(AP) — The fast-mov­ing omi­cron vari­ant may cause less se­vere dis­ease on av­er­age, but COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are climb­ing and mod­el­ers fore­cast 50,000 to 300,000 more Amer­i­cans could die by the time the wave sub­sides in mid-March.

BEL­GRADE, Ser­bia (AP) — No­vak Djokovic ar­rived in his na­tive Ser­bia on Mon­day af­ter be­ing de­port­ed from Aus­tralia be­cause he was not vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, end­ing his hopes of de­fend­ing his Aus­tralian Open ti­tle.

Hin­du fam­i­lies across the coun­try can fi­nal­ly take com­fort know­ing they will be able to give fi­nal peace to their de­ceased loved ones, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha of the spe­cial per­for­mance of MUK­TI PRAYAAN in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary.

MEL­BOURNE, Aus­tralia (AP) — Weary af­ter two years of some of the harsh­est COVID-19 bor­der re­stric­tions in the world, many Aus­tralians want­ed ten­nis star No­vak Djokovic kicked out of their coun­try for trav­el­ing to a ten­nis tour­na­ment with­out be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

The Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union (TI­WU) has added its voice to those con­demn­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment, over the han­dling of a protest demon­stra­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, on Sun­day 16th Jan­u­ary 2022.

With just hours to go be­fore the Gov­ern­ment's dead­line set in for pub­lic ser­vants to get vac­ci­nat­ed in or­der to be al­lowed to con­tin­ue work­ing from Mon­day, dis­trict health of­fi­cials in El Do­ra­do Sat­ur­day re­port­ed a slow­down in the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing for­ward.

While the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en the green light for the re­sump­tion of open-air pyre cre­ma­tions for COVID-19 vic­tims, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) still main­tains that it pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger.

Pub­lic ser­vants have been giv­en an­oth­er month to abide by the Gov­ern­ment's vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has put to­geth­er a five-mem­ber team to eval­u­ate the State's han­dling of the COVID-19 virus "with a pro­fes­sion­al eye" and present their find­ings in one week.

The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) be­lieves the one-month ex­ten­sion to al­low pub­lic ser­vants to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed, is an at­tempt by the State to buy it­self some time to en­sure the rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion is in place so the au­thor­i­ties can act if and when work­ers refuse.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day ad­mit­ted to ac­ci­den­tal­ly break­ing the COVID-19 pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

Open­ing hours for the beach­es have been ex­tend­ed by two hours and peo­ple can now ac­cess the sea­side from 5 am to 2 pm start­ing from Mon­day.