Tuesday, March 03, 2020

DARPA’s competition to find a rapid rocket launch provider ends without a winner

Astra came super close

ONCE UPON A TIME DARPA WAS KNOWN AS THE JASONS

By Loren Grush @lorengrush Mar 3, 2020

Astra’s rocket on the launchpad in Alaska. Image: DARPA

DARPA’s competition to find a rocket company that can rapidly send satellites to space ended without a winner on March 2nd when the final team failed to launch by the contest’s deadline. Rocket startup Astra came within less than a minute of launching its brand-new rocket for the competition out of Alaska, but it had to halt the mission due to some bad data from the vehicle. As a result, the company lost out on winning up to $12 million — and now, no one will win the money prize.

The competition, known as the DARPA Launch Challenge, began about two years ago with the goal of finding a rocket launch provider that could quickly respond to a request to launch any payload from the military. To win the competition, eligible teams had to demonstrate that they could launch small national security satellites from practically any launch site in the US with very little heads-up. A company had to launch at least two rockets carrying DARPA payloads within two weeks of each other during very specific windows.

DARPA originally selected three teams to compete in the challenge, including Virgin Orbit’s subsidiary Vox Space and former small-satellite launcher Vector, which went bankrupt in December. Both dropped out, leaving Astra, a company that had been in stealth mode for years until early February. Astra has been testing its new vehicle over the last couple of years and has had a few launch failures, including one that led to soil contamination at Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island.
ASTRA WAS THE ONLY COMPANY REMAINING IN THE COMPETITION

However, Astra remained in the competition, and on February 18th, DARPA publicly revealed the dates and locations for the company’s launch attempts. In order to win, Astra had to first launch its rocket from the Pacific Spaceport Complex between February 17th and March 1st and then again sometime later in March. For the first launch, DARPA gave details about what payloads Astra would be launching on January 22nd, and the company only saw the satellites when they arrived at the launch site in Alaska to be added on top of the rocket. The initial payloads consisted of three small satellites as well as one that was supposed to remain attached to the rocket in space.

After experiencing some weather delays, Astra was finally set to launch on Monday, March 2nd — the last day in the window, which had been extended by a day due to the poor weather. With its rocket on the launchpad, the company counted down to T-53 seconds but ultimately stopped the countdown when engineers saw some bad data coming from the rocket. The engineering team tried to fix the problem before the launch window ended at 6:30PM ET, but it didn’t figure out the issue in time.

“Fundamentally, safety is our top priority, and winning the challenge would have been fantastic today, but our objective really is to reach orbit in as few flights as possible,” Chris Kemp, Astra co-founder and CEO, said on the live stream broadcasting the mission. “So we really want to use this rocket, and we want to get out there again when we know everything is perfect. And unfortunately, that wasn’t today.” The flight would have been the company’s debut flight to orbit.

If Astra had been able to launch to orbit successfully yesterday, the company could have won a $2 million prize and been eligible to win an additional $10 million if it could launch a second time just a few weeks later. Now, no one will win that prize money, and DARPA plans to remove the payloads from Astra’s rocket. “It was a hard challenge,” Todd Master, the project manager for the DARPA Launch Challenge, said during the live stream. “We set it to be achievable. But certainly, DARPA holds a bar for really hard tests that we asked competitors to do. So they got almost there, almost made it to the finish line. Just didn’t quite make it.”

In the meantime, Astra says it’s already working toward its next launch attempt, which could occur out of Alaska as soon as March 15th. Kemp says he’s unsure what the company will fly on the mission, if anything. But there are apparently a lot of customers who want the opportunity to fly on the vehicle. “We were frankly bombarded with interest from folks that want to fly on it,” Kemp told The Verge after the launch. “The DARPA payload was removed because that was part of the challenge, and so we’re trying to decide whether we will revive the license to fly without a payload, or if one of our many customers can be ready for us.”

With this next launch, Kemp says the company will still consider things a success even if the vehicle doesn’t reach orbit. In fact, the goal is to get to orbit within the next three upcoming launches. “We’re going for a birdie here,” Kemp said. “We’re not going for a hole in one.”

