Month: September 2020

The U.N. children’s agency said Thursday it would lead the world’s largest and fastest procurement and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines from dozens of makers in the next two years so that no country lacks access.UNICEF and the World Health Organization co-lead a COVID-19 A workers sanitizes a metro coach in New Delhi, India, Sept. 3, 2020.On Wednesday, Nepalese protesters defying a government coronavirus lockdown to take part in a religious festival clash with riot police, in Lalitpur, Nepal, Sept. 3, 2020.Amnesty’s report highlighted the deadly toll COVID-19 has had on frontline workers. Overall, at least 7,000 health workers have died of the virus.Other countries with high mortality rates include the United States, Brazil and India, where health worker death tolls stand at 1,077, 634 and 573, respectively, Reuters reported. The three countries have the highest number of deaths and confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins.Mexico ranks eighth in the world with 616,894 confirmed cases, but fourth overall in deaths, with 66,329.According to a Reuters analysis of data from the Mexican government, health care workers in that country are four times more likely to die than in the U.S.”Many months into the pandemic, health workers are still dying at horrific rates in countries such as Mexico, Brazil and the USA,” Steve Cockburn, head of Economic and Social Justice at Amnesty International, told Reuters. “There must be global cooperation to ensure all health workers are provided with adequate protective equipment, so they can continue their vital work without risking their own lives.”Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 and has downplayed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak, said Thursday Brazilians will not be forced to receive a vaccination, when they become available.Brazil on Thursday tallied more than 4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and is second in the world with 124,614 deaths.”Many people want the vaccine to be applied in a coercive way, but there is no law that provides for that,” Bolsonaro said in a Facebook live chat with his supporters, according to a Reuters report.Several COVID-19 vaccines are being tested in Brazil. The government has bought 30 million doses of a vaccine that is being produced by Oxford University/AstraZeneca. Three others are in Phase 3 clinical trials from makers Sinovac Biotech of China, Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical subsidiary Janssen, according to Reuters. 
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NASA this week moved closer to its next crewed mission to the moon.  A successful rocket test means they know how they will get there, while scientists in India have developed eco-friendly bricks for building structures on the lunar surface.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the week in space.Produced by Arash Arabasadi
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Twitter confirmed on Thursday that an account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website was hacked with a series of tweets asking its followers to donate to a relief fund through cryptocurrency.
The incident comes after several Twitter accounts of prominent personalities were hacked in July.
Twitter said it was aware of the activity with Modi’s website account and has taken steps to secure it.
“We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted,” a Twitter spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.
Modi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the tweets posted on the account @narendramodi_in.
The account, with over 2.5 million followers, is the official Twitter handle for Modi’s personal website and the Narendra Modi mobile application.
Modi’s personal Twitter account, which was unaffected by this incident, has over 61 million followers.
The tweets, which have since been taken down, asked the followers to donate to the PM National Relief Fund through cryptocurrency.
Hackers had in July accessed Twitter’s internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk, and used them to solicit digital currency. 
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The U.S. space agency, NASA and aerospace firm Northrop Grumman Wednesday conducted a full-scale test of a rocket motor, known as a “Flight Support Booster” or “FSB-1,” that will power the first Artemis mission to the moon.During the test at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Promontory, Utah, the 47-meter booster motor was anchored to the ground horizontally, and fired for just over two minutes, producing 1.6 million kilograms of thrust.NASA and Northrop Grumman will use data from the test to evaluate the motor’s performance using potential new materials and processes that can be incorporated into future boosters. NASA has contracted Northrop Grumman to build boosters for future rocket flights.Researchers Discover First Intermediate-size Black HoleAstronomers say they have discovered evidence of the first intermediate-size black hole, created by merger of two smaller black holesTwo similar boosters will be used on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket the space agency has ever built. They will provide 75 percent of the power needed to send the rocket into space. NASA says the SLS is the only rocket that can send the space craft, Orion, astronauts and supplies to the Moon in a single mission.NASA plans to send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface by 2024, with a goal of exploring Mars targeted for the mid-2030s.The successful test sets the stage for a planned launch, without crew, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida next year, before a crewed launch in 2023.In Greek mythology, Artemis is both the goddess of the moon and the twin sister of Apollo.
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Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would stop accepting new political ads in the week before the U.S. presidential election in November, bowing to concern that its loose approach to free speech could once again be exploited to interfere with the vote.
 
The world’s biggest social network also said it was creating a label for posts by candidates or campaigns that try to claim victory before the election results are official, and widening the criteria for content to be removed as voter suppression.
 
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the changes that he was concerned about the unique challenges voters would face due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has prompted a surge in voting by mail.
 
 “I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country,” he said.
 
 Zuckerberg has previously defended his decision to allow for a freewheeling political conversation on Facebook, including through paid ads, which the company exempts from its fact-checking program with external partners, including Reuters.
 
 He said in his post he continued to believe that the “best antidote to bad speech is more speech,” but acknowledged that in the final days of an election, “there may not be enough time to contest new claims.”
 
 Facebook will continue to allow campaigns and others to run political ads that are already in the system, and will permit them to change spending amounts and user targeting, but will block adjustments to the ads’ content or design.
 
