International

Israel premier calls for vaccination push in Arab communities

AFP

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called Wednesday for new efforts to promote coronavirus vaccination within Arab communities, which are now the leading hotspots of Covid transmission.

Before leaving New York where he addressed the UN General Assembly, partly on Israel’s pandemic response, Bennett said “the 40 ‘reddest’ communities in Israel are from the Arab sector”, referring to transmission rates.

Bennett has faced criticism from some health experts over his refusal to reimpose lockdown restrictions despite persistently highly daily case counts.

But Bennett said his government’s policy was to keep Israel “as open as possible alongside focused work on the non-vaccinated and the centres of morbidity”.

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“What will help is… going to the Arab sector, and persuading them,” he told reporters.

Israel’s Arab citizens, Palestinians who remained on their land after Israel’s founding in 1948, make up roughly 20 percent of the country’s 9.3 million population.

Zahi Said, a spokesman for the health ministry, told AFP that 40 percent of all new infections in Israel — and a similar rate of hospitalisations and deaths — were within the Arab community.

Said attributed the high rates to a “lack of vaccination and non-compliance with health ministry instructions, such as distancing and wearing masks.”

He said the ministry was promoting vaccine awareness in Arab cities and towns, but that vaccine resistance has persisted.

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Israel was in December among the first countries to launch a national vaccination campaign that brought infections down to a trickle and allowed the lifting in June of nearly all pandemic restrictions.

The emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant caused infections to surge, but Bennett’s government has opted to rollout a third, or booster, jab of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine instead of a new lockdown.

Israeli data shows that those who have received a third shot are less likely to become seriously ill with Covid than those who have received the required two shots.

International

Chile declares state of catastrophe as wildfires rage in Ñuble and Biobío

Wildland firefighting crews are battling 19 forest fires across the country, 12 of them concentrated in the Ñuble and Biobío regions, located about 500 kilometers south of Santiago.

“In light of the severe fires currently underway, I have decided to declare a state of catastrophe in the regions of Ñuble and Biobío. All resources are now available,” the president announced in a post on X.

Authorities have not yet released an official report on possible casualties or damage to homes.

According to images broadcast by local television, the fires have reached populated areas, particularly in the municipalities of Penco and Lirquén, in the Biobío region, which together are home to nearly 60,000 people. Burned vehicles were also reported on several streets.

“The Penco area and the entire Lirquén sector are the most critical zones and where the largest number of evacuations have taken place. We estimate that around 20,000 people have been evacuated,” said Alicia Cebrián, director of the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (Senapred), in an interview with Mega TV.

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In recent years, forest fires have had a severe impact on the country, especially in the central-southern regions.

On February 2, 2024, multiple wildfires broke out simultaneously around the city of Viña del Mar, located 110 kilometers northwest of Santiago. Those fires resulted in 138 deaths, according to updated figures from the public prosecutor’s office, and left approximately 16,000 people affected, based on official data.

International

Former South Korean President Yoon sentenced to five years in prison

Former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison for obstruction of justice and other charges, concluding the first in a series of trials stemming from his failed attempt to impose martial law in December 2024.

The sentence is shorter than the 10-year prison term sought by prosecutors against the 65-year-old conservative former leader, whose move against Parliament triggered a major political crisis that ultimately led to his removal from office.

Yoon, a former prosecutor, is still facing seven additional trials. One of them, on charges of insurrection, could potentially result in the death penalty.

On Friday, the Seoul Central District Court ruled on one of the multiple secondary cases linked to the affair, which plunged the country into months of mass protests and political instability.

International

U.S. deportation flight returns venezuelans to Caracas after Maduro’s ouster

A new flight carrying 231 Venezuelans deported from the United States arrived on Friday at the airport serving Caracas, marking the first such arrival since the military operation that ousted and captured President Nicolás Maduro.

On January 3, U.S. forces bombed the Venezuelan capital during an incursion in which Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured. Both are now facing narcotrafficking charges in New York.

This was the first U.S.-flagged aircraft transporting migrants to land in Venezuela since the military action ordered by President Donald Trump, who has stated that he is now in charge of the country.

The aircraft departed from Phoenix, Arizona, and landed at Maiquetía International Airport, which serves the Venezuelan capital, at around 10:30 a.m. local time (14:30 GMT), according to AFP reporters on the ground.

The deportees arrived in Venezuela under a repatriation program that remained in place even during the height of the crisis between the two countries, when Maduro was still in power. U.S. planes carrying undocumented Venezuelan migrants continued to arrive throughout last year, despite the military deployment ordered by Trump.