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It’s going to take a lot longer to make a COVID-19 vaccine than a treatment
Scientists have a head start on treatments

By Nicole Wetsman Feb 28, 2020

Photo by Sylvain Lefevre / Getty Images

Scientists and drug companies are racing to develop and test treatments and vaccines that address COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Work on both is progressing at an unprecedented speed — but researchers are starting essentially from scratch on vaccine development, so the process is going to take a long time. Treatments, on the other hand, were further along when the outbreak started and might be available sooner.

“They’re in vastly different situations right now,” says Florian Krammer, a professor and vaccine development expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Both treatments and vaccines are important for a robust and effective response to the outbreak. Treatments help people after they already have a disease; in the case of COVID-19, researchers hope to treat the around 15 percent of COVID-19 patients who have non-mild symptoms. Vaccines, on the other hand, help prevent people from getting sick in the first place.

Scientists started work on drugs to treat coronaviruses during the SARS and MERS outbreaks, but because the outbreaks died down, the job was never completed. Now, they’re able to dust off that old research and start building on it. The leading candidate is a drug called remdesivir, which was developed by the pharmaceutical company Gilead. Research showed that it could block SARS and MERS in cells and in mice. In addition, remdesivir was used in a clinical trial looking for treatments for Ebola — and therefore, it had already gone through safety testing to make sure it doesn’t cause any harm.

That’s why teams in China and the US were able to start clinical trials testing remdesivir in COVID-19 patients so quickly. There should be data available showing if it helps them get better as soon as April. If it proves effective, Gilead would presumably be able to ramp up production and get the drug in the hands of doctors fairly quickly, Krammer says.

The vaccine development process will take much longer. Experts say that it will be between a year and 18 months, or maybe longer, before they’re available to the public. One of the strategies for creating a vaccine involves making copies of one part of the virus (in this case, the bit that the novel coronavirus uses to infiltrate cells). Then, the immune system of the person who receives the vaccine makes antibodies that neutralize that particular bit. If they were exposed to the virus, those antibodies would be able to stop the virus from functioning.

The pharmaceutical company Moderna is the furthest along in the process; it already has that type of vaccine ready for testing. A trial in 45 healthy people to make sure that it’s safe will start in March or April and will take around three months to complete. After that, it’ll have to be tested in an even larger group to check if it actually immunizes people against the novel coronavirus. That will take six to eight months. And then, it’ll have to be manufactured at a huge scale, which poses an additional challenge.

Making vaccines is always challenging. Developing this one is made more difficult because there has never been a vaccine for any type of coronavirus. “We don’t have a production platform, we have no experience in safety, we don’t know if there will be complications. We have to start from scratch, basically,” Krammer says.

It was much easier to make a vaccine for H1N1, known as swine flu, which emerged as a never-before-seen virus in 2009. “There are large vaccine producers in the US and globally for flu,” Krammer says. Manufacturers were able to stop making the vaccine against the seasonal flu and start making a vaccine for this new strain of flu. “They didn’t need clinical trials, they just had to make the vaccine and distribute it,” he says.

There won’t be a vaccine done in time to hold off any approaching outbreak of COVID-19 in the US or in other countries where it’s still not widespread. That’s why treatments are so important: along with good public health practices, they can help blunt the impact of the disease and make it less of an unstoppable threat. The best experts can hope for is that a vaccine can help prevent other outbreaks in the future if the novel coronavirus sticks around.

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Ford announces an all-electric Transit cargo van
6

No specs or passenger version yet, but it’s coming to the US and Canada in 2021

By Sean O'Kane @sokane1 Mar 3, 2020

The standard Transit cargo van. Image: Ford

Ford is making an all-electric version of its popular Transit cargo van for the US and Canadian markets, slated to be released in 2021. The company did not share any specifics about the van’s battery pack size, estimated range, or performance characteristics. Ford previously announced an electric Transit for the European market in 2019.

The new cargo van will come equipped with a 4G LTE hotspot and will be outfitted with a number of tech features designed for fleet managers, like live GPS tracking and diagnostics. The electric Transit van will also be equipped with a number of Ford’s safety and driver assistance features, like collision warning and assist, automatic emergency braking, pedestrian detection, and automatic lane-keeping.

