Underwater volcano erupts off Tonga

The eruption of an underwater volcano off Tonga, which triggered a tsunami warning for several South Pacific island nations, is seen in an image from the NOAA GOES-West satellite taken at 5 a.m. GMT on Sunday.Xinhua

French law bans

unvaccinated from venues

France’s parliament approved a law on Sunday that will exclude unvaccinated people from all restaurants, sports arenas and other venues, the central measure of government efforts to protect hospitals amid record numbers of infections driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

The National Assembly adopted the law by a vote of 215-58. Centrist President Emmanuel Macron had hoped to push the bill through faster, but it was slightly delayed by resistance from lawmakers both on the right and left and hundreds of proposed amendments.

More than 91 percent of French adults are already fully vaccinated, and some critics have questioned whether the “vaccine pass” will make much of a difference. Macron’s government is hoping the new pass will be enough to limit the number of patients filling up strained hospitals nationwide without resorting to a new lockdown.

DPRK fires 2 projectiles to eastern waters

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) fired two short-range projectiles into eastern waters, the fourth launch in less than two weeks, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Monday.

The JCS said in a statement that the South Korean military detected two projectiles, presumed to be short-range ballistic missiles, which were launched northeastward to the eastern coast from the DPRK’s Sunan airfield in Pyongyang at about 8:50 a.m. and 8:54 a.m. local time each on Monday.

The projectiles traveled some 380 km at an altitude of around 42 km. The intelligence authorities of South Korea and the United States were precisely analyzing further details on them, according to the JCS.

UK PM apologizes for attending garden party

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized on January 12 for attending a Downing Street garden party during the country’s first lockdown in 2020.

During the weekly session of Prime Minister’s Questions at the House of Commons (lower house of the British Parliament), Johnson admitted that he attended the gathering in the back garden of 10 Downing Street on May 20, 2020.

He told the lawmakers that it was a work event, adding that he went to the garden party with the aim of thanking groups of staff.

Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labor Party, raged against Johnson’s apology and urged him to “do the decent thing and resign.”

EU Parliament president dies at 65

European Parliament President David Sassoli died at age 65 at a hospital in Italy on January 11.

Sassoli, born on May 30, 1956, in Florence, Italy, had been hospitalized for more than two weeks due to a serious complication relating to immune system dysfunction.

He began his career as a journalist at local newspapers and news agencies, before moving to the editorial office of the daily Il Giorno in Rome, and then became a television news reporter.

Sassoli was elected to the European Parliament in 2009. He became president of the European Parliament in 2019 and his term of office would have expired in days.

8.5m US children infected, numbers soar

Nearly 8.5 million children in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, and COVID-19 cases among American children are “increasing exponentially,” according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association.

A total of 8,471,003 child COVID-19 cases had been reported across the country as of January 6, and children represented 17.4 percent of all confirmed cases, according to the report published on January 10.

The overall rate was 11,255 cases per 100,000 children in the population.

(SD-Xinhua)