Month: October 2020

Dozens of European cities have been forced into lockdown amid a surge in coronavirus infections. Hospital intensive care units in the affected regions are filling up fast and doctors are warning that health systems could become overwhelmed as winter approaches.Europe is now reporting more daily infections than the three countries worst hit by the pandemic — the United States, Brazil, and India.Paris, along with eight other French cities, including Rouen, Lille, St. Etienne, Lyon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Marseille and Toulouse, have been put under night-time curfew. All restaurants, bars and shops will be forced to close, and people have been told to stay at home between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. for four weeks beginning Oct. 17.Announcing the measures in a televised address Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron warned of tough times ahead. “Testing, alerting, protecting, this is the key to the strategy that we have to ramp up throughout November and December, because we are going to have to deal with this virus until at least the summer of 2021, all the scientists are clear,” Macron said.Some residents of the French capital expressed alarm at the return of a partial lockdown. “My first reaction was that it’s going to be hell,” said 25-year-old Mathilde Weiss, a product manager. “I’m absolutely not going to have a social life anymore. So, I’m a little apprehensive, I admit.”A woman wearing a face mask to protect against the spread of coronavirus walks beneath the metal Puerta de la Ilustracion urban sculpture designed by Andreu Alfaro in Madrid, Spain, Oct. 15, 2020.Coronavirus infections are rising exponentially in several European countries. Spain has put Madrid and eight nearby municipalities under a state of emergency, with strict limits on traveling outside the region. In Barcelona, the local government has ordered bars and restaurants to close for 15 days, with similar restrictions in force across the Netherlands.Business owners are anxious about the impact of the new restrictions. “Who is going to take care of the wages for these 15 days? Who is going to take charge of the rent?” asked Julio Rodriguez, owner of the Pizza Sur restaurant on Barcelona’s seafront.The Spanish government has extended emergency financial support for businesses. But the economic cost across Europe is growing.The Czech Republic is among the worst-hit countries with the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients this week reaching six times the peak seen during the first wave of the virus in the spring. The country has Europe’s highest number of new coronavirus infections relative to population size.Doctor Sterghios Moschos, a molecular biologist at Britain’s University of Northumbria, says the surge in infections in Europe likely was driven by young people returning to schools and universities in September.“As soon as this virus is outside of those settings — meaning the family settings and therefore, by extension, the work settings as well — we’ll end up having the burden brought back onto those who are elderly, infirm or vulnerable,” Moschos told VOA. “As a result of that we will see increasing hospitalizations in a matter of days.”Britain has imposed a three-tiered system of lockdowns, with the city of Liverpool in the highest tier. Doctors say more than 95 percent of intensive care beds in the city are full.A man wearing a face mask walks past a statue of the Beatles, as new measures across the region are set to come into force in Liverpool, England, Oct. 14, 2020.Jerry MacNally, a 61-year-old Liverpool resident, said he supports the new measures. “If we just carry on and carry on, it’ll spread and spread and spread. It’ll be like the TB [tuberculosis] from years ago, when everyone was dying — years ago when I was a young lad,” MacNally said.London and several other English regions have been put on Tier 2 lockdown, restricting household mixing. The government has stopped short of calling for a so-called “circuit-breaker” two-week national lockdown, however, which some of its own scientific advisers have called for.British Health Secretary Matt Hancock walks through Downing Street on his way into number 10, in London, Sept. 23, 2020.British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told lawmakers Thursday that the new system has to be given time to work. “We must act to suppress it, and suppressing it through local action, in the first instance, is the best tool that we have whilst we work, of course, with the scientists and technology that can help us to do that better,” Hancock told MPs.“It is also best for economic outcomes,” Hancock added. “Because even though the restrictions, of course, have their impact, and I understand that, and I feel that, it is better than the consequences of action that would have to be taken to ensure that we keep the virus under control were it to get out of hand once again.”Doctor Sterghios Moschos told VOA the localized lockdowns won’t be enough to contain the pandemic.“The borders between the Liverpool region and the Manchester region and London, [because of] modern transportation, are porous,” Moschos said. “Unless people are literally stuck at home and not allowed to get out, so that any transmission is restricted to the homeplace, these measures are going to be half measures.”“Time will show that we will end up in a situation that lockdown at Tier 2 is going to be inadequate and Tier 3 is not going to be adequate, and we will need to get into a lockdown like the one in March,” he said. “The longer we leave it, the longer we’re going to need stronger measures to last for to contain the transmission.”With hospitals filling up and the number of deaths increasing across Europe, scientists say the continent faces a difficult winter ahead.
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French officials said police have conducted early-morning searches of the homes of the current and former top government officials after a special French court ordered an investigation of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.France’s Health Ministry confirmed the dawn searches, which include the offices of the current health minister, Olivier Veran. Officials whose homes were searched include former prime minister Edouard Philippe, Veran, his predecessor, Agnes Buzyn, current Public Health Director Jerome Salomon, and former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye.The investigation was opened earlier this year after France’s Court of Justice received complaints from COVID-19 patients, doctors, police and others about the government’s slow response to the pandemic, shortages of protective equipment, and a poor plan for testing.  When he announced the investigation earlier this year, Paris chief prosecutor Remy Heitz said the investigation would have limited scope and would focus on public officials. Heitz said possible offenses could include the alleged failure to implement workplace anti-virus protection, failure to provide face masks to reduce infection, and failure to roll out a workable testing plan.The home searches came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron announced curfews in the Paris region and eight other French metropolitan areas to deal with the rising toll of new infections.French opposition member of parliament Jean-Luc Reitzer, who was hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this year, told French television he was shocked by the searches. “Do our citizens seriously believe that the shortages, which were real, were voluntary,” he said.
