International

World News. 15th March
Protests in Myanmar continue in many cities and towns. On Sunday in Yangon, police and soldiers killed 14 people.  Last week, in Bago, the army shot and murdered a deaf man, Zaw Zaw Aung. His father expressed his sadness at losing his son.  Former politicians in the Government that won the election, say they want a revolution.
The Republic of Ireland (like Norway, Austria, Denmark and Iceland) is not using the AstraZeneca vaccines.  They say it may cause blood clots. AstraZeneca has said it has monitored 17 million doses and there is no evidence that the vaccine causes blood clots. The World Health Organisation has said there is no link between the jab and blood clots.  They tell countries to use the AstraZeneca jab. Northern Ireland has said it will continue with its vaccine programme.
Protests in Russia continue for the release of opposition leader Navalny.  On February 7th, in St Petersburg, police arrested Yevgeny Agafonov.  They said  he was shouting anti-Putin slogans.  Strange .. as he is deaf and uses sign language.  He was in a police cell for 9 hours – police refused to call an interpreter. In court, the judge ignored the lawyers who explained “he was a deaf sign language user – how could he shout slogans?”   The judge fined him 10,000 roubles (£50). Difficult times in Russia.
President Biden confirmed his $1.9 trillion package to help ordinary Americans to recover from the pandemic and job losses.  The Republicans voted against this.  They preferred to talk about the Dr Seuss children’s phonic books.  Some of the books are old fashioned – the company has stopped publishing them.  They have references to ethnic minorities which are not acceptable any more.  People are amazed that the Republican party think about books, instead of helping ordinary people.