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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed new coronavirus lockdown measures in England Saturday, reversing initial plans to ease restrictions during the holiday season after a new strain of the coronavirus was detected in the country. “I know how much emotion people invest in this time of year …I know how disappointing this will be,” Johnson said at a news conference. “There is no alternative open to me.”Britain’s PM Boris Johnson attends a news conference, together with Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer and Patrick Vallance, UK Gov. Chief Scientific Adviser, in response to the ongoing situation with the coronavirus, London , Dec. 19, 2020.Whitty said Britain has alerted the World Health Organization about the strain, which British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday was detected in the south of England.As a result of the new measures that become effective at midnight Saturday night, people in London and southeast England are now under a new higher tier of restrictions, affecting about one-third of the country’s population. They will be required to remain at home except for essential reasons, such as work. Non-essential retail stores will close, along with leisure and entertainment venues.In the U.S., American drug maker Moderna, Inc. and partners have started distributing its COVID-19 vaccine, the second approved for emergency use in the country. Trucks will begin shipping the vaccine to more than 3,700 U.S. locations on Sunday, U.S. Army General Gustave Perna said Saturday during a virtual news conference.FDA Approves Emergency Use of Second Coronavirus VaccineVice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi receive shots Friday Perna said the Moderna vaccine will reach health care workers as early as Monday, but that the delivery of some of the first 20 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, Inc. could be delayed until the first week of January.Nearly 76 million people around the world contracted the coronavirus as of midday Saturday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. More Than 75 Million Global Coronavirus CasesUS has more COVID cases than any other countryThe U.S. tops the list as the country with the most cases, with 17.5 million; India is second, with more than 10 million, followed by Brazil, with 7.1 million.  Medical residents staged a protest Friday at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, because they and other frontline medical professionals, including nurses and respiratory therapists, were not included among the staff members scheduled to receive the coronavirus vaccine.  Stanford apologized and has promised to remedy the situation “immediately.”Turkish state-run media said eight people were killed in a fire that broke out in an intensive care unit where COVID-19 patients were being treated.   The Anadolu news agency said the fire erupted Saturday when an oxygen cylinder exploded at Sanko University Hospital in Gaziantep in southern Turkey. A hospital statement said 14 other patients have been transferred to other hospitals.  Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China’s National Health Commission, said Saturday the country would focus on vaccinating high-risk groups over the next several months before beginning to vaccinate the general public. “During the winter and spring seasons, carrying out novel coronavirus vaccination work among some key population groups is of great significance to epidemic prevention,” Zeng, who also is director of State Council’s vaccine R&D working group, said.  The World Health Organization said it has gained access to 2 billion doses of several coronavirus vaccines.  WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said access to the vaccines ensures that some 190 countries will be able to inoculate their populations “during the first half of next year.”  South Korea has recorded four straight days of more than 1,000 coronavirus cases.  The government is offering free testing because of the surge, but has not yet decided what, if any, new measures will be imposed to curb the uptick.Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic is the latest European leader to test positive for the coronavirus.  French President Emmanuel Macron has also announced that he has contracted COVID-19.  Both men attended an EU summit last week in Brussels. In Australia, portions of Sydney are set to adhere to new lockdown measures, following an outbreak of 38 cases on the city’s beaches. The lockdown begins late Saturday and goes until midnight Wednesday.   “We’re hoping that will give us sufficient time to get on top of the virus so that we can then ease up for Christmas and the New Year,” said Gladys Berejiklian, the state premier of New South Wales.
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British scientists were scrambling Saturday to work out whether a mutant strain of the coronavirus, which has been spreading rapidly in England this month, may be resistant to the crop of newly developed vaccines.   
 
The strain was first identified on December 13 in the county of Kent in southern England, and initial analysis by government scientists suggests it is “growing faster than the existing variants.”   
 Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a news conference in response to the ongoing situation with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street, London ,Britain, Dec. 19, 2020.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson held an unscheduled meeting of ministers Friday amid mounting alarm about the threat posed by the mutant strain, which has been named VUI — 202012/01. Johnson said at a press conference Saturday there is no evidence so far to suggest vaccines will be any less effective against the new strain, but he added, “There is still much we don’t know.”He noted the new strain is up to 70 percent more transmissible than previous strains.  
 