 
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Wildfires churning out dense plumes of smoke as they scorch huge swaths of the U.S. West Coast have exposed millions of people to hazardous pollution levels, causing emergency room visits to spike and potentially thousands of deaths among the elderly and infirm, according to an Associated Press analysis of pollution data and interviews with physicians, health authorities and researchers.
Smoke at concentrations that topped the government’s charts for health risks and lasted at least a day enshrouded counties inhabited by more than 8 million people across five states in recent weeks, AP’s analysis shows.
Major cities in Oregon, which has been especially hard hit,  last month suffered the highest pollution levels they’ve ever recorded when powerful winds supercharged fires that had been burning in remote areas and sent them hurtling to the edge of densely populated Portland.
Medical complications began arising while communities were still enveloped in smoke, including hundreds of additional emergency room visits daily in Oregon, according to state health officials.
“It’s been brutal for me,” said Barb Trout, a 64-year-old retiree living south of Portland in the Willamette Valley. She was twice taken to the emergency room by ambulance following severe asthmatic reactions, something that had never happened to her before.
Trout had sheltered inside as soon as smoke rolled into the valley just after Labor Day but within days had an asthma attack that left her gasping for air and landed her in the ER. Two weeks later, when smoke from fires in California drifted into the valley, she had an even more violent reaction that Trout described as a near-death experience.
“It hit me quick and hard – more so than the first one. I wasn’t hardly even breathing,” she recalled. After getting stabilized with drugs, Trout was sent home but the specter of a third attack now haunts her. She and her husband installed an alarm system so she can press a panic button when in distress to call for help.
“It’s put a whole new level on my life,” she said. “I’m trying not to live in fear, but I’ve got to be really really cautious.”
In nearby Salem, Trout’s pulmonologist Martin Johnson said people with existing respiratory issues started showing up at his hospital or calling his office almost immediately after the smoke arrived, many struggling to breathe. Salem is in Marion county, which experienced eight days of pollution at hazardous levels during a short period, some of the worst conditions seen the West over the past two decades, according to AP’s analysis.
Most of Johnson’s patients are expected to recover but he said some could have permanent loss of lung function. Then there are the “hidden” victims who Johnson suspects died from heart attacks or other problems triggered by the poor air quality but whose cause of death will be chalked up to something else.
“Many won’t show up at the hospital or they’ll die at home or they’ll show up at hospice for other reasons, such as pneumonia or other complications,” Johnson said.
Based on prior studies of pollution-related deaths and the number of people exposed to recent fires, researchers at Stanford University estimated that as many as 3,000 people over 65 in California alone died prematurely after being exposed to smoke during a six-week period beginning Aug. 1. Hundreds more deaths could have occurred in Washington over several weeks of poor air caused by the fires, according to University of Washington researchers.
The findings for both states have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. No such estimate was available for Oregon.
Wildfires are a regular occurrence in Western states but they’ve grown more intense and dangerous as a changing climate dries out forests thick with trees and underbrush from decades of fire suppression. What makes the smoke from these fires dangerous  are particles too small for the naked eye to see that can be breathed in and cause respiratory problems.
On any given day, western fires can produce 10 times more particles than are produced by all other pollution sources including vehicle emissions and industrial facilities, said Shawn Urbanski, a U.S. Forest Service smoke scientist.
Fires across the West emitted more than a million tons of the particles in 2012, 2015 and 2017, and almost as much in 2018 — the year a blaze in Paradise, California killed 85 people and burned 14,000 houses, generating a thick plume that blanketed portions of Northern California for weeks. Figures for 2017 and 2018 are preliminary.
A confluence of meteorological events made the smoke especially bad this year: first, fierce winds up and down the coast whipped fires into a fury, followed in Oregon by a weather inversion that trapped smoke close to the ground and made it inescapable for days. Hundreds of miles to the south in San Francisco, smoke turned day into night, casting an eerie orange pall over a city where even before the pandemic facemasks had become common at times to protect against smoke.
AP’s analysis of smoke exposure was based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data compiled from hundreds of air quality monitoring stations. Census data was used to determine the numbers of people living in affected areas of Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Montana.
At least 38 million people live in counties subjected to pollution considered unhealthy for the general population for five days, according to AP’s analysis. That included more than 25 million people in California, 7.2 million in Washington, 3.5 million in Oregon, 1 million in Idaho and 299,000 people in Montana.
The state totals for the number of people exposed to unhealthy air on a given day were derived from counties where at least one monitoring site registered unhealthy air.
