Six African countries receive RNA technology for their anticovid vaccines

Six African countries – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia – will receive the technology to produce their own messenger RNA vaccines, a key step in ending the global inequality in COVID vaccination.

A person protests in Cape Town (South Africa) for equal access to vaccines against covid. EFE/EPA/NIC BOTHMA

The Director General of the World Health Organization (who), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesusannounced the names of the six beneficiary countries of this initiative on vaccines in the framework of the European Union (EU)-Africa summit held in Brussels, and in the presence of the presidents of those nations, in addition to the French Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

“They will be vaccines designed by Africa, owned by Africa, and with African leadership,” said Von der Leyen, who stressed that the EU, France and Germany have supported the project that has made this advance possible with an investment of 40 million euros. .

The initiative took its first steps last year with the creation of a research center on messenger RNA technology in Cape Town (South Africa), in which not only the EU, France and Germany have collaborated, but also Belgium, Norway and Canada.

Its goal was to develop its own mRNA technology, a new field for vaccine design that has achieved the most effective in the current COVID-19 pandemic: the drugs developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were based on it, and showed the rates higher effectiveness against the coronavirus.

mRNA vaccines differ from traditional ones (normally based on weakened forms of the virus) in that they introduce ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules that by themselves contain instructions with which the human body can produce the virus and at the same time the antibody that neutralize.

First African anticovid vaccine

The Cape Town center, which Tedros visited last week, has already managed to develop an anticovid vaccine similar to Moderna’s in the laboratory, although there is still a long way to go: clinical trials will begin this year, and even if they are developed with success may have to wait until 2024 for it to be available.

The center is run by a consortium that includes the South African vaccine manufacturer Biovac, the firm Afrigen Biologics (which developed the necessary technology) and the South African Medical Research Council.

The necessary training to develop the vaccine production centers in the six selected countries will begin in March, and although the fight against COVID-19 will surely be its first priority, the longer-term objective is to combat other diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis or AIDS.

Von der Leyen highlighted in this regard that currently only 1% of the vaccines administered in Africa are produced on the continent, but that with initiatives such as the current one, it is hoped that by 2040 that percentage will rise to 60%.

“It is not acceptable that Africa is always at the bottom of access to vaccines. We appreciate the donations, but they are not sustainable solutions and we want to empower ourselves », she added at the ceremony South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Queue to get vaccinated in Johannesburg (South Africa). EFE/EPA/Kim Ludbrook

Vaccines in Africa: only 20% immunized

Although more than 10,000 million anticovid vaccines have already been administered in the world, with which more than 60% of the global population has received at least one dose, the distribution is very unequal.

While developed countries have very high vaccination rates and many of their citizens have even received booster injections, in Africa 80% of the population has not received a single dose.

“We have many tools to combat COVID-19, the great tragedy has been that millions of people have not yet benefited from them,” lamented Tedros, who recalled that 116 countries in the world are still far from achieving the great goal of achieving by mid-2022 that 70% of its population is vaccinated.

Although today’s announcement is important, Ramaphosa recalled that there are other ways to fight inequality in the pandemic, such as the suspension of vaccine and treatment patents that his country and India have been defending since 2020 before the World Trade Organization (WTO). .

Dozens of countries have joined the Indo-South African request, but an agreement has not yet been reached due to the reluctance of countries that are the headquarters of large pharmaceutical companies, as is the case of many in the European Union, Japan or Switzerland.

“With today’s initiative we limit the benefits of companies but at the same time we protect the precious asset that is intellectual property, we have to find a bridge between both things,” said Von der Leyen

MSF values ​​the decision but asks for greater involvement of Moderna

Doctors Without Borders appreciates the WHO’s decision but urges Moderna to help the Cape Town center to shorten production times and recalls that its vaccine was financed with public funds.

According Kate Stegeman, MSF Access Campaign Advocacy Coordinator For the Africa region, “This announcement marks a positive milestone on the path to expanding vaccine manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries.”

In a statement, MSF highlights that the center’s research and development partner, the South African company Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, has recently succeeded in producing microliter batches of an mRNA vaccine based on the publicly available sequence of the vaccine from the American pharmaceutical corporation Moderna. .

“And it has succeeded despite the lack of help from Moderna even though its vaccine has been financed, to a large extent, with public funds. The timeframe for the center to produce a final mRNA vaccine and eventual technology transfer to manufacturers is considerable, but could be shortened significantly if Moderna were to provide technical assistance to the center.”

