International

Biden gets updated Covid booster shot

Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP

| By AFP |

President Joe Biden got an updated Covid-19 vaccine booster shot Tuesday and urged Americans to follow his example ahead of winter, saying no one need die anymore from the once devastating virus.

Biden, 79, contracted the coronavirus three months ago with mild symptoms and already received a second booster for the vaccine at the end of March.

His updated shot, given in front of journalists at the White House, targets two subvariants of the virus.

Biden announced efforts to get more Americans boosted with the new version of the vaccine ahead of major holiday travel periods at Thanksgiving and the end of the year.

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“I’m calling on all Americans… to get their shot just as soon as they can,” he said. “There’s still hundreds of people dying each day from Covid, hundreds. That number’s likely to rise this winter, but… this year, nearly every death is preventable.”

Biden said the government and major pharmacy chains, whose leaders joined him on stage to witness the injection, were working together to make sure that the booster was widely available and free of charge.

“Almost everyone who will die from Covid this year will not be up to date on the shots” or have taken the government-funded therapeutics when they get infected, he underlined.

Addressing the long history of political splits on the vaccination issue, Biden pleaded for Americans to “start fresh as a country, put all the old battles over Covid behind us, put all the partisan politics aside.”

“We’ve already lost one million Americans to Covid,” Biden said, calling it “this terrible disease.”

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So far only 20 million Americans, including just one in five elderly people, have got the updated shot, according to the White House.

International

Football Fan Killed in Clashes After Colombian League Match

Fans of Cúcuta Deportivo and their traditional rivals Atlético Bucaramanga clashed outside the stadium following their local league match on Tuesday, leaving one supporter dead and several others injured.

The deceased fan was stabbed, according to a senior police official in Cúcuta who confirmed the cause of death in a video statement. Local media reported that the victim was a supporter of the visiting team, Atlético Bucaramanga.

The match ended in a 2-2 draw. Authorities had banned the entry of Atlético Bucaramanga’s organized supporters into the stadium in an effort to prevent disturbances.

Despite the restrictions, violence broke out in the surrounding areas after the game. Among the injured were three police officers, an institutional source told AFP.

The incident adds to a series of recent violent episodes linked to Colombian football. The most recent occurred in December, when supporters of Atlético Nacional and Independiente Medellín clashed in the stands and on the pitch, leaving 59 people injured.

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International

Missing Spanish Sailor Rescued After 11 Days Adrift in Mediterranean

The man had departed from the port of Gandía, on Spain’s eastern coast, with the intention of reaching the southern Spanish town of Guardamar del Segura, a journey of about 150 kilometers, a spokesperson for Spain’s maritime rescue service told AFP.

Search boats and aircraft were deployed on January 17, but the operation was called off on January 22 after efforts proved unsuccessful. Alerts were then issued to vessels navigating the area in case they spotted any signs of the missing sailor.

As hopes were fading, a surveillance aircraft from the European Union’s border agency Frontex spotted the sailboat on Tuesday, along with a person signaling for help, approximately 53 nautical miles northeast of Bejaia, Algeria.

A nearby vessel, the Singapore-flagged bulk carrier Thor Confidence, carried out the rescue and is expected to bring the man to an end to his ordeal when it arrives on Thursday in the southern Spanish port city of Algeciras.

Maritime rescue services shared images on social media showing a small white sailboat drifting at sea and secured alongside the much larger ship.

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It remains unclear how the sailboat ended up hundreds of kilometers off its intended route or how the man managed to survive for so long alone in open waters.

International

Rubio Says U.S. Could Participate in Follow-Up Russia-Ukraine Talks

The United States could join a new round of talks this week aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.

Teams from Kyiv and Moscow met last Friday and Saturday in Abu Dhabi in their first publicly acknowledged direct negotiations to discuss the peace initiative promoted by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

“They are going to hold follow-up talks again this week,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “There could be U.S. participation.”

However, Rubio suggested that Washington’s role may be more limited than during last week’s discussions, which included Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

The secretary of state indicated that progress may have already been made on security guarantees for Ukraine, one of Kyiv’s key demands in any agreement with Moscow after nearly four years of Russian invasion.

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“There is one remaining issue that everyone is familiar with, and that is the territorial claim over Donetsk,” Rubio said, referring to the eastern Ukrainian region that Russia wants Ukraine to cede.

“I know that active efforts are underway to see whether the positions of both sides on this issue can be reconciled. It remains a bridge we have not yet crossed,” he added during the hearing.

Rubio acknowledged that the territorial question would be particularly difficult for Ukraine to resolve.