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The World Health Organization Friday approved for emergency use a COVID-19 vaccine created by China’s state-owned drug maker Sinopharm, the sixth vaccine approved by the organization, and the first produced by a non-Western drug maker.
At the agency’s regular briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) reviewed the available data and recommended the vaccine for adults 18 years and older, with a two-dose schedule.
Emergency use listing by the WHO is a signal to nations worldwide the vaccine can be quickly approved and imported for distribution, especially those without an international standard regulator of their own.
 
Tedros noted the vaccine can also now be included in the WHO-administered COVAX vaccine cooperative, designed to provide vaccines for the world’s under-developed nations. The program has been running short of vaccine. Sinopharm vaccine is already being used in many countries around the world.
The WHO has already given emergency approval to COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and last week, Moderna.
The WHO said it is also considering a second Chinese vaccine for emergency use, produced by Sinovac Biotech, and is expected to decide on it as soon as next week.
 
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservatives appeared on course Friday to pull off a historic election victory against the country’s main opposition Labour Party, making deep inroads into Labour’s traditional heartlands in northern England after 48 million Britons voted Thursday for devolved, regional and town governments.   
 
Early results painted a gloomy electoral picture for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party — which lost a parliamentary by-election in the northern town of Hartlepool to the Conservatives for the first time in the constituency’s 57-year history.  
 
As ballots continued to be tallied in England, Scotland and Wales following so-called Super Thursday polls, there was little to cheer Labour supporters elsewhere.
 
The election results could have profound implications for the future of the United Kingdom, if Scottish nationalists win an overall majority in Scotland’s devolved Parliament, but the results north of the border won’t be fully known until Sunday. The leader of the Scottish National Party, Nicola Sturgeon, has said she would see a big win as a mandate to hold a second independence referendum.  Scotland rejected independence in a 2014 referendum.
 
The focus in the early tallying of votes Friday was on the results from across England. The coronavirus pandemic delayed some of last year’s scheduled contests for local governments, making this year’s voting the largest test of public opinion outside a general election in nearly half a century, analysts say.
 
Early results show Conservatives scoring wins across England’s northeast and Midlands, traditional Labour territory and known for years as the party’s Red Wall. In the 2019 parliamentary election Johnson’s Conservatives punched a hole in the wall, and the results so far from Super Thursday suggest that electoral accomplishment was no fluke or one-off success fueled by Brexit, favored many of Labour’s working-class northern supporters.
 
Conservatives were gleeful as the results started to trickle through Friday. Conservative lawmaker Robert Halfon noted his party had seized control of the council in Harlow in southern England “for only the second time in the history of our town.”People queue at the entrance of a polling station in London, May 6, 2021. Millions of people across Britain cast ballots Thursday, in local elections, the biggest set of votes since the 2019 general election.Starmer will likely come under mounting pressure from within his own fractious party if the pattern of Labour losses continues as the tallying unfolds in coming days. Analysts had warned before he vote that Super Thursday would amount to a huge test for Starmer, who has tried to shift the party back toward the political center. He has set as his key task attracting back lost Labour supporters, who deserted the party in droves when the leftist Jeremy Corbyn, who Starmer replaced, was leader.
 
Starmer was already facing a backlash Friday from left-wing luminaries in his party for the disappointing early results. They say he has failed to connect with traditional working-class Labour voters, coming across as a “metropolitan technocrat” out of touch with their everyday concerns. Before entering politics Starmer was the country’s director of public prosecutions.  
 
Low personal ratings and rebellious lawmakers have bedeviled Starmer’s leadership.
 
“He’s now got about a year to demonstrate that he can turn things around,” said one senior Labour lawmaker, “otherwise the party will increasingly start to look for someone else.”
 
Some commentators suggest Starmer will be replaced before the next election.
 
“While talk of an imminent leadership challenge currently belongs on the fringes of the Labour Party, the possibility that he could be replaced before the next general election is a matter of open discussion on the Opposition benches,” according to newspaper columnist Gordon Rayner.  
 