 Facebook has been battered by criticism, including from its own employees, since allowing several inflammatory posts by President Donald Trump to remain untouched earlier this summer, including one which contained misleading claims about mail-in ballots.
 
 Disinformation experts have also raised the alarm, echoed in threat assessments by Facebook executives, about false claims and conspiracy theories spreading in the increasingly likely scenario that official results are not immediately available on election night.
 
 Zuckerberg said Facebook was “increasingly seeing attempts to undermine the legitimacy of our elections from within our own borders” in addition to foreign influence campaigns, like the one it and U.S. intelligence agencies determined Russia carried out to meddle in the 2016 vote.
 
 Moscow has denied the allegations.
 
 To address those threats, Facebook will label any posts seeking to delegitimize the outcome of the election, he wrote. The company also will remove posts with misinformation about COVID-19 and voting, which Zuckerberg said could be used to scare people away from exercising their right to vote.
 
 Seeking to boost credible information in addition to tamping down misleading posts, Facebook will partner with Reuters to provide news in the social network’s Voting Information Center about official results.
 
 Zuckerberg said the company would not plan to make any further changes to its election policies beyond those listed in his post before the official declaration of the result.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that it has informed public health officials in all 50 states and several large cities to be prepared to distribute a coronavirus vaccine by November 1, two days before the presidential election.The McClatchy news service was the first to report Wednesday that the CDC had sent out a four-page memo on August 27 for health departments to draft vaccination plans by October 1  “to coincide with the earliest possible release of COVID-19 vaccine.” The Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus crisis hearing, July 31, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington.Fauci’s take on potential vaccine
News of the CDC memo coincided with remarks made Wednesday by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who said that he is confident there will be a “safe and effective” COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year.However Fauci also said in an interview last week with Reuters news agency that “the one thing that you would not want to see with a vaccine is getting an [emergency approval of a vaccine] before you have a signal of efficacy.””One of the potential dangers if you prematurely let a vaccine out is that it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the other vaccines to enroll people in their trial,” he said.Other  health experts have also expressed skepticism about rolling out a vaccine before the completion of clinical trials, saying hastening its distribution to the public could pose safety risks and deepen anti-vaccination sentiments.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 2 MB480p | 3 MB540p | 3 MB1080p | 9 MBOriginal | 19 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioSafety checks
Patricia Zettler, a former Food and Drug Administration associate chief counsel told the Washington Post this week, “I think it’s extremely critical we have rigorous evidence of safety and effectiveness supporting a vaccine before the FDA gives its okay.” Zettler is currently a law professor at Ohio State University.Some state health departments say they lack the staff, money and tools to educate people about vaccines and then to distribute, administer and track hundreds of millions of doses, according to the Associated Press.  “There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to be prepared for this vaccination program, and it will not be complete by Nov. 1,” Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of immunization education at the Immunization Action Coalition, a national vaccine education and advocacy organization in Minnesota, told the AP. “States will need more financial resources than they have now.”   Only half of Americans trust vaccine
A recent Thousands of bikers rode through the streets for the opening day of the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle rally Friday, Aug. 7, 2020, in Sturgis, S.D. (AP Photo/Stephen Groves)COVID death linked to South Dakota rally
Meanwhile, a resident of the northern state of Minnesota is believed to be the first person to have died of the coronavirus after attending a huge motorcycle rally in the neighboring state of South Dakota last month.Health officials in Minnesota say the man was in his 60s and had underlying health conditions.  He was one of hundreds of motorcycle enthusiasts who converged on the small town of Sturgis for 10 days, many of them also refusing to wear face masks or observe social distancing.  At least 260 new COVID-19 infections in 11 states have been tied directly to the event, according to the Washington Post.    
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A Mexican court will later this week hear a case brought on by 15 young people demanding the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador set out clear policies on climate change, documents show. Lopez Obrador is under increased pressure to help mitigate the effects of climate change. The plaintiffs from the state Baja California filed a legal stay of proceedings, known locally as amparo, before a district court in administrative matters, several documents related to the case show. In it, the youths, aged 17 to 23, demand clearer regulations and public policies derived from the country’s existing General Law on Climate Change and the Mexican constitution, the documents showed. All of the documents, which have not been made public, were provided by a representative of the plaintiffs. Demonstrators march during the global protest on climate change in Mexico City, Sept. 20, 2019.The hearing is scheduled for Sept. 4 and comes just days after the country’s environment minister quit. “There’s no bigger mistake than doing nothing based on a belief that one can only do little: However small or simple our actions may seem, they sow what future generations will reap,” said Gema Osorio, one of the plaintiffs, aged 20. “My wish is that even if we don’t manage to repair the damages, at least we stop continuing to harm the planet,” she said on Wednesday. Mexico’s previous government had laid out targets to reduce emissions. Lopez Obrador has not reaffirmed those goals but highlights projects such as a large-scale tree-planting scheme as evidence of commitment to the environment. The environment ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. National oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, has come under particular pressure from investors looking to reduce the carbon footprint of their investments. Pemex alone was the ninth biggest energy producer of carbon and methane emissions globally between 1965 and 2018, according to data from the Climate Accountability Institute, a non-profit. With emissions of some 23 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, the troubled oil company was the largest emitter among its Latin American peers.  