The British leader announced a virtual lockdown for London and the southeast of England, with people urged to stay at home. All non-essential stores are now to close, and people should not enter or leave the British capital or large parts of southeast of England.  
 More Than 75 Million Global Coronavirus CasesUS has more COVID cases than any other countryHe said,“We can’t continue with Christmas as planned” and noted the relaxation of rules for the holiday that had been previously announced would be reversed. In London and southern England, households now can’t mix to celebrate Christmas. Elsewhere in the country, up to three households can mix but only for Christmas Day itself.  
 
“I must stress how complicated it is to work out, in a situation where things might be growing for other reasons, to really put your finger on that it’s actually the virus that is doing it, but the evidence is pointing in that direction,” Ewan Birney, the deputy director of the European Molecular Biological Laboratory, told the BBC.
 
Midweek health minister Matt Hancock said the new strain may be associated with the faster transmission of the virus in the southeast of England and London, but there was “nothing to suggest” it caused a worse disease, or that it might be resistant to vaccines that have only just received approval in Britain and the U.S.WHO: Equitable, Global Distribution of 2 Billion COVID-19 Vaccine Doses to Begin in 2021Funding shortfall could stop COVAX effort to bring vaccines to poorest nations England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said Britain has alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) about the fast transmissibility of the variant strain. “There is no current evidence to suggest the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments, although urgent work is under way to confirm this,” he said in a statement.
 
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a government adviser, warned Saturday of his concern. He tweeted, “The new strain of COVID-19 is worrying & real cause for concern & extra caution. Research is ongoing to understand more but acting urgently now is critical. There is no part of the UK & globally that should not be concerned. As in many countries, the situation is fragile.”
 
Johnson also held emergency talks with the first ministers of Britain’s devolved governments in Scotland and Wales. “I attended a four-nation call earlier today to discuss serious concerns over the spread of a new Covid variant,” Wales’ First Minister, Mark Drakeford, tweeted.  
 
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she would be holding discussions with her Cabinet following the four-nation talks and “preventative action may be necessary” to curb the spread of the new strain.  
 Britain’s PM Boris Johnson attends a news conference, together with Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer and Patrick Vallance, UK Gov. Chief Scientific Adviser, in response to the ongoing situation with the coronavirus, London , Dec. 19, 2020.The new variant includes up to 23 changes, including with the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter human cells allowing it to replicate. There have been many mutations in the virus since it emerged last year in Wuhan, China, with 4,000 mutations in the spike protein alone. Virologists say most mutations are insignificant and are part of the expected evolution of the virus, but some may lead to more efficient transmission.  
 
According to the government’s scientific advisers, the new strain is fast becoming the dominant strain, and they say it might be present in other countries.
 
“Scientists are working extremely hard to work out what is going on,” Mark Walport, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told The Times newspaper.
 
“But it does definitely seem possible that this transmits more easily. It will make the social distancing even more critical,” he added. Government scientists say it could take two weeks for scientists to establish how the new strain reacts to vaccines, but virologists are hoping that a single change won’t diminish the efficacy of vaccines, which are designed to produce antibodies against many different parts of the spike protein.  
 