Ford said it didn’t have any news to share about an electric version of its Transit passenger van “at this time.”

Ford’s Transit van is the bestselling cargo van in the US, though it has seen increased competition over the last few years from Mercedes-Benz, which recently refreshed its popular Sprinter van.

A teaser image released by Ford on Tuesday. Image: Ford

Mercedes-Benz has already unveiled an electric version of the Sprinter, which comes in two configurations. There’s a version with a 55kWh battery pack that can travel 168 kilometers (104 miles) on a full charge, and has a payload capacity of 891 kilograms (1,964 pounds). Mercedes-Benz is making a version with a smaller 41kWh battery pack that goes 115 kilometers (72 miles), but which can carry up to 1,045 (2,304 pounds). Both versions come with 10.5 cubic meters (370.8 cubic feet) of storage space.

Mercedes-Benz also announced the EQV concept a year ago, which is an electric van aimed at slightly more everyday use. The company touted more promising specs with the slightly smaller EQV, saying it will get around 249 miles out of a 100kWh battery pack. Oh, and it has 200 horsepower on offer and will be equipped with the company’s MBUX infotainment system.

Another player in the space is EV startup Rivian, which will build 100,000 electric delivery vans for Amazon over the next few years. Ford has invested $500 million in Rivian, and the startup is helping build a luxury electric SUV for the automotive giant’s Lincoln brand, though the two van projects don’t seem to be related. Ford is also collaborating with Volkswagen on commercial vans after the two companies formed a global alliance early last year.

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Nikola is going public to try to become the first zero-emission big rig company

And adding $525 million to its war chest

By Sean O'Kane @sokane1 Mar 3, 2020

Photo: Nikola Corporation

Electric trucking startup Nikola is becoming a publicly traded company. The Arizona-based outfit announced Tuesday that it’s merging with a publicly listed acquisition company called VectoIQ, in a move that’s similar to what space company Virgin Galactic just pulled off in the second half of 2019. The transaction is expected to close sometime in the second quarter of this year, and when it does, Nikola will be listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the name NKLA.

Nikola will receive $525 million in new investment as a result, adding to an existing stockpile of $525 million it raised across three rounds of funding (and funding from a joint venture it started in Europe).

NIKOLA HAS DEVELOPED HYDROGEN- AND BATTERY-POWERED BIG RIGS
Founded in 2015, Nikola set out to make zero-emission big rigs using hydrogen fuel cell technology. While a number of companies like Tesla, Daimler, Freightliner, and other established players and startups are working on all-electric trucks, Nikola is one of the only ones pursuing hydrogen-powered big rigs. However it gets done, though, switching big rigs over to zero-emission powertrains could help put a big dent into the pollution caused by the transportation sector.

The startup has developed three different trucks, with the last two aimed at mass production in the US and European markets. But the company has since developed versions of its trucks that are battery-powered, too, for companies that don’t need as much range as the hydrogen-powered versions provide.

Hydrogen-powered vehicles have never really caught on in the passenger car space because there’s been very little investment in the necessary infrastructure. Where companies like Tesla and multiple governments and clean energy groups have spent the last decade building out relatively vast networks of electric vehicle chargers, only a handful of hydrogen filling stations exist to date.
Nikola teases an electric pickup with 600 miles of range

But Nikola’s pitch has always been that hydrogen power makes a ton more sense in a commercial application. Since many commercial trucking routes run point to point, it’s easier to identify where hydrogen stations should be built. Nikola has argued that hydrogen trucks are even better suited for the task of long-haul trucking than battery-powered vehicles for a few reasons. It takes far less time to fill a tank than it does to charge a massive battery. Battery-powered big rigs also face a conundrum. They need big battery packs to generate sufficient range, especially with a trailer attached. But the bigger the pack, the more the truck weighs, ultimately limiting how efficient it can be.

