NIST method uses radio signals to image hidden and speeding objects

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST)

VIDEO: THIS DEMONSTRATION OF THE M-WIDAR (MICRO-WAVE IMAGE DETECTION, ANALYSIS AND RANGING) SYSTEM SHOWS, IN THE VIDEO ON THE LEFT, A PERSON WALKING AND LATER CROUCHING AND LYING DOWN IN AN... view more

CREDIT: NIST

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Wavsens LLC have developed a method for using radio signals to create real-time images and videos of hidden and moving objects, which could help firefighters find escape routes or victims inside buildings filled with fire and smoke. The technique could also help track hypersonic objects such as missiles and space debris.

The new method, described in Nature Communications, could provide critical information to help reduce deaths and injuries. Locating and tracking first responders indoors is a prime goal for the public safety community. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of orbiting space junk are considered dangerous to humans and spacecraft.

"Our system allows real-time imaging around corners and through walls and tracking of fast-moving objects such as millimeter-sized space debris flying at 10 kilometers per second, more than 20,000 miles per hour, all from standoff distances," said physicist Fabio da Silva, who led the development of the system while working at NIST.

"Because we use radio signals, they go through almost everything, like concrete, drywall, wood and glass," da Silva added. "It's pretty cool because not only can we look behind walls, but it takes only a few microseconds of data to make an image frame. The sampling happens at the speed of light, as fast as physically possible."

The NIST imaging method is a variation on radar, which sends an electromagnetic pulse, waits for the reflections, and measures the round-trip time to determine distance to a target. Multisite radar usually has one transmitter and several receivers that receive echoes and triangulate them to locate an object.

"We exploited the multisite radar concept but in our case use lots of transmitters and one receiver," da Silva said. "That way, anything that reflects anywhere in space, we are able to locate and image."

CAPTION

Illustration of the lab setup for m-Widar, with transmitters and receiver at left and person behind wallboard at right. Inset at lower right shows the corresponding image produced by the instrument.

CREDIT

NIST

Da Silva explains the imaging process like this:


To image a building, the actual volume of interest is much smaller than the volume of the building itself because it's mostly empty space with sparse stuff in it. To locate a person, you would divide the building into a matrix of cubes. Ordinarily, you would transmit radio signals to each cube individually and analyze the reflections, which is very time consuming. By contrast, the NIST method probes all cubes at the same time and uses the return echo from, say, 10 out of 100 cubes to calculate where the person is. All transmissions will return an image, with the signals forming a pattern and the empty cubes dropping out.

Da Silva has applied for a patent, and he recently left NIST to commercialize the system under the name m-Widar (microwave image detection, analysis and ranging) through a startup company, Wavsens LLC (Westminster, Colorado).

The NIST team demonstrated the technique in an anechoic (non-echoing) chamber, making images of a 3D scene involving a person moving behind drywall. The transmitter power was equivalent to 12 cellphones sending signals simultaneously to create images of the target from a distance of about 10 meters (30 feet) through the wallboard.

Da Silva said the current system has a potential range of up to several kilometers. With some improvements the range could be much farther, limited only by transmitter power and receiver sensitivity, he said.

The basic technique is a form of computational imaging known as transient rendering, which has been around as an image reconstruction tool since 2008. The idea is to use a small sample of signal measurements to reconstruct images based on random patterns and correlations. The technique has previously been used in communications coding and network management, machine learning and some advanced forms of imaging.

Da Silva combined signal processing and modeling techniques from other fields to create a new mathematical formula to reconstruct images. Each transmitter emits different pulse patterns simultaneously, in a specific type of random sequence, which interfere in space and time with the pulses from the other transmitters and produce enough information to build an image.

The transmitting antennas operated at frequencies from 200 megahertz to 10 gigahertz, roughly the upper half of the radio spectrum, which includes microwaves. The receiver consisted of two antennas connected to a signal digitizer. The digitized data were transferred to a laptop computer and uploaded to the graphics processing unit to reconstruct the images.

The NIST team used the method to reconstruct a scene with 1.5 billion samples per second, a corresponding image frame rate of 366 kilohertz (frames per second). By comparison, this is about 100 to 1,000 times more frames per second than a cellphone video camera.

With 12 antennas, the NIST system generated 4096-pixel images, with a resolution of about 10 centimeters across a 10-meter scene. This image resolution can be useful when sensitivity or privacy is a concern. However, the resolution could be improved by upgrading the system using existing technology, including more transmitting antennas and faster random signal generators and digitizers.