Jim McMahon, the party’s transport spokesman and a Starmer loyalist, placed the blame for Labour’s losses on Brexit, telling The Daily Telegraph newspaper that the election was “always going to be difficult.” He said Labour had failed to persuade traditional party voters who fled Labour over its opposition to Brexit to return to the fold.  
 
“This was a Brexit aftershock,” McMahon said.   
 
The Conservative candidate who won the Hartlepool contest, Jill Mortimer, said her victory wasn’t just due to Brexit, though.  
 
“Labour has taken people for granted too long. People have had enough and now through this result, the people have spoken and made it clear — it is time for change,” she said.  
 
It is only the third time since the 1960s that a governing party has won a parliamentary by-election. Hartlepool was one of Britain’s strongest Brexit-supporting constituencies, with 70% to leave in 2016.
 
A senior Labour official said, “Keir has said he will take responsibility for these results — and he will take responsibility for fixing it and changing the Labour Party for the better.”  
 
However, a backbench Labour lawmaker told local media, “Not all of our shadow cabinet are as proactive as they should be. They’re not as combative as they should be. It can’t just be down to Keir to show that the Labour Party has changed.”
 
Johnson had just as much to prove as Starmer in the election. He has faced weeks of sleaze allegations relating to the awarding of government contracts and refurbishment of his residence at 10 Downing Street, but despite that appeared to be riding high in approval ratings, thanks largely to the country’s successful vaccine rollout.
 
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Britain sent two warships to the English Channel on Thursday amid a dispute with France about fishing rights. French fishermen say they are being illegally prevented from fishing the waters around the British island of Jersey. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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On a visit to Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reassured leaders there that the United States will support Kyiv against what he termed “reckless and aggressive” Russian actions but stopped short of announcing increased military aid. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Facebook has taken down a network of hundreds of fake accounts and pages targeting people in Ukraine and linked to individuals previously sanctioned by the United States for efforts to interfere in U.S. elections, the company said Thursday.Facebook said the network managed a long-running deceptive campaign across multiple social media platforms and other websites, posing as independent news outlets and promoting favorable content about Ukrainian politicians, including activity that was likely for hire. The company said it started its probe after a tip from the FBI.Facebook attributed the activity to individuals and entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, including politician Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian lawmaker who was blacklisted by the U.S. government in September over accusations he tried to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election won by President Joe Biden. Facebook said it removed Derkach’s accounts in October 2020.Derkach told Reuters he would comment on Facebook’s investigation on Friday. Facebook also attributed the network to political consultants associated with Ukrainian politicians Oleh Kulinich and Volodymyr Groysman, Ukraine’s former prime minister. Kulinich did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Groysman could not immediately be reached for comment.Facebook said that as well as promoting these politicians, the network also pushed positive material about actors across the political spectrum, likely as a paid service. It said the activity it investigated began around 2015, was solely focused on Ukraine, and posted anti-Russia content.”You can really think of these operators as would-be influence mercenaries, renting out inauthentic online support in Ukrainian political circles,” Ben Nimmo, Facebook’s global influence operations threat intelligence lead, said on a call with reporters.Facebook’s investigation team said Ukraine, which has been among the top sources of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that it removes from the site, is home to an increasing number of influence operations selling services.Facebook said it removed 363 pages, which were followed by about 2.37 million accounts, and 477 accounts from this network for violating its rules. The network also spent about $496,000 in Facebook and Instagram ads, Facebook said.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the world’s economic powers Thursday not to shy away from serious investments in combating climate change.
 
Merkel hosted the 2021 Petersburg Climate Dialogue, an online conference designed to drive international action on global warming and encourage nations and their leaders to focus on the U.N. Climate Change Conference later this year in Glasgow, Scotland.
 
In her comments, Merkel said she realized the COVID-19 pandemic has “torn insane budget holes” for the world’s industrialized countries. But she said they should not compensate for that by spending less on development aid and climate protection.
 
Johnson echoed that theme, saying the world’s wealthiest nations must meet their commitments to a $100 billion fund meant to help developing nations deal with climate change. He said it is up to wealthy countries to take action, as it is the developing world that feels the worst effects from the warming climate.  
 
Johnson said he will use the meeting with the leading industrial nations hosted by Britain next month to promote the U.N.-backed climate goals.  
 