THE STARTUP SAYS IT WILL GENERATE $3.2 BILLION OF REVENUE IN 2024

Along the way, Nikola lined up a number of customers, including Anheuser-Busch, which ordered hundreds of trucks in 2018. It also signed a deal with energy company Nel to develop the hydrogen filling stations, and automotive supplier Bosch to help design parts of its trucks. Nikola got a big boost last year when it landed a joint venture with Iveco, a European truck manufacturer. Not only did this lend some legitimacy to the startup’s plans, it also offered them a shortcut to production.

According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission laying out the merger, the company wants to start production of its battery-electric big rigs next year and expects to deliver 600 of them. It will then double that number each year following as it brings production of the hydrogen trucks online in 2023. Nikola expects to be able to generate $3.2 billion in revenue in 2024 by selling 7,000 battery-powered trucks and 5,000 hydrogen trucks.

Nikola also wants to take the tech it’s developing for its big rigs and apply it to different form factors. Last year, the company showed off an electric personal watercraft and a four-wheeled electric off-road utility vehicle. Just last month, the company teased a pickup truck called the Badger, which would combine hydrogen fuel cell and lithium-ion battery technology to enable a range of up to 600 miles.

TRUMP PUBLIC HEALTH CARE

The earliest known deaths from COVID-19 in the US went undetected for a week

The patients were residents at a nursing home in Washington battling an outbreak

By Nicole Wetsman Mar 3, 2020,

Two people who died last week in Seattle had undetected cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, The New York Times reported. One person was hospitalized on February 24th and died on February 26th. The other also died on February 26th at a nursing facility. There have now been nine deaths from the novel coronavirus in the US.

Both of the people who died last week were residents at the Life Care long-term nursing facility in Kirkland, Washington, where there’s an ongoing outbreak of the virus. Several of the deaths previously announced were in elderly Life Care residents, and dozens of other residents and staff have symptoms of the virus. A person in North Carolina infected with the novel coronavirus was first exposed at the facility, as well.

The deaths and continued spread of the virus from the cluster in Washington highlight the problems with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) initial recommendations for health care providers on when to test people. The agency wasn’t recommending testing for anyone who hadn’t traveled to countries with high numbers of sick people, which made it easy to miss any undetected circulation of the virus in the community. That’s why the people who died on the 26th weren’t tested until this week.

These particular deaths are worrying to public health experts because both patients were hospitalized and treated before they were diagnosed. That means they may have exposed health care workers, who wouldn’t have known to take the precautions normally made when treating COVID-19 patients.

More local and state health labs are now able to test people suspected of having the novel coronavirus, and the CDC says that testing capacity is set to increase over the next week. The CDC’s guidance, though, still says that people who haven’t traveled to countries with outbreaks and who have not been in contact with people sick with COVID-19 shouldn’t be tested unless they’re sick enough that they need to be hospitalized. That guidance likely won’t be sufficient to pick up any virus spreading among people who don’t get severely ill, which is around 80 to 85 percent of cases.

There are currently over 90,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world, and over 3,000 people have died from the disease.

Panic buying of masks puts health care workers’ ‘lives at risk,’ WHO says

Health care workers may be left ill-equipped

By Mary Beth Griggs Mar 3, 2020

A doctor wearing a mask while working at El Alto International

Airport in Bolivia. Photo by AIZAR RALDES/AFP via Getty Images

A shortage of masks, gloves, and other protective gear “is putting lives at risk from the new coronavirus and other infectious diseases” warned the World Health Organization (WHO) in a statement on Tuesday. A frightened public has been buying up masks and other equipment, leaving limited supplies for health care workers who need the gear the most.

Masks can be useful for people who are sick with a respiratory virus to keep them from spreading the illness to others. They are most useful for health care workers who come face to face with disease every day.

Health experts, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), do not currently recommend that people who are well wear masks as protection against diseases like the new coronavirus. People have bought them anyway, in such huge amounts that the WHO is worried that the people who need them the most won’t be able to get them. Supplies are dwindling. The price of surgical gowns has doubled; the price of surgical masks is now six times higher than it was at the start of the outbreak.

