A NASA-Boeing partnership took its next steps toward deep-space exploration. Two commercial space flight companies reached new heights, and China says “foreign scientists” can inspect lunar samples it recently collected. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.Produced by: Arash ArabasadiCamera: NASA/AP/Reuters/Virgin Orbit/Blue Origin
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Day: January 21, 2021
Facebook’s independent oversight board said Thursday that it had accepted the company’s request to review its decision to suspend the accounts of former President Donald Trump.The U.S. social media giant blocked Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts after he was accused of inciting a deadly insurrection by his supporters January 6 at the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were formally certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory.When it made the decision, the company said the suspension would remain in effect at least until the end of Trump’s term on January 20 and possibly indefinitely.The board said a five-member panel would review the case in the coming days and report its findings to the full board.A majority of the members must approve a decision before it can be issued. The board must decide within 90 days, and Facebook is required to act on it within that period. The board’s decisions are nonbinding.Trump’s critics generally applauded Facebook’s decision, but many world leaders and free-speech proponents denounced it, maintaining it sets an alarming precedent against free speech.’Very confident’ decision was rightFacebook global affairs chief Nick Clegg told the Reuters news agency he remained convinced the company acted appropriately when it suspended Trump’s accounts.“I’m very confident that any reasonable person looking at the circumstances in which we took that decision and looking at our existing policies will agree,” Clegg said.But Clegg also said the board might consider wider principles and policies that could influence its decision.In addition to reviewing the decision to suspend Trump’s accounts, Clegg said he asked the board to recommend when political leaders can or should be prohibited from using the company’s platforms.Facebook created the oversight board after being criticized for its management of problematic content. The panel consists of 20 members, including a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a former prime minister, legal experts and rights advocates.Twitter, Trump’s favorite social media platform, has suspended the former president permanently.
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Pakistan said Thursday it will receive half-a-million free doses of China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine by January 31. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi made the announcement at a news conference, saying his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, shared the “good news” in a phone call between the two officials.
“He told me, ‘Send your aircraft and immediately airlift this drug.’ So, this is a welcome news for us. And we will, God willing, succeed in saving many lives,” Qureshi said.
He stressed that the Chinese vaccine is being gifted to Islamabad as a “goodwill gesture” from Beijing “in view of the all-weather strategic relationship” between the two countries.
Pakistan’s drug regulator approved the Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use on Monday. China approved the drug earlier this month, which is also in use in several countries, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
The Pakistani regulator last week also authorized the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine developed with Oxford University.
FILE – Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi speaks during an interview with Reuters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 1, 2020.Qureshi said that Wang also promised to make another 1.1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine available for Pakistan by the end of February to meet the country’s additional urgent requirements.
The foreign minister noted that China’s technical and medical expertise had played an “instrumental role” in Islamabad’s fight against the pandemic.
Pakistan is also conducting a Phase 3 trial of another Chinese anti-coronavirus vaccine from Cansino Biologics, Inc.
Dr. Faisal Sultan, special health assistant to the prime minister, said Wednesday at a news conference that the trial was near completion and that 17,500 people participated in it.
He noted that the Cansino vaccine’s “interim analysis” was currently underway, and the initial results will hopefully be available by early February.
“We are entitled to receive 20 million doses, provided the results are positive and the vaccine proves to be effective,” Sultan said. FILE – Students wear protective masks as they have their temperature checked before entering classrooms as secondary schools reopen amid the second wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Jan. 18, 2021.Pakistan, a country of about 220 million people, has documented at least 527,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections, with more than 11,000 deaths since the outbreak was detected late last February.
Sultan said the government plans to vaccinate at least 70% of its adult population to achieve herd immunity. He explained that the existing national Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) is being strengthened to distribute and inject the coronavirus vaccine. The Pakistani government has said it will provide the COVID-19 vaccine to the public free of cost. The first batch of the doses, however, will be given to frontline health care workers in the first quarter of 2021. FILE – A health worker gives a polio vaccine to a child at a school in Lahore, Pakistan, Feb. 17, 2020.
The program is handling several vaccines, including polio. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where the polio virus remains endemic.
