Palestinian COVID vaccine plan faces large funding gap, World Bank says


By Rami Ayyub

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Palestinians’ COVID-19 vaccination plan faces a $30 million funding shortfall, even after factoring in support from a global vaccine scheme for poorer economies, the World Bank said in a report on Monday.

FILE PHOTO: A Palestinian health worker reacts as he is vaccinated against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) after the delivery of doses from Israel, in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, February 3, 2021. REUTERS/Mussa Qawasma/File Photo

Israel, a world leader in terms of vaccination speed, could perhaps consider donating surplus doses to the Palestinians to help accelerate a vaccine roll-out in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, the bank said.

“In order to ensure there is an effective vaccination campaign, Palestinian and Israeli authorities should coordinate in the financing, purchase and distribution of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines,” it said.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) plans to cover 20% of Palestinians through the COVAX vaccine-sharing programme. PA officials hope to procure additional vaccines to achieve 60% coverage.

Cost estimates suggest that “a total of about $55 million would be needed to cover 60 percent of the population, of which there is an existing gap of $30 million,” the World Bank said, calling for additional donor help.

The Palestinians began vaccinations this month and have received small donations from Israel, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

But the roughly 32,000 doses received to date fall far short of the 5.2 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, territory Israel captured in a 1967 war.

‘EXTRA DOSES’

Palestinians and rights groups have accused Israel of ignoring its duties as an occupying power by not including the Palestinians in its inoculation programme.

Israeli officials have said that under the Oslo peace accords, the PA health ministry is responsible for vaccinating people in Gaza and parts of the West Bank where it has limited self-rule.

Israel reopened swathes of its economy on Sunday after rolling out one of the world’s swiftest vaccination programs. It has been administering Pfizer Inc’s vaccine to its 9.1 million citizens, and has a separate stockpile of an estimated 100,000 doses of Moderna Inc’s vaccine.

While the PA expects to receive an initial COVAX shipment within weeks, the program is at risk of failing, mainly due to a lack of funds. The PA says it has supply deals with Russia and drugmaker AstraZeneca, but doses have been slow to come.

“From a humanitarian perspective, Israel can consider donating the extra doses it has ordered that it would not be using,” the World Bank said.

The PA health ministry said on Friday that Israel had agreed to vaccinate 100,000 Palestinians who regularly cross into Israel for work.

A decision on vaccinating the Palestinian workers should be made soon, Nachman Ash, Israel’s coronavirus czar, told reporters on Sunday.

“From a medical perspective, we think vaccinating the Palestinian workers is very much the correct thing to do.”

Protesters clash with Spanish police in fresh unrest over jailed rapper

By Jordi Rubio, Luis Felipe Castellija

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Protesters threw bottles, stones and rubbish containers at police in Barcelona on Sunday in a sixth night of clashes after a rapper was jailed for glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty in his songs.

The nine-month sentence of Pablo Hasel, known for his virulently anti-establishment raps, has prompted debate over freedom of expression in Spain and sparked protests that have at times turned violent.

“You have taught us that being peaceful is useless,” read a banner carried by protesters.

Five people were arrested for robbing shops and a police officer was injured, according to a Twitter post by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan regional police force.

About 1,000 demonstrators gathered in the city, local police said.

Protesters had looted shops on Saturday on Barcelona’s most prestigious shopping street, Passeig de Gracia, while also smashing windows in the Palau de la Musica concert hall

On Sunday, a lone man outside the concert hall shouted at protesters: “You don’t touch the Palau.”

Five nights of trashed shops and burned containers has caused 900,000 euros ($1.09 million) in damages in Barcelona, the city council said.

“Apart from the economic damage, we have suffered damage to the image of Barcelona as a welcoming and peaceful city,” Luis Sans, president of the Association of Friends of Passeig de Gracia, told El Pais newspaper.

More than 95 people have been arrested across Catalonia and in other Spanish cities since Hasel was arrested and jailed on Tuesday. One woman lost an eye during clashes in Barcelona, triggering calls from politicians to investigate police tactics.

Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem was among artists, celebrities and politicians who called for a change in the law covering freedom of expression.