The medical organization believes that many more advances are needed, such as developing a more heat-stable version, conducting clinical trials, and developing a large-scale manufacturing process. Thus, MSF urges Modernawhose vaccine is the most similar to the one designed by Afigen, to provide technical assistance to the center to shorten production lead timesNo of the vaccine.

“Although the hub is certainly an important initiative now and for future pandemic responses, the fastest way to start vaccine production in African countries and other regions with limited vaccine production remains the full and transparent transfer of vaccine know-how from already approved mRNA technologies to companies with existing capacity that can be retrofitted to produce mRNA vaccines,’ he says.

'Cali needs technology and to become a smart city' - Cali - Colombia

When talking about ‘Calinteligente’, some sectors of the city relate it to the draft Agreement that the Town hall from Cali presented last year and that did not reach a first debate in the Council.

But engineer Marcela Patino, leader of ‘warmsmart’, He replies that it is much more than that. This is what the official maintains, who has faced the great challenge of carrying out this commitment so that Cali can transform itself and achieve its sustainable development with technology. In this challenge, she has had to avoid criticism for alleged businesses already ‘tied up’ and even for being part of the cabinet of Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina.
This responded to THE TIME.

(Also read: The Buga massacre: questions and the investigation, one year later)

What is ‘Smart Heat’?

The draft Agreement before the Council and ‘Calinteligente’ are two different things. The first follows from everything that means ‘Calinteligente’. It was a little bit of the big project. Some think that it sank or that ‘Calinteligente’ is over and it turns out not. It is much bigger.

It is in the Development Plan, it follows and cuts across all the secretariats and departments of the district. Of course to Emcali, as responsible for the provision of home public services.

It is a whole structuring of the great project, designed to improve the quality of life of Caleñas and Caleños, in mobility, transportation, security, public services, civic culture and environmental impact.

The engineer Marcela Patiño, leader of ‘Calinteligente’.

The most important thing is the people, trying to provide the best possible city. The priority will be to define a smart city/district model for Cali that allows it to position itself nationally and internationally. The vision to 2036 will be a smart city by using technology and developing solutions to territorial problems.

(You may be interested in: Beware of false appointments to get a passport in Valle del Cauca)

Under what axes has this model been designed?

The dimension of the model is based on intelligent security with strengthening of the video surveillance system; intelligent mobility with a new intelligent traffic light system; quality of life with a new connected public lighting service; governance and sustainable development (environment, economy, science and technology)

But first we have clear needs in mobility, security, lighting, transportation and it is the first thing that must be resolved. Basic connectivity infrastructure needs to be improved.

How will public lighting work?

30 percent of more than 100,000 lights in Cali is led. The others are obsolete. First they need to be replaced and we are not talking about a smart city. It’s a change of light bulbs led to reduce consumption and less impact on the environment.

That change costs 200,000 million pesos that the municipality does not have, because there are more than 100,000 lights.

If we continue to do it at this rate of small replacements with excess payments of the public lighting rate, that change could take eight to 10 years. We need an injection of capital.

(Also: Fight between students and families ended with shots at Jamundí school)

What was the proposal before the Council?

It was that of a decentralized entity with the Mayor’s Office and with Emcali.

The mixed company…

It was to look for an investment partner or a private source to inject those resources in a short time and he was paid with the same lighting rate, but in a term of 20 years. That was the financial model. But it was also (that investor) to operate Wi-Fi zones or maintain fiber optics. This type of alliance must be made to quickly give the impetus that we need as a city with technological advances.

In the Council there were criticisms from Emcali lobbyists and unions who point to a risk for the public company…

The project of Agreement for a decentralized entity had objections, but I consider that it was taken more from the political point of view. We did not have a counterproposal or a joint proposal. There was no feedback. It was just no.

Do you give up a new entity with the private partner?

It would no longer be a partner, but an ally that arrives to make that impulse. There are several exits, another draft Agreement, but under different conditions. Or a public-private partnership for a specific goal. Do it with Emcali, but Emcali also has no resources. It has some very powerful things in terms of knowledge and technology (…), but the project is going because it goes with Emcali.

In infrastructure…

Think of an information system for management works and geographic information on the state of the roads, but it is necessary to have the capacity to join databases on infrastructure and mobility. (…) We had the intelligent building with a command control center.

Is the smart building maintained, in Paradise City?

Currently not. When the social outbreak occurred, in 2021, we had planned the purchase of the lot (with 18,000 million pesos) and what happened is that the Mayor’s Office had to make decisions to allocate those monies to the critical situation. Back to the topic of resources.

What projects are advancing within ‘Calinteligente’?