All G-7 countries have now set targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero emissions — taking out as much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as are put in — by 2050 at the latest.   
 
Scientists say faster cuts are needed to prevent warming that leads to increased drought, rising sea levels and other potentially disastrous effects.
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Britain has sent two warships to the English Channel in an escalating dispute with France over fishing rights. French fishermen say they are being prevented from accessing the waters around the British island of Jersey. Around two dozen French trawlers sailed to the island to protest Thursday, setting off flares and displaying banners demanding access to Jersey waters. One French vessel briefly entered the main harbor on the island. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
A French fishing vessel blocks the port of St Helier in Jersey, May 6, 2021.Talks between the fishermen and Jersey authorities to resolve the dispute were ongoing Thursday. Jersey has its own government but is also a “Crown Dependency,” meaning Britain is responsible for the defense of the island. It lies just off the northern French coast. Under Britain’s exit deal from the European Union, special provisions were included for the island’s fishing grounds, notes fisheries expert James Kane of the U.K. nonprofit group the Institute for Government. “French boats that were catching fish in Jersey waters for at least 10 days a year between 2017 and 2020 have the right to continue doing so on into the future. What it seems has happened is that the Jersey authorities have taken a very restrictive approach to proving that you were fishing and how much you were fishing in the last three years,” Kane told VOA. Ian Gorst, the external relations minister for the government of Jersey, insists the correct regulations are being applied. “The new post-Brexit trade deal is clear that evidence had to be provided of the nature and extent of historic fishing rights,” Gorst told Sky News on Thursday. “We want to give French fishermen who can prove they have fished in our waters historically, the rights that they had previously but evidence has to be provided.” Fishing vessels gather at sea off the coast of Jersey, May 6, 2021. French fishermen angry over loss of access to waters off the coast have gathered their boats in protest off the English Channel island of Jersey.Speaking to lawmakers in the National Assembly, French Maritime Minister Annick Girardin threatened to cut off Jersey’s electricity supply. “We are ready to use these retaliatory measures,” Girardin said Tuesday. “Europe — France — has the means, it’s written into the agreement. So, as far as Jersey is concerned, I would remind you, for example, of the transport of electricity by submarine cables.” British minister Nadhim Zahawi said Thursday that the government would seek a solution to the dispute. “[We’ll] work together to make sure that operationally, on the ground, we iron out any issues, any problems so that this historic deal between the United Kingdom and the EU, one of the most important deals we have struck, we’ve put in place, works for people, for communities, for the fishing communities,” Zahawi told Sky News. Fishing makes up a fraction of 1% of British and European economies — but remains a potent cultural and political force, says analyst James Kane. “Fishermen are after all — in a modern economy — they’re the only people who are still hunter-gatherers,” Kane said. “They go out and find food and bring it back. And so there’s that kind of primal dimension to fishing that maybe makes it a bit sensitive,” he added. “In addition to that, it’s deeply rooted in coastal communities. People seem to care very much about it to a degree that is wildly disproportionate to its economic importance. And then, politically as well, it’s quite frankly useful for both sides to be pushing this story because it has so much resonance.” The European Union has called for a de-escalation of the dispute. However, analysts say tensions over fishing will likely continue as Britain seeks to fulfil its Brexit promise to “take back control” of its waters and borders. 
 