The Spanish government said last week it would scrap prison sentences for offences involving cases of freedom of speech.

Graffiti artists protest over jailed Spanish rapper

By Jordi Rubio, Luis Felipe Castilleja


BARCELONA (Reuters) - A colourful mural showing arrows through the heads of former Spanish king Juan Carlos and the late dictator General Francisco Franco was among images that graffiti artists painted on walls in Barcelona to protest on Sunday the jailing of a rapper for glorifying terrorism and insulting the monarchy in his songs.

The nine-month sentence imposed on Pablo Hasel, who is known for his fiercely anti-establishment raps, has sparked a debate over freedom of expression in Spain and demonstrations which descended, at times, into violence.

The artists’ peaceful demonstration contrasted with five nights of clashes in Spanish cities between protesters and police in which containers were burned, banks smashed up and projectiles thrown at residents.

They called for a change in anti-terrorism and gagging laws which they say unfairly limit people’s right to demonstrate their disapproval in the streets.

“We have been protesting for years and asking for these changes to gagging laws and now everyone is tearing their clothes or burning containers,” said Roc Blackclock, an artist.

Thirty-eight people were arrested in cities across Catalonia on Saturday after demonstrators smashed windows in Barcelona’s emblematic Palau de la Musica concert hall and looted shops on the city’s most prestigious shopping street, Passeig de Gracia.



“These graffiti transmit what society thinks, in favour of freedom of expression and against the freedom of destruction,” said Toni Marin, 52, a bank worker.

The Spanish government announced last week it would scrap prison sentences for offences involving cases of freedom of speech.

Senior members of the hard left Unidas Podemos party, the junior partners in Spain’s coalition government, voiced support for the protesters which critics took to mean tolerating the violence.

José Luis Martínez-Almeida, the conservative mayor of Madrid, blamed Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez for tolerating Podemos’ attitude to the violence. Sanchez condemned the violent protests on Friday.

Reporting by Graham Keeley, Elena Rodriguez, Nacho Doce, Luis Felipe Castilleja, Jordi Rubio; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

FOR MORE PHOTOS 

Barcelona sees a sixth night of violence over rapper jailed for insulting the monarchy on Twitter | Daily Mail Online

Strike threat by South Korean doctors fans fears of vaccine rollout disruption



By Sangmi Cha, Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) - Doctors in South Korea have threatened a protest strike against legislation to strip them of licences following criminal convictions, sparking fears about possible disruption of a coronavirus vaccination effort set to begin this week.

FILE PHOTO: A medical worker checks the doors inside the Mobile Clinic Module outside Korea Cancer Center Hospital in Seoul, South Korea, January 8, 2021. REUTERS/Heo Ran

Healthcare workers are scheduled to receive the first batch of AstraZeneca’s vaccine from Friday, as South Korea looks to protect 10 million high-risk people by July, on its way to reaching herd immunity by November.

But over the weekend, the Korean Medical Association (KMA), the largest grouping of doctors, said it would go on strike if parliament passed a bill to revoke the licences of doctors getting jail terms.

“The bill might result in ordinary, innocent doctors being stripped of their licences and falling into hell because of an accident that has nothing to do with their job, or lack of legal knowledge,” spokesman Kim Dae-ha said in a statement on Monday.

Association president Choi Dae-zip has called the bill “cruel”, saying its passage into law would “destroy” current cooperation with the government to treat the virus and carry out the vaccine campaign.

No date has been set yet for the strike, the KMA told Reuters, however.

The standoff stoked concern that any strike of doctors could slow the rollout at a time when authorities are scrambling to allocate medical personnel to about 250 inoculation centres and 10,000 clinics nationwide.

Discord over the bill was undesirable ahead of the vaccine rollout, the health ministry said, adding that the doctors’ association was in the grip of a “misunderstanding” about it.


Parliament has been seeking to revise the Medical Service Act to ban physicians guilty of violent crimes, such as sexual abuse and murder, from practicing their skills.

Ruling party lawmakers pushing for the bill denounced the association, saying it was trying to “take public health hostage to maintain impunity from heinous crimes”.