In the future, the images could be improved by using quantum entanglement, in which the properties of individual radio signals would become interlinked. Entanglement can improve sensitivity. Radio-frequency quantum illumination schemes could increase reception sensitivity.

The new imaging technique could also be adapted to transmit visible light instead of radio signals -- ultrafast lasers could boost image resolution but would lose the capability to penetrate walls -- or sound waves used for sonar and ultrasound imaging applications.

In addition to imaging of emergency conditions and space debris, the new method might also be used to measure the velocity of shock waves, a key metric for evaluating explosives, and to monitor vital signs such as heart rate and respiration, da Silva said.

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This work was funded in part by the Public Safety Trust Fund, which provides funding to organizations across NIST leveraging NIST expertise in communications, cybersecurity, manufacturing and sensors for research on critical, lifesaving technologies for first responders.

Paper: F.C.S. da Silva, A.B. Kos, G.E. Antonucci, J.B. Coder, C.W. Nelson and A. Hati. 2020. Continuous Capture Microwave Imaging. Nature Communications. June 25.

 COVID EXPOSED RACIST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

COVID-linked multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children diagnosed more in Black and Latino child

New study identifies key demographic, clinical and biomarker features of MIS-C patients

CHILDREN'S NATIONAL HOSPITAL

Research News

 

Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) significantly affected more Black and Latino children than white children, with Black children at the highest risk, according to a new observational study of 124 pediatric patients treated at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. Researchers also found cardiac complications, including systolic myocardial dysfunction and valvular regurgitation, were more common in MIS-C patients who were critically ill. Of the 124 patients, 63 were ultimately diagnosed with MIS-C and were compared with 61 patients deemed controls who presented with similar symptoms but ultimately had an alternative diagnosis.

In the study, published in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers provide insight into key features distinguishing MIS-C patients to provide a more realistic picture of the burden of disease in the pediatric population and aid with the early detection of disease and treatment for optimal outcomes. The COVID-linked syndrome has affected nearly 4,000 children in the United States in the past year. Early reports showed severe illness, substantial variation in treatment and mortality associated with MIS-C. However, this study demonstrated that with early recognition and standardized treatment, short-term mortality can be nearly eliminated.

"Data like this will be critical for the development of clinical trials around the long-term implications of MIS-C," says Dr. Roberta DeBiasi, M.D., lead author and chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Children's National. "Our study sheds light on the demographic, clinical and biomarker features of this disease, as well as viral load and viral sequencing."

Of the 63 children with MIS-C, 52% were critically ill, and additional subtypes of MIS-C were identified including those with and without still detectable virus, those with and without features meeting criteria for Kawasaki Disease, and those with and without detectable cardiac abnormalities. While median age (7.25 years) and sex were similar between the MIS-C cohort and control group, Black (46%) and Latino (35%) children were overrepresented in the MIS-C group, especially those who required critical care. Heart complications were also more frequent in children who became critically ill with MIS-C (55% vs. 28%). Findings also showed MIS-C patients demonstrated a distinct cytokine signature, with significantly higher levels of certain cytokines than those of controls. This may help in the understanding of what drives the disease and which potential treatments may be most effective.

In reviewing viral load and antibody biomarkers, researchers found MIS-C cases with detectable virus had a lower viral load than in primary SARS-CoV-2 infection cases, but similar to MIS-C controls who had alternative diagnoses, but who also had detectable virus. A larger proportion of patients with MIS-C had detectable SARS-CoV-2 antibodies than controls. This is consistent with current thinking that MIS-C occurs a few weeks after a primary COVID-19 infection as part of an overzealous immune response.

Viral sequencing was also performed in the MIS-C cohort and compared to cases of primary COVID-19 infection in the Children's National geographic population. 88% of the samples analyzed fell into the GH clade consistent with the high frequency of the GH clade circulating earlier in the pandemic in the U.S. and Canada, and first observed in France.

"The fact that there were no notable sequencing differences between our MIS-C and primary COVID cohorts suggests that variations in host genetics and/or immune response are more likely primary determinants of how MIS-C presents itself, rather than virus-specific factors," says Dr. DeBiasi. "As we've seen new variants continue to emerge, it will be important to study their effect on the frequency and severity of MIS-C."

Researchers are still looking for consensus on the most efficacious treatments for MIS-C. In a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. DeBiasi calls for well-characterized large prospective cohort studies at single centers, and systematic and long-term follow-up for cardiac and non-cardiac outcomes in children with MIS-C. Data from these studies will be a crucial determinant of the best set of treatment guidelines for immunotherapies to treat MIS-C.