Smart traffic lights advance by intervening at 480 intersections with technology, sensors and cameras that collect data and send it to a central unit, so that the traffic lights are synchronized, according to mobility demand.

At the end of the year, the installation is expected at 60 intersections to calculate another 70 later and reach 200. But that implies works that are worked on with the city’s Mobility Secretariat. This traffic light costs 120,000 million pesos and they leave the loan.

There is also the public bicycle system. It costs about 15,000 million pesos, but its source of financing is still not clear because the municipality has no resources.

Arrangements of traffic lights and stations of the Cali MIO

In Cali, not a few citizens they keep wondering about the operation of all the traffic lightsafter they were damaged during the national strike last year.

According to the Secretary of Mobility of the district, 41 intersection points are missing for the network of traffic lights to have a complete ‘green light’.

The Personería, for its part, indicated that it is attentive, after the call for attention in a preventive action to the Ministry of Mobility.

The repair amounts to about 7,500 million pesos, a figure that was set in 2021.

However, according to the city’s Secretary of Mobility, William Vallejo, of the 155 traffic light networks throughout Cali, 112 have been recovered, after being out of service since the social outbreak, attacks that were recorded, especially, in the middle of the last year. This is equivalent, according to the district Mobility Secretary, to the fact that 90 percent of these intersections are operating. This data has a cut-off as of December 31, 2021.

The leader of the ‘Calinteligente’ project, Marcela Patino, pointed out the importance of this initiative, because when a camera does not work, in the case of security or photo fine, it may be that the optical fiber is damaged or has been stolen. Waiting for a new public hiring, times are delayed. She pointed out that a tender can take about three months.

The reactivation of OWN it goes step by step with more than twenty of the 55 stations that have returned to operating. The second phase with 7 stations is 85% complete.

CALI

Rights Groups Urge Crack Down on US Prison Surveillance Technology

Dozens of rights groups are demanding a crackdown on an artificial intelligence system used to eavesdrop on U.S. prisoners’ phone calls, after a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation highlighted the risk of rights violations.

Documents from eight states showed prison and jail authorities were using surveillance software called Verus, which scans for key words and leverages Amazon’s voice-to-text transcription service, to monitor prisoners’ phone calls.

California-based LEO Technologies, which operates Verus, says it has scanned close to 300 million minutes of calls going in and out of prisons and jails in the United States, describing the tool as a way to fight crime and help keep inmates safe.

But a coalition of civil and digital rights groups said the surveillance sometimes overstepped legal limits by targeting conversations unrelated to the safety and security of detention facilities, or possible criminal activity.

“This surveillance infringes the rights of incarcerated Americans, many of whom have not been convicted and are still working on their defenses, as well as those of their families, friends, and loved ones,” the groups wrote in a joint letter.

Four different letters were sent to the attorney general’s office in New York State, the state’s Inspector General and the federal Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ provided a $700,000 grant to the sheriff’s office in Suffolk County, New York, to implement a pilot of the AI-powered voice-to-text surveillance system in 2020.

Undersheriff Kevin Catalina, who helps run the Verus program in Suffolk, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the system is crucial for alerting jail authorities to people who are suicidal and to identify gang members behind bars.

“It saves lives,” he said.

A DOJ official said the department is reviewing technology programs receiving federal funding to ensure they are enhancing public safety while respecting constitutional rights.

A spokesperson for the New York State Inspector General’s Office said in emailed comments that they would review the letter and “thoroughly investigate” complaints that are sent in.

More than 50 advocacy groups are part of the campaign, among them the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Worth Rises, the Innocence Project, and Access Now.

They also raised concerns about the prison phone call company Securus, and the possible recording of conversations protected by attorney-client privilege.

A Securus spokesperson said the company is committed to protecting civil liberties, that users can set attorney numbers to private – meaning calls are not recorded and cannot be monitored – and that they act immediately to delete “inadvertent” recordings.

A representative for LEO did not respond to requests for comment on the letters.

“It seems like the regulators have been asleep at the switch at the federal, state and local level,” said Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, which helped draft the letter.

‘Unproven, invasive, and biased’

As Suffolk County was trialing Verus, it also expanded beyond New York, winning state contracts in Georgia and Texas, and in local sheriff’s departments across the United States.

The rights groups urged regulators to block further expansion of surveillance tools in prisons and jails, saying they have the potential to produce racial bias and undermine privacy rights, without any clear track record of success.

In their letter addressed to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the groups cited research showing voice-to-text tools have a much higher error rate for Black voices. Black people are disproportionately represented among U.S. prisoners.