Scientists studying long-term health problems have found correlations between smoke exposure and decreased lung function, weakened immune systems and higher rates of flu. That includes studies from northwestern Montana communities blanketed with smoke for weeks in 2017.
“Particulate matter enters your lungs, it gets way down deep, it irrigates the lining and it possibly enters your bloodstream,” said University of Montana professor Erin Landguth. “We’re seeing the effects.”
The coronavirus raises a compounding set of worries: An emerging body of research connects increased air pollution with greater rates of infection and severity of symptoms, said Gabriela Goldfarb, manager of environmental health for the Oregon Health Authority.
Climate experts say residents of the West Coast and Northern Rockies should brace for more frequent major smoke events, as warming temperatures and drought fuel bigger, more intense fires.
Their message is that climate change isn’t going to bring worse conditions: they are already here. The scale of this year’s fires is pushing the envelope” of wildfire severity modeled out to 2050, said Harvard university climate researcher Loretta Mickley.
“The bad years will increase. The smoke will increase,” said Jeffrey Pierce an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University. “It’s not unreasonable that we could be getting a 2020-type year every other year.”
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U.S. regulators Wednesday approved the first drug for the treatment of Ebola.The Food and Drug Administration OK’d the drug developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for treating adults and children with the Zaire Ebola virus strain, the most deadly of six known types. It typically kills 60% to 90% of patients.The drug was one of four tested during an outbreak in Congo that killed nearly 2,300 people before it ended in June. Survival was significantly better in study participants given Regeneron’s Inmazeb or a second experimental drug.The study was ended ahead of schedule last year so all patients could get access to those drugs.Regeneron’s treatment is a combination of three antibodies that work by killing the virus. It’s given once by IV.”When you have three drugs that bind to the (virus), there’s a low probability that the virus can evade all of them,” said Leah Lipsich, who heads Regeneron’s global program for infectious diseases.She said that should help prevent the virus from becoming resistant to the drug.Seeking U.S. approval first is a common strategy for drugmakers developing treatments for diseases mainly found in the tropics and in developing countries. The FDA’s action will make it easier for Regeneron to get approval or allow emergency use during outbreaks in African countries, where the approval process is not straightforward, Lipsich said.The study in Congo involved 681 people, who were give one of four treatments. After four weeks, about a third of those who got Regeneron’s drug had died. Results were about the same for a second drug. But about half had died among the groups given one of the other two drugs, ZMapp or remdesivir.Gilead Science’s remdesivir is now being used as a treatment for coronavirus.Ebola is very contagious and is spread mainly through contact with body fluids from infected people. Symptoms include fever, muscle pain, vomiting, kidney and liver damage, and sometimes internal and external bleeding.The FDA approved the first vaccine for Ebola in December.The U.S. government, which helped fund the approved drug’s development, will buy thousands of doses over the next six years to go into the Strategic National Stockpile. Ebola cases are rare in the U.S. but occasionally are diagnosed in travelers returning from areas with an outbreak.
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Around the world, governments are turning to technology to trace people who have been exposed to the coronavirus. There are two main approaches. Michelle Quinn has a look at how they aim to work.
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Governments around the world have used the COVID-19 pandemic as their reason for expanding digital surveillance and collecting more data from their citizens, according to a report published Wednesday.The annual FILE – People wearing face masks to protect against the coronavirus use their smartphones to enter their personal data before being allowed to enter a pedestrian shopping street in Beijing, May 16, 2020.The report again singled out China for specific criticism as the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom, but Beijing also found new methods of digital surveillance in the pandemic.The report noted that Chinese authorities combined low- and high-tech tools not only to manage the outbreak of the coronavirus, but also to deter internet users from sharing information from independent sources and challenging the official narrative.The report concluded “the pandemic is normalizing the sort of digital authoritarianism that the Chinese Communist Party has long sought to mainstream.”“China’s government already was sitting on the most sophisticated and multilayered censorship and internet control apparatus around the world,” said Sarah Cook, a senior researcher at Freedom House.Technology spreadsShe added that what is unusual this year with COVID-19 is these tactics were being used regarding public health. Surveillance technology developed in the Xinjiang region — such as handheld devices for pulling data from citizens’ phones — is now proliferating in other parts of the country.There also are certain upgrades in these surveillance technologies, such as refining facial recognition technology to be able to identify people who are wearing masks or forcing people to use various color-coded health apps in China to track citizens’ infections.“These really don’t protect privacy and there are research initiatives that indicated that they even had a backdoor to the police,” Cook continued.FILE – A man holding a smartphone walks past the headquarters of Chinese state newspaper People’s Daily in Beijing, Oct. 6, 2018.In addition, Freedom House researchers say individuals around China also have reported pandemic-related intrusions, like being told to put webcams inside their houses and outside their doors for alleged quarantine enforcement.Apart from the heavy surveillance, Cook said the spread of COVID-19 is directly related to Chinese Communist Party speech controls on the internet.WeChat users
 
“The very thing we flagged last year as a problem in terms of monitoring of WeChat users and reprisals against WeChat users is exactly what happened to doctors like Li Wenliang, who initially tried to share information about this emerging SARS-like virus,” she said.“So, I think there’s really this very intimate connection between the outbreak overall and the fact that China is the worst abuser of internet freedom around the world.”Elsewhere in the world, Iceland is said to have the greatest internet freedom, followed by Estonia and Canada. The report listed U.S. in seventh place, with internet freedom worsening for the fourth year running. 