Hospitals in England are seeing a record number of patients suffering from COVID-19, the disease triggered by the coronavirus. About 38 million people in England already were under tough coronavirus restrictions before Saturday’s announcement. The new measures amount to a virtual lockdown, something Johnson had said just a few days ago he would do everything to avoid.
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Irma Baralija is looking forward to Sunday, when she intends to vote and hopes win her race in the first local election in 12 years held in her hometown — the southern Bosnian city of Mostar.To make that possible, the 36-year-old Baralija had to sue her country in the European Court of Human Rights for letting a stalemate between two major nationalist political parties in Bosnia prevent her, along about 100,000 other Mostar residents, from voting or running in a municipal election for over a decade.By winning in court in October 2019, Baralija believes she has “busted the myth (that nationalist parties) have been feeding to us, that an individual cannot move things forward, that we matter only as members of our ethnic groups.”Parties representing only one ethnic group have dominated Bosnian politics since the end of the country’s devastating 1992-95 war, which pitted its three main ethnic factions — Serbs, Croats and Muslims — against each other after the break-up of Yugoslavia.”I hope that my example will inspire citizens of Mostar, when they vote on Sunday, to be brave, to realize that as individuals we can bring positive change,” said Baralija, who is running for a seat in the city council on the ticket of the small, multi-ethnic Our Party.Divided between Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats, who fought fiercely for control over the city during the 1990s conflict, Mostar has not held local polls since 2008, when Bosnia’s constitutional court declared its election rules to be discriminatory and ordered that they be changed.The dominant nationalist Bosniak and Croat political parties, the SDA and the HDZ respectively, have spent over a decade failing to agree about how to do that. Meanwhile, Mostar was run by a de facto acting mayor, HDZ’s Ljubo Beslic, and his office, which included the SDA’s representatives, with no local council to oversee their work or the allocation of nearly 230 million euros from the city’s coffers they have spent over the years.Left without fully functioning institutions, Mostar — one of the Balkan nation’s main tourist destinations — had seen its infrastructure crumble, trash repeatedly pile up on its streets and hazardous waste and wastewater treatment sludge dumped in its only landfill, which was supposed to be for non-hazardous waste.An agreement between the two parties, endorsed by the top European Union and the U.S. diplomats in Bosnia, was finally reached last June — eight months after the court in Strasbourg had ruled in favor of Baralija and gave Bosnia six months to amend its election laws so a vote can be held in Mostar.A city dividedMostar is divided in half by a river. During the war, Croats moved to the western side and Muslims to the east. Since the fighting stopped, the city has had two post offices, two electricity and water suppliers, two phone networks, two public hospitals and more — one crumbling set for each ethnic group.On Sunday, several small, multiethnic parties will be vying for seats in the city council after campaigning on bread-and-butter issues. But the nationalist HDZ and SDA parties hope that, among them, they will secure a two-thirds majority in the council and keep their grip on power.While acknowledging that the nationalists have armies of faithful voters whom they mobilize by stoking ethnic mistrust, non-nationalist election candidates in Mostar hope the past 12 years has shown that those two parties are too corrupt and incompetent.”I think that many people finally realized that the abstract, ethnic interests are meaningless while their children are leaving (Mostar) in droves in search of decent jobs and a decent life” elsewhere in Europe, said Amna Popovac, a candidate from the multi-ethnic Platform for Progress party.The nationalists are now promising to fix the city’s many problems as if “Martians and not they were running Mostar, unchecked, for the past 12 years,” she added.Miljan Rupar’s name will also be on the ballot. The 35-year-old, who is running as a candidate from the multi-ethnic Social Democrat Party, decided to get involved in politics after realizing that over 38 friends and relatives, including his sister, had left Mostar “for good” in search of a better life abroad.Rupar wants his city focused on the future, just like the international school where he teaches physics, the United World College branch in Mostar. The school is one of 17 around the globe and run by a movement founded in 1962 with the aim of overcoming Cold War divisions by bringing high-achieving youngsters from all over to live and learn together.”When I walk into the classroom or attend our bi-weekly assembly and see students and teachers from all over the world, including from various parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, who share the same values and goals, it gives me hope,” he said.Political journalist Faruk Kajtaz, however, thinks that hope could prove to be treacherous in the divided city, despite local voters’ well-justified grievances. He notes that not just Mostar but all of Bosnia has long been politically and administratively fragmented along ethnic lines.”Maybe too much is expected from the people of Mostar,” he said. “(But) just the fact that citizens of Mostar will finally get a chance to vote for their local legislators is in itself a big win for democracy.”   
