The European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended Monday to administer an extra Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to people with severely weakened immune systems 28 days after the second dose. 

The EMA’s Committee for Human Medicine assessed data on Pfizer-BioNTech booster shots and concluded that it showed “a rise in antibody levels when a booster dose is given approximately six months after the second dose in people from 18 to 55 years old,” the EU regulator said in a statement.

It did not directly advise a third dose for healthy adults.

The scientific body is still evaluating data on Moderna booster shots.

Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were the first COVID-19 jabs authorized in the European Union, and the bloc financially contributed to the development of the vaccine under an advanced purchase agreement signed in 2020.

This year, Pfizer-BioNTech committed to delivering a total of 600 million vaccine doses to the bloc.

In order to provide booster jabs, the European Commission agreed in May with Pfizer-BioNTech to purchase another 1.8 billion doses for 2022 and 2023.

The vaccine is based on messenger RNA (mRNA), a messenger molecule with instructions to produce a protein from the virus that causes COVID-19 to prepare the body to fight the disease.

Contrary to traditional vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech’s jab does not contain the virus itself./agencies

Fugitive Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont walked out of an Italian court a free man on Monday after a judge decided to delay the hearing on his extradition to Spain.

Puigdemont’s lawyer told press that the hearing will be suspended until a European court decides whether or not the politician can have immunity as a current Member of the European Parliament (MEP).

Upon leaving the court, Puigdemont told supporters he was “very happy” with the judge’s decision.

The former Catalan president has been battling attempts to be extradited to Spain since he fled the country following an illegal independence referendum and unilateral declaration of independence in 2017.

The exiled politician has been living in Belgium since the failed independence push and has appeared before courts in Belgium, Germany and Italy in response to the European arrest warrant issued by the Spanish Supreme Court. So far, Puigdemont has managed to avoid extradition to Spain, where he faces charges including rebellion and sedition.

His most recent arrest occurred on Sept. 23 in Sardinia, where he was set to attend a Catalan cultural event. He was soon after released but returned to the Italian island on Monday for the extradition hearing.

Although free for now, his future could depend on what the European Court of Justice decides to do with his immunity.

He was given automatic protection from prosecution when he was elected MEP in 2019. But in March, the European Parliament voted to strip him of his immunity, and his appeal was later denied.

However, following his arrest in Sardinia, Puigdemont’s lawyers filed a request to the European Court of Justice to restore his immunity, citing the impending threat of being arrested.

Puigdemont’s victory in the Sardinia court, however temporary, was celebrated by figures like current Catalan President Pere Aragones and other key members of the Catalan separatist movement.

“The justice that is lacking in Spain comes, and will continue to come from Europe,” tweeted Oriol Junqueras, who served as Puigdemont’s vice president but did not flee the country.

Junqueras was eventually sentenced to 13 years in prison for his role in the independence attempt but was freed in June after the Spanish government issued a pardon./agencies

European stock markets closed lower on Monday, while US indices extended their losses despite a mixed opening.

The STOXX Europe 600, which includes around 90% of the market capitalization of the European market in 17 countries, was down 2.13 points, or 0.47%, to close at 450.77.

London's FTSE 100 fell 16 points, or 0.23%, to 7,011, while Germany's DAX 30 index was the worst performer of the day by diving 119, or 0.8%, to 15,036.

The French CAC 40 decreased by 40 points, or 0.61%, to 6,477. Italy's FTSE MIB slipped 154, or 0.6%, to 25,460 points.

Spain's IBEX 35 declined almost 8 points, or 0.1%, to 8,791.

Eurozone investor confidence fell for the third consecutive month to 16.9 in October, its lowest level since April 2021, according to Frankfurt-based sentiment analysis company Sentix earlier.

The expectations index also fell to 8.0 in October, from 9.0 in September, to its lowest level since May 2020. It marked the fifth monthly decline in a row.

US turns negative

After a mixed opening to the first trading day of the week, major indices in the US extended their losses.

The Dow Jones dove 385 points, or 1.1%, to 33,945 at 12.37 p.m. in New York (1637GMT), while the S&P 500 was down 67 points, or 1.5%, to 4,288.

The Nasdaq plummeted 360 points, or 2.5%, to 14,206.

The VIX volatility index soared 13.4% to 23.98, and the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes rose 0.3% to 1.472%.

The dollar index, on the other hand, fell 0.25% to 93.80.