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Apple unveiled four new iPhones equipped with technology for use with faster new 5G wireless networks, hoping that demand for higher data speeds will spark demand for new phones.
That might not happen as quickly as Apple would like.
In a virtual presentation Tuesday, the company announced four 5G-enabled versions of the new iPhone 12 ranging in price from almost $700 to roughly $1,100. Apple also announced a new, less expensive version of its HomePod smart speaker.
Smartphone sales have been slowing for years as their technology has matured. That has meant far fewer gotta-have-it innovations that can drive demand and, at least until recently, increasingly pricey phones. Add to that pandemic-related economic crisis, and consumers have tended to eke as much life as possible out of their existing phones.
Apple, however, is clearly betting that 5G speeds could push many users off the fence. At its event, the company boasted about 5G capabilities and brought in Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to champion the carrier’s network.
5G is supposed to mean much faster speeds, making it quicker to download movies or games, for instance. But finding those speeds can be a challenge. While telecom operators have been rolling out 5G networks, significant boosts in speed are still uncommon in much of the world, including the U.S. So far, there are no popular new consumer applications that require 5G.
Updates in the new phones mostly amount to “incremental improvements” over predecessor iPhones, technology analyst Patrick Moorhead said, referring to 5G capabilities and camera upgrades on higher-end phones. But he suggested that if carriers build out their 5G networks fast enough, it could launch a “supercycle” in which large numbers of people switch to 5G phones.
That might be a big if. Mobile expert Carolina Milanesi of the firm Creative Strategies said economic pain caused by the global pandemic and accompanying job losses could easily restrain that buying impulse.
Apple’s new models include the iPhone 12, which features a 6.1-inch display and starts at almost $800, and the iPhone 12 Mini, with a 5.4-inch display at almost $700. A higher-end iPhone 12 Pro with more powerful cameras will begin at roughly $1,000; the 12 Pro Max, with a 6.7-inch display, will set buyers back at least $1,100. Apple said the phones should be more durable.iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max feature a new, elevated flat-edge stainless steel design and Ceramic Shield front cover for increased durability.In a move that may annoy some consumers, Apple will no longer include charging adapters with new phones. It says that will mean smaller, lighter boxes that are more environmentally friendly to ship. Apple, however, separately sells power adapters that cost about $20 and $50, depending on how fast they charge phones.
The iPhone models unveiled Tuesday will launch at different times. The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro will be available starting Oct. 23; the Mini and the Pro Max will follow on Nov. 13.
That compresses Apple’s window for building up excitement heading into the key holiday season.
Although other parts of Apple’s business are now growing more rapidly, the iPhone remains the biggest business of a technology juggernaut currently worth about $2 trillion, nearly double its value when stay-at-home orders imposed in the U.S in mid-March plunged the economy into a deep recession.
The pandemic temporarily paralyzed Apple’s overseas factories and key suppliers, leading to a delay of the latest iPhones from their usual late September rollout. The company also closed many of its U.S. stores for months because of the pandemic, depriving Apple of a prime showcase for its products.
Apple on Tuesday also said it was shrinking the size and price of its HomePod speaker to catch up to Amazon and Google in the market for internet-connected speakers, where it has barely made a dent. Both Amazon and Google are trying to position their speakers, the Echo and the Nest, as low-cost command centers for helping people manage their homes and lives. They cost as little as $50, while the HomePod costs almost $300.
The new HomePod Mini will cost almost $100. It will integrate Apple’s own music service, of course, with Pandora and Amazon’s music service in “coming months.” Apple didn’t mention music-streaming giant Spotify. It will be available for sale Nov. 6 and start shipping the week of Nov. 16.
The research firm eMarketer estimates about 58 million people in the U.S. use an Amazon Echo while 26.5 million use a Google Nest speaker. Roughtly 15 million use a HomePod or speakers sold by other manufactures, including Sonos and Harman Kardon.
