A 2024 review of 67 studies found that fully vaccinated pregnant women had a 61 percent lower likelihood of a COVID-19 infection during pregnancy.
Rolex announced a boycott and ceased supplies to Russia after the Ukraine invasion and its watches are considered luxury goods under EU and US sanctions, although the UAE has not joined sanctions against Moscow.When approached directly by Al Jazeera for comment, a representative said the company did "not need marketing or advertisement” and refused to discuss the matter further.
Kiv.Kz, a wholesaler in Kazakhstan that sells household appliances, said it also had many clients from Russia, some of whom make bulk purchases of goods that are not officially available in the country due to sanctions.“You can come and buy the whole truck,” a company representative told Al Jazeera in a phone conversation.Customs data shows that products are being imported into Russia through unofficial channels on a large scale.
All goods that enter Russia, whether through official distribution channels or as parallel imports, must be declared to customs, which records information including the name of the shipper, the consignee and the quantity of the shipment.While customs data does not formally distinguish between imports based on whether they were authorised by the manufacturer, importing companies that have no official relationship with the manufacturer are an indication of parallel imports.
In the weeks after the invasion, shipments of iPhones to Russia virtually ceased.
Only about 200kg (440 pounds) of the devices - the equivalent of about 400 iPhones - were imported into Russia in the first three months after the invasion, according to Russian import data provided by Import Genius, compared with about 200 tonnes in January 2022 alone.Lee Sung-yoon, board member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, described the policy differences between the rival camps as “immutable” and referred to earlier comments by the Democratic Party’s Lee, because of which some view him as being soft on China and Russia.
“In the past, Lee has said South Korea should not get involved in China’s posture towards Taiwan, and just say thank you to both Beijing and Taiwan and stay out of the conflict. He has said of the trilateral defensive drills among US, Japan and South Korea as ‘a defence disaster’ and an ‘extremely pro-Japanese act’. And more than once he has said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy incited Russia to invade because he was a political novice who said unfortunate things.”The analyst said Lee has – over the course of the election campaign – tried to walk back some of his statements in a bid to appeal to more moderate voters.
However, “I would venture to guess that people sitting in the councils of power in Washington, DC, or Tokyo or in Kyiv, Ukraine, are not overly jubilant at the prospect of a Lee administration,” he said.When will we know the results?