VACCINATION TIMELINE

AstraZeneca shots enough for about 750,000 people will be distributed from a production facility of SK Chemicals unit SK bioscience to immunization centres across the country from Wednesday, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) director Jeong Eun-kyeong said.

The first inoculation is set for Friday 9 a.m. (0000 GMT), Jeong told a briefing on Monday.

South Korea will begin administering the first of 117,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine on Saturday to around 55,000 healthcare workers in COVID-19 treatment facilities.

The government’s goal of reaching herd immunity by November will only work if the public responds in good measure to the vaccination programme and if authorities are able to secure enough doses on time, as well as control the more transmissible new variants, Jeong said.


The medical association, with nearly 140,000 members, has a long history of policy disputes with the government.

Many hospitals were depleted of staff during the pandemic last year when the group steered weeks-long walkouts over plans to boost the number of medical students, build medical schools, ease insurance coverage and increase telemedicine options.

That action spurred hundreds of thousands of Koreans to file presidential petitions urging punishment for the doctors, as polls showed 58% of respondents opposed the strike. There are no surveys yet on the latest stalemate.

Last week, a government poll showed almost 94% of 367,000 healthcare workers aged 64 or younger in priority groups said they were ready to take the AstraZeneca vaccine, despite concerns over its efficacy in older people. About 95% said they would accept Pfizer products.

South Korea reported 332 new virus infections by Sunday, taking its tally to 87,324, and a death toll of 1,562.

Greece investigates reports theatre director accused of rape taught refugee children


By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) - A prosecutor has ordered an investigation into reports that migrant children were taught acting classes by the former artistic director of Greece’s National Theatre, now facing child rape allegations, a migration ministry official said on Monday.

Dimitris Lignadis turned himself in on Saturday following an arrest warrant issued after lawsuits were filed against him by two men who say he raped them when they were minors. He has denied wrongdoing and is being held pending a plea hearing on Wednesday.

His case has become the highest profile accusation in a cascade of sex abuse scandals in Greek culture and sport in recent weeks, causing a reckoning which Greeks have compared to the “me too” movement in the United States.

The Migration Ministry’s special secretary for the protection of unaccompanied minors, Irini Agapidaki, told Reuters she had asked the prosecutor to investigate reports in newspapers and on social media that children staying in shelters had taken acting lessons with Lignadis in 2017-18.

“I have an institutional obligation and a moral duty to request that these reports are thoroughly investigated,” Agapidaki said.

A lawyer for Lignadis could not immediately be reached for comment.

The semi-official Athens News Agency reported that after two or three lessons with Lignadis, some migrant children had “expressed discomfort or refusal to return to the classroom”. It said the shelters were run by three charities, which it did not identify.

Lignadis resigned from his position earlier this month after accusations of harassment against him appeared in Greek media. The allegations were among a number that have surfaced in Greece since January, when Olympic sailing champion Sofia Bekatorou testified in court that she had been raped 23 years ago by a sports official.

No case was brought against the man Bekatorou accused, as the statute of limitations had passed. But her testimony won praise from politicians and was followed by similar confessions from athletes, actors, singers and others.

The scandals have become a major political issue, with the leftwing opposition calling on Culture Minister Lina Mendoni to resign, accusing her of protecting Lignadis. She denied on Friday that she and the theatre director were friends.

On Monday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis gave his backing to Mendoni. His government is due to outline further measures to combat sexual abuse, a spokeswoman told a briefing. She said Mitsotakis would address parliament on Thursday on the issue.

White supremacy a 'transnational threat', U.N. chief warns


GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday that white supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are becoming a “transnational threat” and have exploited the coronavirus pandemic to boost their support.

Addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council, Guterres said the danger of hate-driven groups was growing daily.

“White supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are more than domestic terror threats. They are becoming a transnational threat,” he told the Geneva forum. Without naming states, Guterres added: “Today, these extremist movements represent the number one internal security threat in several countries.”

In the United States, racial tensions simmered during the turbulent four-year presidency of Donald Trump. His successor Joe Biden has said the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters was carried out by “thugs, insurrectionists, political extremists and white supremacists”.