“Even absent discrimination, Verus and similar technologies exceed prisons and jails’ lawful surveillance powers,” they wrote.

Documents obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation from the pilot site in Suffolk County showed Verus was used to analyze more than 2.5 million calls between its launch in April 2019 and May 2020 – leading to 96 “actionable intelligence reports.”

While Catalina did not specify how many prisoners had been disciplined or faced charges based on those leads, he said the tool had helped prevent 86 suicides.

The rights groups also raised concerns about mission creep, noting the technology had been used to identify conversations that could flag problems for prison or jail administrators – such as complaints about their response to COVID-19.

Catalina said the sheriff’s office reviews all its surveillance strategies on a monthly basis to make sure that their terms used in the Verus system are appropriate, and that it has never found any issues.

The surveillance of detainees’ phone calls is especially troubling in county jails, where people are frequently held before being convicted of any crime, said Bianca Tylek, executive director of criminal justice nonprofit Worth Rises.

“People who are innocent, (who) have the presumption of innocence, who cannot afford bail … should not be subjected to surveillance that no one else is,” said Tylek.

Besides infringing the privacy of incarcerated people and their relatives, AI-powered surveillance in prisons and jails could also lead to increases in the cost of phone calls for prisoners, rights campaigners fear.

The average 15-minute phone call from a jail already costs $5.74, according to a 2019 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, while 2015 research found more than a third of families reported getting into debt to pay for calls or visits.

Worth Rises, which has been pushing to reduce the cost of prison phone calls across the country, is urging state and local law enforcement to offer calls for free.

Emails between LEO and sheriff’s offices, which were obtained through public records requests, show use of LEO’s Verus system could cost as much as 8 cents per minute.

They also give a picture of how the company worked in tandem with law enforcement officials to raise funds – enlisting PR personnel, helping draft federal grant proposals, and making appeals to lawmakers.

In Suffolk County, the Sheriff’s office discussed plans to pass the cost onto prisoners themselves if grant funding ran out, the emails reveal.

The office said that while it had considered passing along the costs to prisoners, they ultimately decided not to.

Tylek said the federal government should not be funding pilots involving systems like Verus, warning that authorities rarely relinquish surveillance powers once they have been granted.

“It (becomes) almost impossible to pull it out,” she said.

Afghan Refugees Get Technology to Easier Adapt to Life in US

U.S. businesses and Asian Americans are stepping up to help Afghan refugees adjust to life in the U.S. with technology training and tools. One resettlement effort that began at a military base in Indiana has spread throughout the United States. VOA’s Jessica Stone has the story.

Biden Administration Considers Technology Sanctions if Russia Invades Ukraine

WASHINGTON — 

In the months since Russia began massing troops on the border of Ukraine, the Biden administration has, on multiple occasions, warned that any further aggression by Moscow toward its neighbor would be met with unprecedented levels of sanctions. Now, the White House appears to be dropping some specific hints about what those sanctions might look like.

According to multiple confirmed media reports, the administration has begun laying the groundwork for a ban on the sale of high-technology products containing U.S.-made components or software to Russia.

The plan echoes steps the Trump administration took against the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in 2020, barring vendors from selling the company semiconductors it needed to produce mobile telephone handsets. The ban had devastating consequences for Huawei’s business. Once the world leader in smartphone sales, it has fallen to 10th overall since the ban was put in place.

FILE – A man uses his smartphone as he stands near a billboard for Chinese technology firm Huawei at the PT Expo in Beijing, Oct. 31, 2019.

The extent to which the administration intends to cut off Russian supplies of high-tech gear is unclear, and that’s probably intentional, experts said.

“As with any sort of major event, or crisis, or potential invasion, government leaders want options … from strongest to weakest and everything in the middle, in terms of actions that can be taken,” Kevin Wolf, a former assistant secretary of Commerce for export administration in the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, told VOA.

Wolf, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump in Washington, said that the administration is unlikely to signal exactly what action it will take unless Russia forces its hand by trying to take over more of Ukraine’s territory.

In 2014, in an earlier invasion, Russia took control of Crimea, a region of Ukraine, and continues to support local militias that control parts of the country’s Donbass region.

Extraterritorial reach

The U.S. appears to be considering the application of a new doctrine, the foreign direct product rule, to Russia. First put forward under the Trump administration, the rule would make it illegal under U.S. law for any entity in the world to sell high-technology equipment to Russia if that equipment was made or tested using U.S. technology.

Theoretically, that could apply to virtually any product in the world that contains semiconductors, given the prevalence of U.S. technology and software involved in the devices’ manufacturing process.