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Media contact: Beth Riggs | briggs@childrensnational.org | 301-233-4038

 

AI used to predict unknown links between viruses and mammals

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL

Research News

IMAGE: NETWORKS OF OBSERVED AND PREDICTED ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN WILD AND SEMI-DOMESTICATED MAMMALIAN HOSTS AND KNOWN VIRUS SPECIES. view more 

CREDIT: DR MAYA WARDEH

A new University of Liverpool study could help scientists mitigate the future spread of zoonotic and livestock diseases caused by existing viruses.

Researchers have used a form or artificial intelligence (AI) called machine-learning to predict more than 20,000 unknown associations between known viruses and susceptible mammalian species. The findings, which are published in Nature Communications, could be used to help target disease surveillance programmes.

Thousands of viruses are known to affect mammals, with recent estimates indicating that less than 1% of mammalian viral diversity has been discovered to date. Some of these viruses such as human and feline immunodeficiency viruses have a very narrow host range, whereas others such as rabies and West Nile viruses have very wide host ranges.

"Host range is an important predictor of whether a virus is zoonotic and therefore poses a risk to humans. Most recently, SARS-CoV-2 has been found to have a relatively broad host range which may have facilitated its spill-over to humans. However, our knowledge of the host range of most viruses remains limited," explains lead researcher Dr Maya Wardeh from the University's Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences.

To address this knowledge gap, the researchers developed a novel machine learning framework to predict unknown associations between known viruses and susceptible mammalian species by consolidating three distinct perspectives - that of each virus, each mammal, and the network connecting them, respectively.

Their results suggests that there are more than five times as many associations between known zoonotic viruses and wild and semi-domesticated mammals than previously thought. In particular, bats and rodents, which have been associated with recent outbreaks of emerging viruses such as coronaviruses and hantaviruses, were linked with increased risk of zoonotic viruses.

The model also predicts a five-fold increase in associations between wild and semi-domesticated mammals and viruses of economically important domestic species such as livestock and pets.

Dr Wardeh said: "As viruses continue to move across the globe, our model provides a powerful way to assess potential hosts they have yet to encounter. Having this foresight could help to identify and mitigate zoonotic and animal-disease risks, such as spill-over from animal reservoirs into human populations."

Dr Wardeh is currently expanding the approach to predict the ability of ticks and insects to transmit viruses to birds and mammals, which will enable prioritisation of laboratory-based vector-competence studies worldwide to help mitigate future outbreaks of vector-borne diseases.

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FIGHT, FLIGHT OR FUCK

When pandemic hit, some people wanted more sexual activity

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

Research News

 

IMAGE: DIRECTOR OF THE UROLOGIC ONCOLOGY PROGRAM, UPMC HILLMAN CANCER CENTER, AND PROFESSOR, PITT'S DEPARTMENT OF UROLOGY. view more 

CREDIT: BENJAMIN DAVIES

PITTSBURGH, June 25, 2021 - It is widely assumed that Americans' sexual activity took a nosedive during the early chaotic months of the coronavirus pandemic. But a new study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine challenges this popular narrative.

In a research letter published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, scientists from Pitt and UPMC found that some people were having more sex during the pandemic than ever before. That group? Older men with erectile dysfunction.

"People's sexual lives contribute to the psychosocial fabric of society," said senior author Benjamin Davies, M.D., director of the Urologic Oncology Program at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and professor at Pitt's Department of Urology. "We saw a huge spike in sales of daily use erectile dysfunction drugs, which suggests that some people were having more spontaneous sex than ever--with their partners at home, they wanted to always be ready."

In a review of National Sales Perspective data, the researchers found that sales of prescription daily-use erectile dysfunction drugs, such as tadalafil, soared after March 2020, when the country went into the nationwide lockdown.

Scientists used the sales rates of the widely available erectile dysfunction drugs as a proxy for the amount of sexual activity--and compared the changes in sales trends pre-pandemic, before March 2020, and after the pandemic was declared, between March and December of 2020. To account for possible fluctuations of drug sales due to other factors, such as ease of access to pharmacies, the researchers tracked the sales of urological drugs--which didn't change in the months after the pandemic was declared.

Interestingly, scientists found, after a short decrease in sales in March and April, the sales of erectile dysfunction drugs have enjoyed a steady increase ever since. The sales of tadalafil, in particular--a longer-acting drug designed to be taken daily to help with spontaneous sexual activity--nearly doubled between February and December of 2020.