“Without secure supply chains, the risk to healthcare workers around the world is real,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “Industry and governments must act quickly to boost supply, ease export restrictions and put measures in place to stop speculation and hoarding. We can’t stop COVID-19 without protecting health workers first.”

The surgeon general recently made a similar appeal over Twitter begging people to stop buying masks. He also warned that improperly wearing masks could actually increase the spread of the disease.
Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
https://t.co/UxZRwxxKL9— U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) February 29, 2020

The WHO is asking manufacturers to increase production by 40 percent. They estimate that 89 million masks will be needed by health care workers every month, along with 76 million gloves and 1.6 million goggles.

TV manufacturer Sharp recently announced that they would start making masks in one of their Japanese factories this month, in order to deal with the growing shortage of the products. Amazon has warned sellers against price gouging items like masks. The company has also scrubbed a million products making misleading claims about curing or preventing COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

More than 90,000 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed globally, and more than 3,000 people have died. Health officials recommend that people protect themselves from the disease by staying home when sick, covering their mouths when they sneeze, and washing their hands thoroughly and frequently.

Incredible colourised footage from 1911 shows what life was like in vintage New York

Image: YouTube

Ever wondered what photographs and films from more than 100 years ago would look like in glorious colour?

Well now you don’t have to, because old footage has been brought to life by a YouTuber using artificial intelligence.

In 1911, a Swedish production companyvisited the United States and took black and white footage of the streets of New York City. YouTuber Guy Jones then posted it online for us all to enjoy. Then another YouTuber, Denis Shiryaev, restored and colourised the footage.

IFL Science’s James Felton reports that the colour was restored using using DeOldify, an open-source AI tool available on GitHub for retouching pictures and videos using Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN).

Lots of iconic older films have been colourised recently, including The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (1896) and Martin Luther King Jr’s iconic “I have a Dream” speech.

There’s some more niche examples floating around online too, like old episodes of Doctor Who and old political footage.

H/T: IFL Science

Experts baffled as Trump asks why they can't just use flu vaccines to prevent coronavirus

by Sirena Bergman in news
Donald Trump appears to be even more confused than ever bout coronavirus.

In a series of videos actually released by the White House, Trump can be seen getting increasingly more confused by the experts in the room, who are patiently trying to explain very very basic concepts to the president.

During one segment, he seems incapable of understanding how long it actually takes to formulate a vaccine, repeatedly suggesting "a couple months" should be the timeframe, because he "likes that better" than the actual realistic year-and-a-half estimate he's given.

He keeps going on and on about this among awkward laughter from people who understand that science doesn't actually bow to Trump's whims. It only stops when an advisor explains:

Vaccines have to be tested because there's precedent for vaccines actually making diseases worse.

You don't want to rush and treat a million people and find out you're making 900,000 of them worse.

Trump's response? A baffling "that's a good idea". (Good idea to rush and screw it up? Good idea to mention this? WHAT??)

But perhaps the weirdest of all was when he thought that he – a mediocre business person – may have come up with the solution to a complex global pandemic which no medical professional could ever have thought of:

You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that would have an impact? Or much of an impact? On corona?

Let's recap. A "solid" (whatever that means) flu vaccine. For the flu.

To stop "corona", as he calls it. Which is... a completely different type of virus. Otherwise it would be called flu. That's how words (and science) work.

So what impact would a flu shot have? "Probably none," Trump is told. For obvious reasons. The president responds:

Probably none? That simple?

Well no, not simple at all really, despite him seeming to think that coronavirus can be cured either by a vaccine for a different virus or by way of actual miracles. For context, researchers have been trying to develop a vaccine against HIV since the 1980s. Does that sound simple to you? Us neither. Maybe they should just use the flu one instead and see if that works.

Trump’s ignorance was on public display during coronavirus meeting with pharmaceutical execs

The president is pushing to get a Covid-19 vaccine before the election. It doesn’t work like that.