Precious metals have continued their increase with gold adding 0.5% to $1,770 per ounce and silver rising 0.55% to $22.66 an ounce.

Oil prices were up, approaching three-year highs once again, with a 2.7% gain. Brent crude was trading at $81.53 per barrel and the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate was at $77.89./agencies

At least eight Burkina Faso soldiers were killed on Monday morning in an armed attack on a military unit in the central-north Sanmatenga province, local media reported.

The attack on the Yirgou military detachment took place at around 5 a.m. local time (0500GMT) and left two other soldiers wounded, state television said, quoting security sources.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but sources said search operations are underway to find the attackers.

Last month, Burkina Faso's authorities said unidentified armed men killed six gendarmeries and wounded seven others in an attack on a convoy of vehicles returning from a gold mine in the eastern part of the country.

Groups with links to the Daesh/ISIS terror group are known to frequently carry out similar attacks in the country.

Some 480 civilians were killed in attacks orchestrated by insurgents in Burkina Faso between May and August, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said last month.

More than 1.4 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Burkina Faso due to the attacks, according to the NRC./aa

Authorities are scrambling on Monday to contain the fallout from a weekend oil spill off the coast of southern California that has already resulted in a massive toll for the region's birds and fish and is continuing to contaminate fragile wetlands.

Several Orange County beaches remain closed amid the massive clean-up effort as oil continues to wash ashore, and the typically salty crisp ocean breeze instead reeks of oil.

Authorities have estimated that roughly 126,000 gallons of oil, or 3,000 barrels, seeped into coastal waters after the spill was first detected on Saturday morning off the coast of Huntington Beach in what marks one of the largest oil spills in California history.

An oil slick now covers about 13 square miles in the Pacific, according to Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr, who said during a news conference on Sunday that the spill is an "environmental catastrophe."

"At this time, we have not received confirmation that the leak has been completely capped," she said during an interview with the MSNBC television network later Sunday. "This is going to be a big hit for our community."

Officials have deployed over 2,000 feet (610 meters) of a protective boom on top of the ocean's surface in an attempt to contain its spread, and have identified the source of the leak to an oil pipeline, according to the mayor.

The leak appears to have occurred in a segment of the pipeline that connects an oil platform known as Elly to the Port of Long Beach, one of the busiest on the west coast. Elly and a connected oil drilling platform known as Ellen are owned by Amplify Energy Corp.

The company said all of its operations at the site have been shut down. Its stock nosedived by some 45% on Monday.

There is growing concern over the impact that the spill will have on the region's typically pristine habitats.

Oil has been found in the ecologically sensitive nature reserve known as the Talbert Marsh, which is home to dozens of species of birds, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper. Some birds and fish have already been found dead, officials said.

An exact toll has yet to be established./aa

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland will summon the British ambassador to explain why a journalist accused of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and the justification of rape was refused entry to Britain, a deputy foreign minister said on Monday.

Rafal Ziemkiewicz was detained at London’s Heathrow airport on Saturday after travelling to Britain with his wife and daughter, who is starting a course at Oxford University. He was subsequently denied entry and flew back to Warsaw.

In a letter posted on social media by a British lawmaker, the UK border force attributed the decision to “conduct and views which are at odds with British values and likely to cause offence”.

“This week I will invite British Ambassador Anna Clunes to the Foreign Ministry to make sure that freedom of speech is included in the catalogue of British values and to ask how this corresponds to the attitude of British services to Rafal Ziemkiewicz,” Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said on Twitter.

The British embassy could not immediately be reached for comment.

‘SLANDER’

Poland’s Human Rights Ombudsman has accused Ziemkiewicz of anti-Semitism after he said on Polish public television last year that some Jews had cooperated with Germans in the Holocaust.

In 2014 he was accused of justifying rape after a tweet in which he said “whoever has never taken advantage of a drunk person, let him throw the first stone”.

In a telephone conversation with Reuters, Ziemkiewicz denied allegations of prejudice and said the decision of British authorities was based on misrepresentations of his statements.

“I have been called a racist. I have been called an Islamophobe and anti-Semite..., and I have been called, which is the most painful for me, a Holocaust denier. This is a huge slander,” he said.

Ziemkiewicz, who writes for right-wing weekly Do Rzeczy and is the author of several books, cancelled a trip to Britain in 2018 after lawmakers raised concerns with the police over his views.