By: Malia Bicoy
There’s a lot happening in the world this week. With the pandemic still running rampant through almost every nation across the globe and several movements finally getting the traction they need, many new government policies, protests, relief programs, and conflicts have been utilized or dismantled very recently. Let’s recap on a few of these detrimental and groundbreaking events all across the globe from the last few days.
Americans will reach a total of a hundred million vaccines by this Friday, under the Biden administration and their first hundred day plan. This goal is forty days earlier than expected. In addition the Biden administration has decided to provide a certain sum of excess coronavirus vaccines to Mexico and Canada. The leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Bercerra, barely reached verification from the Senate on his title this week, but is now leading the agency detrimental to regulating and halting the virus.
The Astrazeneca coronavirus commonly used in European nations has indeed been confirmed as safe and functional. However, the European Medicines Agency did a study of twenty-five individual cases with diagnosed blood clots after receiving the vaccine. The goal was to observe the connection between the vaccine type and blood clots in the brain and veins. Nine of the twenty-five died due to complications with the blood clot. No other blood clots in Astrazeneca coronavirus vaccine patients have been found, out of the other twenty million people who have received it throughout the United Kingdom and other European nations. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and a few other small scale countries had suspended the use and distribution of the Astrazeneca vaccine but now plan to continue use this week.
The goal to fully vaccinate every Italian citizen over eighty has fallen short this month. In actuality only one third of Italy’s total sum of seven million doses have been administered to citizens above the age of eighty. Over sixty-six percent of total coronavirus related deaths in Italy have been people from this age group, and two and a half million elderly in Italy are still waiting for their vaccines to increase their chances of surviving.
A volcano twenty miles south of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, erupted Friday night after being dormant for approximately six thousand years. The Icelandic Meteorological Office remarked that the eruption, while shocking, was actually pretty small scale and did not require evacuation of any kind. This was the first eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula in almost eight hundred years and the lava covered a little less than a mile around the volcano. This was far less concerning than the 2010 volcanic eruption deemed the name Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland.
In Africa the border region between two rivers named Al-Fashaga, is still being disputed over by Sudan and Ethiopia. Many government officials worry this dispute will end in war between countries and escalate into a larger conflict in the region. Prior to this issue, a hundred-year old treaty claimed that the disputed territory, Al-Fashaga, belonged to the Sudanese people. However, Ethiopia has also had a big presence in the area with many of their citizens in the region. When Ethiopia fell into a civil war, the Tigray region of Ethiopia, which connects to Al-Fahsaga, had broken the delicate border system that was in place. Now tensions are rising and Sudanese officials have officially accused the Ethiopian Prime Minister of attempting to force Sudan in a corner by halting negotiations for the filling up of The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam being built near the border. If no proper agreement is made, then the water supply of half of Sudan would be in potential Jeopardy. It is very likely that war will ensue between the two countries over this territory and other diplomatic policies.
The President of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shocked Istanbulites last night when he withdrew from the Istanbul Convention treaty, which was used to protect Turkish and other European women and their rights when it came to gender-based violence. It includes thirty-four European nations and has become world renowned for protecting women internationally. Women rights activists in Turkey have been observing the country’s lack of enforcement for the treaty and the provisions it calls much before this withdrawal. This movement will potentially further divide Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and the United States. Tensions had already risen due to Turkey’s anti-LGBTQIA+ ethics and ideas from the past, and this withdrawal will most likely not be favored by Americans.
Our world is already hectic enough as it is, but throwing in a global pandemic was bound to throw some twists and turns at all people across the globe. Slowly citizens of each nation are building themselves back up with the virus in their midst, while simultaneously dealing with the external issues of the environment around them. It’s a tough week in the world to say the least, but people all over the globe are ready to do it all over again.