Europe

ZURICH, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Switzerland will halve its quarantine time to five days to help cope with a wave of coronavirus infections that threatens to hamstring the economy, the government said on Wednesday.

Health authorities had given their blessing on Tuesday for the move, which comes as tens of thousands more people get infected every day due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus. 

DUBLIN, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Ireland will allow adopted people automatic access to their birth records for the first time under new laws the government hopes will end a "historic wrong", including for thousands sent for adoption in secret by Catholic institutions.

International laws say all children should be able to establish their identity but tens of thousands of adopted people in Ireland have no automatic right to their birth records or access to tracing services.

SARAJEVO, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Inflammatory rhetoric is leading to a spread in hate incidents in Bosnia, rights and security watchdog the OSCE said on Wednesday, as unresolved rivalries among its three ethnic groups stoke fears of a new conflict.

In the days around the Orthodox Christian Christmas and Sunday's banned national holiday, a spate of security incidents occurred across Bosnia's Serb Republic, with Serb nationalists encouraged by their leader's rhetoric provoking their Muslim neighbours.

BERLIN, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- The number of daily COVID-19 cases in Germany hit a new record of 80,430 on Wednesday, according to data released by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Seventy-two percent of the country's population has been fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, according to official figures by the RKI and the Ministry of Health (BMG). At least 36.8 million people also received a booster vaccination.

However, 21 million people remain unvaccinated.

MOSCOW (AP) — Kazakh authorities said Wednesday they detained 1,678 more people in the past 24 hours over their alleged participation in the violent unrest that rocked the former Soviet nation last week, the worst since Kazakhstan gained independence three decades ago.

The additional detentions, reported by authorities in Almaty, the country’s largest city that was hit the hardest by the turmoil, brought the total number of arrests to about 12,000. More than 300 criminal investigations into mass unrest and assaults on law enforcement officers have been opened.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s medical community has scored a victory after a court ordered that a regional government must compensate doctors with up to 49,000 euros ($56,000) for having to work without personal protection suits during the devastating early months of the pandemic.

The lawsuit brought by a doctor’s union is the first of its kind to be won in Spain, whose health care system was pushed to the brink when COVID-19 first struck.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The United States and NATO on Wednesday rejected key Russian security demands for easing tensions over Ukraine, but left open the possibility of future talks with Moscow to discuss other issues like arms control, missile deployments and ways to prevent military incidents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that the 30-country military alliance halt its expansion and withdraw troops or military equipment from countries neighboring Russia like Ukraine, but also NATO allies like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized Wednesday for attending a garden party during Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown, but brushed aside opposition demands that he resign for breaching the rules his own government had imposed on the nation.

The apology, which stopped short of admitting wrongdoing, was Johnson’s attempt to assuage a tide of anger from the public and politicians after repeated accusations he and his staff flouted pandemic restrictions by socializing when it was banned.

11 Jan 2022; MEMO: Campaign groups have claimed a "huge victory" against Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, which they claim has been forced to shut one of its UK branches following an 18-month long sustained direct protest by Palestine Action.

Elbit sold off its Ferranti Power and Control business in Manchester to TT Electronics for $12 million in a deal which the Israeli firm completed, apparently, as part of its restructuring of its UK operations.

10 Jan 2022; MEMO: The fringe Muslim Ahmadiyya sect, which is feted by the ruling Conservative Party in Britain, has been rocked by a scandal involving its members and claims that its spiritual leader insisted that the relatives of an alleged rape victim should keep quiet about the case.

An audio recording has emerged which reveals that the leader of the Ahmadiyya community, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, encouraged a woman named as Nida Ul Nasser to keep quiet and urged her against taking the matter any further.