EU -Vaccines - Oxford/AstraZeneca: Spain joins France, Germany and Italy in pausing Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine

France, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Cyprus announced they will stop administering the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine pending an assessment by the EU’s medicine regulator. Spain said it will stop using the AZ vaccine for at least two weeks.

The benefits of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid outweigh the risks of side effects, the European Medicines Agency said in a statement. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said there is no proven link to blood clots and that people should not panic.

Read more at: Spain joins France, Germany and Italy in pausing Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – as it happened | World news | The Guardian

The Netherlands: Covid-19: Dutch police break up anti-lockdown protest

Police in the Netherlands have used water cannon to clear anti-government demonstrators from a park in The Hague.

Some 2,000 demonstrators rallied in the centre of the city to protest against Covid-19 restrictions and other government policies. <

Read more at: Covid-19: Dutch police break up anti-lockdown protest - BBC News

German- Turkish Relations: Young Turkish people seek fresh start in Germany amid repression at home

Turkey is once again experiencing a brain drain, as more and more young graduates and other highly qualified workers are leaving the country to start a new life abroad.

Critics blame President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government for failing to offer qualified Turks enough prospects and even stigmatizing them. The criticism has intensified since protests broke out at Istanbul's renowned Bogazici University in January after Erdogan appointed an unpopular rector loyal to his ruling AKP party. The police cracked down heavily on the demonstrations, and politicians have described the student protesters as "terrorists" or even "perverts."

Read More at Young Turkish people seek fresh start in Germany amid repression at home | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 13.03.2021

The Netherlands - racial Reckoning: Caribbean racial reckoning: Sint Maarten confronts Netherlands over coronavirus aid - by Anthony Faiola and Ana Vanessa Herrero

Inside the prime minister’s office in the Caribbean nation of Sint Maarten, the walls of paradise were closing in.

In the former Dutch colony renowned for fish stews and rum cocktails on Great Bay Beach, the coronavirus pandemic had ground tourism to a halt, sparking a financial crisis akin to the aftermath of a hurricane. By December, Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs said, public coffers were so low that she didn’t know how she could continue to cover the government payroll.

She needed a financial lifeline. Four thousand miles away, Mother Holland was prepared to throw one — but with strings attached. What followed would be a racial reckoning in the Caribbean: a bitter dispute between Sint Maarten’s Dutch overseers in Europe and local politicians representing an island populated predominantly by Afro-Caribbeans and other people of color.

Reas more at: Caribbean racial reckoning: Sint Maarten confronts Netherlands over coronavirus aid - The Washington Post

EU-US Relations: New transatlantic partnership for global change in motion

In a letter sent to Manfred Weber – the chairman of the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political organization in the EU Parliament, Council, and Commission – Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban officially announced that his political party, Fidesz, would resign from the center-right group.

Orban’s decision to pull Fidesz out of the faction came after the EPP, which has dominated EU politics for over 20 years, moved to enact a new rule change that would have paved the way for Fidesz to be suspended from its ranks.

Reas more at: New transatlantic partnership for global change in motion | New Europe

The Netherlands: Lessons from the Netherlands on staying in power

Ask Dutch people about Mark Rutte, their prime minister since 2010, and they recite the ritual Dutch paean to any hero who remains “normaal”: how the eternal bachelor lives in an ordinary flat, having refused to move into the official residence; how he doesn’t even have a coffee machine, just a kettle; how he cycles to work, teaches social studies once a week at a high school in an immigrant neighbourhood of The Hague and, finally, has no noticeable political beliefs. Rutte himself, a Germanophile, likes to quote the late West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt: “Anyone having visions should see a doctor.”

Read more at: Lessons from the Netherlands on staying in power | Financial Times

Cancer Treatment: Cure for cancer the next target for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine inventor Ugur Sahin

The man who invented the first vaccine against the deadly coronavirus is prioritizing a cure for cancer as his post-pandemic target.

Ugur Sahin, the co-founder and chief executive of BioNTech, the firm which developed the earliest authorized vaccine in partnership with Pfizer, told Arab News that successful cancer treatment, using similar techniques he developed in the fight against COVID-19, was his next goal.

Sahin, who developed the vaccine along with his wife Ozlem Tureci, who is BioNTech’s chief medical officer, was appearing in the latest episode of Frankly Speaking, the series of video interviews with leading global policy-makers and business people.

Read more at: Cure for cancer the next target for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine inventor Ugur Sahin