By Aaron Rupar @atrupar Mar 3, 2020, 11:30am EST

Trump during a meeting with the White House Coronavirus Task Force and pharmaceutical executives on Monday. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

It’s understandable that during a White House meeting on Monday with pharmaceutical executives and public health officials, President Donald Trump pressed them to develop and deploy a vaccine to Covid-19 (the disease caused by the novel coronavirus) as quickly as possible. Beyond the obvious public health benefits, a vaccine could help allay fears, stabilize markets, and quell criticisms that his administration was unprepared for or mismanaged the response to the outbreak.

What is harder to wrap one’s brain around, however, is the level of ignorance Trump displayed about how vaccines work.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already said it will take up to 18 months to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — a time frame much shorter than the usual two- to five-year window. There are straightforward reasons it’s impossible to roll out new vaccines for public consumption overnight: They need to be developed, tested for effectiveness and safety during trials, approved by regulators, manufactured, and then distributed. Each of those steps takes time.

At one point during the meeting, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, tried to explain to the president that it would be at least a year and probably closer to 18 months before a coronavirus vaccine could be available to the public. But Trump didn’t want to hear it, and kept pressing the executives to come up with something before November’s election.

“I mean, I like the sound of a couple months better, if I must be honest,” Trump said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the “couple months” time frame execs mentioned merely referred to a vaccine being ready for trials.

Trump on it taking up to a year to develop a coronavirus vaccine: "I mean, I like the sound of a couple months better, if I must be honest." pic.twitter.com/zvvrE9JnPS— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2020

Later, Trump pressed the pharmaceutical leaders on why they can’t just release the coronavirus drugs their companies are working on tomorrow — in the process revealing that he doesn’t understand the concept of clinical trials.

“So you have a medicine that’s already involved with the coronaviruses, and now you have to see if it’s specifically for this. You can know that tomorrow, can’t you?” he said.

“Now the critical thing is to do clinical trials,” explained Daniel O’Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences, which has two phase-three clinical trials going for remdesivir, a potential treatment for the coronavirus. “We have two clinical trials going on in China that were started several weeks ago ... we expect to get that information in April.”

"So you have a medicine that's already involved with the coronaviruses, and now you have to see if it's specifically for this. You can know that tomorrow, can't you?" -- Trump has no idea what a clinical trial is pic.twitter.com/PoA2usKZ9Z— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2020

Trump also wondered aloud why the flu vaccine can’t just be used for coronavirus, asking, “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

“No,” one of the experts at the table replied.

Following the meeting, an unnamed administration source told CNN that they thought the scientists and experts were able to convince Trump that a vaccine would not be available for a year or longer.

“I think he’s got it now,” the source told CNN.

But if Trump does get it now, that wasn’t apparent during a political rally in Charlotte hours later, during which the president claimed pharmaceutical companies “are going to have vaccines I think relatively soon.”

"We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies, and they're going to have vaccines I think relatively soon. And they're going to have something that makes you better, and that's going to actually take place we think even sooner" -- Trump on the coronavirus pic.twitter.com/oujTse5Lnp— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2020

Trump went on to portray the coronavirus problem in ethnonationalist terms: “There are fringe globalists that would rather keep our borders open than keep our infection — think of it — keep all of the infection, let it come in,” he said, before expressing surprise that tens of thousands of Americans die from the flu each year.

“When you lose 27,000 people [from the flu] a year — nobody knew that — I didn’t know that. Three, four weeks ago, I was sitting down, I said, ‘What do we lose with the regular flu?’ They said, ‘About 27,000 minimum. It goes up to 70, sometimes even 80, one year it went up to 100,000 people.’” (According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have not been more than 51,000 flu-related deaths in the US over the past decade.)

“I said, ‘Nobody told me that. Nobody knows that.’ So I actually told the pharmaceutical companies, ‘You have to do a little bit better job on that vaccine,’” Trump continued.

"I told the pharmaceutical companies that they have to do a better job on that vaccine" -- Trump admits he just learned that the flu can be deadly and says he wants the pharmaceutical companies to do something about it pic.twitter.com/7jPDsi7WAX— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2020

Then, following the rally, the White House released a statement not detailing new federal initiatives to help stop the spread of Covid-19, but highlighting tweets from Republicans praising the administration’s response.