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Bulgaria accuses a Russian diplomat of spying and is expelling him from the country.  “The foreign ministry of the Republic of Bulgaria declared persona non grata a diplomat from the Russian embassy in Sofia and gave him 72 hours to leave the country due to activities incompatible with his diplomatic status,” Bulgaria’s foreign ministry said in a statement Friday.Russia said the charges against its diplomat are “groundless.” Prosecutors say the diplomat had been gathering information for years on the deployment of U.S. troops in Bulgaria. The U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria said in a statement: “We have in recent weeks and months seen too many examples of Russian officials carrying out aggressive actions, from espionage in Bulgaria to poisoning opponents both at home and abroad. Bulgaria is a strong NATO ally and partner and has an unalienable right to defend its sovereignty.”Neither Bulgaria nor Russia revealed the identity of the diplomat, but the Associated Press reports that local media identified the diplomat as Colonel Vasiliy Sazanovich.Bulgaria has expelled at least five Russia diplomats over the past year that it has accused of spying. The eastern European country is a NATO and European Union member, but it was once one of Russia’s closest allies during the Cold War. 
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The Trump administration has notified Congress that it intends to shutter the two remaining U.S. consulates in Russia.The State Department told lawmakers last week that it would permanently close the consulate in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok and temporarily suspend operations at the consulate in Yekaterinburg just east of the Ural Mountains.The notice was sent to Congress on Dec. 10 but received little attention at the time. That timing predates by three days the public emergence of news about a major suspected Russian computer intrusion into U.S. government and private computer systems that has raised grave cybersecurity fears.The department’s notification to Congress, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, says the closures are because of caps placed by Russian authorities in 2017 on the number of U.S. diplomats allowed to work in the country.Artists from Russia’s city of Yekaterinburg work on the ice sculpture “Muse of Victory” during the annual international festival of snow and ice sculptures “Magical Ice of Siberia”, in Krasnoyarsk, Russia Feb. 28, 2019.The moves are “in response to ongoing staffing challenges of the U.S. Mission in Russia in the wake of the 2017 Russian-imposed personnel cap on the U.S. Mission and resultant impasse with Russia over diplomatic visas,” it said.Following the closures, the only diplomatic facility the U.S. will have in Russia will be the embassy in Moscow. Russia ordered the closure of the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg in 2018 after the U.S. ordered the Russian consulate in Seattle closed in tit-for-tat actions over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain.The consulate in Vladivostok had been temporarily closed in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, and staffers there had already begun removing sensitive equipment, documents and other items. The consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg employ a total of 10 American diplomats and 33 local staff.The exact timing of the closures has yet to be determined. The American staff are to be relocated to the embassy in Moscow, while the locals will be laid off, according to the notice. The department estimated the permanent closure of the Vladivostok consulate would save $3.2 million per year.The closures will leave the U.S. without diplomatic representation in a massive swath of Russia — everywhere east of Moscow — and present a major inconvenience for American travelers in Russia’s far east, as well as Russians in the region seeking visas to come to the United States, as all consular services will be handled out of the Moscow embassy.
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France says it arrested four people linked to a September 25 meat cleaver attack in Paris, outside the former offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The four are of Pakistani origin, as is the main suspect, Agence France-Presse reported. Two people were wounded in the attack. According to news reports, the four were arrested Monday, with one being charged two days later with taking part in a terrorist conspiracy. The remaining three were set to be charged, as well. The four were suspected of knowing about the attack beforehand and encouraging Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud to carry it out, according to a report in the Le Parisien newspaper. Mahmoud, who said he wanted to attack the magazine for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, was arrested after the attack and remains in custody. Two days before the arrest, a French court convicted 13 accomplices in the 2015 gun attack on Charlie Hebdo offices that killed 12 and wounded 11.Charlie Hebdo vacated those offices after the 2015 attack and is now in a secret location. In October, a Chechen refugee in a Paris suburb beheaded a teacher, Samuel Paty, who had shown the Hebdo cartoons to his pupils. 
 
