Month: February 2021

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is appealing for $9.4 million to fund efforts to prevent a new Ebola outbreak from spreading across West Africa.   
 
The IFRC said Monday the money will be used to step up “surveillance and community sensitization efforts” in Guinea, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
 
“Ebola does not care about borders,” said Mohammed Mukhier, the IFRC’s Regional Director for Africa.  “Close social, cultural and economic ties between communities in Guinea and neighboring countries create a very serious risk of the virus spreading to Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, and potentially even further.”
 
Health officials in Guinea declared an epidemic Sunday after three cases were detected in Gouécké, a rural community in N’Zerekore prefecture. At least one victim there has died. It is the first Ebola outbreak in Guinea since 2016.
 
The 2014 Ebola outbreak, the biggest in history, killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
 
Guinea was expecting the delivery of 11,000 doses of Ebola vaccine from the World Health Organization Sunday, but the Reuters news agency says the shipment was delayed due to heavy dust brought by winds from the Sahara Desert.  The shipment is now due to arrive in Conarky on Monday, with vaccination efforts due to begin on Tuesday.   
 
Guinea is also expecting another 8,600 doses of vaccine from the United States.   
 
There have also been four confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including two deaths. WHO has around 20 experts supporting national and provincial health authorities in the DRC.
 
The United Nations announced it is releasing $15 million from its emergency relief fund to help fight the outbreaks in both Guinea and the DRC.
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Israel closed all its Mediterranean beaches until further notice Sunday, days after an offshore oil spill deposited tons of tar across more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) of coastline in what officials are calling one of the country’s worst ecological disasters.Activists began reporting globs of black tar on Israel’s coast last week after a heavy storm. The deposits have wreaked havoc on local wildlife, and the Israeli Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry determined Sunday that a dead young fin whale that washed up on a beach in southern Israel died from ingesting the viscous black liquid, according to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster.  Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority has called the spill “one of the most serious ecological disasters” in the country’s history. In 2014, a crude oil spill in the Arava Desert caused extensive damage to one of the country’s delicate ecosystems.  The Environmental Protection Ministry and activists estimate that at least 1,000 tons of tar, a product of an oil spill from a ship in the eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, have washed up on shore. The ministry is trying to determine who is responsible. It declined commenting on details of the investigation because it was ongoing.  Yoav Ratner, coordinator of the ministry’s oil spill contingency plan, said that there were still many “unknown unknowns” about the extent of the ecological damage and therefore it was difficult to say how long cleanup would take.  Thousands of volunteers took to the beaches on Saturday to help clean up the tar, and several were hospitalized after they inhaled toxic fumes. The military also deployed thousands of soldiers to assist in the operation.  The Environmental Protection, Health and Interior Ministries issued a joint statement Sunday warning the public not to visit the entire length of the country’s 195-kilometer (120-mile) Mediterranean coastline, cautioning that “exposure to tar can be harmful to public health.”  Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel told Hebrew media that her department estimates the cleanup project will cost millions of dollars.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured one of the country’s tar-pocked beaches on Sunday and praised the ministry’s work.Representatives from a coalition of Israeli environmental groups said in a press conference on Sunday that the ministry was woefully underfunded, and that existing legislation did little to prevent or address environmental disasters.  Arik Rosenblum, director of the Israeli environmental group EcoOcean, said that the Environmental Protection Ministry is “fighting this situation and many other situations with their hands tied behind their back” because of inadequate legislation.  They cautioned that this disaster should be a wake-up call for opposition to a planned oil pipeline connecting the United Arab Emirates and Israeli oil facilities in Eilat — home to endangered Red Sea coral reefs.
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Israel has reopened many schools, malls and gyms that were closed for several weeks. Some venues, however, are open only to those with a “green passport,” a document showing they have received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine. The opening comes amid reports that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine works better than expected.  Malls reopened after almost two months, and there were lines outside some of the stores. Parking lots were jammed, and many children went back in school for the first time in months. But some venues, like gyms, cultural events and hotels, are open only to those with a green passport, a document showing that they have either received both shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or have recovered from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Israel is not imposing an obligation to get vaccinated.   Edelstein said that contrary to what he called “fake news,” Israel is not imposing sanctions on anyone who does not get vaccinated.   At the same time, some in Israel said that limiting venues like gyms and hotels to those who have been vaccinated was in effect a sanction on those who hadn’t received the shots.   FILE – Israelis receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from medical professionals at a coronavirus vaccination center set up on a shopping mall parking lot in Givataim, Israel, Feb. 4, 2021.So far, about one-third of Israel’s population of 9.2 million has received both doses, and nearly half have received the first shot. A further 3 million Israelis are not eligible to receive the vaccine, either because they are under 16 or because they have recovered from the infection. The director of Israel’s Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, Ronni Gamzu, says the results of the Pfizer vaccine are even better than in clinical trials. They show that the vaccine is very effective and very, very minor side effects almost, you know what, almost none, we have seen cases here and there, and we have seen the effectiveness is what was stated in the studies of Pfizer and Moderna, around 95 percent, and if you look at people admitted to the hospital it is even more than that. The protection is solid, said Gamzu.Israel’s Health Ministry said that after two doses, Israelis saw their risk of illness from the coronavirus drop 98.5 percent, and their risk of hospitalization drop almost 99 percent. The statement was based on data from a poll  of 1.7 million Israelis who had received both shots by the end of January.  Among those being vaccinated are Arab citizens of Israel, and Palestinians in east Jerusalem, which is under Israeli control; but, the 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have yet to be inoculated.  The Palestinian minister of health said on Friday that Israel has agreed to vaccinate 100,000 Palestinian laborers who work regularly in Israel. Some human rights groups say that because Israel controls entry and exit into the West Bank and Gaza, it is responsible for providing vaccinations for the residents there.   
