A gigantic, fully loaded container ship has run aground and become wedged across Egypt’s Suez Canal, blocking all other vessels from passing through, and threatening the viability of a pandemic-beleaguered global shipping system, the Associated Press reports. The MV Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that transports cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday for reasons that were still not clear on Wednesday.
Frustrated U.S. Border Patrol agents are risking their livelihoods to reveal what’s going on in illegal immigrant processing facilities, a major U.S. newspaper reported Tuesday.
A German pastor who faces expulsion from Turkey urged prayers Tuesday as he awaits the outcome of a trial that could effectively ban him from the country, supporters said.
The foreign ministers of China and Russia affirmed their countries’ close ties at a meeting Tuesday, amid intense criticism and new Western sanctions against them over human rights.
The Middle East quartet of mediators – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – discussed on Tuesday reviving “meaningful negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinians with the aim of a two-state solution.
The European Parliament declared the European Union (EU) an “LGBTIQ Freedom Zone” on March 11, largely in reaction to various municipalities in Poland declaring themselves LGBTIQ-Free Zones. The vote in Parliament was 492 in favor, 141 against, and 46 abstentions, according to a European Parliament press release.
The European Union and the United States on Monday imposed sanctions on individuals and groups linked to last month’s military coup in Myanmar as the repression of pro-democracy protesters by security forces reached what Germany’s foreign minister called “an unbearable” level.
The United States and its allies in Canada, Britain and the European Union on Monday announced sanctions on several Chinese officials alleged to have links to what U.S. officials say is a genocidal campaign against Uyghur Muslims.
The U.S. State Department says Secretary of State Antony Blinken has “strongly condemned” recent attacks against Saudi territory from “Iranian-aligned groups” in the region, and discussed cooperation to end the war in Yemen in a call with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister.
The European Union has confirmed its plans to issue ‘digital green certificates’ to vaccinated members of its 450 million population, allowing them to travel freely across the bloc this summer, the UK’s Daily Mail reports. The new ‘passport’ would be issued to those who have been recently tested or who have recovered from the virus as well.
Demonstrators took to the streets in several European cities on Saturday to protest Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, with clashes between demonstrators and police erupting in the German city of Kassel while in London, police arrested dozens of people for breaching pandemic restrictions. Protests also erupted in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, Finland, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland as European authorities confront a third coronavirus wave.
Egypt is racing to prepare a grandiose new capital city in the desert east of Cairo before the first civil servants move in this summer and ahead of the delayed official opening of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s flagship project.
Iran has yet to recover from a devastating explosion at its Natanz nuclear facility last July, sources have told The Jerusalem Post, undercutting IAEA reports this week that the Islamic Republic has made progress with advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was heading towards a fourth term in office as one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders in elections overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Two Bangladeshi girls who were born conjoined at the head returned to their hometown after they were successfully separated by a team of Hungarian doctors in 2019, officials confirmed.
The Chief Rabbi of Moscow warned this week that Jewish life in Europe is once again under serious threat due, among other things, to the intolerance of ritual slaughter and male circumcision practices that are central to Jewish religious expression. Writing in the Times of Israel, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt attested: “There is almost no value in remembering the past if a country and its politicians don’t allow its Jewish population to live their life in the present.”
Iran has begun using the highly advanced new IR-4 centrifuge to enrich uranium at its Natanz plant in a further breach of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, the Reuters news agency reported Tuesday, citing a UN atomic watchdog document.
Italy and Germany on Monday joined Ireland and Holland as the latest European Union member states to suspend the use of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, Reuters reports. The decisions follow Norwegian reports of blood clots and brain hemorrhages among people who had taken the shot; Denmark, Norway, and Bulgaria have also suspended use of the vaccine.
Myanmar’s military rulers declared martial law in a large area of the country’s largest city Yangon after security forces killed more than 100 pro-democracy protesters since Saturday.
The International Criminal Court is considering a lawsuit filed by a group of Israeli lawyers and doctors who believe Israel’s warp-speed COVID-19 vaccination campaign is a “medical experiment” that violates the Nuremberg Code and constitutes crimes against humanity, All Israel News reports.