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Another pharmaceutical company halted testing of an experimental COVID-19 drug treatment because of safety concerns. U.S.-based Eli Lilly and Company announced Tuesday that the clinical trial of its coronavirus antiviral drug had been paused by independent monitors “out of an abundance of caution,” but did not go into details.   The drug, which Eli Lilly is developing with Canadian-based biotech firm AbCellera, is part of a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which are made to act as immune cells that scientists hope can fight off the virus. The antibody therapy was similar to one given to U.S. President Donald Trump after he tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month.   The study, which launched in August, aimed to enroll 10,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients in the United States.   Eli Lilly applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization for the drug to be used for mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 infections based on preliminary results from a different clinical trial.   A day before the pause, U.S. drug maker Johnson & Johnson halted its late-stage clinical trials of its experimental vaccine after a participant was diagnosed with an unexplained illness.    Johnson & Johnson had just launched a wide scale test of its single-dose vaccine involving 60,000 volunteers across more than 200 locations in the United States and internationally, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and South Africa.    The Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial is the second to be put on hold after a volunteer became ill after receiving the vaccine.  U.S.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca halted its late-stage trial of a vaccine developed with the University of Oxford early last month after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.Hospital Puc de Campinas (SP), Brazil on October 2, 2020 will receive doses of the new vaccine against coronavirus from the American company Johnson & Johnson, which will be tested on 1,000 volunteers from the Campinas region.The late-stage testing of that vaccine has resumed in Britain, Brazil, India and South Africa, but remains on hold in the United States.   The World Bank said Tuesday that it has approved a $12 billion package for developing countries to purchase and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments. Meanwhile, both The New York Times and The Washington Post say the Trump administration has embraced the strategy of herd immunity as the means of stopping the COVID-19 pandemic. Herd immunity happens when a population is protected from a virus because a threshold immunity has been reached in that society.       The newspapers say anonymous senior administration officials told reporters Monday they are embracing a strategy to allow the spread of the coronavirus among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and other vulnerable populations in order to keep the nation’s economy up and running.   The officials cited a petition titled “The Great Barrington Declaration” posted online on October 4, that argues against lockdowns and ignores current scientific guidance on blunting the spread of COVID-19, including wearing masks and engaging in social distancing.   The petition says the strategy, called “Focused Protection,” is “the most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity.”  The declaration’s lead authors include Dr. Scott Atlas, a neurologist who has emerged as one of President Trump’s main advisors on the pandemic.   The Trump administration’s embrace of herd immunity runs counter to a stance by the World Health Organization, which calls the strategy unethical.   Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, told reporters Monday in Geneva that health officials should only try to achieve immunity through vaccination, not through exposing people to the virus.    Health authorities in the Netherlands said Tuesday that an 89-year-old woman is the first known case of someone who died after contracting COVID-19 for a second time.  Researchers acknowledge the woman’s immune system had been weakened from the treatment she received from a rare form of bone marrow cancer. The woman’s death coincides with a new study that suggests that a person infected with COVID-19 is still vulnerable to the disease. A report published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal revealed a 25-year-old man in (the western U.S. state of) Nevada first tested positive with COVID-19 back in April, then a second time in June with more severe symptoms that led to him being placed on oxygen.     Researchers say the man was infected with two distinct strains of the novel coronavirus, but could not be sure why the second infection was worse. He may have been exposed to a higher dose of the virus the second time, or the later version was more virulent than the first. 
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Scientists have discovered that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef lost more than half of its coral populations between 1995 and 2017.  Researchers at the The Great Barrier Reef stretches across 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeastern coast and is home to a wide variety of marine life, making it the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem. The region was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1981. 
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Another pharmaceutical company halted testing of an experimental COVID-19 drug treatment because of safety concerns. U.S.-based Eli Lilly and Company announced Tuesday that the clinical trial of its coronavirus antiviral drug had been paused by independent monitors “out of an abundance of caution,” but did not go into details.   The drug, which Eli Lilly is developing with Canadian-based biotech firm AbCellera, is part of a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which are made to act as immune cells that scientists hope can fight off the virus. The antibody therapy was similar to one given to U.S. President Donald Trump after he tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month.   The study, which launched in August, aimed to enroll 10,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients in the United States.   Eli Lilly applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization for the drug to be used for mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 infections based on preliminary results from a different clinical trial.   A day before the pause, U.S. drug maker Johnson & Johnson halted its late-stage clinical trials of its experimental vaccine after a participant was diagnosed with an unexplained illness.    Johnson & Johnson had just launched a wide scale test of its single-dose vaccine involving 60,000 volunteers across more than 200 locations in the United States and internationally, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and South Africa.    The Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial is the second to be put on hold after a volunteer became ill after receiving the vaccine.  U.S.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca halted its late-stage trial of a vaccine developed with the University of Oxford early last month after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.Hospital Puc de Campinas (SP), Brazil on October 2, 2020 will receive doses of the new vaccine against coronavirus from the American company Johnson & Johnson, which will be tested on 1,000 volunteers from the Campinas region.The late-stage testing of that vaccine has resumed in Britain, Brazil, India and South Africa, but remains on hold in the United States.   The World Bank said Tuesday that it has approved a $12 billion package for developing countries to purchase and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments. Meanwhile, both The New York Times and The Washington Post say the Trump administration has embraced the strategy of herd immunity as the means of stopping the COVID-19 pandemic. Herd immunity happens when a population is protected from a virus because a threshold immunity has been reached in that society.       The newspapers say anonymous senior administration officials told reporters Monday they are embracing a strategy to allow the spread of the coronavirus among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and other vulnerable populations in order to keep the nation’s economy up and running.   The officials cited a petition titled “The Great Barrington Declaration” posted online on October 4, that argues against lockdowns and ignores current scientific guidance on blunting the spread of COVID-19, including wearing masks and engaging in social distancing.   The petition says the strategy, called “Focused Protection,” is “the most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity.”  The declaration’s lead authors include Dr. Scott Atlas, a neurologist who has emerged as one of President Trump’s main advisors on the pandemic.   The Trump administration’s embrace of herd immunity runs counter to a stance by the World Health Organization, which calls the strategy unethical.   Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, told reporters Monday in Geneva that health officials should only try to achieve immunity through vaccination, not through exposing people to the virus.    Health authorities in the Netherlands said Tuesday that an 89-year-old woman is the first known case of someone who died after contracting COVID-19 for a second time.  Researchers acknowledge the woman’s immune system had been weakened from the treatment she received from a rare form of bone marrow cancer. The woman’s death coincides with a new study that suggests that a person infected with COVID-19 is still vulnerable to the disease. A report published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal revealed a 25-year-old man in (the western U.S. state of) Nevada first tested positive with COVID-19 back in April, then a second time in June with more severe symptoms that led to him being placed on oxygen.     Researchers say the man was infected with two distinct strains of the novel coronavirus, but could not be sure why the second infection was worse. He may have been exposed to a higher dose of the virus the second time, or the later version was more virulent than the first. 