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Major winter storms, extreme cold and power outages shut down more than 2,000 vaccination sites and delayed delivery of 6 million vaccine doses in all 50 states last week, White House senior adviser Andy Slavitt said in a briefing with reporters Friday.Extreme weather has spread across large swaths of the United States since Feb. 14. Crippling snowfall and record-cold temperatures hit Oklahoma and Arkansas and triggered power outages across Texas.The storms set back the Biden administration’s efforts to ramp up vaccine delivery. Earlier in the month, more than 1.5 million doses per day were delivered on average. Preliminary data from last week show a steep drop-off, but full numbers are not yet available.The weather delayed President Joe Biden’s visit to a Kalamazoo, Michigian, plant producing vaccine from drugmaker Pfizer from Thursday to Friday.The weather is improving and deliveries are getting back on track, with 1.4 million doses shipping Friday, Slavitt said. But the backups will take time to clear.”We anticipate that all the backlog doses will be delivered within the next week, with most being delivered within the next several days,” he said.The weather caused disruptions all along the supply chain, Slavitt said.A plant packaging vaccines from pharmaceutical company Moderna was knocked offline by a winter storm.”Roads are being cleared for the workforce to leave their homes,” Slavitt said. “They are working today through Sunday to package the backlogged orders.”Road closures held up deliveries between manufacturing, distribution and shipping sites. And workers at all three major shipping companies, UPS, FedEx and McKesson, have been snowed in, he added, holding up shipments.Vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech need to be kept extremely cold while stored, but Slavitt told CNN Thursday that “there hasn’t been a single vaccine that’s spoiled” due to the delays.”The vaccines are sitting safe and sound in our factories and hubs, ready to be shipped out as soon as the weather allows,” he told reporters Friday.The disruptions were severe enough for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker to discuss sending the state’s National Guard to rescue doses trapped in Kentucky and Tennessee.After federal officials rushed 135,000 doses to the state, Baker spokesperson Kate Reilly said Friday that the governor “appreciates the efforts made to get this critical shipment here and is not anticipating additional delays from the federal government for vaccine shipments at this time.”Slavitt said the federal government is asking vaccinators to extend hours and offer extra appointments to catch up.”We will be able to catch up, but we understand this will mean asking more of people,” he said.
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It took just three months for the rumor that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was engineered as a bioweapon to spread from the fringes of the Chinese internet and take root in millions of people’s minds.By March 2020, belief that the virus had been human-made and possibly weaponized was widespread, multiple surveys indicated. The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab; one in four thought it had been engineered intentionally.This chaos was, at least in part, manufactured.Powerful forces, from Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, have battled to control the narrative about where the virus came from. Leading officials and allied media in all four countries functioned as super-spreaders of disinformation, using their stature to sow doubt and amplify politically expedient conspiracies already in circulation, a nine-month Associated Press investigation of state-sponsored disinformation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found. The analysis was based on a review of millions of social media postings and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube, Telegram, and other platforms.Disinformation leaderAs the pandemic swept the world, it was China — not Russia — that took the lead in spreading foreign disinformation about COVID-19 virus’s origins.Beijing was reacting to weeks of fiery rhetoric from leading U.S. Republicans, including then-President Donald Trump, who sought to rebrand COVID-19 virus as “the China virus.”China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Beijing has worked to promote friendship and serve facts, while defending itself against hostile forces seeking to politicize the pandemic.