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The Swiss government Friday ordered all bars, restaurants, cultural venues and sports facilities to close next week because of a surging number of coronavirus cases.At a news conference, Health Minister Alain Berset said the new restrictions, which take effect Tuesday, are necessary because the situation in health facilities ”is not tenable in the long term.”The government will also restrict the number of people who can be inside stores, which must close after 7 p.m. and on Sundays and public holidays.While the closures include restaurants and bars at ski resorts, the federal government is leaving it to Switzerland’s 26 cantons — or states — to decide whether to close skiing facilities.But Berset cautioned they should “think carefully” about their decision “because hospitals are full and putting a lot of people on snow slopes can lead to an increase in accidents and we need to be very careful.”The Swiss health minister’s cautionary stance is a reversal from earlier this month. As other European nations announced plans to close their ski facilities for at least the first several weeks of the season, he said Swiss resorts would be allowed to stay open if they put in place safety measures such as masks, proper hygiene, social distancing and limited capacity for bars and restaurants.At the time, he said he realized the stance could raise regional tensions, but said “We are a sovereign country and can decide ourselves what the facts are on our territory.”The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Switzerland has risen over the past two weeks from 43 cases per 100,000 people on December 3 to 50 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday.  
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UNICEF UK, for the first time in its 70-year history, is giving food assistance to Britain’s children whose families have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.   A little more than $1 million will be distributed to 30 organizations.  UNICEF UK’s action has angered a British politician, accusing the United Nations Children’s Fund of playing a “political stunt.” Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg said Thursday in the Commons: “I think it’s a real scandal that UNICEF should be playing politics in this way when it is meant to be looking after people in the poorest, the most deprived countries in the world, where people are starving, where there are famines and there are civil wars … It is a political stunt of the lowest order.”Not all politicians agreed with Rees-Mogg.  Ed Davey, the Liberal Democratic Leader, called Rees-Mogg’s comments “abhorrent – a modern-day version of ‘let them eat cake.’”“The only scandal here is this rotten Tory government leaving 4.2 million children living in poverty,” said Angela Rayner, Labor’s deputy leader.  UNICEF UK said in a statement that an estimated 2.4 million British children were already food insecure before the pandemic. French President Emmanuel Macron has joined the list of world leaders who has tested positive for the coronavirus.  Macron has left Elysée Palace and is temporarily working at an official residence in Versailles.FILE – The World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge.Dr. Hans Kluge, the regional director of the World Health Organization’s European office, has urged people to stay home during the holidays.  He said in a statement that it is “not worth the risk” of contracting the virus.  Kluge also said the pandemic has created a “growing mental health crisis in Europe.” He added, “From anxieties around virus transmission, the psychological impact of lockdowns and self-isolation, to the effects of unemployment, financial worries and social exclusion – the mental health impact of the pandemic will be long term and far reaching.”There are more than 75 million global COVID-19 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.The United States has 17.2 million cases, followed by India with almost 10 million and Brazil with 7.1 million cases. 
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In marking International Migrants Day, the United Nations says at least 3,174 migrants have died this year while seeking safety from persecution and violence or in hopes of bettering their impoverished lives.The International Organization for Migration says the number of recorded migrant deaths is likely to be highly underestimated. It says tens of thousands of people embark on dangerous journeys across deserts, jungles and seas. Many thousands do not survive but their deaths, it says, are not recorded.The IOM says the overall number of global migrant deaths recorded this year is lower than in previous years. However, it notes fatalities have increased significantly on some of the migratory routes. For example, IOM spokesman Paul Dillon says at least 593 deaths have been documented in 2020 on route to Spain’s Canary Islands, compared to 45 fatalities in 2018.“An increase in migrants’ deaths was also recorded in South America compared to previous years, with at least 104 lives lost—most of them Venezuelan migrants—compared to fewer than 40 in all previous years,” said Dillion. “This includes at least 23 people who drowned off the coast of Venezuela last weekend. Some 381 men, women and children also lost their lives on the U.S.-Mexican border.”Advocates Warn of More Immigrant Deaths without ICE Action More people will die of the coronavirus in US immigration custody unless the Trump administration rapidly improves conditions and releases more detainees, lawyers and advocates warn, following the first confirmed virus-related death of a detaineeThis year, migration within and on route to Europe claimed the largest number of lives, more than 1,700. Dillon says a significant number of the deaths were among migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.He says migrants are not just statistics. He says they are people who make significant contributions to their countries of migration, especially in this time of coronavirus.“What we see every day are the images of doctors and nurses and support staff in health care facilities and old age homes, many of whom are migrant workers contributing to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, saving lives, putting in the long arduous hours on behalf of those who are stricken with the virus,” Dillion said. Dillon says migrants should be welcomed and appreciated for the services and beneficial roles they perform in their adopted societies instead of being vilified and subjected to discrimination.
