As India sets new daily records in COVID-19 deaths and infections, some experts see the humanitarian crisis as an opportunity for other nations to counter China’s vaccine diplomacy elsewhere.Three of the nations that make up the Quad — U.S., Australia and Japan — are expected to assist the fourth, India, after U.S. President Joe Biden promised April 26 to provide New Delhi with the China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying gestures during a press conference in Beijing on Dec. 10, 2020.China has denied it is engaged in vaccine diplomacy, and it says it is supplying “vaccine aid,” This handout photo taken on May 3, 2021, shows Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte receiving a dose of China’s Sinopharm to battle the COVID-19 coronavirus at Malacanang Palace in Manila.The partnership allows Quad leaders to take “shared action necessary to expand safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing in 2021” and “work together to strengthen and assist countries in the Indo-Pacific with vaccination, in close coordination with the existing relevant multilateral mechanisms including World Health Organization (WHO) and COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access),” according to a statement the White House released March 12.Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, thinks that the partnership will need to be modified “given that it was dependent on Indian vaccine manufacturing capacity. India will, understandably, prioritize vaccines for its domestic population.”Ideally, such partnerships should be fully coordinated with COVAX and WHO to maximize impact, Adalja said in an email to VOA Mandarin. However, Joe Thomas Karackattu, assistant professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India, where he focuses on Sino-Indian relations and China’s foreign and economic policy, told VOA Mandarin via email that COVID-19 relief cannot become a strategic turf war.”All countries have to work together,” he said. “If the Quad delivers on the pitch for the ‘Quad Vaccine Partnership’ … it might cement a longer-term foundation for the Quad to coordinate on multilateral cooperation, but that necessarily does not automatically translate into an organic and systematic modus vivendi in strategic affairs.” On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that it supports waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. South Africa and India had proposed the waiver, which is opposed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a group that includes vaccine makers such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,” wrote U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.This is a monumental moment in the fight against #COVID19. The commitment by @POTUS Joe Biden & @USTradeRep@AmbassadorTai to support the waiver of IP protections on vaccines is a powerful example of 🇺🇸 leadership to address global health challenges. pic.twitter.com/3iBt3jfdEr— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) May 5, 2021 While a waiver could remove obstacles to ramping up the production of vaccines in developing countries, crafting the waiver may take time because it will require approval from all 164 members of the World Trade Organization.Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Facebook has taken down a network of hundreds of fake accounts and pages targeting people in Ukraine and linked to individuals previously sanctioned by the United States for efforts to interfere in U.S. elections, the company said Thursday.Facebook said the network managed a long-running deceptive campaign across multiple social media platforms and other websites, posing as independent news outlets and promoting favorable content about Ukrainian politicians, including activity that was likely for hire. The company said it started its probe after a tip from the FBI.Facebook attributed the activity to individuals and entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, including politician Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian lawmaker who was blacklisted by the U.S. government in September over accusations he tried to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election won by President Joe Biden. Facebook said it removed Derkach’s accounts in October 2020.Derkach told Reuters he would comment on Facebook’s investigation on Friday. Facebook also attributed the network to political consultants associated with Ukrainian politicians Oleh Kulinich and Volodymyr Groysman, Ukraine’s former prime minister. Kulinich did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Groysman could not immediately be reached for comment.Facebook said that as well as promoting these politicians, the network also pushed positive material about actors across the political spectrum, likely as a paid service. It said the activity it investigated began around 2015, was solely focused on Ukraine, and posted anti-Russia content.”You can really think of these operators as would-be influence mercenaries, renting out inauthentic online support in Ukrainian political circles,” Ben Nimmo, Facebook’s global influence operations threat intelligence lead, said on a call with reporters.Facebook’s investigation team said Ukraine, which has been among the top sources of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that it removes from the site, is home to an increasing number of influence operations selling services.Facebook said it removed 363 pages, which were followed by about 2.37 million accounts, and 477 accounts from this network for violating its rules. The network also spent about $496,000 in Facebook and Instagram ads, Facebook said.
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Twitter wants to curb what the company calls “potentially harmful or offensive” tweets. The social media company announced Wednesday it has released a feature that can detect a mean tweet and prompt a user to be sure they really want to send it. “People come to Twitter to talk about what’s happening, and sometimes conversations about things we care about can get intense, and people say things in the moment they might regret later,” the company said in a blog post. “That’s why in 2020, we tested prompts that encouraged people to pause and reconsider a potentially harmful or offensive reply before they hit send.” The prompt says: “Want to review this before tweeting?” Users can then decide whether to send, edit or delete the tweet. Twitter did not specify what would be considered “potentially harmful or offensive.” The company currently has a similar feature that asks users if they went to read an article before retweeting a link to the article. Twitter’s new mean tweet detector has been tested for the past year and will be rolled out soon to English-language Twitter. The company said that while testing, 34% of users, when prompted, either edited the offensive tweet or did not send it at all. Last week, Twitter stock plunged 10% on lower-than-expected user growth.
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The Netflix series “Zero,” which premiered globally last month, is the first Italian TV production to feature a predominantly Black cast, a bright spot in an otherwise bleak Italian television landscape where the persistent use of racist language and imagery is sparking new protests.
Even as “Zero” creates a breakthrough in Italian TV history, on private networks, comedy teams are asserting their right to use racial slurs and make slanty-eye gestures as satire. The main state broadcaster RAI is under fire for attempting to censor an Italian rapper’s remarks highlighting homophobia in a right-wing political party. And under outside pressure, RAI is advising against — but not outright banning — the use of blackface in variety skits.
With cultural tensions heightened, the protagonists of “Zero” hope the series — which focuses on second-generation Black Italians and is based on a novel by the son of Angolan immigrants — will help accelerate public acceptance that Italy has become a multicultural nation.