“All parties should firmly say ‘no’ to the dissemination of disinformation,” the ministry said in a statement to AP, but added, “In the face of trumped-up charges, it is justified and proper to bust lies and clarify rumors by setting out the facts.”FILE – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian takes a question at the daily media briefing in Beijing on April 8, 2020.The day after the World Health Organization designated the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shot off a series of late-night tweets that launched what may be the party’s first truly global digital experiment with overt disinformation.Chinese diplomats have only recently mobilized on Western social media platforms, more than tripling their Twitter accounts and more than doubling their Facebook accounts since late 2019. Both platforms are banned in China.”When did patient zero begin in US?” Zhao tweeted on March 12. “How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe (sic) us an explanation!”What happened next showcases the power of China’s global messaging machine.Spray of tweetsOn Twitter alone, Zhao’s aggressive spray of 11 tweets on March 12 and 13 was cited more than 99,000 times over the next six weeks, in at least 54 languages, according to an analysis conducted by DFRLab. The accounts that referenced him had nearly 275 million followers on Twitter, a number that almost certainly includes duplicate followers and does not distinguish fake accounts.Influential conservatives on Twitter, including Donald Trump Jr., hammered Zhao, propelling his tweets to their largest audiences.China’s Global Times and at least 30 Chinese diplomatic accounts, from France to Panama, rushed in to support Zhao. Venezuela’s foreign minister and RT’s correspondent in Caracas, as well as Saudi accounts close to the kingdom’s royal family, also significantly extended Zhao’s reach, helping launch his ideas into Spanish and Arabic.FILE – The logo of Sina Corp.’s Chinese microblogging site, Weibo, on a screen, Beijing, September 2011.His accusations got uncritical treatment in Russian and Iranian state media and shot back through QAnon discussion boards. But his biggest audience, by far, lay within China itself — even though Twitter is banned there. Popular hashtags about his tweetstorm were viewed 314 million times on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, which does not distinguish unique views.Late on the night of March 13, Zhao posted a message of gratitude on his personal Weibo: “Thank you for your support to me, let us work hard for the motherland ??!”China leaned on Russian disinformation strategy and infrastructure, turning to an established network of Kremlin proxies to seed and spread messaging. In January, Russian state media were the first to legitimize the theory that the U.S. engineered the virus as a weapon. Russian politicians soon joined the chorus.”One was amplifying the other. How much it was command controlled, how much it was opportunistic, it was hard to tell,” said Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, based in Riga, Latvia.FILE – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a televised speech, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2021. (Official Khamenei Website/Handout via Reuters)Iran participatesIran also jumped in. The same day Zhao tweeted that the virus might have come from the U.S. Army, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced COVID-19 could be the result of a biological attack. He would later cite that conspiracy to justify refusing COVID-19 aid from the U.S.Ten days after Zhao’s first conspiratorial tweets, China’s global state media apparatus kicked in.”Did the U.S. government intentionally conceal the reality of COVID-19 with the flu?” asked a suggestive op-ed in Mandarin published by China Radio International on March 22. “Why was the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick in Maryland, the largest biochemical testing base, shut down in July 2019?”Within days, versions of the piece appeared more than 350 times in Chinese state outlets, mostly in Mandarin, but also around the world in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic, AP found.China’s Embassy in France promoted the story on Twitter and Facebook. It appeared on YouTube, Weibo, WeChat and a host of Chinese video platforms, including Haokan, Xigua, Baijiahao, Bilibili, iQIYI, Kuaishou and Youku. A seven-second version set to driving music appeared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.No consequences”Clearly pushing these kinds of conspiracy theories, disinformation, does not usually result in any negative consequences for them,” said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow in the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund.In April, Russia and Iran largely dropped the bioweapon conspiracy in their overt messaging.China, however, has carried on.In January, as a team from the World Health Organization poured through records in China to try to pinpoint the origins of the virus, spokeswoman Hua Chunying of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the U.S. to “open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas biolabs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States.”Her remarks went viral in China.China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told AP it resolutely opposes spreading conspiracy theories.”We have not done it before and will not do it in the future,” the ministry said in a statement. “False information is the common enemy of mankind, and China has always opposed the creation and spread of false information.”  