"Changes in sales of erectile dysfunction drugs can indicate important problems and point out issues in people's general well-being," said Davies.

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Other authors on this manuscript include Inmaculada Hernandez, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Zeynep Gul, M.D., and Walid Gellad, M.D., M.P.H., all of Pitt.

This research was supported by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute grant # K01HL142847.

To read this release online or share it, visit https://www.upmc.com/media/news/062521-davies-pandemic-sex [when embargo lifts].

A scientist says he's found 13 Wuhan coronavirus sequences that were deleted from a US database - and claims they're a 'goldmine' for research into the virus' origins
gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) 23 hrs ago

A man receives a nasal swab COVID-19 test at Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport . Mario Tama/Getty Images

A Seattle researcher said he's uncovered previously deleted data on coronavirus sequences from Wuhan, China.

The sequences were a "gold mine" for scientists researching the virus' origins, he said.

The data was initially uploaded to a US database by Chinese scientists before being deleted.

A researcher in Seattle claims he's discovered 13 partial coronavirus sequences from samples collected in Wuhan, China, that were deleted from a US database last year.

The discovery could mean scientists researching the origins of the pandemic have been working with incomplete data, he said.

Dr. Jesse Bloom, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, said Tuesday that he had recovered the deleted files from Google Cloud, and had reconstructed partial sequences of 13 viruses. He said they came from samples taken at the early stages of pandemic in Wuhan, where scientists first discovered SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The data initially came from a study by Wuhan University scientists, he said.

Bloom said his findings suggested the coronavirus was already circulating in Wuhan before being linked to COVID-19 outbreaks at the Huanan Seafood Market. They also suggested the sequences used in most studies into the virus' origins, including the joint WHO-China report, "are not fully representative of the viruses actually present in Wuhan at that time," he said.

Throughout the pandemic, Bloom has called for more research into the origins of the pandemic. But he told CNN that the new sequences alone didn't provide any further evidence about whether the virus spread naturally from animals to humans or was, as some claim, the result of a laboratory leak.

Bloom said that the samples, from early outpatients in Wuhan, were a "gold mine" for scientists wanting to understand the spread of the virus.

Bloom's findings, published in a paper, haven't been peer-reviewed by experts.

Read more: Experts explain why the mRNA tech that revolutionized COVID-19 vaccines could be the answer to incurable diseases, heart attacks, and even snake bites: 'The possibilities are endless'

Bloom said that there was "no plausible scientific reason" for the sequences being deleted from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) database. The NIH said that it had removed the sequences in June 2020 at the request of the person that added them to the database, and said that allowing this was standard practice, CNN reported.

Prof David Robertson, an expert on viruses at the University of Glasgow, said in a statement that it was difficult to "conclude this is a cover-up rather than a more mundane deletion of data," based on Bloom's paper. "We also know already that the Huanan market wasn't the sole spillover event and SARS-CoV-2 was probably circulating in late October/November," he said.

Prof Martin Hibberd, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a statement: "More work would need to be done to know how solid these findings are, particularly the accuracy and reasons for the sequence deletions, but it does look intriguing."

Bloom said that he was reviewing genetic data when he discovered a March 2020 study about 241 genetic virus sequences collected by scientists at Wuhan University. He said he couldn't find the research online publicly, but was able to access 13 sequences via Google Cloud.

Additional reporting from Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce

Renowned scientist recovers deleted SARS-CoV-2 data from Wuhan

Download PDF Copy

By Sally Robertson, B.Sc.

Jun 24 2021

Reviewed by Dan Hutchins, M.Phil

Renowned evolutionary researcher, Jesse Bloom from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has conducted a phylogenetic analysis suggesting that the early severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequences that were obtained from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, are not fully representative of the viruses circulating in the city at the time of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak.

Bloom’s findings are based on the identification and recovery of a dataset containing SARS-CoV-2 sequences from early on in the Wuhan epidemic that had been deleted from The National Institutes of Health’s Sequence Read Archive.

Bloom says the analysis suggests that the progenitor of known SARS-CoV-2 sequences differs from the Huanan Seafood Market sequences and is at least three mutations closer to SARS-CoV-2’s bat coronavirus relatives.

“The current study suggests that at least in one case, the trusting structures of science have been abused to obscure sequences relevant to the early spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan,” writes Bloom. “A careful re-evaluation of other archived forms of scientific communication, reporting, and data could shed additional light on the early emergence of the virus.”