“I always say that Italy is a country tied to traditions, more than racist,” said Antonio Dikele Distefano, who co-wrote the series and whose six novels, including the one on which “Zero” was based, focus on the lives of the children of immigrants to Italy.
“I am convinced that through these things — writing novels, the possibility of making a series — things can change,” he said.
“Zero” is a radical departure because it provides role models for young Black Italians who have not seen themselves reflected in the culture, and because it creates a window to changes in Italian society that swaths of the majority population have not acknowledged.
Activists fighting racism in Italian television underline the fact that it was developed by Netflix, based in the United States and with a commitment to spend $100 million to improve diversity, and not by Italian public or private television.
“As a Black Italian, I never saw myself represented in Italian television. Or rather, I saw examples of how Black women were hyper-sexualized,” said Sara Lemlem, an activist and journalist who is part of a group of second-generation Italians protesting racist tropes on Italian TV. “There was never a Black woman in a role of an everyday woman: a Black student, a Black nurse, a Black teacher. I never saw myself represented in the country in which I was born and raised.”
“Zero,” which premiered on April 21, landed immediately among the top 10 shows streaming on Netflix in Italy.
Perhaps even more telling of its impact: The lead actor, Giuseppe Dave Seke, was mobbed not even a week later by Italian schoolchildren clamoring for autographs as he gave an interview in the Milan neighborhood where the series is set. Seke, a 25-year-old who grew up in Padova to parents from Congo, is not a household name in Italy. “Zero” was his first foray into acting.
“If you ask these children who is in front of them, they will never tell you: the first Black Italian actor. They will tell you, ‘a superhero,’ or they will tell you, ‘Dave’,” Dikele Distefano said, watching the scene in awe.
In the series, Zero is the nickname of a Black Italian pizza bike deliveryman who discovers he has a superpower that allows him to become invisible. He uses it to help his friends in a mixed-race Milan neighborhood.
It’s a direct play on the notion of invisibility that was behind the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in Italian squares last summer following George Floyd’s murder in the United States. Black Italians rallied for changes in the country’s citizenship law and to be recognized as part of a society where they too often feel marginalized.
“When a young person doesn’t feel seen, he feels a bit invisible,” Seke said. “Hopefully this series can help those people who felt like me or like Antonio. … There can be many people who have not found someone similar to themselves, and live still with this distress.”
The protest movement has shifted from targeting Italian fashion, where racist gaffes have highlighted the lack of Black creative workers, to Italian television, where a movement dubbing itself CambieRAI held protests last month demanding that Italian state and private TV stop using racist language and blackface in skits.
CambieRAI plays upon the name of Italian state TV, RAI, and the Italian language command “you will change.” The movement, bringing together second-generation Italians from a range of associations, also wants RAI — which is funded by mandatory annual fees on anyone owning a TV in Italy — to set up an advisory council on diversity and inclusion.
Last week RAI last responded to an earlier request by other, longer-established groups asking that it stop broadcasting shows using blackface, citing skits where performers darkened their skin to impersonate singers like Beyonce or Ghali, an Italian rapper of Tunisian descent.
“We said we were sorry, and we made a formal commitment to inform all of our editors to ask that they don’t use blackface anymore,” Giovanni Parapini, RAI’s director for social causes, told The Associated Press. He said that was as far as they could go due to editorial freedom.
The associations said they viewed the commitment as positive, even if it fell short of a sought-for ban, since RAI at least recognized that the use of blackface was a problem.
Parapini, however, said the public network did not accept the criticism of the CambieRAI group “because that would mean that RAI in all these years did nothing for integration.”
He noted that the network had never been called out by regulators and listed programming that included minorities, from a Gambia-born sportscaster known as Idris in the 1990s to plans for a televised festival in July featuring second-generation Italians.
Dikele Distefano said for him the goal is not to banish racist language, calling it “a lost battle.” He sees his art as an agent for change.
He is working on a film now where he aims to have a 70% second-generation Italian cast and crew. “Zero” has already helped create positions in the industry for a Black hairstylist, a Black screenwriter and a director of Arab and Italian origin, he noted.
“The battle is to live in a place where we all have the same opportunity, where there are more writers who are Black, Asian, South American, where there is the possibility to tell the stories from the point of view of those who live it,” he said.
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Pfizer and BioNTech will donate their COVID-19 vaccine to athletes training for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, the International Olympic Committee said Thursday. Doses are expected to be delivered later this month, which would be in time for the athletes to be fully immunized for the games, starting July 23. “We are inviting the athletes and participating delegations of the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games to lead by example and accept the vaccine where and when possible,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement. Last month, the IOC announced a similar deal to distribute Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines to Chinese athletes prior to both the Tokyo Summer Games and the Beijing Winter Games. Most countries have yet to approve Chinese vaccines for emergency use. How the Tokyo Games will be held is still in question as Japan is reportedly considering extending its coronavirus state of emergency, Reuters reported.