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent guidelines on August 27 to all 50 states, U.S. territories and several large cities, telling them to be prepared to distribute a coronavirus vaccine by Nov. 1, two days before the presidential election, according to several media reports Wednesday.In a four-page memo sent to governors in August, the CDC told health departments to draft vaccination plans by October 1 “to coincide with the earliest possible release of COVID-19 vaccine.”McClatchy first reported news of the letter, which other media then reported.The CDC declined to comment on the letter, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.States “in the near future” will receive permit applications from McKesson Corp., the firm that has contracted with the CDC to distribute vaccines to sites including state and local health departments and hospitals, CDC Director Robert Redfield wrote in the August 27 letter, according to the media.“CDC urgently requests your assistance in expediting applications for these distribution facilities and, if necessary, asks that you consider waiving requirements that would prevent these facilities from becoming fully operational by November 1, 2020,” Redfield wrote.’Tremendous amount of work to be done’Health departments, however, said they lack the staff, money and tools to educate people about vaccines and then to distribute, administer and track hundreds of millions of doses, according to the AP.“There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to be prepared for this vaccination program, and it will not be complete by November 1,” Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of immunization education at the Immunization Action Coalition, a national vaccine education and advocacy organization in Minnesota, told the AP. “States will need more financial resources than they have now.”A recent poll from AP-NOR Center for Public Affairs Research found that only about half of Americans said they would get vaccinated.Molly Howell, who manages the North Dakota Department of Health’s immunization program, told the AP it would be crucial to educate people about the benefits of vaccination.The AP report said while the U.S. has committed more than $10 billion to developing new coronavirus vaccines, no money has specifically been allocated for distributing and administering the vaccines.Also Wednesday, the United States said it will not participate in a global initiative to develop, manufacture and equally distribute a vaccine for COVID-19 because the World Health Organization (WHO) is taking a leading role in the effort.More than 170 countries are in talks to participate in the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, called COVAX, a joint project undertaken by WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.Gavi was founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries.White House spokesperson Judd Deere issued a statement saying the United States “will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.”President Donald Trump announced in July that he was withdrawing the United States from WHO, claiming the agency mishandled the coronavirus outbreak and showed deference to China, where the virus was first detected late last year.The State Department said Wednesday that as part of the withdrawal, the administration would redirect $62 million of its 2020 WHO dues to meet its obligations under the United Nations’ regular budget.Under withdrawal terms, Washington must provide a one-year notice to WHO and fully meet the payment of its assessed financial obligations. Washington had already paid $58 million of this year’s $120 million contribution at the time of the president’s decision to withdraw. The U.S. says it will in the future redirect money that would have gone to WHO to “other more credible partners.”’A real blow’On the vaccine effort, Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, told The Washington Post that when the United States decides not “to participate in any sort of multilateral effort to secure vaccines, it’s a real blow.”The Trump administration has launched its own COVID-19 vaccine initiative, Operation Warp Speed, that aims to deliver 300 million doses of an approved vaccine by January. The initiative has distributed billions of dollars to a handful of pharmaceutical companies to develop, manufacture and test a potential vaccine.”This president will spare no expense to ensure that any new vaccine maintains our own FDA’s gold standard for safety and efficacy, is thoroughly tested, and saves lives,” Deere said in his statement, referring to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).The Trump administration’s initiative is one of many around the world aiming to quickly introduce a COVID-19 vaccine, with a handful currently in late-stage human trials. But recent remarks by FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn that the agency would consider authorizing an emergency use of a vaccine before the completion of late-stage human trials raised concerns Monday among WHO officials.Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist, said issuing such an authorization “has to be done with a great deal of seriousness and reflection. It’s not something that you do very lightly.”Blood plasma treatmentIn a related development, a panel of U.S. government health experts said there is no evidence to date that convalescent blood plasma is an effective treatment for coronavirus patients to help them build immunity.Convalescent blood plasma comes from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 and is rich in antibodies. The FDA approved an emergency authorization of the use of convalescent blood plasma August 23, a decision Trump described as “truly historic.”But a panel of more than 30 experts for the National Institutes of Health issued a statement Tuesday that there is “insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use” of convalescent blood plasma, and said doctors should not rely on it as a standard of care until more studies have been conducted.A day after the emergency authorization was announced, Hahn apologized for apparently overstating the benefits of using convalescent blood plasma.Hahn reaffirmed claims made by Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar of a 35% decrease in mortality among those younger than 80 years of age who were not on a respirator, a month after receiving the treatment early in the course of their disease.But critics said the administration’s claim was a gross exaggeration of preliminary findings of a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, noting that the study lacked a comparison group of untreated COVID-19 patients.Hahn conceded this fact in a tweet apologizing for his remarks, explaining that he should have said that the data shows “a relative risk reduction, not an absolute risk reduction.”Margaret Besheer at the United Nations contributed to this report. 
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