“Far too often, these hate groups are cheered on by people in positions of responsibility in ways that were considered unimaginable not long ago,” Guterres said. “We need global coordinated action to defeat this grave and growing danger.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet is to report to the council on March 18 on systemic racism against people of African descent. The global inquiry was launched after George Floyd died in Minneapolis last May when a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Guterres also accused authorities in some countries of using the COVID-19 pandemic to deploy “heavy-handed security responses and emergency measures to crush dissent”.

“At times, access to life-saving COVID-19 information has been concealed - while deadly misinformation has been amplified - including by those in power,” he said.

Guterres warned about the power of digital platforms and the use and abuse of data.

“I urge all Member States to place human rights at the centre of regulatory frameworks and legislation on the development and use of digital technologies,” he said. “We need a safe, equitable and open digital future that does not infringe on privacy or dignity.”

Indonesia president warns of forest fires as hot spots detected

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Monday local authorities should get prepared for potential forest fires later this year as hot spots had been detected on the island of Sumatra.

The Southeast Asian country has suffered some of the biggest tropical forest fires outside the Amazon and Congo in recent years, putting at risk endangered animals like orangutans and tigers and sending choking haze across the region.

“Ninety-nine percent of forest fires are perpetrated by humans, whether intentional or out of negligence,” Jokowi, as the president is widely know, said in a virtual meeting with officials.

Farmers often used fire as a cheap land clearing method, the president said, calling on local governments to get forest fire containment infrastructure ready.

Jokowi said Sumatra is facing a rising risk of forest fires this month and warned that the Kalimantan region on Borneo island, as well as Sulawesi island, could also start seeing forest fires in May to July, with the peak expected in the August to September period.

The president said the fires could cause considerable financial losses and “not to mention the damage to our ecology and ecosystem.”

Fires, sometimes set to clear land for palm oil plantations in the world’s top producer of the commodity, were the most damaging in years in 2015, with the World Bank estimating they caused $16.1 billion of damage.

Meanwhile, fires in 2019 caused total damage and economic loss amounting to at least $5.2 billion, equal to 0.5% of gross domestic product, the World Bank said. (reut.rs/3qJCnwH)

State news agency Antara, citing a meteorology official, reported that number of hot spots in Riau province on Sumatra island has jumped to 63 as of Monday, from nine a day earlier.

($1 = 14,110.0000 rupiah)
Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Writing by Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by Ed Davies

Tunisian power struggle risks street escalation


By Tarek Amara, Angus McDowall

TUNIS (Reuters) - A standoff over a cabinet reshuffle in Tunisia has accelerated a power struggle between the president, prime minister and parliament speaker that threatens to spill over into street protests by rival blocs and bring down the government.


FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators attend a protest to mark the anniversary of a prominent activist's death and against allegations of police abuse, in Tunis, Tunisia February 6, 2021. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi/File Photo

The dispute has been building since a 2019 election delivered a fragmented parliament and a political outsider as president, creating a constant state of political turmoil in the only country to emerge with an intact democracy from the “Arab Spring” revolts a decade ago.

It has come to a head as Tunisia attempts to navigate the economic havoc wrought by COVID-19, while facing the biggest protests for years and public debt levels that have spooked capital markets needed to finance the state budget.

If the government falls, appointing a new one could take weeks, further delaying fiscal reforms needed to win financing.

“Today the revolution faces its most severe crisis and the solution is dialogue leading to change in the constitution, the political system, the electoral system,” said Zouhair Maghzaoui, head of the Chaab political party, which has backed President Kais Saied in his dispute with Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi.

Saied has vowed not to swear in four ministers nominated in a reshuffle by Mechichi, saying each has a possible conflict of interest.

Mechichi, who took office last summer, is backed by Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi, head of the moderate Islamist Ennahda, the only major political party to have weathered Tunisia’s first decade of democracy.


The 2011 revolution jettisoned autocracy, but many Tunisians have been disillusioned by a bad economy. Meanwhile, a power sharing system established in a 2014 constitution has led to constant squabbling between presidents, prime ministers and parliamentary leaders.