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Fire erupted Thursday in a building under construction in India that is owned by the world’s largest vaccine maker, but the company said it would not affect production of a COVID-19 vaccine.The fire broke out at a Serum Institute of India (SII) building in the western city of Pune.Fire official Prashant Ranpise said the cause of the fire was not immediately clear, but it was contained to a facility under construction to boost production of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.SII CEO Adar Poonawalla sought to reassure the global community the fire did not affect the company’s production of the vaccine, labeled COVISHIELD in India, which many low- and middle-income countries are depending on to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.“I would like to reassure all governments & the public that there would be no loss of COVISHIELD production due to multiple production buildings that I had kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies,” Poonawalla tweeted.Ranpise said three people were rescued from the fire and no one was injured. SII has been contracted to produce a billion does of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.Poonawalla told the Associated Press in December that his family-owned company hopes to increase production capacity from 1.5 billion doses to 2.5 billion doses annually by the end of this year. He said the new facility is part of the plan.Wealthy countries already have bought 75% of the 12 billion coronavirus vaccine doses expected to be produced this year. Consequently, SII is likely to produce most of the vaccines that will be used by developing countries.
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The leading infectious disease expert in the United States says the country will participate in the global initiative to provide COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to new U.S. President Joe Biden, told the executive board of the World Health Organization Thursday during a videoconference that the U.S. will join the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, or COVAX, an international alliance led by WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, an organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates to vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries. Fauci also said the U.S. would fulfill its financial obligations to the United Nations health agency and maintain its previous staffing commitments. His remarks came one day after Biden issued an order on his first day in office pledging to restore Washington’s ties with WHO. Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, announced in May that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO, accusing the agency of helping China cover up the extent of the coronavirus, which was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, speaks after Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a visioconference, in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021. (Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters)“This is a good day for WHO and a good day for global health,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in response to Fauci’s announcement. In a related story, Reuters news agency says the COVAX initiative announced Thursday that it is aiming to deliver 1.8 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine to poor countries in 2021, and hopes to fulfill supply deals for wealthier ones in the second half of the year. The world is racing against time to produce and deliver billions of doses of new coronavirus vaccines to blunt the pandemic, which has killed over 2 million people out of a total of over 96.9 million confirmed COVID-19 infections, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The United States leads the world in both categories with 406,147 deaths out of a total of 24.4 million cases. Health officials use wireless devices to register people with vaccine appointments at a mass COVID-19 vaccination site outside The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., Jan. 19, 2021.But vaccination efforts have run into numerous difficulties, including logistical hurdles, bureaucratic failures and a basic shortage of vaccines, which has led to residents across the U.S. having had their vaccine appointments canceled. Peru doctors on hunger strike In Peru, a group of doctors launched a hunger strike this week to protest the government’s lack of preparation for a second wave of COVID-19 cases. Dr. Teodoro Quiñones, the secretary-general of Peru’s physician’s union who is taking part in the strike, and at least a half-dozen striking doctors are staging the strike in a makeshift tent outside the headquarters of the health ministry in the capital, Lima. Quiñones says the government has not fulfilled its commitments to improve conditions in the country’s public hospital system, leaving doctors without adequate supplies of oxygen, medicines and ventilators. He told The New York Times the state-run EsSalud network dismissed COVID-19 specialists after the first wave receded and failed to hire them back when more and more new cases began filling up hospital intensive care units. The South American country has 1,073,214 confirmed coronavirus infections, including 39,044 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.