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The recent decision about Facebook and former President Donald Trump sends a signal to world leaders everywhere that to use social media, they have to play by a set of rules that are still forming. Tina Trinh has more.Produced by: Matt Dibble
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Sixty years after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, everyday people are on the verge of following in his cosmic footsteps.Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin used Wednesday’s anniversary to kick off an auction for a seat on the company’s first crew spaceflight — a short Shepard-like hop launched by a rocket named New Shepard. The Texas liftoff is targeted for July 20, the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic aims to kick off tourist flights next year, just as soon as he straps into his space-skimming, plane-launched rocketship for a test run from the New Mexico base.And Elon Musk’s SpaceX will launch a billionaire and his sweepstakes winners in September. That will be followed by a flight by three businessmen to the International Space Station in January.”We’ve always enjoyed this incredible thing called space, but we always want more people to be able to experience it as well,” NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough said from the space station Wednesday. “So I think this is a great step in the right direction.”It’s all rooted in Shepard’s 15-minute flight on May 5, 1961. Shepard was actually the second person in space — the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin three weeks earlier, to Shepard’s everlasting dismay. The 37-year-old Mercury astronaut and Navy test pilot cut a slick sci-fi figure in his silver spacesuit as he stood in the predawn darkness at Cape Canaveral, looking up at his Redstone rocket. Impatient with all the delays, including another hold in the countdown just minutes before launch, he famously growled into his mic: “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?”His capsule, Freedom 7, soared to an altitude of 116 miles (186 kilometers) before parachuting into the Atlantic.Twenty days later, President John F. Kennedy committed to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely by decade’s end, a promise made good in July 1969 by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Shepard, who died in 1998, went on to command Apollo 14 in 1971, becoming the fifth moonwalker — and lone lunar golfer.Since Gagarin and Shepard’s pioneering flights, 579 people have rocketed into space or reached its fringes, according to NASA. Nearly two-thirds are American and just over 20% Soviet or Russian. About 90% are male and most are white, although NASA’s crews have been more diverse in recent decades. A Black community college educator from Tempe, Arizona, sees her spot on SpaceX’s upcoming private flight as a symbol. Sian Proctor uses the acronym J.E.D.I. for “a just, equitable, diverse and inclusive space.”NASA wasn’t always on board with space tourism, but is today.”Our goal is one day that everyone’s a space person,” NASA’s human spaceflight chief, Kathy Lueders said following Sunday’s splashdown of a SpaceX capsule with four astronauts. “We’re very excited to see it starting to take off.” Twenty years ago, NASA clashed with Russian space officials over the flight of the world’s first space tourist.California businessman Dennis Tito paid $20 million to visit the space station, launching atop a Russian rocket. Virginia-based Space Adventures arranged Tito’s weeklong trip, which ended May 6, 2001, as well as seven more tourist flights that followed.”By opening up his checkbook, he kicked off an industry 20 yrs ago,” Space Adventures co-founder Eric Anderson tweeted last week. “Space is opening up more than it ever has, and for all.”There’s already a line.A Russian actress and movie director are supposed to launch from Kazakhstan in the fall. They’ll be followed in December by Space Adventures’ two newest clients, also launching on a Russian Soyuz rocket. SpaceX will be next up in January with the three businessmen; the flight from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center was arranged by Axiom Space, a Houston company run by former NASA employees. And as early as 2023, SpaceX is supposed to take a Japanese entrepreneur and his guests around the moon and back.While no fan of human spaceflight — he prefers robotic explorers — Duke University emeritus history professor Alex Roland acknowledges the emergence of spaceflight companies might be “the most significant change in the last 60 years.” Yet he wonders whether there will be much interest once the novelty wears off and the inevitable fatalities occur.Then there’s the high price of admission.The U.S., Canadian and Israeli entrepreneurs flying SpaceX early next year are paying $55 million — each — for their 1 1/2-week mission.Virgin Galactic’s tickets cost considerably less for minutes versus days of weightlessness. Initially $250,000, the price is expected to go up once Branson’s company starts accepting reservations again.Blue Origin declined Wednesday to give a ticket price for future sales and would not comment on who else — besides the auction winner — will be on board the capsule in July. A couple more crew flights, each lasting minutes, would follow by year’s end.As for SpaceX’s private flight on a fully automated Dragon capsule, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman won’t say what he’s paying. He considers his three-day flight a “great responsibility” and is taking no shortcuts in training; he took his crewmates hiking up Mount Rainier last weekend to toughen them up.”If something does go wrong, it will set back every other person’s ambition to go and become a commercial astronaut,” Isaacman said recently.John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, where he founded the Space Policy Institute, has mixed feelings about this shift from space exploration to adventure tourism.”It takes the romance and excitement out of going to space,” Logsdon said in an email this week. Instead of the dawn of a new era like so many have proclaimed, it’s “more like the end of the era when space flight was special. I guess that is progress.”
