German held after racist attack on Syrian caught on video

 BERLIN: A 39-year-old German man has been arrested in connection with a racist attack on a teenage refugee in the eastern city of Erfurt that was captured on video, officials said Monday.

The governor of Thuringia state, where Erfurt is located, called the attack that took place late Friday in one of the city’s trams “simply disgusting.”

“The perpetrator has been caught,” the governor, Bodo Ramelow, wrote on Twitter. “Such a cowardly person, strong and aggressive against someone who was defenseless.”
A video circulating on social media shows a man standing over the seated victim, repeatedly insulting and spitting at him, and then kicking him in the face.
Erfurt police said the 17-year-old victim from Syria, suffered minor injuries in the attack, which followed a verbal argument.
Witnesses on the tram alerted officers, who were able to identify the suspect based on the video as he was already known to police.
Anti-racism groups say there were 102 cases of far-right and antisemitic violence in Thuringia last year.

Spain: 17 dead in migrant boat found drifting off Canaries

 BARCELONA: Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service says at least 17 people are believed to have died aboard a migrant boat found adrift off the Canary Islands.

A Spanish military helicopter airlifted three survivors and was bringing them to land, a spokesperson with Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service said.

The migrant boat was first spotted by a Spanish Air Force plane drifting in the Atlantic Ocean some 265 nautical miles from the island of El Hierro Monday morning. A search and rescue vessel was deployed to the area but wasn’t expected to reach the boat carrying the 17 bodies until Tuesday afternoon.
The Atlantic sea journey from the Western coast of Africa to the Spanish archipelago has become a major route for migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing conflict, violence and economic hardship exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Some 4,000 people have reached the Canaries so far this year according to Spain’s Interior Ministry.

CDC is investigating Oregon woman's death after J&J vaccine

 PORTLAND, ORE. -- Oregon health officials said Thursday that federal officials are investigating the death of a woman in her 50s who developed a rare blood clot and low platelets within two weeks of receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against COVID-19.

The Oregon Health Authority learned of the probe on Tuesday, two days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began the investigation, the agency said. The woman, whose name was not released, received the dose before the CDC ordered a pause on the vaccine amid concerns it could cause dangerous clots.

The woman developed a "rare but serious blood clot in combination with very low platelets," OHA said in a statement.

Dr. Shimi Sharief, senior health advisor for the state's health authority, said the woman's symptoms were consistent with other cases -- severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath .

Health officials declined to release any further details, including the date the woman got the vaccine or where in Oregon she lived, citing patient privacy. The woman was hospitalized before her death and got the vaccine in early April, Sharief said.

Mexican Grandmother beat by young girl

 A MEXICAN grandmother was horrifically injured when she was attacked by a "black woman who thought she was Asian-American," the victim's son has claimed.

Disturbing images show "Becky's" bruised, swollen face and neck after she was allegedly assaulted by Yasmine Beasley, 23, who was arrested shortly afterwards, reports say.

Salt Lake woman 39 dies after second Covid shot.

 SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — During a KUTV investigation into COVID-19 vaccine side effects and where to report them, we found four reported deaths, filed by Utah families and their caregivers to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System.

This beautiful 39 year old woman's liver stopped working after her second Covid shot!

Norway Covid shot kills elderly

 Doctors in Norway have been told to conduct more thorough evaluations of very frail elderly patients in line to receive the Pfizer BioNTec vaccine against covid-19, following the deaths of 23 patients shortly after receiving the vaccine.

“It may be a coincidence, but we aren’t sure,” Steinar Madsen, medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency (NOMA), told The BMJ. “There is no certain connection between these deaths and the vaccine.”

The agency has investigated 13 of the deaths so far and concluded that common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhoea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.

“There is a possibility that these common adverse reactions, that are not dangerous in fitter, younger patients and are not unusual with vaccines, may aggravate underlying disease in the elderly,” Madsen said. “We are not alarmed or worried about this, because these are very rare occurrences and they occurred in very frail patients with very serious disease,” he emphasised. “We are now asking for doctors to continue with the vaccination, but to carry out extra evaluation of very sick people whose underlying condition might be aggravated by it.” This evaluation includes discussing the risks and benefits of vaccination with the patient and their families to decide whether or not vaccination is the best course.

More than 20 000 doses of the vaccine have been administered over the past few weeks in Norway and around 400 deaths normally occur among care home residents every week.

The Paul Ehrlich Institute in Germany is also investigating 10 deaths shortly after covid-19 vaccination.1

Asked if any deaths had occurred in UK patients after vaccination, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that details of all suspected reactions reported in association with approved covid-19 vaccines would be published along with its assessment of the data on a regular basis in the future. Based on the available published reports from the clinical trials, the MHRA said it did not currently anticipate any specific safety concerns.

In a statement, Pfizer said, “Pfizer and BioNTech are aware of reported deaths following administration of BNT162b2. We are working with NOMA to gather all the relevant information.

“Norwegian authorities have prioritised the immunisation of residents in nursing homes, most of whom are very elderly with underlying medical conditions and some of whom are terminally ill. NOMA confirm the number of incidents so far is not alarming, and in line with expectations. All reported deaths will be thoroughly evaluated by NOMA to determine if these incidents are related to the vaccine. The Norwegian government will also consider adjusting their vaccination instructions to take the patients’ health into more consideration.

“Our immediate thoughts are with the bereaved families.”

Pause on Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine Fuels New Concerns

 To federal health officials, asking states on Tuesday to suspend use of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine until they could investigate six extremely rare but troubling cases of blood clots was an obvious and perhaps unavoidable move.

But where scientists saw prudence, public health officials saw a delicate trade-off: The blood clotting so far appears to affect just one out of every million people injected with the vaccine, and it is not yet clear if the vaccine is the cause. If highlighting the clotting heightens vaccine hesitancy and helps conspiracy theorists, the “pause” could ultimately sicken — and even kill — more people than it saves.

“It’s a messaging nightmare,” said Rachael Piltch-Loeb, an expert in health risk communications at the N.Y.U. School of Global Public Health. But officials had no other ethical option, she added. “To ignore it would be to seed the growing sentiment that public health officials are lying to the public.”