At least 96 killed as quake, floods hit Indonesia

Indonesian police officers inspect a collapsed building following an earthquake in Mamuju, West Sulawesi province, Indonesia, on Sunday. The death toll from the 6.2-magnitude earthquake and floods in the central parts of Indonesia has risen to 96, with nearly 70,000 people forced to flee home and take shelter, the country’s National Disaster Management Agency said on Monday.SD-Agencies

Samsung heir sentenced to 2.5 years in prison

Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jae-yong was jailed on Monday for corruption linked to his management succession.

The Seoul High Court sentenced Lee, an heir apparent of South Korea’s biggest family-run conglomerate Samsung Group, to two and a half years in prison for corruption charges, including bribery.

With a suspended prison sentence, he was released from jail in February 2018 after serving about one year behind bars, but the Supreme Court returned the case to the high court calling for harsh punishment.

Armin Laschet elected as German CDU leader

Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Saturday elected Armin Laschet as its party chairman after an online vote, which is widely seen as a crucial step paving the way for the era after Angela Merkel retires from her post.

Laschet, 59, is the governor of Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia. In a runoff, Laschet garnered 521 votes beating the pro-business conservative Friedrich Merz, who got 466 votes.

A third candidate, foreign policy expert Norbert Roettgen, was knocked out in the first round of the voting. To make the online election legitimate, a postal vote would follow the digital vote, and the formal recognition will be on January 22, according to a schedule given by the CDU.

Australia unlikely to fully reopen borders in 2021

The head of Australia’s Department of Health has revealed that it is unlikely that the country’s borders will be cast open in 2021.

Brendan Murphy, who headed Australia’s initial response to COVID-19 as the chief medical officer (CMO) before becoming the Secretary of the Department of Health, said on Monday that full-scale travel to and from Australia would likely not resume until 2022.

“I think the answer is probably no,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television channel on Monday when asked if borders would “realistically” be reopened in 2021.

Indonesian president gets Chinese vaccine shot

Indonesian President Joko Widodo on January 13 received the COVID-19 vaccine shot developed by China’s biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech.

The president, widely known as Jokowi, is the first Indonesian vaccinated to show that the vaccine is safe. After the president, the Indonesian military chief, the national police chief and the Health Minister, among others, were also vaccinated.

Norway: Vaccines may

lead to fatal outcome

An adverse reaction to the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine may be responsible for as many as 23 reported deaths among frail and elderly patients in nursing homes in Norway, said a press release from the Norwegian Medicines Agency (NoMA) on Friday.

The studies on Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) included few participants aged over 85 and did not include patients with unstable or acute illness, according to NoMA.

“The assessment suggests that common adverse reactions to mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients,” said Sigurd Hortemo, NoMA’s chief physician. (SD-Agencies)