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Argentina’s health minister has resigned after he reportedly gave preferential treatment to those with personal connections when authorizing coronavirus vaccinations.The Associated Press reported that President Alberto Fernández, through his chief of staff, asked for Minister of Health Ginés González García’s resignation Friday after a high-profile local journalist said he had been vaccinated after personally asking the minister.González García had led the country’s COVID-19 strategy.The journalist was one of at least 10 people reported to have been inoculated without following protocol.The scandal heightened concerns about corruption in the region, as well as access to limited doses of vaccines.Two Cabinet officials in Peru resigned earlier this month following reports of hundreds of Peruvian officials inappropriately receiving vaccine doses.Praise from WHOMeanwhile, the World Health Organization said it welcomed the recent pledges of coronavirus vaccines from several Western countries to the international health group that will help ensure an equitable allocation of vaccines around the world.FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, speaks during a session of the Executive Board on the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.“There is a growing movement behind vaccine equity, and I welcome that world leaders are stepping up to the challenge by making new commitments to effectively end this pandemic by sharing doses and increasing funds to COVAX,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said recently. COVAX is the mechanism WHO established for the global distribution of coronavirus vaccines.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that the pandemic would not end until the world was vaccinated. In remarks after the videoconference of leaders of the G-7, the group of the largest, developed economies, she said Germany and other wealthy countries might need to give some of their own stock of vaccines to developing nations.French President Emmanuel Macron told the conference that Europe and the United States must quickly send enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa to inoculate the continent’s health care workers or risk losing influence to Russia and China.The coronavirus death toll on the African continent surpassed 100,000 Friday, as African countries struggle to obtain vaccines to counteract the pandemic.South Africa alone accounts for nearly half of the confirmed deaths in Africa, with more than 48,000, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center in the U.S. The country, which is facing its own variant of the virus, also accounts for nearly half the confirmed cases in the region, with more than 1.5 million. Total cases across the African continent are more than 3.8 million.The 54-nation continent of about 1.3 billion people reached 100,000 deaths shortly after marking one year since the first coronavirus case was confirmed on the continent, in Egypt on February 14, 2020.The actual death toll from the virus in Africa is believed to be higher than the official count as some who died were likely never included in confirmed tallies.FILE – A container with doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus disease is loaded into a truck, at the airport in Luque, Paraguay, Feb. 18, 2021.Russian vaccinesRussia’s deputy prime minister said Saturday on state television that Russia was on target to produce 88 million coronavirus vaccine doses in the first six months of 2021. Tatiana Golikova said 83 million of the doses would be the Sputnik V vaccine.Russia’s prime minister, also speaking on state television Saturday, said that Russia had approved a third coronavirus vaccine for domestic use.Mikhail Mishustin said the first 120,000 doses of CoviVac, produced by the Chumakov Centre in St. Petersburg, would be released in March.California’s governor said his state would set aside 10% of its vaccines for teachers and school employees, beginning March 1. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged U.S. school districts to reopen, teachers unions have pushed back against the action, saying safety precautions, such as vaccines for school staff, need to be in place first.Denmark is imposing stricter regulations at some of its border crossings with Germany and has temporarily closed others because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the German town of Flensburg.“Therefore, we are now introducing considerably more intense border checks and closing a number of smaller border crossings along the Danish-German border,” Danish Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup said in a statement.Johns Hopkins reported Saturday afternoon EST that there were more than 110,940,000 global COVID-19 cases.  The U.S. had more cases than any other country with 28 million, followed by India with 10.9 million and Brazil with 10 million. Global deaths were more than 2.4 million.FILE – A child wearing a mask to protect against the coronavirus rests on the bank of the Yangtze River in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province, April 16, 2020.Book dealA major publishing company has picked up a self-published children’s book, illustrated with simple line drawings, about a little boy struggling with all the changes in his life because of the COVID-19 pandemic.When Can I Go Back to School was written by Anna Friend, a theater director, about her son Billy. She told The Guardian newspaper, “I wrote the book to try and understand what was happening to him.”She asked Jake Biggin, a friend who is an artist, to do the illustrations. They started selling the book on Amazon and now they have a deal with Scholastic.  