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Many Broadway productions are scrambling to resume ticket sales in the coming days to welcome theater-goers this fall after city and state leaders have green-lit a reopening of the Great White Way at full capacity by mid-September.”We remain cautiously optimistic about Broadway’s ability to resume performances this fall and are happy that fans can start buying tickets again,” Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, said in a statement Wednesday. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Broadway theaters can reopen Sept. 14 and will be allowed to decide their own entry requirements, like whether people must prove they’ve been vaccinated to attend a show. Selling tickets will allow theaters to gauge interest before stages open, said Robert Mujica, Cuomo’s budget director.”Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running show, announced Wednesday it would resume performances on Oct. 22, with tickets going on sale Friday. More shows are expected to circle return dates in the coming weeks.Actors’ Equity Association, the national labor union representing more than 51,000 actors and stage managers in live theater, said the news meant the theater community is “one step closer to the safe reopening” of Broadway.”We look forward to continuing our conversations with the Broadway League about a safe reopening and know that soon the time will come when members can go back to doing what they do best, creating world-class theater,” said Mary McColl, executive director of Actors’ Equity. The Broadway that reopens will look different. In May, the big budget Disney musical “Frozen” decided not to reopen when Broadway theaters restart, marking the first time an established show had been felled by the coronavirus pandemic. Producers of “Mean Girls” also decided not to restart.But there will be new shows, including Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s “Pass Over” that is slated to reopen the August Wilson Theatre, the same venue “Mean Girls” has vacated. And a Shubert theater has been promised for playwright Keenan Scott II’s play “Thoughts of a Colored Man.” The lifting of all capacity restrictions has long been considered by the industry as crucial to any reopening plan since Broadway economics demand full venue capacity. Some off-Broadway shows have already reopened with limited capacity.All city theaters abruptly closed on March 12, 2020, knocking out all shows, including 16 that were still scheduled to open.Some scheduled spring 2020 shows — like a musical about Michael Jackson and a revival of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker — pushed their productions to 2021. But others abandoned their plans, including “Hangmen” and a revival of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
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Facebook’s oversight board on Wednesday upheld the social media company’s decision to ban former U.S. President Donald Trump from posting comments to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, a measure imposed after he posted incendiary remarks as hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6.The quasi-independent panel, however, left open the possibility that Trump could eventually return to the popular website, saying it “was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension.” The oversight group gave Facebook executives six months to re-examine the “arbitrary penalty” it imposed the day after the insurrection, when Trump urged followers to confront lawmakers as they certified Joe Biden’s election victory. The review said Facebook executives should decide on another penalty that reflects the “gravity of the violation and the prospect of future harm.” Facebook management responded by saying it “will now consider the board’s decision and determine an action that is clear and proportionate. In the meantime, Mr. Trump’s accounts remain suspended.” Trump reacted angrily to the oversight panel’s decision. “Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before,” he said.“The People of our Country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process,” he said. He also said, “What Facebook, Twitter and Google have done is a total disgrace and embarrassment to our Country.”The White House offered no response to the board’s decision. “This is an independent board decision, and we’re not going to have any comment on the future of the former president’s social media platform,” press secretary Jen Psaki said.Trump, now three-plus months out of office but contemplating another run for the presidency in 2024, unveiled Tuesday morning a new website, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” to communicate with his supporters. It looked much like a Twitter feed, with posts written by Trump that could be shared on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.During his four years in the White House, Trump broke new ground with thousands of tweets on issues of the day, endorsements of Republican candidates he favored over those who had attacked him, and acerbic comments about opposition Democrats. A letter submitted to the oversight panel on Trump’s behalf asked the board to reconsider the Facebook suspension, contending it was “inconceivable” that either of his January 6 posts “can be viewed as a threat to public safety, or an incitement to violence.” The letter also claimed all “genuine” Trump supporters at the Capitol on January 6 were law-abiding, and that “outside forces” were involved. However, more than 400 people inside the Capitol that day, including many wearing Trump-emblazoned hats and shirts and carrying pro-Trump flags and signs, have been arrested and charged with an array of criminal offenses. The oversight board found that Trump’s two posts in the midst of the chaos at the Capitol that left five people dead severely violated Facebook’s Community Standards and Instagram’s Community Guidelines. “We love you. You’re very special” in the first post, and “great patriots” and “remember this day forever,” in the second post violated Facebook’s rules prohibiting praise or support of people engaged in violence, the review panel said. The oversight group went on to say that “in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible. At the time of Mr. Trump’s posts, there was a clear, immediate risk of harm, and his words of support for those involved in the riots legitimized their violent actions.” “As president, Mr. Trump had a high level of influence,” the panel concluded. “The reach of his posts was large, with 35 million followers on Facebook and 24 million on Instagram. “Given the seriousness of the violations and the ongoing risk of violence, Facebook was justified in suspending Mr. Trump’s accounts on January 6 and extending that suspension on January 7,” the panel said. “However, it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose an ‘indefinite’ suspension.” In one of his posts during the insurrection, Trump said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!” Facebook removed the post and decided the next day to extend Trump’s ban indefinitely, at least past Biden’s January 20 inauguration. “His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the U.S. and around the world,” Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a January 7 statement. “We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence.” The 20-member review panel was composed of legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists. A five-member panel prepared a decision, which had to be approved by a majority of the full board, and which Facebook was then required to implement unless the action could violate the law. The board says its mission is to “answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.” The Facebook Oversight Board was created last October after the company faced criticism it was not quickly and effectively dealing with what some feel has been problematic content. The board announced its first decisions in January, supporting Facebook’s decision to remove content in one case, but overruling the company and ordering it to restore posts in four other cases.