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U.N. agencies are reporting a sharp rise in deaths across the Central Mediterranean among refugees and migrants fleeing conflict, persecution and economic hardship in their home countries.  
So far this year, say U.N. agencies, at least 500 people have lost their lives at sea trying to reach Europe via the dangerous Central Mediterranean route.   This is compared to 150 sea fatalities in the same period last year.   An estimated 130 people died in a shipwreck off the Libyan coast last month.  A report by the International Organization for Migration blamed their deaths on the failure of maritime rescue vessels to respond to their calls of distress. A spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, Carlotta Sami, says fortunately the distress calls of some 1,500 others who recently made this perilous journey were heeded.   She says more than 1,000 disembarked in the port of Trapani in Sicily on May 1 following rescue by the Italian Coast Guard.   She says she was present to watch more than 450 other refugees and migrants rescued by the NGO vessel Sea Watch come ashore on Tuesday.   Most of the arrivals, she says, departed from Libya onboard flimsy, unseaworthy vessels and made repeated distress calls.   “We have noticed a high presence of minors, many of whom are unaccompanied,” she said.  “The majority of arrivals originate from Mali and the Sahel/West Africa area, Eritrea and North Africa.  Many of the people making the sea crossing come from refugee producing countries.”     Sami says many are fleeing from war and conflict, like in the Africa’s Sahel region.  Many others are fleeing persecution and being trafficked and sold like commodities.  She says the latest disembarkations in Italy bring the number of sea arrivals this year to more than 10,400.  This, she notes is more than a 170 percent increase compared to the same period in 2020.   She says the UNHCR, and partners are working with the government of Italy at disembarkation points to help identify the needs of new arrivals and to support the reception system for asylum seekers. “We gather in the past few days several testimonies also from minors that are speaking of imprisonment and brutalities with no respect for human rights in Libya, while also survivors are suffering mental health issues,” she said.    The UNHCR is urging the international community to strengthen protections for migrants and refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean and to provide safe alternatives to these dangerous journeys.  The agency is calling on states to expand legal pathways such as humanitarian corridors, evacuations, resettlement, and family reunification. 
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that while Russia has withdrawn some forces from the Ukrainian border region, “significant forces” and equipment remain there and the United States wants Russia to “cease reckless and aggressive actions.”
 
Speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv, Blinken said Russia still “has the capacity on fairly short notice to take aggressive action if it so chooses.”
 
“I admire the restraint Ukraine has shown in the face of those provocative actions,” Blinken said.
 
Late last month, senior U.S. and European Union officials said roughly 150,000 Russian troops had massed along the border of Ukraine and in the Crimea region, more than at any time since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.   
 
Russia said the forces were taking part in military exercises and as of late April were returning to their bases.U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pose for a picture during their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine May 6, 2021.Zelenskiy said Thursday there remains a threat in the border region, and that Ukraine does not want any surprises.
 
Blinken said the United States is looking at further security assistance to Ukraine, and that Russia’s actions were the subject of extensive discussions at recent NATO and G-7 meetings.
 
He also said Thursday’s talks included the Minsk agreements to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has been supporting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region.  Blinken said the United States will keep looking for ways to advance diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict, and that “Russia continues to be the recalcitrant party.”
 
During the meeting, Zelenskiy and Blinken also discussed efforts to institute democratic reforms and battle corruption in Ukraine.
 
Blinken said both Russian challenges to Ukraine’s sovereignty and corrupt actors within Ukraine involve the same fundamental issues, which is seeking to “take away from the Ukrainian people what is rightfully theirs.”
 