A pre-print version of the research paper is available on the bioRxiv* server, while the article undergoes peer-review.

Study: Recovery of deleted deep sequencing data sheds more light on the early Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Image Credit: NIAID / Bloom
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains a mystery

Understanding the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan is essential to trace the origin of the virus.

Further Reading​
Preprints: how draft academic papers have become essential in the fight against COVID

The first reports outside of China at the end of December 2019 highlighted the Huanan Seafood Market as a site of zoonotic spread.

However, this theory became increasingly unlikely as reports of earlier cases in 2019 emerged that had no connection to the market.

For example, Professor Yu Chuanhua from Wuhan University told the “Health Times” that the records he reviewed included two cases in mid-November and one suspected case on September 29th.

Example of the process to delete SRA data. The image shows e-mails between the lead author of the pangolin coronavirus paper Xiao et al. (2020) and SRA staff excerpted from USRTK (2020).
Chinese CDC banned the sharing of information without approval

At around the same time, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an order forbidding sharing information about the COVID-19 epidemic without approval. China’s State Council then issued a much broader order requiring central approval of any publication related to COVID-19.

In 2021, the joint World Health Organization (WHO)–China report dismissed all reported cases prior to December 8th 2019, as not COVID-19, and the theory that the virus may have originated at the Huanan Seafood Market was revived.

Although there is much debate surrounding how exactly SARS-CoV-2 infected the human population, it is universally accepted that the virus’s deep ancestors are bat coronaviruses.

The reported collection dates of SARS-CoV-2 sequences in GISAID versus their relative mutational distances from the RaTG13 bat coronavirus outgroup. Mutational distances are relative to the putative progenitor proCoV2 inferred by Kumar et al. (2021). The plot shows sequences in GISAID collected no later than February 28, 2020. Sequences that the joint WHO-China report (WHO 2021) describes as being associated with the Wuhan Seafood Market are plotted with squares. Points are slightly jittered on the y-axis. Go to https://jbloom.github.io/SARS-CoV-2_PRJNA612766/deltadist.html for an interactive version of this plot that enables toggling of the outgroup to RpYN06 and RmYN02, mouseovers to see details for each point including strain name and mutations relative to proCoV2, and adjustment of the y-axis jittering.

However, the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 sequences, which are mostly derived from the Huanan Seafood Market, differ significantly from these bat coronaviruses, compared with other sequences collected at later dates outside of Wuhan.


“As a result, there is a direct conflict between the two major principles used to infer an outbreak’s progenitor: namely that it should be among the earliest sequences, and that it should be most closely related to deeper ancestors,” writes Bloom.
What did the current study involve?

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Bloom identified a dataset of SARS-CoV-2 sequences isolated from outpatient samples collected early on in the Wuhan epidemic that had been deleted from the NIH’s Sequence Read Archive. He recovered the files from the Google Cloud and reconstructed partial sequences of 13 early epidemic viruses.

Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences, in conjunction with careful annotation of existing ones, suggested that the early Wuhan sequences from the Huanan Seafood Market that have been the focus of the joint WHO–China report are not fully representative of the viruses that were actually present in Wuhan at the time.

The RaTG13 coronavirus that infects the horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus affinis) has been identified as sharing the greatest genome sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2 to date.

However, the early Huanan Seafood Market sequences are more distant from RaTG13 than sequences collected in January from other locations in China and even other countries.


“All sequences associated with this market differ from RaTG13 by at least three more mutations than sequences subsequently collected at various other locations – a fact that is difficult to reconcile with the idea that the market was the original location of the spread of a bat coronavirus to humans,” writes Bloom.
More about the deleted sequences

Phylogenetic analysis of the deleted sequences revealed that four GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data) sequences collected in Guangdong that fall within a putative progenitor node were isolated from two different clusters of people who traveled to Wuhan in late December of 2019. These individuals then developed symptoms before or on the day that they returned to Guangdong, where their viruses were ultimately sequenced.


“All sequences from patients infected in Wuhan but sequenced in Guangdong are more similar to the bat coronavirus outgroup than sequences from the Huanan Seafood Market,” writes Bloom.

These deleted data as well as existing sequences from Wuhan-infected patients hospitalized in Guangdong, show that early Wuhan sequences frequently contained the T29095C mutation and were less likely to carry the mutations T8782C and C28144T than sequences in the joint WHO-China report.
Deletion of the data has important implications for future studies

Bloom says the deletion of such an informative data set has implications beyond those gleaned directly from the recovered sequences.