Both parliament and the president are required to approve a prime minister, who has most executive powers while the president oversees defence and foreign affairs.

A constitutional court, envisaged to resolve disputes between rival branches of the state, has not been formed yet because none of those in power can agree on judges they trust to be impartial.

Saied wants a presidential system with only a minor role for political parties. Ghannouchi and his allies want a more clearly parliamentary system.

“The president wants to be the main player... he wants a puppet prime minister,” said Sadok Jabnoun, a senior official in jailed media mogul Nabil Karoui’s Heart of Tunisia party and a supporter of Mechichi.

RIVAL PROTESTS

Recent protests against inequality and police abuses have mostly directed anger at Mechichi and Ghannouchi.

However, Ghannouchi’s Ennahda has called for its own members to demonstrate on Saturday to “protect democracy” and oppose Saied’s rejection of Mechichi’s reshuffle.

Other parties with opposing views have also called for demonstrations.

The spectre of rival protests recalls the extreme polarisation that gripped Tunisia in 2013 and 2014 before Ennahda and a group of secular parties averted violence by agreeing to share power.

Saied, a political outsider, won the 2019 presidential election run-off vote in a landslide that, analysts say, he saw as a strong personal mandate and a rejection of the parties that dominate parliament.

Meanwhile the parliamentary election left a chamber in which no party had more than a quarter of votes, making it all but impossible for a government to gain stable majority backing.

“I am not ready to back down from my principles,” Saied said of the dispute, adding that the presidency was not a mere post office to uncritically receive decisions sent by prime ministers.

Baloch protesters end sit-in after Pakistani prime minister's pledge to meet them


By Umar Farooq
FEBRUARY 22, 2021




ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Protesters calling for an end to enforced disappearances in Pakistan’s Balochistan province ended a week long sit-in in the capital on Monday, after an assurance that Prime Minister Imran Khan will meet them next month.

Balochistan, where separatist militants have waged an insurgency against the state that has grown in profile as ally China develops mining there, has long been plagued by enforced disappearances. Families say men are picked up by the security forces, disappear often for years, and are sometimes found dead, with no official explanation.

“We don’t have any big hopes from this government, but the way they have reassured us, we also have decided to give them a chance,” Sammi Baloch, who has been searching for her father Deen Muhammad since 2009, told Reuters.

She and other families have protested across Pakistan for years to little avail.

The Islamabad protesters - 10 families of missing men and around a hundred supporters - said they will return if assurances are not met.

Security officials say many of Balochistan’s so-called disappeared have links to the separatists. But actual court punishments have been rare.

Pakistan’s military and human rights ministry did not respond to requests for comment for this story, including questions about specific family members sought by the protesters.

For one week, protesters held up photos of missing relatives under the watchful eyes of police surrounding them.

Among them was 60-year-old Baz Khatoon, who clutched a stack of news reports and court filings about her son, Rashid Hussain Brohi. She believes he was detained in Dubai in December 2018, was flown to Pakistan six months later, and then vanished without a trace.

Khatoon said her son moved to Dubai to be safe in 2017 after three male relatives, including his father, had turned up dead after being taken away by security forces over the years.

After Brohi was detained, Amnesty International and U.N. bodies looking into disappearances called on the Emirati authorities not to deport him to Pakistan for fear he would be killed there.

Brohi’s mother has obtained a copy of an Emirati travel document showing Brohi’s Emirati visa was cancelled in June, 2019, and that he left two days later on a flight to a small airport in Balochistan. The UAE government media office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Pakistani news channels reported that he was brought back to Pakistan and charged with sending funds to gunmen responsible for a 2018 attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi. But Khatoon said she has been given no official explanation of his whereabouts.

“Just tell us our kids are safe, put them in jail, we don’t have any problem with that,” Khatoon said.

“If they were in jail at least we would know they are safe, at least I could take some food there for my son, or a blanket to keep him warm, or a change of clothes.”

Balochistan: Families of abducted Baloch end their sit-in after PM promises to meet them – Balochwarna News

Farmers fight back: Making animal feed from a locust plague



By Baz Ratner

LAIKIPIA (Reuters) - Kenya is battling some of the worst locust plagues in decades, but start-up The Bug Picture hopes to transform the pests into profits and bring “hope to the hopeless” whose crops and livelihoods are being destroyed by the insects.