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Chile is getting a new weapon to help in its fight against the spread of the coronavirus.Health regulators approved the emergency use of the CoronaVac vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.Heriberto Garcia, director of Chile’s Public Health Institute, said very encouraging data from late-stage trials and the Health Institute’s independent investigations suggested CoronaVac was a “safe and effective vaccine to fight the pandemic.”Chile paid $3.5 million to host a clinical trial of the Sinovac vaccine and has ordered 60 million doses of the vaccine, according to Reuters.Garcia said Sinovac will arrive in Chile at the end of the month. Chile has already inoculated more than 29,000 people with the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which arrived in the country late last month.Leaders of Chile’s Public Health Institute are also weighing approval of AstraZeneca’s vaccine for emergency use and have already signed a deal to purchase 14.4 million doses.So far, Chile has confirmed more than 677,000 COVID infections and 17,573 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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Zimbabwe is mourning the death of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Sibusiso Moyo.The government said the country’s top diplomat died Wednesday after contracting COVID-19.Moyo gained international notoriety as an army general, becoming the spokesperson of the 2017 coup that ousted longtime President Robert Mugabe, who was replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa.Moyo is the third cabinet minister to succumb to COVID-19 in the past six months.Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs Ellen Gwaradzimba died last week, and Agriculture Minister Perrance Shiri died of the disease in July.The 61-year-old Moyo was reportedly getting weekly treatment for a kidney ailment at the time of his death.COVID-19 infections and deaths are on the rise in Zimbabwe, with more than 16,000 new infections and 505 deaths in the past month, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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Twitter has locked the account of China’s U.S. embassy for a tweet that defended China’s policies in the Xinjiang region, which the U.S. social media platform said violated the firm’s policy against “dehumanization.” The Chinese Embassy account, @ChineseEmbinUS, posted a tweet this month that said that Uighur women were no longer “baby making machines,” citing a study reported by state-backed newspaper China Daily. The tweet was removed by Twitter and replaced by a label stating that it was no longer available. Although Twitter hides tweets that violate its policies, it requires account owners to manually delete such posts. The Chinese Embassy’s account has not posted any new tweets since January 9. Twitter’s suspension of the embassy’s account came a day after the Trump administration, in its final hours, accused China of committing genocide in Xinjiang, a finding endorsed by the incoming Biden administration. The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Twitter’s move. “We’ve taken action on the Tweet you referenced for violating our policy against dehumanization, where it states: We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious disease, national origin, race, or ethnicity,” a Twitter spokesperson said on Thursday. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment. Twitter is blocked in China but is an increasingly favored platform by China’s diplomats and state media. China has repeatedly rejected accusations of abuse in its Xinjiang region, where a United Nations panel has said at least 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims had been detained in camps. Last year, a report by German researcher Adrian Zenz published by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation think tank accused China of using forced sterilization, forced abortion and coercive family planning against minority Muslims. The Chinese foreign ministry said the allegations were groundless and false. Twitter’s move also follows the removal of the account of former U.S. President Donald Trump, which had 88 million followers, citing the risk of violence after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol this month. Twitter had locked Trump’s account, asking for deletion of some tweets, before restoring it and then removing it altogether after the former president violated the platform’s policies again.
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This week the head of the World Health Organization warns the world is on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” over the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. This comes after some countries are already well underway with their vaccination campaigns, while others do not know when they will get their first shots. More from VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo.
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A massive Antarctic iceberg that last month threatened a penguin-populated island off the southern tip of South America has since lost much of its mass and broken into pieces, scientists say. The main ice mass, called A68a, and its “child bergs” are still on the move, swirling in waters near South Georgia Island, said scientist Ted Scambos at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Scambos and other scientists have been tracking the iceberg — one of the largest-ever recorded — since it broke off from Antarctic’s Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017 and drifted north through a region known as “iceberg alley.” In the last month, the main berg shed about a third of its size, or more than 1,400 square kilometers (541 square miles), in smaller pieces and ice melt. On Tuesday, the main iceberg covered about 2,450 square kilometers (946 square miles). The edges of A68a have “curled up like a dinner plate,” causing pieces to break off from its sides as it moves through warmer currents, Scambos said. The iceberg could block penguins from foraging grounds if it lodges off the island’s coast, or it could grind over the seabed and significantly damage marine life. FILE – Penguins stand in South Georgia Island, in this undated photo obtained by Reuters Dec. 11, 2020. The A68a iceberg could interfere with the birds if it lodges off the island’s coast. (Alek Komarnitsky/via Reuters)That may already have happened, Scambos said, when the ice moved over some of the southern shelf in December. Scientists have yet to check on the impact up close. The baby bergs are also still a threat. “There’s city-block-sized bergs that are drifting around,” Scambos said. Scientists are tracking six of these smaller chunks, four of which are near the island. Pieces began breaking off from A68a as it was approaching the island’s western shelf in December. Strong currents caused the berg to pivot nearly 180 degrees. Satellite images suggest an underwater shelf may have clipped the berg, causing the first big break. More big bits then broke off, including a protruding piece that scientists had called the iceberg’s “finger.” The bergs “keep wandering” around the island, Scambos said. “They might grind to a halt for a short while … days, maybe weeks.” But then, they should melt and thin away, he said. “The bergs are in water that’s too warm for them.”
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