Firstly, samples from early outpatients in Wuhan represent a gold mine for anyone seeking to understand the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Secondly, genomic epidemiology studies of early SARS-CoV-2 must focus on the provenance and annotation of the underlying sequences as much as they do technical considerations.

In addition, future studies should devote equal effort to going beyond the annotations in GISAID to carefully trace the location of patient infection and sample sequencing, says Bloom.


“In addition, I suggest it could be worthwhile to review e-mail records to identify other SRA [Sequence Read Archive] deletions.”


*Important Notice

bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Journal reference:

Bloom J. Recovery of deleted deep sequencing data sheds more light on the early Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. bioRxiv, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.18.449051, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.449051v1

U.S. says ban on Chinese firm's solar products will not slow clean energy progress

by Reuters

Thursday, 24 June



Biden administration says import bans on polysilicon and solar products allegedly made with forced labor in Xinjiang will not block progress on clean energy goals


By David Lawder, David Shepardson and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) - The Biden administration said Thursday it banned U.S. imports of a key solar panel material from Chinese-based Hoshine Silicon Industry Co , but stopped short of imposing a ban on all imports of silica from Xinjiang and said the action would not harm U.S. clean energy goals.

The Commerce Department separately added five Chinese entities to the U.S. economic blacklist over forced labor allegations in Xinjiang -- including Hoshine. The White House cited the G7's recent pledge to clean up the global supply chain as part of its actions.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the import bans on polysilicon and solar products made with forced labor would not hamper the Biden administration's clean energy goals.

"Our environmental goals will not be achieved on the backs of human beings in a forced labor environment," Mayorkas said at a press briefing. "We're going to root out forced labor wherever it exists."

The import ban covers products made overseas that use Hoshine materials, including any solar panels produced abroad with polysilicon from Hoshine.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, reacting to earlier reports of the U.S. action, said on Thursday that China would take "all necessary measures" to protect its companies' rights and interests.

Hoshine Silicon Industry said on an interactive investor platform that it backed the Chinese foreign ministry's reaction, adding that the firm does not export industrial silicon to the United States directly and the impact on its business would be limited.

Asked whether the Hoshine ban could be expanded into a region wide ban on all polysilicon from Xinjiang, Mayorkas and CBP officials downplayed any similarities to the agency's recent region-wide import bans on Xinjiang-produced cotton and tomato products over forced labor.

Ana Hinojosa, CBP's executive director for trade remedy law enforcement, said any expansion would depend on the substantiation of evidence that forced labor is being used.

Hinojosa said CBP identified $6 million of direct imports from Hoshine and $150 million of downstream products using Hoshine materials over the past 2.5 years.

The United States is also restricting U.S. exports of "commodities, software, and technology" to Hoshine, three other Chinese firms and the paramilitary Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), saying they were involved with the forced labor of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the western Chinese region.

Representative Dan Kildee, a Democrat active on trade issues, said the announcement was an "important signal of the administration's intent to enforce the law and as a first step." He said he expects other companies in Xinjiang producing silica will likely be subject to further enforcement actions.

The White House said the entities' practices ran counter not only to American values but also tipped the scales against U.S. workers "by exploiting workers and artificially suppressing wages."

John Smirnow, general counsel and vice president of market strategy at the Solar Energy Industries Association, the main U.S. solar industry association, said the group fully supported the Biden administration's move.

"The fact is, we do not have transparency into supply chains in the Xinjiang region, and there is too much risk in operating there," Smirnow said.

Polysilicon analyst Johannes Bernreuter with Germany-based Bernreuter Research said the CBP order could have a broad impact on the U.S. solar industry, noting that the world's top eight polysilicon manufacturers, which produced more than 90% of the solar-grade polysilicon output in 2020, have all been mentioned by Hoshine as customers.

"That means they source at least some of their silicon metal needs from Hoshine. Solar panel importers into the U.S. have to prove that the polysilicon for their panels was not made with any silicon metal from Hoshine," Bernreuter said.

The Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics said in a report on Thursday that China accounts for nearly half the global production of polysilicon.

'PROVE IT'

The new measures are the latest in a series of steps under President Joe Biden to secure U.S. supply chains in the face of allegations of rights abuses in China, and also the growing economic challenges posed by the United States' top geopolitical rival.

Beijing has dismissed accusations of genocide and forced labor in Xinjiang as lies.

The three other companies added to the Commerce Department's blacklist were Xinjiang Daqo New Energy Co, a unit of Daqo New Energy Corp; Xinjiang East Hope Nonferrous Metals Co, a subsidiary of Shanghai-based manufacturing giant East Hope Group; and Xinjiang GCL New Energy Material Co, part of GCL New Energy Holdings Ltd.