Unusual weather patterns exacerbated by climate change have created ideal conditions for surging locust numbers, which have destroyed crops and grazing grounds across East Africa and the Horn.

Scientists say warmer seas are creating more rain, waking dormant eggs, and cyclones that disperse the swarms are getting stronger and more frequent.

The Bug Picture is working with communities around the area of Laikipia, Isiolo and Samburu in central Kenya to harvest the insects and mill them, turning them into protein-rich animal feed and organic fertilizer for farms.

“We are trying to create hope in a hopeless situation, and help these communities alter their perspective to see these insects as a seasonal crop that can be harvested and sold for money,” said Laura Stanford, founder of The Bug Picture.

In central Kenya’s Laikipia, clouds of locusts are devouring crops and other vegetation. The Bug Picture is targeting swarms of 5 hectares or less in inhabited areas not suitable for spraying.

Swarms can travel up to 150 km (93 miles) a day and can contain between 40-80 million locusts per square kilometre.

“They destroy all the crops when they get into the farms. Sometimes they are so many, you cannot tell them apart, which are crops and which are locusts,” said farmer Joseph Mejia.

The Bug Picture pays Mejia and his neighbours 50 Kenyan shillings ($0.4566) per kilogram of the insects. Between Feb. 1-18, the project oversaw the harvest of 1.3 tons of locusts, according to Stanford, who said she was inspired by a project in Pakistan, overseen by the state-run Pakistan Agricultural Research Council.

The locusts are collected at night by torchlight when they are resting on shrubs and trees.

“The community ... are collecting locusts, once they (are collected) they are weighed and paid,” said Albert Lemasulani, a field coordinator with the start-up.

The insects are crushed and dried, then milled and processed into powder, which is used in animal feed or an organic fertiliser.

VIDEO

https://www.reuters.com/video/?videoId=OVE0QD46R&jwsource=em

Reporting by Baz Ratner; Writing by Omar Mohammed; Editing by Katharine Houreld and Raissa Kasolowsky

Boeing 747 cargo plane drops engine parts in Netherlands, investigation launched

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - An incident involving a Boeing 747-400 cargo plane that dropped engine parts after a mid-air explosion and fire over the southern Netherlands on Saturday is under investigation, the Dutch Safety Board said.

The Longtail Aviation cargo plane, flight 5504, scattered small metal parts over the Dutch town of Meerssen, causing damage and injuring a woman shortly after take-off, Maastricht Airport spokeswoman Hella Hendriks said.

The Bermuda-registered plane, which was headed from Maastricht to New York, was powered by Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines, a smaller version of those on a United Airlines Boeing 777 involved in an incident in Denver, also on Saturday.

After that incident, Boeing recommended airlines suspend operations of certain older versions of its 777 airliner powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines, variants currently flown by five airlines.


U.S. regulators announced extra inspections and Japan suspended their use while considering further action.

In the Dutch incident, witnesses heard one or two explosions shortly after take-off and the pilot was informed by air traffic control that an engine was on fire, Hendriks said.

“The photos indicate they were parts of engine blade, but that’s being investigated,” she said. “Several cars were damaged and bits hit several houses. Pieces were found across the residential neighbourhood on roofs, gardens and streets.”

Longtail Aviation said it was “too early to speculate as to what may have been the cause of the problem” and that it was working with Dutch, Belgian, Bermuda and UK authorities looking into the incident.

Dozens of pieces fell, Hendriks said, measuring around 5 centimetres wide and up to 25 centimetres long. The aircraft landed safely at Liege airport in Belgium, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of the Dutch border.

Boeing referred questions to Dutch authorities.

“Our investigation is still in a preliminary phase, it is too early to draw conclusions,” a spokeswoman for the Dutch Safety Board said on Monday.

Europe’s EASA aviation regulator said on Monday that it was aware of the Pratt & Whitney jet engine incidents, and was requesting information on the causes to determine what action may be needed.