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The Biden administration has agreed to support waiving intellectual property (IP) restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO), a breakthrough in the global fight against the pandemic that can empower governments to tackle vaccine scarcity and inequity.U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the administration’s position in a FILE – A logo is seen at the headquarters of the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, June 2, 2020.Biden agrees; now what?Now that Biden has agreed to support the waiver, it doesn’t mean U.S. pharmaceutical companies must start giving away vaccine recipes so developing countries can make their own.The WTO is a consensus-based organization and cannot move forward unless the European Union, which is against the waiver, and everyone else agrees. Once all WTO members agree, the next steps would be for countries to implement it at the national level by removing legal risks that hinder production and supply by alternative producers. To clarify these implementation options, countries must start text-based negotiations at the WTO, going through each item of the complex and multilayered IP legal requirements — a process that could take months, or even years.”I’m not going to put odds on how likely it is to find an agreement,” said WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell, summarizing the WTO closed-door General Council meeting on the TRIPS waiver Wednesday.But he said there was consensus on the need for wider access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.”When people begin to voice very clearly their share objectives, it makes it easier to get to ‘yes,’ ” Rockwell said.There is not a single “recipe” for a COVID-19 vaccine — the vaccines are complex in terms of ingredients, manufacturing technology, delivery vehicles, etc., and each vaccine has dozens, if not hundreds, of IPs attached, many of them under patent pending litigation, making the granting of waivers an even more complicated and lengthy process.FILE – Boxes of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine are seen at the McKesson Corp., amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Shepherdsville, Ky., March 1, 2021.There are many complex challenges in scaling up COVID-19 vaccine production. The waiver is just one tool and does not offer a blanket solution, said Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser with Doctors Without Borders, one of the organizations that support the TRIPS waiver.But as an important enabler, Hu added, “the earlier the waiver can be adopted, the sooner its impact can be realized.”If countries are given the permission and know-how to produce vaccines, waiver proponents say, they don’t have to wait in line while pharmaceutical companies fulfill orders from rich countries who have the resources to do so.But even if a full waiver is not approved, proponents are hoping the pressure will become leverage to force vaccine producers to ramp up global manufacturing capacity via additional licensing agreements, or donate or sell doses at a reduced cost.TRIPS waiver opponentsDrug manufacturers, including Pfizer and Moderna, oppose the waiver, saying that easing patent rules FILE – Microsoft founder Bill Gates holds a vaccine for meningitis during a news conference at U.N. headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, May 17, 2011.Another big opponent is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — the driving force behind COVAX, the U.N. mechanism to improve low- and middle-income countries’ access to vaccines. Despite more than two decades of philanthropic work to immunize the world’s poor, Gates is a fierce defender of IP protection.On Wednesday, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke to representatives from developing and developed countries and again urged them to quickly agree on this issue, over which countries have been at odds for six months.The ‘third way’Opponents insist a waiver would not help accelerate vaccine access or address supply chain and logistical constraints. It would still take a long time for governments to set up factories, train staff and procure materials to make vaccines.They say the faster and better way to do it is through technology transfer partnerships and licensing agreements, such as the one between AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India, which produced doses for COVAX. The agreement has been halted by the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which wants to prioritize doses for its own populations as it deals with another wave of COVID-19 cases.Licensing agreements, including those between Britain’s AstraZeneca and Brazil’s Fiocruz, or the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech and the Indonesian firm Bio Farma, have shown that middle-income countries have the capacity to produce vaccine doses within months after technology transfer.These licensing agreements and other means of technology transfer have been praised by Okonjo-Iweala as the “third way,” an alternative to vaccine protectionism and waiving IP rights.However, these agreements can include restrictions — for example, geographical limitations on where, when and to whom the doses can be sold. Most bilateral agreements on COVID-19 vaccine production are contract manufacturing agreements through which the contracted entity manufactures on behalf of a licenser that maintains full control over the use of its technology, the volume of production, and where and at what prices vaccines may be supplied.The Biden administration said it would continue to ramp up efforts, working with the private sector and all possible partners to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution, and increase the raw materials needed to produce the vaccines.VOA’s Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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A senior Indian government scientific adviser warned Wednesday that a third wave of coronavirus infections would sweep the country as it struggles with the devastating effects of the current wave that officially claimed nearly 4,000 lives in the course of one day.The government’s principal scientific adviser, K. Vijay Raghavan, issued the warning as the World Health Organization said in its weekly report that India accounted for almost half the cases reported globally last week and about a quarter of all fatalities.“Phase 3 is inevitable, given the high levels of circulating virus,” Raghavan told a news briefing in New Delhi. “But it is not clear on what timescale this phase 3 will occur … We should prepare for new waves.”India’s crisis is aggravated by a critical lack of oxygen needed to treat critically ill patients, along with the raw materials needed to manufacture doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. While India is home to the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, only 2% of the country’s 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated, according to local reports. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 10 MB480p | 15 MB540p | 20 MB720p | 38 MB1080p | 81 MBOriginal | 243 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioTo help address the oxygen shortage, India’s Supreme Court ordered the government Wednesday to submit a plan to meet oxygen needs in New Dehli hospitals within one day.Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have been roundly criticized over the last several weeks for holding massive election rallies in West Bengal. Health experts have suggested the rallies may have contributed to a record surge in the state.Other political parties also held rallies there.Award-winning author Arundhati Roy called for Modi to resign in an opinion piece that was published Tuesday by the independent news website Scroll.in.“This is a crisis of your making,” she wrote. “You cannot solve it. You can only make it worse … So please go.”In a related development, Agence France-Presse reported that India’s Reserve Bank has pledged to provide $6.7 billion in cheap financing for the country’s vaccine makers, hospitals and other health firms.
The United Nations Children’s Fund announced shipments of medical supplies to India Wednesday, including 2 million face shields and 200,000 surgical masks. UNICEF also said it is supporting other endeavors in India, such as the acquisition of 25 oxygen plants for hospitals in the northeast and in the western state of Maharashtra. India’s Health Ministry reported another 382,315 new cases of coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including 3,780 COVID-related deaths. The South Asian nation has more than 20 million total coronavirus infections, second only behind the United States, and 226,188 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 4 MB480p | 5 MB540p | 8 MB720p | 16 MB1080p | 32 MBOriginal | 163 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioIntellectual property rights
Member nations of the World Trade Organization were wrapping up two days of talks in Geneva Wednesday on waiving intellectual property rights on new COVID-19 vaccines.
Ambassadors from the WTO’s 164 member states had been debating a proposal first floated by South Africa and India last October that would temporarily lift patent rights held by pharmaceutical companies that developed the vaccines. Supporters of the proposal say the waiver will allow for the faster manufacture of vaccines for use by developing countries, where vaccination rates have lagged behind those of wealthier nations.
But pharmaceutical companies claim that granting the waiver could hurt future innovation and will not lead to the quick production of vaccines.
Dozens of civil society groups and former heads of state, including former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mikhail Gorbachev of the former Soviet Union, have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to support the proposed waiver. More than 100 members of the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to Biden, urging him to support the proposal.
The International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations also urged Biden to support the proposal, saying in a letter it would help “ensure universal and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.”