Several of the companies are major manufacturers of monocrystalline silicon and polysilicon used in solar panel production.

Xinjiang Daqo New Energy Co, in an email to Reuters, said it had "zero tolerance" towards forced labor, and does not directly sell or buy from the United States so there would be no "significant impact" on its business.

The other companies or their parent firms, including XPCC, did not reply to requests for comment, or could not be reached.

Separately, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act to the full Senate on Thursday. Proposed by Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, the bill - should it become law - would ban all products from Xinjiang unless importers could show they were not produced with forced labor.

"This is slavery. Simple as that," Rubio told the committee. "American companies argue that their supply chains are clean, and what this bill says is: prove it."

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld, David Lawder, David Shepardson, Michael Martina, Richard Valdmanis and David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Emily Chow in Shanghai and Min Zhang, Gabriel Crossley, Shivani Singh in Beijing and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Mark Heinrich and Daniel Wallis)

Iran dismisses Canadian report finding Tehran 'fully responsible' for downing of Flight PS752

Iran's military claims it shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake.

(AP: Mohammad Nasiri)


Iran has criticised as "highly politicised" a report by Canadian forensic experts that accused the country of incompetence and recklessness over the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane last year.

Key points:
While not pre-meditated, the Canadian report said Iranian officials were reckless,

 incompetent and ultimately responsible for the downing of flight PS752

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Iran still owes the victims' families answers

Iran has decried the expert report as "illegal" and "highly politicised"

The report found that while the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 was not premeditated, it did not absolve Iranian officials of responsibility for the incident.

The doomed flight, from Tehran to Kiev, crashed on January 8, 2020 shortly after takeoff with 176 people on board, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

Three days later, the Iranian armed forces admitted having shot down the aircraft "by mistake".
The wreckage of the MH17 disaster holds a message for Iran


The chance of a swift and honest outcome for those killed on Flight PS725 remains remote but we can be sure of one thing, writes Philip Williams.Read more

The Canadian expert report acknowledged that the forensic investigators, who examined all the evidence that was available to them, "found no evidence that the downing of Flight PS752 was premeditated".

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the report had nevertheless concluded Iran was "fully responsible" for shooting down the plane.

"The report highlights the Iranian authorities' recklessness, incompetence, and wanton disregard for human life," he said in a statement.


"Iran still owes these answers to the victims' loved ones so they can have a measure of closure.

"Canada will vigorously pursue full reparations for the downing and the harm that Iran has caused to the victims and their families."

Canada says Iran is fully responsible for the deaths of 176 people in the 2020 plane crash.(AP: Chris Young via The Canadian Press)

Iran slams report as 'highly politicised'

Canada and other countries are seeking reparations for victims' families.

Canada does not have formal diplomatic relations with Iran, making the process lengthy and complex.

"From a legal standpoint, they (Canada) lack any authority to conduct a unilateral or arbitrary report or comment on an air crash outside their jurisdiction," Mohsen Baharvand, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister, was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

"If this highly politicised and illegal behaviour by Canada became the norm, all countries, even the civil aviation industry, would be the main victims."

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On the night of the tragedy, Iran's air defences were on high alert, since it had just attacked a base used by the US military in Iraq in response to the US drone strike five days earlier in Baghdad that had killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran's regional strategy.

In its final report released in March, the Iranian Civil Aviation Organisation exonerated the Islamic Republic's armed forces.

Ukraine slammed those findings as a "cynical attempt to hide the real causes" and Canada denounced the "incomplete" report without "hard evidence".

Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said that while the Canadian report found Iran had not premeditated shooting down the plane, it nevertheless "does not get off the hook in any way whatsoever".

"It is totally responsible for what happened due to a combination of incompetence, lack of accountability, a total failure of their command and control system, a total failure to properly assess the risk," he told a press briefing.


"The facts are clear, Iran is responsible for the deaths of 176 innocent people."

ABC/wires
Posted 2hhours ago

West Australian mining executives apologise to mine site sexual assault victims

By David Weber

The Chamber of Minerals and Energy says the most most significiant issue on mine sites is ensuring they are safe for female employees.

(Supplied: Rio Tinto/Christian Sprogoe Photography)

WA mining company executives have held an unprecedented media conference to apologise to those who have been sexually assaulted or harassed on the state's mine sites.

