Lunchtime News Wednesday 21st April 2021

News

 Mayor of Nice speaks of health situation and plans for reopening - The mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi has spoken to France’s Health Minister Olivier Véran about his intentions for the lifting of the restrictions in Nice. On Tuesday Estrosi spoke of the “encouraging figures for the region” with the incidence rate having dropped to 198 and the number of people being hospitalised standing at its lowest since the beginning of the year.

The mayor stressed that the “reassuring indicators” were no doubt due to the fact that the Alpes Maritimes went into lockdown ahead of other regions in France. Next week Estrosi plans to put forward details of a health protocol to the minister of health proposing the “reopening of around fifty restaurants to assess procedures and measure the impact on the transmission of the virus, with the monitoring of customers”. The mayor says that pedestrianized areas of the city will be able to extend terraces with the distribution of self-tests, which will be compulsory at least for the first ten days of May.

European drugs regulator – Meanwhile the EU's drugs regulator has said that blood clots should be listed as a "very rare" side effect of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that it had found a "possible link" between the jab and clots. But it added that the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine outweighed the risks.

In other news

Weather warning - Meteo France has placed the Alpes Maritimes on a yellow weather alert this morning with thunderstorms forecast. The warning is in place until 3pm this afternoon with sunny spells expected by early evening.

Boss of waste processing company placed in police custody - The boss of a waste reprocessing company in the Var has been  placed in police custody, suspected of having illegally stored 160,000 tonnes of waste. The man is suspected of having stored 7,000 square meters of site waste in Puget-sur-Argens (Var) for the last four years instead of reprocessing it. The illegal storage had been going on since 2017, despite a warning from the town city council in 2018.

And Finally

If you're looking for a new job and fancy a break from social media, this could be the perfect role for you. An intelligent learning platform is recruiting three members of the public in the paid job role. It will involve replacing the use of the social media platform in favour of learning a new skill for less than an hour a day.

Hownow is recruiting for the positions after a screen time study found the average adult spends 58 minutes a day on Instagram. The closing date is May 7 According to the job description, the chosen candidate must replace social media use with learning instead.

The candidates will be able to work remotely, and choose what skills they learn, as long as it's not something they've done before. This could be a new language or learning a musical instrument

Each candidate will have three months to learn the skill, and will be expected to submit weekly reports on their progress.

 

 

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