Biden said he has not made a decision on the matter. The proposal must be agreed on by all the WTO member nations.
Global tracker
Also on Wednesday, Germany and the World Health Organization announced plans to establish a global monitoring operation to help prevent future threats like the current pandemic.
The Berlin-based “global hub for pandemic and epidemic intelligence” would track and monitor “exposed gaps in the global systems for pandemic and epidemic intelligence,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The monitoring center will get about $36 million from Germany and search for funds from other sources.
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The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said current projections see COVID-19 cases remaining low and dropping sharply by July, provided vaccination rates remain high and people continue to observe basic prevention practices.At a briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the projections are based on a study published Wednesday by the CDC. The study used data taken from recent trends to create models showing what could happen if current vaccination and prevention practices, such as mask use and social distancing, continue.Walensky said nationwide, U.S. COVID-19 statistics continue to trend well, with the daily average of new cases falling by 12%, to 42,494 per day, while average daily hospitalizations dropped by 9.5%. She said daily average deaths also fell by nearly 1%.But she said the wild card in the CDC models is variant coronavirus strains that cause COVID-19. Walensky said data show current vaccines are performing well against the predominant variants, so it is even more imperative to get more people vaccinated. To that end, White House COVID-19 Response Team Senior Adviser Andy Slavitt announced that anyone in the United States can simply send a mobile text message with their Zip (postal) code to GETVAXED and they will be sent three vaccination locations near them. He said people can also get information on where they might receive a preferred vaccine. Slavitt said the texts will also provide information on how people can get a free ride to a vaccine location through ride share services. He said those without access to mobile devices or the internet will be provided with telephone numbers they can call to obtain the information.Slavitt said the measures are all part of meeting goals laid out in a speech Tuesday by President Joe Biden. The president said he would like to see 70% of all Americans with at least one vaccination and 160 million Americans fully vaccinated by July 4, the U.S. Independence Day holiday. As of Tuesday, the CDC reports just less than 45% of people in the U.S. have received at least one shot while more than 106 million – 32% – of Americans are fully vaccinated.
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In marking World Hand Hygiene Day, the World Health Organization is stressing the importance of good hand hygiene practices in stopping the spread of deadly infections. It says this is especially true at a time when the world is battling the coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.
COVID has dramatically amplified the importance of hand washing. The head of WHO’s infection prevention and control, Benedetta Allegranzi, says this simple action can prevent the risk of transmitting the infection, when used as part of a comprehensive package of public health measures.
“Effective hand hygiene also prevents any infection acquired in health care, the spread of antimicrobial resistance and other emerging health threats. Hand hygiene is a simple action that has a central role in contributing to quality care and to the whole of society efforts to prevent infection spread and saves lives,” Allegranzi said.
A WHO survey of 88 countries finds low-and-middle-income countries have made significantly lower progress than high-income countries in implementing hand hygiene and infection prevention programs.
The report notes one in four health care facilities in poorer countries does not have basic water services and one in three lacks hand hygiene supplies.
Allegranzi said the poorer countries lack the money needed to shore up their crumbling health care infrastructure. Consequently, she noted, most do not meet the minimal requirements to make a significant dent in reducing often life-threatening infections.
“For example, in some low-and-middle-income countries, only one in 10 have workers who practice proper hand hygiene while caring for patients at high-risk of health care susceptibility infection in intensive care units. While, also in high-income countries, hand hygiene compliance rarely exceeds 60% to 70%.”
WHO reports every year, health care-acquired infections affect millions of patients and health workers globally. Europe alone, it says, records nearly nine million infections yearly. The U.N. agency says highly effective and low-cost hand hygiene strategies are available that could reduce these infections by half.
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Relentless wind and rain keeps pummeling much of the southeastern United States, spawning tornadoes, sparking a flash flood emergency in Alabama and damaging homes from Texas to Virginia. The storms have prompted boat rescues and toppled trees and power lines.
Crews were preparing to continue cleaning up debris and assessing destruction across the region early Wednesday, as some schools canceled classes or moved them online due to damage on campuses and surrounding areas.
The National Weather Service’s prediction center warned Wednesday morning that flash flooding also could now affect the Central Gulf Coast with storms shifting southeast and rain continuing to soak much of the region.
The storms have been responsible for at least three deaths and dozens of injuries this week, and more than 200,000 customers were without power from Arkansas to Maryland early Wednesday, including about 75,000 in Alabama, about 66,000 in Mississippi, about 13,800 in Georgia and about 25,700 in Virginia, according to the website poweroutage.us.
Torrential rains Tuesday near Birmingham, Alabama, dumped more than 7 inches (17.7 centimeters) of water in a few afternoon hours, causing flooding problems across much of the state’s most populous areas.
Emergency Management officials in the area urged residents to stay off roads because so many were flooded, including some downtown. In the Birmingham suburb of Homewood, fire department rescuers in a small boat paddled past submerged cars in a parking lot, slowly removing more than a dozen people from the waters surrounding an apartment complex.
Strong winds blowing behind a line of storms were toppling trees across central Alabama, where soil was saturated with water, and lightning struck a church in central Alabama, causing extensive damage from a fire. The National Weather Service in Birmingham said late Tuesday it planned to send two crews to Greene and Tuscaloosa Counties to assess wind and possible tornado damage from storms that started Sunday.
Strong winds and heavy rain whipped through Mississippi’s capital city of Jackson late Tuesday while thunder rattled windows. The high winds cracked some limbs off trees and sent them onto nearby houses. The storms left streets littered with branches and leaves.
At least eight people were injured when storms that brought tornadoes to Texas flipped tractor-trailers on an interstate and damaged structures.
