MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian pharmaceutical company Petrovax on Thursday said 92.5% of Russian volunteers in trials of the Chinese Ad5-Ncov vaccine against COVID-19 had shown high levels of antibodies, the Interfax news agency reported.
Ad5-nCoV is a candidate vaccine co-developed by CanSino Biologics and a Chinese military-backed research unit.
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow; editing by John Stonestreet)
Dane DeHaan has confirmed that he will be (virtually) the only Spider-Man villain not to be returning for the upcoming Spider-Man 3.
For some survivors of the Holocaust, the vow to "never forget" takes on a special meaning when they have only faded memories, or none at all, of parents they lost as young children. Leah Nebenzahl was a baby when her parents, Pipha and Zvi Herschman, were murdered in Nazi-occupied Poland. On Wednesday, Holocaust survivors mark the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops.
U.S. President Joe Biden's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations will stress on Wednesday the importance of U.S. re-engagement with the 193-member world body in order to challenge efforts by China to "drive an authoritarian agenda." Veteran diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield is due to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing. "We know China is working across the U.N. system to drive an authoritarian agenda that stands in opposition to the founding values of the institution - American values," Thomas-Greenfield will say, according to excerpts from her statement.
Spain is launching a new migration policy in the Canary Islands, opening camps for undocumented migrants in a sign that it expects a significant influx of new arrivals, while it largely refuses to transfer them to the mainland. After a huge jump in arrivals from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa last year sparked tensions in the archipelago, authorities have started to move some migrants to tents in two camps on Gran Canaria. Four more will be opened in mid-February on Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Fuerteventura islands for up to 7,000 migrants.
Weeks after other Latin American countries began inoculating their citizens against coronavirus, Brazil finally administered its first shot on Jan. 17 using China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd vaccine. With efficacy of just over 50% - barely above Brazil's threshold for regulatory approval - the Chinese shot was not the government's first choice. The country's principle strategy - to manufacture 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine locally - has been plagued by repeated delays.
A former principal at a Jewish ultra-Orthodox school returned to Australia under extradition Wednesday to face dozens of child sexual assault charges, more than 12 years after she fled the country.
In an interview with Reuters, Gates said the millions of online posts about him and about top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci had likely taken hold in part because of the combination of a frightening viral pandemic and the rise of social media. Gates, a billionaire who stepped down as chairman of Microsoft Corp in 2014, has through his philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation committed at least $1.75 billion to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes support for some makers of vaccines, diagnostics, and potential treatments. Since the pandemic began a year ago, millions of conspiracies have spread over the Internet, fuelling misinformation about the coronavirus, its origins and the motives of those working to fight it.
GEORGE TOWN, Jan 27 — The Penang government will explore its options for the iconic ferry that Penang Port Commission (PPC) has presented to the state, said state exco Zairil Khir Johari. The...
The European Union is asking AstraZeneca to publish the contract it signed with the bloc on COVID-19 vaccine supplies, an EU official said on Wednesday, in an escalation of the row over delivery delays. The company pulled out of a meeting with the European Union scheduled for Wednesday, the official said. In an interview with newspapers on Tuesday, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said the EU contract was based on a best-effort clause and did not commit the company to a specific timetable for deliveries.
The head of the World Food Program said Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to strengthen vulnerable supply chains to impoverished nations struggling to feed their populations. David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations' Nobel Peace Prize-winning food program, said that the pandemic put further stress on supply chains getting food to the hungry. “We’ve got to continue to work the system, we've got to make certain that we are ... less vulnerable to COVID type impacts,” Beasley told a World Economic Forum virtual panel.
Weeks after other Latin American countries began inoculating their citizens against coronavirus, Brazil finally administered its first shot on Jan. 17 using China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd vaccine. With efficacy of just over 50% - barely above Brazil's threshold for regulatory approval - the Chinese shot was not the government's first choice. The country's principle strategy - to manufacture 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine locally - has been plagued by repeated delays.
As U.S. President Joe Biden took the oath of office last Wednesday, Felipe Ortega sat in a van handcuffed and chained at the waist and feet, headed toward Mexico and the end of his 30-year life in the United States. A day earlier, the 58-year-old grandfather of eight U.S. citizens was on his way to work when immigration agents surrounded his car in Midland, Texas, just blocks from his home. After one sleepless night in jail and a long ride to the border, Ortega, a Mexican national, was sent across the international bridge at El Paso in Texas around 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
CoreCivic and the GEO Group, two of the largest U.S. private prison companies, could lose as much as a quarter of their revenue, about $1 billion a year between them, under new limits on the sector from President Joe Biden. Shares in GEO Group and CoreCivic took a hit on Tuesday after Biden signed an executive order to roll back the U.S. government's use of private prisons, a part of what he called an initiative to tackle systemic racism. Shares of GEO and CoreCivic had already been walloped in the past year as COVID-19 restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border and capacity restrictions for health reasons kept facilities they operate for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) well below capacity.
Indian police imposed heavy security and closed several main roads around New Delhi on Wednesday, a day after farmers went on the rampage in the capital, leaving one person dead and several hundred injured.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield says that if confirmed by the U.S. Senate as America's ambassador to the United Nations she will vigorously counter China’s authoritarian agenda and engage in “people-to-people diplomacy.” The veteran foreign service officer, in prepared remarks, speaks of China’s diplomatic inroads during the Trump administration, which pursued an “America First” policy that weakened international alliances. “When America shows up — when we are consistent and persistent — when we exert our influence in accordance with our values — the United Nations can be an indispensable institution for advancing peace, security, and our collective well-being,” she says.
AstraZeneca says it has not pulled out of vaccine talks with the European Union and plans to meet with EU officials later Wednesday in Brussels. The comments came after EU officials said earlier that the company had pulled out of the meeting to discuss delayed vaccine commitments to the 27-nation bloc. The talks were slated to be the third in in as many days.
The US is running up debt like never before, and one of the reasons Washington can get away with it is because interest rates are hovering around their lowest levels ever. This raises the question—should the Treasury lock in these rates for 50 years? Government borrowing is under renewed scrutiny as politicians consider their third mega-spending package to support the US economy, adding to more than $3 trillion already earmarked since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Amazon stock is down around 6% from its early September 2020 highs. This means Wall Street will be glued to the e-commerce titan's upcoming Q4 earnings release on February 2...
There is nothing weird about seeing snow in January, unless it's falling on sun-kissed expanses, including Nevada's Las Vegas and Arizona's deserts, which were transformed on Tuesday into winter wonderlands. According to the zoo's press release, Penzi the baby elephant took the snowflakes as cue to alternate between taking a splash in the enclosure's pond and rolling in the mud. Her older sister Nandi and a few other elephants also could not resist frolicking amid the flurries. Just days after sunny Malibu, California was blanketed with snow by an unusual winter storm, frosty flakes made their way to Nevada and Arizona - shocking for some but a welcome relief for many in the drought-plagued U.S. West.
The city of Beijing tightened curbs on inbound travellers ahead of the peak Lunar New Year travel season kicking off on Thursday, requiring negative COVID-19 test results even from individuals arriving from China's low-risk areas. People from low-risk areas in China arriving between Jan. 28 and March 15 must show negative results for COVID-19 tests taken within seven days before entry, Xu Hejian, spokesman of the Beijing city government, said on Wednesday. Visitors from areas of high- or medium-risk areas where infections have been found, or from cities that are under lockdown, are not to enter Beijing, according to existing rules.