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A trio of space travelers has launched successfully to the International Space Station, for the first time using a fast-track maneuver to reach the orbiting outpost in just three hours. NASA’s Kate Rubins along with Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos lifted off as scheduled Wednesday morning from the Russia-leased Baikonur space launch facility in Kazakhstan for a six-month stint on the station.   For the first time, they are trying a two-orbit, three-hour approach to the orbiting space outpost. Previously it took twice as long for the crews to reach the station.   They will join the station’s NASA commander, Chris Cassidy, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, who have been aboard the complex since April and are scheduled to return to Earth in a week. Speaking during Tuesday’s pre-launch news conference at Baikonur, Rubins emphasized that the crew spent weeks in quarantine at the Star City training facility outside Moscow and then on Baikonur to avoid any threat from the coronavirus.   “We spent two weeks at Star City and then 17 days at Baikonur in a very strict quarantine,” Rubins said. “During all communications with crew members, we were wearing masks. We made PCR tests twice and we also made three times antigen fast tests.” She said she was looking forward to scientific experiments planned for the mission.   “We’re planning to try some really interesting things like bio-printing tissues and growing cells in space and, of course, continuing our work on sequencing DNA,” Rubins said. Ryzhikov, who will be the station’s skipper, said the crew will try to pinpoint the exact location of a leak at a station’s Russian section that has slowly leaked oxygen. The small leak hasn’t posed any immediate danger to the crew.   “We will take with us additional equipment which will allow us to detect the place of this leak more precisely,” he told reporters. “We will also take with us additional improved hermetic material which will allow to fix the leak.” In November, Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov are set to greet NASA’s SpaceX first operational Crew Dragon mission, bringing NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi to the space station aboard the Crew Dragon vehicle. It follows a successful Demo-2 mission earlier this year. The Crew Dragon mission was pushed back from Oct. 31 into November, and no new date has been set yet. The delay is intended to give SpaceX more time to conduct tests and review data from an aborted Falcon 9 launch earlier this month. 
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As coronavirus infections surged in Malaysia this year, a wave of hate speech and misinformation aimed at Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar began appearing on Facebook.   Alarmed rights groups reported the material to Facebook. But six months later, many posts targeting the Rohingya in Malaysia remain on the platform, including pages such as “Anti Rohingya Club” and “Foreigners Mar Malaysia’s Image,” although those two pages were removed after Reuters flagged them to Facebook recently.   Comments still online in one private group with nearly 100,000 members included “Hope they all die, this cursed pig ethnic group.”   Facebook acknowledged in 2018 that its platform was used to incite violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and last year spent more than $3.7 billion on safety and security on its platform. But the surge of anti-Rohingya comment in Malaysia shows how xenophobic speech nonetheless persists.   “Assertions that Facebook is uncommitted to addressing safety and security are inaccurate and do not reflect the significant investment we’ve made to address harmful content on our platform,” a company spokeswoman told Reuters.   Reuters found more than three dozen pages and groups, including accounts run by former and serving Malaysian security officials, that featured discriminatory language about Rohingya refugees and undocumented migrants.   Dozens of comments encouraged violence.   Reuters found some of the strongest comments in closed private groups, which people have to ask to join. Such groups have been a hotbed for hate speech and misinformation in other parts of the world. Facebook removed 12 of the 36 pages and groups flagged by Reuters, and several posts. Five other pages with anti-migrant content seen by Reuters in the last month were removed before Reuters queries.   “We do not allow people to post hate speech or threats of violence on Facebook and we will remove this content as soon as we become aware of it,” Facebook said. Some of the pages that remain online contain comments comparing Rohingya to dogs and parasites. Some disclosed where Rohingya had been spotted and encouraged authorities and the public to take action against them. Widespread hate speech   “This kind of hate speech can lead to physical violence and persecution of a whole group. We saw this in Myanmar,” said John Quinley, senior human rights specialist at Fortify Rights, an independent group focused on Southeast Asia.   “It would be irresponsible to not actively take down anti-refugee and anti-Rohingya Facebook groups and pages.”   Muslim-majority Malaysia was long friendly to the Rohingya, a minority fleeing persecution in largely Buddhist Myanmar, and more than 100,000 Rohingya refugees live in Malaysia, even though it doesn’t officially recognize them as refugees. But sentiment turned in April, with the Rohingya being accused of spreading the coronavirus. Hate speech circulated widely, including on Facebook – a platform used by nearly 70% of Malaysia’s 32 million people.   Rights groups and refugees said comments on Facebook helped escalate xenophobia in Malaysia.   “Malaysians who have lived with Rohingya refugees for years have started calling the cops on us, some have lost jobs. We are in fear all the time,” said Abu, a Rohingya refugee who did not want to give his full name fearing repercussions. Another refugee who declined to be identified said he deactivated his Facebook account after his details were posted and Malaysians messaged him telling him to go back to Myanmar – from where he fled five years ago. “Facebook has failed, they don’t understand how dangerous such comments can be,” he said, referring to posts he had seen supporting action in Myanmar against Rohingya.   ‘Absent’ Rights groups said the government of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had failed to do enough to curb xenophobia as it rounded up thousands of undocumented migrants and said it would no longer accept Rohingya refugees.   “The Malaysian government was completely absent from any sort of effort to try to curtail this wave of hate speech,” said Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson. Muhyiddin’s office did not respond to requests for comment.   