Kabul, Nov 21: A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people, three government officials said.
Najib Danish, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said more than 70 other people were injured in the attack.
“A suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a wedding hall where Islamic religious scholars had gathered to commemorate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad,” Danish said.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast.
Scientists predict the world may have a COVID-19 vaccine within one year or even a few months earlier, said the Director-General of the World Health Organisation even as he underlined the importance of global cooperation to develop, manufacture and distribute vaccines.
However, making the vaccine available and distributing it to all will be a challenge and requires political will, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday during a meeting with the European Parliament's Committee for Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.
One option would be to give the vaccine only to those that are most vulnerable to the virus.
There are currently over 100 COVID-19 vaccine candidates in various stages of development.
Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic has highlighted the importance of global solidarity and that health should not be seen as a cost but an investment.
He added that all countries in the world must strengthen primary health care and crisis preparedness and stressed the need for EU leadership globally.
While the Director-General said the situation in the EU has improved significantly, he underlined that COVID-19 is very much still circulating globally, with more than four million new cases in the last month.
Many Members of European Parliament said that the global community must cooperate including in developing, manufacturing and distributing vaccines against COVID-19 and asked when a safe vaccine could be available.
Several Members of European Parliament underlined the importance of the WHO but also said it has made mistakes in its response to the pandemic.
The Director-General admitted everyone makes mistakes and informed the members that an independent panel will evaluate the WHO response to the pandemic to learn from any mistakes made.
It will start its work soon, he said.
Washington, May 20: The United States recorded another 1,536 coronavirus deaths over the past 24 hours, the Johns Hopkins University tracker said.
That figure, tallied as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT), raises to 91,845 the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the US.
The US tops the global rankings both for the highest death toll and the highest number of infections, with more than 1.5 million cases.
Washington, Jun 24: Twitter has once again flagged a tweet from US President Donald Trump which promoted violence by saying if protesters tried to set up an "autonomous zone" in Washington, DC they would be met with "serious force".
This is the fourth time Twitter has red flagged Trump's tweet for glorifying violence or violating its policies.
Trump has been critical of the "autonomous zone" in Seattle, an area occupied by protestors for much of this month.
"We've placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behaviour, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group," Twitter's safety team tweeted late Tuesday.
Trump had tweeted: "There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone' in Washington, D.C., as long as I'm your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!"
Twitter earlier labeled a video tweeted by him which mocked CNN as manipulated media.
According to Twitter, "this Tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context".
In May, Twitter labeled two Trump tweets that made false claims about mail-in ballots in California.
Twitter later labeled another Trump tweet glorifying violence in which he said, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
Facebook also removed a Trump campaign ad featuring a symbol used by Nazis for political dissenters, saying the ad violated its policies.
Comments
Add new comment