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Britain and the European Union provided sober updates Thursday on the state of post-Brexit trade discussions, with only two weeks to go before a potentially chaotic split.While Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union’s executive commission, noted “substantial progress on many issues,” she voiced concerns about the discussions taking place around fishing rights. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also warned that a no-deal outcome seemed “very likely.”The two spoke early Thursday evening, their latest in a series of conversations in the past couple of weeks aimed at unclogging the talks, which have moved at a snail’s pace since Britain left the EU on January 31.Britain remains within the EU’s tariff-free single market and customs union until December 31. A failure to reach a post-Brexit deal would likely lead to chaos on the borders at the start of 2021 as tariffs and other impediments to trade are enacted by both sides. The talks have gotten bogged down on three main issues — the EU’s access to Britain’s fishing waters, the level playing field to ensure fair competition between businesses, and the governance of any deal.Following their latest conversation, von der Leyen warned that bridging big differences, in particular on fisheries, “will be very challenging.” Negotiations, she added, would continue Friday.According to a statement from Johnson’s office, the prime minister stressed that “time was very short” and that it “now looked very likely that agreement would not be reached unless the EU position changed substantially.”European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addresses European lawmakers during a plenary session at the European Parliament in Brussels, Dec 16, 2020.Intractable disputeJohnson, like von der Leyen, focused on the lack of progress on fisheries. which has proved to be a hugely intractable issue in the talks — even though it accounts for only a very small amount of economic output.On fisheries, the EU has repeatedly said it wants an agreement that guarantees a reciprocal access to markets and waters. EU fishermen are keen to keep working in British waters and Britain’s seafood industry is extremely dependent on exports to the 27-nation bloc. Johnson has made fisheries and British control over its waters a key demand in the long saga of Britain’s departure from the EU.According to Downing Street, Johnson stressed that Britain could “not accept a situation where it was the only sovereign country in the world not to be able to control access to its own waters for an extended period and to be faced with fisheries quotas which hugely disadvantaged its own industry.”The EU’s position, according to Johnson, “was simply not reasonable, and if there was to be an agreement, it needed to shift significantly.”Earlier, the European Parliament issued a three-day ultimatum to negotiators to strike a trade deal if it is to be in a position to ratify an agreement this year. European lawmakers said they would need to have the terms of any deal in front of them by late Sunday if they were to organize a special gathering before the end of the year.If a deal comes later, it could only be ratified in 2021, as the Parliament would not have enough time to debate the agreement before that.An anti-Brexit placard is held in Parliament Square, in London, Dec. 16, 2020.’Intolerable’ uncertainty”We give until Sunday to Boris Johnson to make a decision,” said Dacian Ciolos, president of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament. “The uncertainty hanging over citizens and businesses as a result of U.K. choices becomes intolerable.”A trade deal would ensure there are no tariffs and quotas on trade in goods between the two sides, but there would still be technical costs, partly associated with customs checks and nontariff barriers on services.Britain’s Parliament must also approve any Brexit deal, and the Christmas break adds to the timing complications. Lawmakers are due to be on vacation from Friday until January 5, but the government has said they can be called back on 48 hours’ notice to approve an agreement if one is struck.Though both sides would suffer economically from a failure to secure a trade deal, most economists think the British economy would take a greater hit, at least in the near term, as it is relatively more reliant on trade with the EU than vice versa.Both sides have said they would try to mitigate the impact of a no-deal, but most experts think that whatever short-term measures are put in place, the disruptions to trade will be immense.”The prime minister repeated that little time was left,” Downing Street said in its statement after the call. “He said that, if no agreement could be reached, the U.K. and the EU would part as friends, with the U.K. trading with the EU on Australian-style terms.”Australia does not have a free-trade deal with the EU.
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Lawmakers in the lower house of Spain’s parliament approved a bill Thursday, amid ongoing protests, that would allow people to lawfully end their lives if they suffer from serious or incurable diseases.The bill, which is awaiting Senate approval, passed 198-138, in the face of staunch opposition from the conservative People’s Party, its supporters and religious groups.FILE – Santiago Abascal, leader of far-right party Vox, speaks at parliament in Madrid, Spain, Oct. 22, 2020.Many of the protesters who gathered outside parliament Thursday held banners that read “Government of death.”“The euthanasia law is a defeat for civilization and a victory for the culture of death, for those who believe that some lives are more worthy than others,” far-right Vox leader Santiago Abascal said in a video on social media.But Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa told lawmakers the society “cannotFILE – Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa speaks at Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 12, 2020.remain impassive when faced with the intolerable pain that many people suffer.”Euthanasia is the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma.The practice is illegal in most countries but has received favorable consideration in the European Union. If passed by the Senate, Spain would become the fourth European country after Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium to allow people to legally end their lives because of medical conditions.Without any amendments, the law could go into effect as early as next spring.After that point, patients who choose to die because of a medical condition are required to demand euthanasia or ask to be assisted to commit suicide four separate times.The first two requests must be in writing and submitted two weeks apart, while the fourth just before the procedure takes place. All these requests have to be approved by an oversight board with jurisdiction over the patient’s location.Only Spanish citizens or residents of adult age can request to end their lives. The law does, however, give doctors the chance to deny requests based on their personal beliefs. 
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