This is bonkers. Press release just released by the White House with tweets praising Trump's management of Coronavirus outbreak. "Top Tweets". pic.twitter.com/8lPGAsfN2h— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 3, 2020

On Tuesday, Trump gave a speech to the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference in which he brought up the coronavirus but then expressed confusion about the difference between cures, which eliminate diseases, and therapies, which treat them.

“Therapies are sort of another word for cure,” he said, conflating the two.

"Therapies are sort of another word for cure" -- Trump still hasn't figured out what a vaccine is pic.twitter.com/QSAk6cyDlW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2020

While Trump may be confused about what’s going on, Vice President Mike Pence — head of the administration’s coronavirus task force — did claim during a news conference on Monday that treatments for Covid-19 could be available within the next couple of months. He did not provide details, however.
It’s going to take a lot longer to make a COVID-19 vaccine than a treatment
Scientists have a head start on treatments

By Nicole Wetsman Feb 28, 2020

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THE GRENFELL MASSACRE

Grenfell architect did not check fire safety guidance for tall buildings, inquiry hears

Asked whether he read government guidelines on building and fire regulations, Bruce Sounes said he referred to it but 'certainly didn't read it from start to finish'

Caitlin Doherty

The lead architect on the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower “can’t recall” whether he knew there were different fire regulations for high-rise buildings, an inquiry has heard.

Bruce Sounes was in charge of the day-to-day management of the redesign of the 24-storey North Kensington block.

Giving evidence to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry on Tuesday, the associate at Studio E architects was shown a diagram of different building classifications relating to blocks over 18m tall.

Mr Sounes was asked by Kate Grange QC, counsel to the inquiry: “Were you aware that there might be different rules that applied to buildings over 18m ...”

He replied: “No, I was aware that they may exist, but I did not refer to [the document] at the time.”
Watch more

Firms in Grenfell Tower inquiry given immunity from prosecution
DAMN SHAME

He added: “I can’t recall if I was aware of that.”

When asked whether he read the government guidelines on building and fire regulations – also known as approved document B – during the Grenfell project, Mr Sounes said: “I referred to it on occasion but I certainly didn’t read it from start to finish.

“Because it’s so wide ranging, an architect will find themselves referring to specific sections to try and understand whether they are meeting their requirements.”

Mr Sounes was also shown a diagram of how fire can spread up the external cladding of a building.

When asked whether he saw anything like this during the Grenfell project, he said “no”.
Read more

Grenfell firms ‘killed residents as if they’d pulled a trigger’

Grenfell Tower firms ‘knew planned cladding would fail in fire’

Grenfell firefighter who revoked ‘stay put’ policy made LFB chief

Earlier on Tuesday, the inquiry heard that Studio E has “no record” of ever signing a contract for the Grenfell project with the local property management company.

In his written statement to the inquiry, Mr Sounes, said: “From the documents within Studio E’s possession I do not know whether the Kensington and Chelsea tenant management organisation (KCTMO) appointment was ever actually signed by Studio E and KCTMO.

“I cannot specifically recall Studio E signing the documents and nor do we have a completed copy on file.”

Giving evidence, the architect added: “I have no recollection of it being signed and we couldn’t locate a copy, but that’s not to say it wasn’t signed. I cannot remember.

“I guess I thought maybe it was, but I don’t know.”

The evidence comes after Studio E boss Andrzej Kuszell told the hearings that Mr Sounes had no experience of over cladding residential blocks.

However, he had faith that his firm could complete the Grenfell job.

Grenfell fire remembered two years on: In pictures
Show all 12

The Grenfell Tower is illuminated green to mark the
second anniversary of the fire

Campaign group Grenfell United project a message on to the side of a tower block in Newcastle ahead of the second anniversary of the Grenfell fire to highlight the number of blocks that are still covered in flammable cladding, despite the role that it played in the fire

PA

People release balloons in front of the Grenfell Tower during a vigil to mark the second anniversary of the fire (Peter Summers/Getty Images)

Tower ahead of the second anniversary of the fire to highlight the number of blocks that are still covered in flammable cladding, despite the role that it played in the fire

Cards bearing names of victims of the Grenfell fire are attached to a railing nearby to the tower

People observe a memorial during a vigil to mark the second anniversary of the Grenfell fire

Mr Kuszell said on Monday: “I believed we had the processes and experience of complex buildings to be able to undertake this commission. It wasn’t just my belief, it was clearly the belief of all senior members.