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The World Health Organization says it welcomes the recent pledges of coronavirus vaccines from several Western countries to the international health group that will help ensure an equitable allocation of vaccines to countries around the world.“There is a growing movement behind vaccine equity, and I welcome that world leaders are stepping up to the challenge by making new commitments to effectively end this pandemic by sharing doses and increasing funds to COVAX,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said recently. COVAX is the global mechanism WHO established for the global distribution of coronavirus vaccines.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday the pandemic will not end until the world is vaccinated. In remarks after the video conference of leaders of the G-7, the group of the largest, developed economies, she said Germany and other wealthy countries may need to give some of their own stock of vaccines to developing nations.French President Emmanuel Macron told the conference that Europe and the United States must quickly send enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa to inoculate the continent’s health care workers or risk losing influence to Russia and China.The coronavirus death toll on the African continent surpassed 100,000 Friday, as African countries struggle to obtain vaccines to counteract the pandemic.South Africa alone accounts for nearly half of the confirmed deaths in Africa, with more than 48,000, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The country, which is facing its own variant of the virus, also accounts for nearly half the confirmed cases in the region, with more than 1.5 million. Total cases across the African continent are more than 3.8 million.The 54-nation continent of about 1.3 billion people reached 100,000 deaths shortly after marking one year since the first coronavirus case was confirmed on the continent, in Egypt on Feb. 14, 2020.The actual death toll from the virus in Africa is believed to be higher than the official count as some who died were likely never included in confirmed tallies.Visitors wear face masks while walking the pier amid the COVID-19 pandemic Feb. 19, 2021, in Santa Monica, Calif.Russia’s deputy prime minister said Saturday on state television that Russia is on target to produce 88 million coronavirus vaccine doses in the first six months of 2021. Tatiana Golikova said 83 million of the doses will be the Sputnik V vaccine.Russia’s prime minister, also speaking on state television Saturday, said that Russia has approved a third coronavirus vaccine for domestic use.Mikhail Mishustin said the first 120,000 doses of CoviVac, produced by the Chumakov Centre in St. Petersburg, will be released in March.California’s governor says his state will set aside 10% of its vaccines for teachers and school employees, beginning March 1. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged U.S. school districts to reopen, teachers’ unions have pushed back against the action, saying safety precautions, such as vaccines for school staff, need to be in place first.Denmark is imposing stricter regulations at some of its border crossings with Germany and has temporarily closed others because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the German town of Flensburg.A sign encourages visitors to wear face masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic Feb. 19, 2021, in Santa Monica, Calif.“Therefore, we are now introducing considerably more intense border checks and closing a number of smaller border crossings along the Danish-German border,” Danish Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup said in a statement.Johns Hopkins reported early Saturday that there are 110,747,370 global COVID-19 cases. The U.S. has more cases than any other country with 28 million, followed by India with 10.9 million and Brazil with 10 million.A major publishing company has picked up a self-published children’s book, illustrated with simple line drawings, about a little boy struggling with all the changes in his life due to the COVID-19 pandemic.When Can I Go Back To School was written by Anna Friend, a theater director, about her son Billy. She told The Guardian newspaper, “I wrote the book to try and understand what was happening to him.”She asked Jake Biggin, a friend who is an artist, to do the illustrations. They started selling the book on Amazon and now they have a deal with Scholastic.
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Alphabet Inc.’s Google fired staff scientist Margaret Mitchell on Friday, they both said, a move that fanned company divisions on academic freedom and diversity that were on display since its December dismissal of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru.Google said in a statement that Mitchell violated the company’s code of conduct and security policies by moving electronic files outside the company. Mitchell, who announced her firing on Twitter, did not respond to a request for comment.Google’s ethics in artificial intelligence work has been under scrutiny since the firing of Gebru, a scientist who gained prominence for exposing bias in facial analysis systems. The dismissal prompted thousands of Google workers to protest. She and Mitchell had called for greater diversity and inclusion among Google’s research staff and expressed concern that the company was starting to censor papers critical of its products.Gebru said Google fired her after she questioned an order not to publish a study saying AI that mimics language could hurt marginalized populations. Mitchell, a co-author of the paper, publicly criticized the company for firing Gebru and undermining the credibility of her work.The pair for about two years had co-led the ethical AI team, started by Mitchell.Google AI research director Zoubin Ghahramani and a company lawyer informed Mitchell’s team of her firing on Friday in a meeting called at short notice, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person said little explanation was given for the dismissal. Google declined to comment.The company said Mitchell’s firing followed disciplinary recommendations by investigators and a review committee. It said her violations “included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.” The investigation began Jan. 19.Google employee Alex Hanna said on Twitter the company was running a “smear campaign” against Mitchell and Gebru, with whom she worked closely. Google declined to comment on Hanna’s remarks.Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly write about the negative effects of technology and offer unflattering perspectives on their employer’s products.Reuters reported exclusively in December that Google introduced a new “sensitive topics” review last year to ensure that papers on topics such as the oil industry and content recommendation systems would not get the company into legal or regulatory trouble. Mitchell publicly expressed concern that the policy could lead to censorship.Google reiterated to researchers in a memo and meeting on Friday that it was working to improve pre-publication review of papers. It also announced new policies on Friday to handle sensitive departures and evaluate executives based on team diversity and inclusion.