The rule relies on the implicit threat that companies that rely on U.S. technology or software to produce their products — even if the physical components of the products themselves originate outside the U.S. — could find themselves cut off from crucial licenses or equipment if they refuse to honor the U.S. export ban.

The extreme reach of the rule, into the business dealings of non-U.S. firms, makes it politically fraught, according to Jim Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

However, speaking with VOA, Lewis said, “Using force against Ukraine really justifies it.”

‘No more iPhones for Russia’

The U.S. has a wide range of options when it comes to blocking the transfer of technology to Russia, both in terms of the entities within Russia that the sanctions affect and the companies outside Russia that would be subject to them. (The U.S. already has export controls in place that target Russia’s defense sector, so anything the Biden administration applies would be in addition to those existing sanctions.)

FILE – A customer waits to buy Apple’s new iPhone X before its launch outside Central Universal Department Store in Moscow, Russia, Nov. 3, 2017.

At the more targeted end of the spectrum, the administration could identify specific companies, making it illegal to sell U.S. technology to them. More broadly, the U.S. could impose sectorwide restrictions, barring the export of technology to, for example, the Russian civil aviation industry.

At the far end of the spectrum would be a flat-out ban on the sale of all U.S.-related technology to Russia.

“If they go for the maximum approach, that means no more iPhones for Russia,” said Lewis, of CSIS.

Pushing Moscow toward China?

If the U.S. does move forward with extensive technological sanctions against Russia, it will be difficult for Moscow to fill the gap with domestic production, said Jeffrey Edmonds, a senior analyst at the security think tank CNA.

“Russia has always been fairly weak when it comes to things like microchips, microelectronics and electronics in general,” Edmonds told VOA. “That’s coupled with the fact that Russia has a very weak entrepreneurial system, in that most of the technology companies in that whole sector are really run by government-sponsored organizations that are highly inefficient and subject to high levels of corruption.”

The result could be to push Moscow toward China, which has already been working to create a domestic manufacturing base that, in the future, might be able to provide Russia with homegrown equipment that would render U.S. sanctions ineffective.

In an email exchange with VOA, research analysts Megan Hogan and Abigail Dahlman, at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, pointed out that United Nations data indicate that Russia already imports some 68% of its consumer IT products from China.

“In the short term, the application of the (foreign direct product) rule will provide the Chinese government with further evidence of Western powers, particularly the U.S., meddling in Eastern affairs, validating the Chinese government’s … anti-foreign sanctions measures and further straining U.S.-China relations,” Hogan and Dahlman wrote. “Chinese tech companies will likely be forced to choose between access to the U.S. market and access to the Chinese market, with penalties associated with either decision.”

They continued, “In the long term, the U.S. risks expediting China’s development of its own domestic semiconductor industry. China’s largest chip manufacturer, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), is currently years behind its competitors in terms of its manufacturing technology and capacity. While China is already making moves to improve its domestic semiconductor manufacturing (as is the U.S.), U.S. technology sanctions on Russia are likely to expedite the process at the cost of the American semiconductor industry.”

2022 a year of surprises, they capture a huge and modern narco-submarine loaded with more than 6 tons of cocaine

Cocaine is a source of criminal resources. Those with access to their wealth quickly gain rise and power, in general today, there are more opportunities than ever to access cocaine both in America and in Europe because while the cocaine trade has spawned some of the most powerful criminal structures and notorious on the planet, they must innovate to continue persisting. And this is evidenced by the seizure made by US authorities today.

On January 12, 2022, from early hours, the United States Department of Justice announced that its coast guard units, in cooperation with European agencies, tracked and captured with its maritime units, a large submersible drug trafficker, which had previously been had detected during patrol maneuvers. They were more surprised when the boat skillfully began to maneuver, and has evaded the coast guard units, evidencing not only the skill of the crew but also the presence of advanced technology on the boat for such purposes, in other words, high-end military equipment. and of unknown origin that at times gave the advantage to this modern underwater narco.

Inter-agency cooperation and the use of advanced maritime drones made it possible to successfully pursue and capture the stealthy vessel. At the time of boarding by the authorities, the crew did not try to flee or destroy the boat, its four crew members were arrested, and the cargo of 6,350 kilos of cocaine (more than 6 tons) was confiscated. The value of the cargo, the nationalities of those captured and its origin are unknown at this time.

It is speculated that the cargo, which in total would be more than 6 tons of cocaine, would be destined for the cartels that currently control the European market, among other situations that are still under investigation by the United States Drug Control Administration. States (DEA), which has not yet issued an official statement.