Reuters found four pages with links to security and enforcement agencies voicing anti-immigrant sentiment. “Let us not suffer the cancer of this ethnic (group),” administrators of a group called “Friends of Immigration” posted. The group says it is run by current and former immigration officials. That post from April was removed this month after Reuters queries to Facebook. The immigration department did not respond to Reuters queries. The communications and home ministries also did not respond to queries on hate speech in social media.   Among the earliest posts to draw comments calling for Rohingya to be shot was one from the Malaysian Armed Forces Headquarters asking the public to be its “ears and eyes” and report undocumented migrants. A military spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the page.   Another post that was shared more than 26,000 times was from a page calling itself the Military Royal Intelligence Corps that said undocumented migrants “will bring problems to all of us.”   Reuters was unable to contact the administrator of the page. The military said it had nothing to do with the page and it was run by a former member of the intelligence unit.   Facebook removed both posts after Reuters queries. The Intelligence Corps page was also taken down. 
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A mobile app launched last week in China that many there hoped would allow access to long banned Western social media sites abruptly disappeared from Chinese app stores a day after its unveiling.Tuber, an Andriod app backed by Chinese cyber security software giant Qihoo 360, first appeared to be officially available last Friday. It offered Chinese citizens limited access to websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Google, and it facilitated some 5 million downloads following its debut.Yet a day later, the Tuber app disappeared from mobile app stores, including one run by Huawei Technologies Co. A search for the app’s website yielded no results when VOA checked Monday. It’s unclear whether the government ordered the takedown of the app.Experts told VOA that such ventures are sometimes designed to create the illusion of choice to users eager to gain access to the global internet, but these circumvention tools are sometimes deleted if they are deemed by the Chinese government to be too popular with consumers.FILE PHOTO: The messenger app WeChat is seen next to its logo in this illustration picture taken Aug. 7, 2020.Short-lived frenzyChinese users hailed their newfound ability to visit long banned websites before the app was removed last Saturday.Several now banned articles introducing Tuber went viral Friday on China’s super app WeChat and seem to have contributed to Tuber’s overnight success.Sporting a logo similar to that of YouTube, Tuber’s main page offered a feed of YouTube videos, while another tab allowed users go to Western websites banned in China.A reporter at Chinese state media Global Times tweeted that the move is “good for China’s stability and it’s a great step for China’s opening up.”Exciting news!! #China launched a new web browser Tuber that can connect to FB, Twitter, Google, etc, without using VPN!! It’s still censoring fake news or propaganda like Epoch Times, but I think it’s good for China’s stability and it’s a great step for China’s opening up! pic.twitter.com/03fyJAo6U8— Rita Bai Yunyi (@RitaBai) October 9, 2020Users noticed, though, that the browser came with its own censorship already included. References to sensitive political issues, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and the more recent Hong Kong protests, were omitted, according to a Reuters check. YouTube queries for politically sensitive keywords such as “Tiananmen” and “Xi Jinping” returned no results on the app, according to TechCrunch.Some terms in the users’ agreement also raised concerns among observers. According to the app’s terms of service, the platform could suspend users’ accounts and share their data “with the relevant authorities” if they “actively browse or disseminate” content that breaches the constitution, endangers national security and sovereignty, spreads rumors, disrupts social orders or violates other local laws.Additionally, the terms of service stated the collection of personal information about users related to national security, public safety and public health does not require user authorization.Meanwhile, users of the app had to register through a Chinese phone number, which is tied to a person’s real identity, and allows GPS location tracking.Since its removal last Saturday, those who downloaded the app received a message that Tuber is “undergoing a system upgrade,” according to TechCrunch.Not the first attemptSarah Cook, a senior research analyst for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House, a watchdog organization, told VOA the brief availability of the new app might be a way for the Chinese government to create the “illusion of choice” to users who want to use the global internet, especially for communications that are not sensitive.“By facilitating and controlling the access, the Chinese Communist Party is able to ensure that their browsing indeed stays within approved limits,” she said.Cook added that by contrast, when a Chinese internet user jumps the Great Firewall with an independent VPN, then even if they were looking for entertainment content, they are likely to come across more politically sensitive information.Tuber is not the first browser in China that attempted to provide Chinese citizens with some access to the Western internet, although few have drawn as much attention.About a year ago, there was a similar effort made with a mobile browser called Kuniao that was approved by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It purported to allow users to bypass internet censorship, though critics also suggested that it simply reduced the scope of censorship, rather than allowing people to fully circumvent controls.“But within two days of its launch, Kuniao’s website crashed from the high demand and it was soon blocked entirely. The official position on it seemed to sour quickly and online references to the browser were also deleted,” Cook said.A Chinese blogger who has been following China’s Great Fire Wall and who requested anonymity for fear of government retaliation told VOA the latest moves are telling. The blogger said the fate of both Tuber and Kuniao shows the government is increasingly unable to control sophisticated circumvention tools, including commercially available VPN (virtual private network) services and tools developed by tech-savvy amateurs.“The government has actually allowed a considerable number of these web browsers,” the blogger said. “It helps the government to achieve some level of monitoring over these Internet users compared to those who use VPN services.“These browsers are remarkably reliable when used within limited groups. But when they’ve become overly popular, the government will inevitably intervene,” the blogger said, adding it wouldn’t be surprising to see similar circumvention tools coming out soon. 