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The coronavirus death toll on the African continent surpassed 100,000 on Friday, as African countries struggled to obtain vaccines to counteract the pandemic.South Africa alone accounts for nearly half of the confirmed deaths in Africa with 48,859, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The country, which is facing its own variant of the virus, also accounts for nearly half the confirmed cases in the region, with more than 1.5 million. Total cases across the African continent are more than 3.8 million.The 54-nation continent of about 1.3 billion people reached the milestone of 100,000 deaths shortly after marking one year since the first coronavirus case was confirmed on the continent, in Egypt on Feb. 14, 2020.The actual death toll from the virus in Africa is believed to be higher than the official count as some who died were likely never included in confirmed tallies.Countries across the continent are only beginning to see the arrival of coronavirus vaccines, months after some wealthier countries are well under way in the process of vaccinating their most vulnerable populations.United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that the global manufacturing capacity of coronavirus vaccines needs to double to meet global demand.In a virtual address to this year’s Munich Security Conference, he called for a global vaccination plan to ensure an equitable vaccine distribution and said the biggest world powers must work together.Backdropped by a national flag, a doctor waits to receive a dose of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V at the Ana Francisca Perez de Leon II public hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 19, 2021.Without naming the United States and China, he said, “Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe into two opposing areas in a Great Fracture.”U.S. President Joe Biden announced Friday the U.S. would soon begin releasing $4 billion it pledged to a global campaign to bolster the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries. The funds were approved by Congress in December, but former President Donald Trump had declined to participate in the program.At his first meeting as president with world leaders at the Munich Security Conference, Biden announced the financial support for COVAX, a coalition tasked with distributing vaccines to low- and middle-income countries.“Even as we fight to get out of the teeth of this pandemic, a resurgence of Ebola in Africa is a stark reminder that we must simultaneously work to finally finance health security, strengthen global health systems, and create early warning systems to prevent, detect and respond to future biological threats, because they will keep coming,” Biden said at the virtual meeting.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the pandemic will not end until the world is vaccinated. In remarks after the video conference of leaders of the G-7 group of large, developed economies, she said Germany and other wealthy countries may need to give some of their own stock of vaccines to developing nations.French President Emmanuel Macron told the conference that Europe and the United States must quickly send enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa to inoculate the continent’s health care workers or risk losing influence to Russia and China.”If we announce billions today to supply doses in six months, eight months, a year, our friends in Africa will, under justified pressure from their people, buy doses from the Chinese and the Russians,” Macron told the conference.A man and child wearing face masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus walk past lanterns at a public park in Beijing on Feb. 19, 2021.Also Friday, Brazil reported 1,308 additional COVID-19 deaths and 51,050 new confirmed cases of the virus on Friday, according to data released by the Health Ministry.The South American nation has now recorded more than 243,000 deaths and more than 100 million cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins.In Russia, officials reported Friday 13,433 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24-hour period and 470 deaths.Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases said a new COVID-19 variant has emerged at a Tokyo immigration facility.A day after the Australian state of Victoria lifted its COVID-19 five-day lockdown, three family members tested positive for the coronavirus. Two of the three had quarantined at the Holiday Inn at the Melbourne airport.Health officials in Spain say they have given a full two-shot course of the coronavirus vaccines to almost all the country’s elderly nursing home residents.Officials in the United States extended land border closures with Canada and Mexico for another 30 days. The extension is the first announced since President Biden took office in January.White House officials said Friday that the distribution of the vaccine has been held up in all 50 states by winter storms and power outages. They say the country has a backlog of 6 million vaccine doses, but that the federal government expects to be caught up by next week.In another development Friday, pharmaceutical partners Pfizer and BioNTech said a new study they conducted indicates their COVID-19 vaccine can remain effective when stored in standard freezers for up to two weeks.If the finding is approved, it would be a significant development since one of the initial drawbacks of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was that it was required to be stored in ultra-low-temperature freezers not commonly found in standard clinics and pharmacies.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that data collected in the first month of vaccinations in the United States have found no concerning new issues with either the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or the Moderna vaccine.It said data collected from the administration of 13.8 million doses of vaccine between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 13, 2021, showed 6,994 reports of adverse events after vaccination, with 90.8% of them classified as nonserious and 9.2% as serious.There are more than 110 million global cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins. The United States tops the list with nearly 28 million infections. India is second with nearly 11 million cases, followed by Brazil with more than 10 million.