“We put the project in the hands of one of our most senior and experienced people.

“I had no reason to believe we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Mr Kuszell also apologised to survivors of the 2017 fire that killed 72 people, and told them: “It really shouldn’t have happened.

“Hindsight now comes into play – we’ve lived two and a half years since the tragedy and doubtless absolutely every one of us would wish to turn the clock back.

“It really shouldn’t have happened, and I’m really, really sorry for all of you and everybody else who was involved in the project.”

The hearings continue.

Press Association

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GRENFELL TOWER | KENSINGTON

Campaign group Grenfell United project a message on to the side of a tower block in Salford ahead of the second anniversary of the Grenfell fire to highlight the number of blocks that are still covered in flammable cladding, despite the role that it played in the fire

One in three Tory (PARTY)members believe human activity not responsible for climate change, survey finds

THOUGH I SUSPECT IT APPLIES TO CONSERVATIVES IN CANADA TOO

Boris Johnson to chair first meeting of ministerial committee ahead of global warming summit in Glasgow

Andrew Woodcock

Political Editor @andywoodcock

Fewer than half of Conservative party members believe that human activity is responsible for climate change, according to a new survey.

The poll of more than 1,100 Tories found that almost one in three (32.9 per cent) think that “global warming is happening but human activity isn’t driving it”, while nearly a tenth (9.7 per cent) said they did not believe that climate change was happening at all.

Just 48.5 per cent of those taking part in the survey for the ConservativeHome website agreed with the consensus among climate scientists that the planet is getting warmer and that human activities are driving the change. Some 8.9 per cent said they did not know.

ConservativeHome editor, the former Tory MP Paul Goodman, said: “Our sense is that Conservative MPs will be very roughly where our panel is – although we have to admit that we’ve no evidence for that.

“But if roughly a third, say, believe that human activity doesn’t drive global warming we can add that much less than a third are vocal about it.”

The results were released a day before Boris Johnson is due to chair the first meeting of a new cabinet committee on climate change.

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The prime minister has come under fire for failing to convene the committee sooner, including by former MP Claire Perry O’Neill, who hit out at Mr Johnson’s inactivity after she was sacked as president of the United Nations COP26 climate change summit to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow in November.

In a letter in February, just days after being fired, she told Mr Johnson the government was “miles off track” in its preparations and said promises of resources and leadership from the prime minister “are not close to being met”.

In particular, she said: “The cabinet sub-committee on climate that you promised to chair, and which I was to attend, has not met once”.

Preparations for the COP26 summit will be on the agenda of Mr Johnson’s committee when it meets on Wednesday afternoon.

Ministers will be asked to set out what their departments are doing to assist the battle against global warming and their priorities for the year of climate action declared by the prime minister last month, said Downing Street.

Regular meetings of the committee will provide an opportunity to hold government departments to account for their actions to tackle climate change, said Mr Johnson’s spokesman.

But Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Aaron Kiely said: “They certainly have a lot of work to do, and a lot of ground to make up. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that convening such an important meeting with only months to go until the crunch UN climate talks shows a government not putting this front and centre, where it should be.

“Show-piece meetings won’t combat environmental and ecological breakdown. It’s policy that counts, not pledges, so let’s see some decisive action starting with big commitments in next week’s budget.”

Full members of the new committee include Mr Johnson, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, business secretary - and Ms O’Neill’s successor as COP26 president - Alok Sharma, chancellor Rishi Sunak, foreign secretary Dominic Raab, environment secretary George Eustice and environment minister Zak Goldsmith.

Also attending Wednesday’s meeting will be chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, housing secretary Robert Jenrick, international development secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, transport secretary Grant Shapps, international trade secretary Liz Truss and energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng.

ConservativeHome questioned a panel of 1,136 party members.

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