Новости за 16.08.2021

Of all Western-European capitals, Brussels has the lowest Covid-19 vaccination level, Belgian newspaper De Standaard writes. So far, just half of the Brussels population received at least one jab. The vaccination level in Flanders is 78 percent, in the Walloon region 67 percent. Opposition parties in the Brussels region have demanded an emergency meeting in the Brussels parliament to discuss the matter.

Gordon Brown has accused the EU of adopting a "neocolonial approach" to the supply of Covid-19 vaccines and demanded rich western nations relinquished their stranglehold on pandemic treatments, The Guardian writes. The former UK prime minister has called on Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, and Mario Draghi to convene a special summit to coincide with next month's UN general assembly in New York to address Africa's vaccine deficit.

An influx of migrants from Iraq and elsewhere into Lithuania allegedly abetted by neighbouring Belarus appears to have stopped, but leaving a pile of asylum applications to process and local communities angry about nearby camps, creating an unfamiliar challenge for the Lithuanian government, AP reports. This year, more than 4,000 asylum-seekers from 40 countries illegally crossed from Belarus into Lithuania. That was 50 times more than during all of 2020.

Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday announced that an early election would take place on 20 September, Deutsche Welle reports. The Canadian leader is seeking a new mandate to ensure voters approved of his government's Covid-19 pandemic recovery plan. The move comes at a "pivotal, consequential moment" for Canada amid a new wave of Covid-19 cases "amongst unvaccinated people," Trudeau said.

Thousands of people joined an LGBTI pride march in Bucharest on Saturday for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, ahead of planned legislation that would chip away at minority rights, Reuters reports. Lawmakers from two different parties said they planned to introduce legislation to ban so-called gay propaganda in schools when parliament reconvenes in September.

Italian police arrested two farmers in Sicily on Saturday on suspicion of lighting recent wildfires to create grazing land for their sheep, and said the two had been planning another large and dangerous blaze, Reuters writes. Wildfires have torn through swathes of southern Italy this summer, helped by record high temperatures, ravaging woodland in Calabria and on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.

While Covid-19 vaccines are readily and freely available in Romania, some refuse the jabs and pay for fake vaccination certificates instead in order to get the EU Digital Covid Certificate.

Scores of fearful Afghan families rushed to the airport on Sunday evening in the hope of catching a flight out as the Taliban entered the city while the country's president Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

Poland and Israel have all-but severed diplomatic ties after Poland ratified a new law banning Holocaust-era property restitutions.