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Hot, dry conditions and intense winds across California are threatening to reinvigorate what has already been the worst fire season in state history, officials warned on Tuesday.Gusty winds in California’s north and extreme heat in its south are creating conditions that could fan wildfires that began earlier in the summer as well as spark new ones, leading state and federal authorities to urge residents to prepare.The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for a wide swath of Southern California as temperatures topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). The agency asked residents to exercise caution with any fire sources.Strong winds, low humidityThe California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said strong winds and low humidity could ramp up blazes in Northern California starting Wednesday.”While good progress has been made on a number of fires, this could hamper containment efforts,” Daniel Berlant, Cal Fire assistant deputy director, said on Twitter on Tuesday. “It means if a new fire breaks out, that that fire is going to be able to burn very rapidly.”Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), which provides power to much of California, said Monday it was considering proactively shutting off power as soon as Wednesday to as many as 50,000 state residents to mitigate fire risk.Over 4 million acres burned This year, wildfires have burned over 4 million acres in California — twice the total of 2018 which had been the highest on record. Five of the six largest fires in state history were in 2020. Thirty-one people have died, and over 9,200 structures have been destroyed.Fall has tended to be California’s peak wildfire season, but state officials say the season is growing longer each year.Experts say droughts and climate change from fossil fuels have made poorly managed forests much more flammable, leading to extreme fire activity. 
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The commercial space launch company Blue Origin, in partnership with the U.S. space agency NASA, launched an unmanned reusable suborbital rocket into space Tuesday and landed it on a West Texas launch site. The 12-minute flight, 100 kilometers to the edge of space and back, was a test of a number of new technologies, including two NASA precision descent and landing sensor systems, which could be used in future landers on the moon and Mars, and are able to intelligently identify and avoid potential hazards on target landing zones. FILE – A general view of the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket booster at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Apr. 5, 2017.The launch included Blue Origin’s six-person crew capsule, which is designed with future commercial passengers in mind, including what the company says are the largest windows ever designed for a spacecraft. Once in space, the capsule separated from the launch rocket. The reusable rocket, named New Shepard after the first U.S. astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, touched down at the Texas launch and landing site with a controlled, engine-powered descent. The capsule landed a short time later using three large parachutes.  The capsule contained a variety of experiments and other payloads, including postcards provided by children from across the country. Blue Origin is owned by U.S. investor and entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com.  
   
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Britain’s opposition Labor Party Leader Keir Starmer on Tuesday called on the government to implement a three-week temporary nationwide “circuit breaker” lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19 throughout Britain.Starmer made the proposal in a speech in London, one day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced his three-tiered regional alert plan designed to simplify and standardize the variety of COVID-related restrictions that have been imposed around the country.But Starmer said Britain is in a decisive moment in the fight against the virus and “there’s no longer time to give this prime minister the benefit of the doubt.””This was not inevitable, but it is now necessary,” he said, acknowledging that the restrictions are largely unpopular.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London, Oct. 12, 2020.He also said the lockdown idea comes from recommendations made by Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) which said “a package of stringent interventions is now urgently needed” to lower the rate of infection and take strain off hospitals and the National Health service.Quoting SAGE, the opposition leader said, “not acting now will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences.”Starmer proposed allowing only essential work and travel, restricting household mixing and that all pubs, bars and restaurants should be closed, but also be compensated. He said he understood the measures would require “significant sacrifices across the country.”The Labor Party leader added that schools would not have to close under his proposal, as the lockdown would be timed to coincide with an upcoming school holiday.Speaking directly to Prime Minister Johnson, Starmer said: “You know that the scientific evidence backs this approach … that the restrictions that you introduced won’t be enough.”Starmer’s words will only increase the pressure on the British leader, who has defended his decision not to re-introduce a full lockdown by saying he was trying to protect lives and livelihoods by balancing public health and the economy.
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