Key points:

Two BHP workers have been charged with separate sexual assaults

Women make up about 22 per cent of Australia's mining workforce

WA Premier Mark McGowan has supported calls for an inquiry

Managers from BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), Woodside and Newmont said they had a "zero tolerance policy" on assault and harassment and were committed to ensuring their workplaces were safe for female employees.

And the WA Premier said the government would support an inquiry into the safety of female workers.

It comes after two BHP workers were charged with sexual penetration over separate incidents, and FMG revealed it was assisting police investigating an incident of alleged indecent assault.

Chamber of Minerals and Energy (CME) chief executive Paul Everingham said it was the most significant issue on mine sites.

"I just wanted to put on the record on behalf of the resources industry in Western Australia our very strong stance opposing any and all forms of workplace rape, assault or harassment at any time," he said.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy in the resources sector.

"Health and safety has for a long time been our most important tool on all of our sites and this includes personal safety, and safe and responsible behaviours.

Women make up about 22 per cent of Australia's mining workforce.

(ABC News: Rachel Pupazzoni)

"I'd also like to express my apologies on behalf of the sector for people who've been impacted by sexual assault, harassment and or rape.

"And also I would like to apologise if anyone has felt they haven't been able to come forward to put on record instances or allegations."
Sector must be 'completely inclusive'

A recently established Safe and Respectful Behaviours Working Group will focus on a code of conduct for employees of the chamber's member companies, behaviour at external events, after hours on site, and social media activities.

The role of alcohol use at work sites will also be considered.

FMG director of people Linda O'Farrell said her company's most important values were family and safety.

"Any kind of harassment, any kind of victimisation is completely at odds with those values," she said.

"[It] has no place in our company, in our sector, in our society.

WA Premier Mark McGowan has supported calls for an inquiry

.(Supplied: Rio Tinto)

"We welcome this opportunity to collaborate together as an industry."

She said the task was not over until the sector was "completely" inclusive and everyone felt safe.

BHP head of WA iron ore Brandon Craig said it was "critical" to take positive steps to prevent incidents of sexual assault.

"We're going to work incredibly hard over these coming months and into the future at making sure that this type of issue is eradicated from our industry and our workplace," he said.

The views were echoed by Woodside executive vice-president Fiona Hick, Newmont regional chief financial officer Felicity Hughes, Rio Tinto's iron ore chief executive Simon Trott, and BHP general manager integrated production Jessica Farrell.
Premier supports inquiry

Women make up about 22 per cent of Australia's mining workforce.

Mr Everingham said he did not have data on whether harassment and ill treatment of women was more prevalent in mining than in other industries.

"To me, in a way, it's irrelevant," he said.

"It's happening in our industry and we're doing something about it."

The CME and mining company representatives said they would co-operate with any parliamentary inquiry into the safety of women on sites.

WA Premier Mark McGowan said the government would support an inquiry.

"It's not to examine individual cases. That's a matter for the police," Mr McGowan said.

"It's to examine the overall issue and how we make the environment — bear in mind it's a long way from home and [there is] a large number of people gathering — as safe as possible for everyone involved."

Rare tornado, storms rip through southern Czech Republic, killing three

By Metro US
Posted on June 25, 2021

Aftermath of rare tornado in Czech Republic

MORAVSKA NOVA VES, Czech Republic (Reuters) -A rare tornado and strong storms struck along the Czech Republic’s southern border on Thursday to destroy parts of some towns, killing at least three people and injuring dozens more, emergency services and media said.

The tornado, reported in towns around Hodonin, along the Slovak and Austrian borders and 270 km (167 miles) southeast of Prague, the capital, may have reached windspeeds above 332 kph (206 mph), a Czech Television meteorologist said.

That would make it the strongest in the modern history of the central European nation and its first tornado since 2018.

Strong storms ripped roofs off houses and other buildings, blew out windows, overturned cars and scattered debris through the streets.

Workers of emergency services rested amid debris in the market town of Moravska Nova Ves, after having worked through the night.

A spokesperson for the South Moravia region’s ambulance service told Czech Television three people died in the storms and dozens were treated for injuries.

Czech TV reported as many as seven small towns were “massively” damaged, citing an emergency services spokesperson. An official of one municipality, Hrusky, said half of the town was practically levelled to the ground.

Search and rescue teams fanned out in the area, with neighbouring Austria and Slovakia also sending emergency units to help.

(Reporting by David Cerny in Moravska Nova Ves and Jason Hovet in Prague; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Aftermath of rare tornado in Czech Republic