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The United States has officially rejoined the Paris Agreement after the Trump administration abandoned the global climate pact saying it was too costly for business.  VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.Produced by:  Kimberlyn Weeks   
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Jolted by a sweeping hack that may have revealed government and corporate secrets to Russia, U.S. officials are scrambling to reinforce the nation’s cyber defenses and recognizing that an agency created two years ago to protect America’s networks and infrastructure lacks the money, tools and authority to counter such sophisticated threats.The breach, which hijacked widely used software from Texas-based SolarWinds Inc., has exposed the profound vulnerability of civilian government networks and the limitations of efforts to detect threats.It’s also likely to unleash a wave of spending on technology modernization and cybersecurity.”It’s really highlighted the investments we need to make in cybersecurity to have the visibility to block these attacks in the future,” Anne Neuberger, the newly appointed deputy national security adviser for cyber and emergency technology, said Wednesday at a White House briefing. ‘Likely Russian’ hackersThe reaction reflects the severity of a hack that was disclosed only in December. The hackers, as yet unidentified but described by officials as “likely Russian,” had unfettered access to the data and email of at least nine U.S. government agencies and about 100 private companies, with the full extent of the compromise still unknown. And while this incident appeared to be aimed at stealing information, it heightened fears that future hackers could damage critical infrastructure, like electrical grids or water systems.President Joe Biden plans to release an executive order soon that Neuberger said would include about eight measures intended to address security gaps exposed by the hack. The administration has also proposed expanding by 30% the budget of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, or CISA, a little-known entity now under intense scrutiny because of the SolarWinds breach.President Joe Biden participates in a virtual event with the Munich Security Conference in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 19, 2021.Biden, making his first major international speech Friday to the Munich Security Conference, said that dealing with “Russian recklessness and hacking into computer networks in the United States and the world has become critical to protecting our collective security.”Republicans and Democrats in Congress have called for expanding the size and role of the agency, a component of the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in November 2018 amid a sense that U.S. adversaries were increasingly targeting civilian government and corporate networks as well as the critical infrastructure, such as the energy grid that is increasingly vulnerable in a wired world.Call for resourcesSpeaking at a recent hearing on cybersecurity, Representative John Katko, a Republican from New York, urged his colleagues to quickly “find a legislative vehicle to give CISA the resources it needs to fully respond and protect us.”Biden’s COVID-19 relief package called for $690 million more for CISA, as well as providing the agency with $9 billion to modernize IT across the government in partnership with the General Services Administration.That has been pulled from the latest version of the bill because some members didn’t see a connection to the pandemic. But Representative Jim Langevin, co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said additional funding for CISA was likely to reemerge with bipartisan support in upcoming legislation, perhaps an infrastructure bill.FILE – Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., prepares the dais after he was chosen as speaker pro tempore for the opening day of the 116th Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2019.”Our cyber infrastructure is every bit as important as our roads and bridges,” Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, said in an interview. “It’s important to our economy. It’s important to protecting human life, and we need to make sure we have a modern and resilient cyber infrastructure.”CISA operates a threat-detection system known as Einstein that was unable to detect the SolarWinds breach. Brandon Wales, CISA’s acting director, said that was because the breach was hidden in a legitimate software update from SolarWinds to its customers. After it was able to identify the malicious activity, the system was able to scan federal networks and identify some government victims.”It was designed to work in concert with other security programs inside the agencies,” he said.The former head of CISA, Christopher Krebs, told the House Homeland Security Committee this month that the U.S. should increase support to the agency, in part so it can issue grants to state and local governments to improve their cybersecurity and accelerate IT modernization across the federal government, which is part of the Biden proposal.FILE – Then-U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs speaks to reporters at CISA’s Election Day Operation Center in Arlington, Va., March 3, 2020.”Are we going to stop every attack? No. But we can take care of the most common risks and make the bad guys work that much harder and limit their success,” said Krebs, who was ousted by then-President Donald Trump after the election and now co-owns a consulting company whose clients include SolarWinds.The breach was discovered in early December by the private security firm FireEye, a cause of concern for some officials.”It was pretty alarming that we found out about it through a private company as opposed to our being able to detect it ourselves to begin with,” Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, said at her January confirmation hearing.Right after the hack was announced, the Treasury Department bypassed its normal competitive contracting process to hire the private security firm CrowdStrike, U.S. contract records show. The department declined to comment. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has said that dozens of email accounts of top officials at the agency were hacked.’Backdoor code’The Social Security Administration hired FireEye to do an independent forensic analysis of its network logs. The agency had a “backdoor code” installed like other SolarWinds customers, but “there were no indicators suggesting we were targeted or that a future attack occurred beyond the initial software installation,” spokesperson Mark Hinkle said.Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the hack has highlighted several failures at the federal level but not necessarily a lack of expertise by public sector employees. Still, “I doubt we will ever have all the capacity we’d need in-house,” he said.There have been some new cybersecurity measures taken in recent months. In the defense policy bill that passed in January, lawmakers created a national director of cybersecurity, replacing a position at the White House that had been cut under Trump, and granted CISA the power to issue administrative subpoenas as part of its efforts to identify vulnerable systems and notify operators.The legislation also granted CISA increased authority to hunt for threats across the networks of civilian government agencies, something Langevin said they were only previously able to do when invited.”In practical terms, what that meant is they weren’t invited in because no department or agency wants to look bad,” he said. “So you know what was happening? Everyone was sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that cyberthreats were going to go away.” 