In Tennessee, at least 11 counties were hit by possible EF-0 tornadoes, according to an official with the National Weather Service in Nashville. A tornado that struck Virginia’s Northumberland County near the Chesapeake Bay destroyed one home and severely damaged a few others Monday.
On Monday, tornadoes also touched down in South Carolina and southern Kentucky while a possible tornado hit West Virginia.
In Mississippi, forecasters confirmed 12 tornadoes Sunday evening and night, including the Yazoo City twister, which stretched for 30 miles (50 kilometers), and another tornado that moved through suburbs south of Jackson, producing a damage track 910 meters (1,000 yards) wide.
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Facebook’s quasi-independent oversight board on Wednesday upheld the social media company’s decision to ban former U.S. President Donald Trump from posting comments to his Facebook and Instagram accounts.The panel, however, left open the possibility that Trump could eventually return to the popular website with millions of viewers, saying it “was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension.” The oversight group gave Facebook executives six months to reexamine the “arbitrary penalty” it imposed the day after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol when Trump urged followers to confront lawmakers as they were certifying that he had lost his November reelection contest to Democrat Joe Biden. The board is made up of 20 members, including legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists. A panel of five members prepares a decision, which has to be approved by a majority of the full board, and which Facebook is then required to implement unless the action could violate the law.The board says its mission is to “answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.”In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington.Trump made several posts during the attack on the January attack on the U.S. capital, continuing his false claims that the election was “stolen.” Facebook removed two of Trump’s posts and initially banned him from posting for 24 hours.“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long,” Trump posted about two hours before police and National Guard troops secured the Capitol. “Go home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!”Facebook decided the next day to extend Trump’s ban indefinitely, at least past the inauguration of President Joe Biden.“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a January 7 statement.Twitter instituted a permanent ban against Trump, saying several of his posts “are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.”The Facebook Oversight Board was created last October after the company faced criticism it was not quickly and effectively dealing with what some feel is problematic content.The board announced its first decisions in January, supporting Facebook’s decision to remove content in one case, but overruling the company and ordering it to restore posts in four other cases.
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As its COVID-19 lockdown eases, Spain has resumed bullfights — and reignited a fiery political debate between right-wingers who defend the tradition and leftists who condemn it as animal cruelty. Jonathan Spier narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Barcelona.Camera: Alfonso Beato
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An Olympic test event to evaluate COVID-19 safety protocols for the upcoming Tokyo Games has won praise from the head of the world governing body of track and field.
Organizers of Wednesday’s test marathon race in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo pleaded with the general public not to attend the event, even deploying staff along the route with signs that read “please refrain from watching the event from here.” The few athletes who took part in the race had to undergo strict testing protocols before and after entering Japan, and were largely restricted to their hotel rooms unless they were training.
World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe said the organizing committee demonstrated “the highest level of capability” to stage the marathon and race walk events in Sapporo. The events were originally supposed to be staged in Tokyo, but were moved to avoid the city’s hot summer temperatures.
The delayed Tokyo Olympics will be held from July 23 to August 8. Organizers postponed the games for a year when the novel coronavirus began spreading across the globe.
But with Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new COVID-19 infections, recent public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the Olympics should be postponed again or cancelled.
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Member nations of the World Trade Organization are wrapping up two days of talks in Geneva Wednesday focused on waiving intellectual property rights on new COVID-19 vaccines. Ambassadors from the WTO’s 164 member states have been debating a proposal first proposed by South Africa and India back in October that would temporarily lift patent rights held by pharmaceutical companies that developed the vaccines. Supporters of the proposal say the waiver will allow for the faster manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines for use by developing countries, where vaccination rates have lagged behind those of wealthier nations. But pharmaceutical companies claim that granting the waiver could hurt future innovation and will not lead to the quick production of coronavirus vaccines. Dozens of civil society groups and former heads of state, including former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mikhail Gorbachev of the former Soviet Union have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to support the proposed waiver. More than 100 members of the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to President Biden also urging him to support the proposal. Biden says he has not made a decision on the matter. The proposal must be agreed on by all 164 WTO member nations. India
In a related development, Agence France-Presse is reporting that India’s Reserve Bank has pledged to provide $6.7 billion in cheap financing for the country’s vaccine makers, hospitals and other health firms as the world’s second-most populous country is mired in a catastrophic surge of the virus. Workers load empty oxygen cylinders onto a supply truck for refilling, at the Medical College and Hospital, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Kolkata, India, May 5, 2021.”The devastating speed with which the virus affects different regions of the country has to be matched by swift and wide-ranging actions,” said Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das in making the announcement. India’s Health Ministry reported another 382,315 new cases of coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including 3,780 COVID-related deaths. The South Asian nation has more than 20 million total coronavirus infections, second only behind the United States, and 226,188 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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With an estimated one-third of the U.S. population hesitant to get a vaccine for COVID-19, a new study indicates that approaches by faith community leaders can help convince people to get the shot. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reported from a church in Washington which was the site of the city’s first reported COVID-19 case.Camera: Sabiq Ul Islam, agencies
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Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies turn their attention to issues of global interest including coronavirus vaccines, climate change and education for girls on Wednesday as they close three days of talks in London. “I think COVAX and the ability to fund it, get vaccines to the most vulnerable countries, what we do about the surplus domestic supply, all of those issues again, really good opportunity with the G-7, together with our Indo-Pacific partners, to talk all of that through and come up with positive answers,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Tuesday. With Britain hosting the ministerial talks, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose office highlighted the importance of global access to COVID-19 vaccines. “The Prime Minister and Secretary Blinken agreed that the global roll out of vaccines will be key to defeating the coronavirus pandemic. They underlined the importance of G-7 work in this area, including efforts to increase international manufacturing capability,” a Downing Street spokesman said.Trilateral meeting with Japan and South Korea on the sidelines of the G7 foreign ministers meeting in London, May 5, 2021.Tuesday’s G-7 meetings included a focus on China. A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters there was broad agreement among the ministers, “both the fact that we all want China to be an integral member of the international order, but to do that, it has to play by the rules of that international order.” The official cited concern about China’s human rights record and its “threatening and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and other areas around its border.” Blinken also said Tuesday the G-7 nations want to end the 10-year civil war in Syria. “My @G7 counterparts and I reaffirmed our commitment to a political resolution for ending the conflict in Syria and support to the reauthorization of the U.N. cross-border aid mechanism,” Blinken tweeted.My @G7 counterparts and I reaffirmed our commitment to a political resolution for ending the conflict in Syria and support to the reauthorization of the UN cross-border aid mechanism. We’ll continue working to advance all aspects of UNSCR 2254 and end the suffering of Syrians.— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 4, 2021He said the group would work to advance all parts of a 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for a cease-fire in Syria, along with a Syrian-led political process with a new constitution and elections. The G-7 ministerial talks are laying the foundation for a summit of leaders from those countries in June, also in Britain. In addition to Britain and the United States, the G-7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Australia, India, South Africa, South Korea and Brunei are also taking part in this week’s talks. After the G-7 meetings, Blinken is scheduled to travel to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other senior government officials. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that Blinken will “reaffirm unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression.”
