NEW ZEALAND
Vaccine interval to be cut
The country is to reduce the interval between a second COVID-19 vaccine dose and a booster shot to four months from six as part of its response to the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. People aged 18 or older who have had second shots of a vaccine at least four months ago would be eligible for a booster from Wednesday, the Ministry of Health said in a statement. The shorter interval means that more than 82 percent of vaccinated people in the country would be eligible for a booster by the end of next month, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said in the statement. More than 70 percent of people who were eligible for a booster last year have already had the shot, the statement said. The country had planned to gradually open its border, which has been closed to foreigners since March 2020, from this month, but has delayed the phased reopening until the end of next month due to Omicron.
UNITED STATES
ISS extension in works
The administration of President Joe Biden has committed to extending the International Space Station’s (ISS) operations through 2030, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Friday. Nelson said that the Biden administration had committed to working with international partners, including Russia, to continue research being conducted in the orbiting laboratory through the rest of this decade. Russia and the US have had close cooperation aboard the ISS for more than two decades. US officials said in November last year that an anti-satellite missile test that Russia conducted generated a debris field in low-Earth orbit that endangered the station and would pose a hazard to space activities for years. The station would operate through 2030 if approved by international partners and funded by the Congress. Currently, Congress has approved funding through 2024.
SUDAN
Protesters block streets
Pro-democracy demonstrators blocked streets in Khartoum on Friday, protesting against violence a day earlier that left five people dead and sparked condemnation. Protesters barricaded roads in the east Khartoum district of Burri, as well as in nearby Khartoum North, using rocks, tree branches and tires, an Agence Frace-Presse journalist reported. The country has been gripped by turmoil since military leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan launched a coup on Oct. 25 and detained Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. Hamdok was reinstated on Nov. 21, but mass protests have continued as demonstrators distrust Burhan’s promises of seeking to guide the country toward full democracy.
IRAQ
Leopard’s leg amputated
An endangered leopard captured in the country’s mountainous north had its hind leg amputated on Friday following a trap-inflicted wound, an Agence France-Presse photographer said. The Persian leopard, taken in a day earlier in the autonomous Kurdistan region near the border with Turkey, had injured two people, said Colonel Jamal Saado, head of the environmental protection police in Dohuk Province. Residents of a village near the town of Zakho lost about 20 sheep before realizing a leopard was attacking their flocks, he said. The big cat sustained a wound to its back leg when it was caught in a shepherd’s trap, but managed to escape before villagers helped police track it down. Saado said the leopard was given anesthetic before it was captured.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
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