biden picked a Harvard infectious disease expert, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, 62, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a US$1-trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans.

Violence erupts during Paris protest

Scores of hooded anarchists launched projectiles at riot police, smashed up shop fronts, torched cars and burned barricades during a demonstration in the French capital on Saturday against police violence and a draft security law.

The police fired back volleys of tear gas and made repeated charges at groups of troublemakers for close to three hours. One group of anarchists ransacked the branch office of a bank, throwing piles of paperwork onto a fire outside.

It marked the second consecutive of weekend of unrest in Paris, provoked by recent episodes of police brutality and President Emmanuel Macron’s security plans, which the demonstrators say would restrict civil liberties.

Coronavirus deaths exceed 50,000 in Iran

Iran’s total deaths from coronavirus surpassed 50,000 on Saturday, with more than 1 million people infected, although transmission rates in the Middle East’s worst-affected country were slowing, state TV reported.

Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, shopping malls and several other businesses reopened after a two-week shutdown, following a 10 percent drop in infections over the past days.

Officials cautioned that the situation remained “fragile” in Tehran and in the other cities that have moved from the coronavirus red alert to the lower risk orange level, said the broadcast.

Speeding car kills 5 pedestrians in Germany

A man was arrested after he drove a speeding car into a pedestrian area in the western German city of Trier on December 1, police said, killing five people, including a 9-month-old.

The crash injured at least 14 others, in addition to killing a 73-year-old woman, and the infant, Mayor of Trier, Wolfram Leibe, said during a press conference.

Police have arrested a 51-year-old German national, 51, from the Trier-Saarburg district, they said, and had begun questioning him.

Studies likely pushing back COVID-19 timeline

A newly released study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that COVID-19 was likely in the United States as early as mid-December 2019, weeks before the virus was first identified in China, presenting the latest evidence that the coronavirus was spreading around the world earlier than previously known.

According to the study in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, CDC researchers tested blood samples from 7,389 routine blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from December 13, 2019 to January 17, 2020 for antibodies specific to the novel coronavirus.(SD-Agencies)