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President Joe Biden toured a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing plant Friday afternoon outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he touted the safety of the vaccine.”If there’s one message to cut through to everyone in this country, it’s this: The vaccines are safe,” he said, according to NBC News. “Please, for yourself, your family, your community, this country, take the vaccine when it’s your turn … that’s how to beat this pandemic.”During his tour of the “freezer farm,” where doses are stored in ultra-cold conditions, he was joined by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and White House virus-response coordinator Jeff Zienets. The presidential visit had been delayed by a day because of inclement weather.Speaking before Biden, Bourla said Pfizer would more than double vaccine production capacity in the coming weeks, the Daily Mail reported. Currently it averages 5 million doses per week.President Biden at Pfizer plant: “If there’s one message to cut through to everyone in this country, it’s this: The vaccines are safe. Please, for yourself, your family, your community, this country, take the vaccine when it’s your turn … That’s how to beat this pandemic.” pic.twitter.com/M92BSyw53a— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 19, 2021On Friday, Pfizer and its vaccine partner BioNTech said they had asked the Food and Drug Administration to allow the vaccine to be stored in normal freezers, a move that would make it easier for the company to ship the vaccine. Currently, the FDA requires the virus to be stored between -112°F and -76°F.Earlier Friday, the administration said the winter storms in the Midwest and South had delayed the delivery of 6 million vaccine doses, which would impact every state. The 6 million represents three days’ worth of vaccine shipments.The administration also said it was working with Florida and Pennsylvania to open more vaccination centers.
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U.S. President Joe Biden pledged $4 billion to the World Health Organization’s COVAX plan designed to help provide COVID-19 vaccines for 92 low- and middle-income economies around the world. During Friday’s virtual G-7 and the Munich Security Conference, Biden championed U.S. involvement in international alliances. VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara has more.  
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Two South African medics are swapping their medical gear for oars as they train for a risky 4,000-kilometer (2,500-mile) journey by rowboat through the Arctic Northwest Passage.If the 14-member team finishes the trip — across the north of Canada to Alaska — they will make history, as all attempts to row the icy waters have failed. “Nobody conquers a passage there,” said Leven Brown, the expedition leader. ”The ocean allows you to pass. And there is a very important distinction there. We will be lucky to get through the Northwest Passage, to row from Pond Inlet at the top right-hand corner of Canada, to the top left-hand corner of Alaska, a place called Point Barrow.”  In decades past, travel through the icy, Arctic waters was only possible by large ships. Physical, mental toll   Reduced summer ice will allow the team to row the passage, but the journey — planned for next year — will still be a physical and mental challenge.   The South African team member, Daniel Lobjoilt, says such a long, confined journey will likely take a toll. “We are going to be out there, in the elements, by ourselves, essentially, and I think after a certain period of time of repetitive rowing, on and off for, you know, weeks on end. Pressure on my mind might be the biggest challenge I have to overcome. So, my fear is … is that encounter that I have to have with myself,” Lobjoilt said.  Gathering dataAlong the journey, Brown says the team will use scientific tools to gather data for climate change and wildlife studies.    “We hope to be the first modern-day expedition through the Northwest Passage, and to highlight, you know, what is happening with the environment and the climate. This is the sort of expedition that wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be possible, you know, 50 years ago,” he said.  Despite the history of failed attempts to row the passage, South African medic Dr. Daniel Kritzinger says the team is hoping to finish the trip within two months, before the winter ice returns.    “There has been a previous attempt in 2013, also trying to row the Northwest Passage, but they were unsuccessful as the ice caught on them,” he said. “So hopefully the ice will stay back enough for us to finish, and to be the first to row the Northwest Passage.” The team is planning another expedition to help them prepare.    In June, they will row from England’s Newcastle to Orkney, a much smaller distance than the length of the Arctic Northwest Passage. 
 
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Pharmaceutical partners Pfizer and BioNTech said Friday a new study the companies conducted indicates their COVID-19 vaccine can remain effective when stored in standard freezers for up to two weeks. In a statement posted on Pfizer’s website, the companies say they have submitted the new data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration demonstrating their COVID-19 vaccine is stable when stored at -25°C to -15°C, temperatures commonly found in pharmaceutical freezers and refrigerators.  The new data would be a significant development. One of the initial drawbacks of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was that it was required to be stored in ultra-low temperature freezers not commonly found in standard clinics and pharmacies. The requirement added considerable expense to transporting the vaccine and storing and distributing it in less developed areas.  The company said it submitted the data to the FDA to support a proposed update to the U.S. Emergency Use Authorization. BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said in the statement the companies’ top priority has been to make their vaccine safe, effective and available to the most vulnerable people in the world. He said it is their hope the new data will give pharmacies and vaccination centers greater flexibility. FILE – Israelis receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from medical professionals at a coronavirus vaccination center set up on a shopping mall parking lot in Givataim, Israel, Feb. 4, 2021.A separate study done in Israel indicates the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 85 percent effective after the first dose.  The study, published Thursday in the British medical journal The Lancet, was conducted on more than 7,000 Israeli health care workers, who were vaccinated at the Sheba Medical Center. Researchers saw an 85% reduction of symptomatic COVID-19 between 15 and 28 days after the single shot was given. Overall that study showed infections, including those among asymptomatic patients, were reduced by 75 percent. 
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