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Facebook’s quasi-independent Oversight Board is set to announce Wednesday whether the social media company was correct to indefinitely prohibit former U.S. President Donald Trump from posting to his Facebook and Instagram accounts.The board is made up of 20 members, including legal scholars, human rights experts and journalists. A panel of five members prepares a decision, which must be approved by a majority of the full board, and which Facebook is then required to implement unless the action could violate the law.The board says its mission is to “answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.”Trump’s ban dates to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters that came as members of Congress were meeting to certify the results of the November presidential election.In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo, Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington.He made several posts during the attack continuing his false claims that the election was “stolen.” Facebook removed two of Trump’s posts and initially banned him from posting for 24 hours.“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long,” Trump posted about two hours before police and National Guard troops secured the Capitol. “Go home with love in peace. Remember this day forever!”Facebook decided the next day to extend Trump’s ban indefinitely, at least past the inauguration of President Joe Biden.“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a January 7 statement.Twitter instituted a permanent ban against Trump, saying several of his posts “are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.”The Facebook Oversight Board was created last October after the company faced criticism it was not quickly and effectively dealing with what some feel is problematic content.The board announced its first decisions in January, supporting Facebook’s decision to remove content in one case, but overruling the company and ordering it to restore posts in four other cases.
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A Malian woman gave birth to nonuplets in Morocco on Tuesday, and all nine babies are “doing well,” her government said, although Moroccan authorities had yet to confirm what would be an extremely rare case. Mali’s government flew 25-year-old Halima Cisse, a woman from the northern part of the West African state, to Morocco for better care on March 30. She was initially believed to have been carrying septuplets. Cases of women successfully carrying septuplets to term are rare; nonuplets, even rarer. Moroccan health ministry spokesman Rachid Koudhari said he had no knowledge of such a multiple birth having taken place in one of the country’s hospitals. But Mali’s health ministry said in a statement that Cisse had given birth to five girls and four boys by cesarean section. “The mother and babies are doing well so far,” Mali’s Health Minister Fanta Siby told AFP, adding that she had been kept informed by the Malian doctor who accompanied Cisse to Morocco. They are due to return home in several weeks’ time, she added. Doctors had been concerned about Cisse’s health, according to local press reports, as well as her babies’ chances of survival. Mali’s health ministry said in a statement that ultrasound examinations conducted in both Mali and Morocco had suggested that Cisse was carrying seven babies. Siby offered her congratulations to “the medical teams of Mali and Morocco, whose professionalism is at the origin of the happy outcome of this pregnancy.”
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President Biden set a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030. His pledge to a virtual summit of world leaders in April is welcomed by those hit hardest by climate change and looking for as much quick action as possible. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more. Camera: AP/REUTERS/NASA/SKYPE/NATIONAL AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITYProduced by: Arash Arabasadi
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Dozens of Taiwanese Star Wars fans gathered on the top floor of the nation’s tallest building Tuesday to salute their favorite movie, while stressing the importance of wearing face masks to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.Fans dressed in full Star Wars costumes held mock lightsaber battles and posed for pictures on the 89th floor of the Taipei 101 financial building for what has become an annual observance of what has become known as international Star Wars Day.Organizer of the event Makoto Tsai told reporters he also wanted the “opportunity to introduce interesting places of Taiwan to the world,” because International Star Wars Day, “is an event watched by all the Star Wars fans in the world.”Tsai said their annual event was cancelled last year because the pandemic was at its worst in Taiwan. He said while COVID-19 is largely contained in Taiwan, he is aware that much of the world is continuing to struggle with it.He said he wanted to use his Taiwan gathering to show the world the importance of wearing a mask to fight COVID.“Every character today, including those who wear a helmet, is wearing a mask. I hope to show Star Wars fans of the world that even in Taiwan, we all have to wear the mask. And I hope the pandemic goes away soon.”May the 4th has become the unofficial international “Star Wars Day” over the years, as a play on the famous catch phrase of the movie, “May the force be with you.” Media reports trace the international origins of the day to 1979, when Britain’s Conservative Party won elections there and then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher first assumed her office.The party reportedly took out a newspaper advertisement congratulating the day she took office — May the 4th — saying “May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations!”Reports say a copy of the original advertisement has yet to be found, so the story has not been officially verified.
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