Senate

Moderna's chief executive on March 22 defended the U.S. company's plan to quadruple the price of its lifesaving COVID vaccine to as much as $130 per dose as soon as government stockpiles run out.

"The US banking system remains stable and Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be available when they are needed, thanks to the 'decisive and strong' action taken after Silicon Valley Bank's (SVB) failure to deal with the outflow of deposits at its end last week," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the Senate Finance Committee, Reuters reported.

Dutch farmers dealt a blow to Prime Minister Mark Rutte's environmental plans on March 15, ploughing up the political landscape to win elections that will shape the upper house of parliament.

Exit polls showed the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB), which was founded less than four years ago, riding a wave of recent protests to win the most seats in the Dutch senate.

The City of Light is losing its luster with tons of garbage piling up on Paris sidewalks as sanitation workers were on strike for a ninth day Tuesday. The creeping squalor is the most visible sign of widespread anger over a bill to raise the French retirement age by two years.

France's Senate voted early yesterday to approve a deeply unpopular reform to the country's pension system, hours after demonstrators took to the streets to oppose the cornerstone policy of President Emmanuel Macron's second term in office.

The upper house of the French parliament - the Senate - adopted the controversial pension reform, which caused a wave of protests throughout France and was considered a key measure of Emmanuel Macron's second presidential term, BTA reported.

"An important milestone has been overcome," said French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.

The diploma of Sebija Izetbegovic, director of the Sarajevo Clinical Centre and professor at the Faculty of Medicine in the Bosnian capital, was revoked on Monday following an investigation into her master's qualifications.

Jacek Karnowski, currently mayor of Sopot on Poland's Baltic Sea coast, was monitored by state surveillance in 2018-2019 when he was one of the key politicians promoting an opposition alliance to win the Senate elections, according to Friday's daily Gazeta Wyborcza. (The united opposition did win the Senate in 2019).

Senior Democrats, dismayed by a steady stream of startling disclosures, expressed criticism Sunday of how President Joe Biden handled classified material after leaving office as vice president and disappointment that the White House has not been more forthcoming with the public.

The FBI searched President Joe Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday and located additional documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the president's lawyer said Saturday.