And he said that while there are still significant challenges in battling corruption, “there has been real progress as well.” 
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A jury in Rome on Wednesday convicted two American friends in the 2019 slaying of a police officer in a tragic unraveling of a small-time drug deal gone bad, sentencing them to life in prison. The jury deliberated more than 12 hours before delivering the verdicts against Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, handing them Italy’s stiffest sentence. Elder and Natale-Hjorth were indicted on charges of homicide, attempted extortion, assault, resisting a public official and carrying an attack-style knife without just cause. They were found guilty of all counts.  The slain officer’s widow, who held a photo of her dead husband while waiting for the verdict, sobbed and hugged his brother, Paolo. The defendants were led immediately out of the courtroom after the verdicts had been read. As Elder was being walked out, his father, Ethan Elder, called out, “Finnegan, I love you.” Prosecutors alleged that Elder stabbed Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega 11 times with a knife that he brought with him on his trip to Europe from California and that Natale-Hjorth helped him hide the knife in their hotel room.  The July 26, 2019, killing of the officer from the storied Carabinieri paramilitary police corps shocked Italy. Cerciello Rega, 35, was mourned as a national hero. His widow, brother and partner were in the courtroom as the jury went into deliberations.  The two Californians were allowed out of steel-barred defendant cages inside the courtroom to sit with their lawyers before the case went to the jury, which consisted of the presiding judge, Marina Finiti, a second judge and six civilian jurors. “I’m stressed,” Elder said to one of his lawyers. Just before the brief court appearance, Elder took a crucifix he wears on a chain around his neck and kissed it. He also turned to his co-defendant, Natale-Hjorth, and held out the crucifix toward him through a glass partition, motioning heavenward.  Elder was joined in the courtroom by his parents. He and his father crossed their fingers toward each other for good luck after the jury went to deliberate. Natale-Hjorth was greeted by his Italian uncle, who lives in Italy.Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, center, is escorted by police officers during the trial for the slaying of an Italian plainclothes police officer, in Rome, May 5, 2021.Cerciello Rega had recently returned from a honeymoon when he was assigned, along with a plainclothes police partner, officer Andrea Varriale, to follow up on a reported extortion attempt.  Prosecution’s case Prosecutors contend the young Americans concocted a plot involving a stolen bag and cellphone after their failed attempt to buy cocaine with 80 euros ($96) in Rome’s Trastevere nightlife district. Natale-Hjorth and Elder testified they had paid for the cocaine but didn’t receive it. Both defendants contended they acted in self-defense.  During the trial, which began on Feb. 26, 2020, the Americans told the court they thought that Cerciello Rega and Varriale were thugs or mobsters out to assault them on a dark deserted street. The officers wore casual summer clothes and not uniforms, and the defendants insisted the officers never showed police badges.  Under Italian law, an accomplice in an alleged murder can also be charged with murder, even without materially doing the slaying. Prosecutor Maria Sabina Calabretta has demanded life imprisonment for both defendants.  Varriale, who suffered a back injury in a scuffle with Natale-Hjorth while his partner was grappling with Elder, testified that the officers did identify themselves as Carabinieri. At the time of the slaying, Elder was 19 and traveling through Europe without his family, while Natale-Hjorth, then 18, was spending the summer vacation with his Italian grandparents, who live near Rome. Former schoolmates from the San Francisco Bay area, the two had met up in Rome for what was supposed to be couple of days of sightseeing and nights out.  Prosecutors alleged that Elder thrust a 7-inch (18-centimeter) military-style attack knife repeatedly into Cerciello Rega, who bled profusely, like a “fountain,” Varriale had testified, and died shortly after in hospital.  Elder told the court that during the scuffle, the heavyset Cerciello Rega was on top of him on the ground, and Elder feared that he was being strangled. Elder said he pulled out the knife and stabbed him to avoid being killed, and when the officer didn’t immediately let him go, he stabbed again. After the stabbing, the Americans ran to their hotel room, where, according to Natale-Hjorth, Elder cleaned the knife and then asked him to hide it. Natale-Hjorth testified that he hid the knife behind a ceiling panel in their room, where police discovered it hours later. The drug deal The defendants had told the court that several hours before the stabbing, they attempted to buy cocaine in the Trastevere district. With the intervention of a go-between, they paid a dealer, but instead of cocaine, they received an aspirinlike tablet.  Before Natale-Hjorth could confront the dealer, a separate Carabinieri patrol in the neighborhood intervened, and all scattered. The Americans snatched the go-between’s knapsack in reprisal and used a cellphone inside to set up a meeting with the goal of exchanging the bag and the phone for the cash they had lost in the bad drug deal.  Meanwhile, Cerciello Rega, wearing a T-shirt and long shorts, and Varriale, in a polo shirt and jeans, headed out to follow up on what was described as a small-scale extortion attempt. They didn’t carry their service pistols.  From practically its start, the trial largely boiled down to the word of Varriale against that of the young American visitors. The victim’s widow, Rosa Maria Esilio, would sit in the front row, often clutching a photo of her husband. Photos of the newlyweds, with Cerciello Rega in his dress uniform after their wedding, were widely displayed in Italian media after the slaying. As the trial neared its end, one of Elder’s defense lawyers, Renato Borzone, argued in court that deep-set psychiatric problems, including a constant fear of being attacked, figured in the fatal stabbing. Borzone told the court his client saw a world filled with enemies due to psychiatric problems and that something “short-circuited” when Elder was confronted by the officer. 
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