Iran reveals ‘killers’ of nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh

Published  on November 28, 2020
By Wale Odunsi


Iran President Hassan Rouhani has blamed Israel and the United States for the murder of nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

He alleged that Israel acted as a “mercenary” for America.

Fakhrizadeh was shot near Absard city in Tehran on Friday.

In a statement on Saturday, Rouhani said once again, “the evil hands of global arrogance were stained with the blood of the mercenary usurper Zionist regime”.

The ‘Zionist regime’ is veiled reference Israel.

State TV quoted the Islamic Republic premier as saying the assassination of Fakhrizadeh displays enemies’ despair and the depth of their hatred.


“His martyrdom will not slow down our achievements”, Rouhani vowed.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s prominent and distinguished nuclear and defensive scientist.

Khamenei hinted that was the “definitive punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered it”.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said there were “serious indications of an Israeli role” in the hit.

The U.S. sanctioned the deceased in 2008 for activities and transactions that contributed to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Fakhrizadeh as a father of the nuclear weapon project.

Zionists behind assassination of Iranian scientist: Pakistani politician 

Islamabad, Nov 28, IRNA -- Secretary General of Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) strongly condemned the assassination of a prominent Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and said the Zionist regime and the United States are behind the heinous cowardly act.

Allama Raja Nasir Abbas Jafri in a statement on Saturday said the Zionist regime is playing with a fire which will soon engulf the illegitimate state.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of Research and Innovation Organization of the Iranian Defense Ministry, was assassinated by terrorists in a terrorist attack near Tehran on Friday afternoon.

Allama Raja Nasir Abbas Jafri added that agents of the United States and the Zionist regime have assassinated the prominent defense scientist of Iran which is very unfortunate.

He said targeting Iran's most important figure is the worst aggression and interference in the internal affairs of the states, adding that the Zionists are playing with fire which will soon engulf the illegitimate Israeli regime.

He said that the United States, the Zionist regime and some Arab dictators in the region States are bent on destroying the peace of the region.

Allama Jafri added that the US is on the verge of collapse and the end of the Zionist regime is an eternal and undeniable fact. He said only some of their mercenaries in the region have the illusion of showing their power by buying security from outside.

Addressing some Arab rulers, he said that they should stop spreading hatred and a hypocritical approach and play a role in strengthening the position of the Islamic world.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reacting to the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Head of the Research and Innovation Organization of the Ministry of Defense, highlighted the Israeli regime’s role in the act.

“Iran calls on int'l community—and especially EU—to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror,” Zarif wrote in his Twitter account on Friday.

COVID-killing UV lamps may cause serious eye damage, researchers say

November 28, 2020 Coronavirus, Health & Medical by John Anderer

MIAMI, Fla. — One of the most frustrating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the virus’ ability to remain infectious on surfaces for days on end. In an attempt to rid their homes of the coronavirus, many people have started using ultra violet light emitting lamps. While UV light can kill bacteria and viruses, a new study finds those germicidal lamps may represent a serious health risk to your eyes.

Researchers at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine report that several of their patients using UV lamps to clean their homes have developed a serious and painful inflammation of the cornea called photokeratitis.

Injected conjunctiva (redness) of the right and left eye (top row) 

Diffuse staining of the cornea with green dye indicating epithelial damage (bottom row). 

(Credit: Bascom Palmer Eye Institute)

“During the height of the pandemic, we noticed an increased number of patients coming in with irritation, pain and sensitivity to light,” says first author and Bascom Palmer resident Jesse Sengillo, M.D., in a university release. “We realized this was after direct exposure to germicidal lamps that emit UV light in the C range to kill bacteria and viruses. This can be quite a painful experience for the patient, but with prompt topical lubrication and antibiotics to prevent infection, patients often do very well.”

UV light can be an issue in certain environments

Typically, UV-related photokeratitis develops when a patient’s cornea is overexposed to UV light. This can happen at high elevations, due to the atmosphere absorbing fewer UV rays. It is also common near bodies of water, snow, or other reflective surfaces. It usually takes a few hours, but eventually patients start to feel burning in their eyes and increased light sensitivity.

There are quite a few UV light lamps available for purchase nowadays. While these products are technically “safe for in-home use,” researchers stress that consumers need to follow the instructions carefully.

“The patients we met were not aware of these recommendations, and many were unknowingly exposed at work” says co-author and fellow resident Anne Kunkler, M.D., B.S. “For UV-C emitting devices, it is best to leave the room while the device is on. Our patients were directly exposed to the light for various lengths of time. A few hours later, they felt discomfort and sought medical attention.”

If you start feeling discomfort in your eyes after using a UV lamp, study authors recommend seeking medical attention immediately. To be clear, this study didn’t attempt to determine just how effective UV light is at killing SARS-CoV-2.

“Our study was not designed to answer that question. If you choose to use these lamps, just make sure to follow manufacturer recommendations closely to avoid unnecessary injury,” Dr. Sengillo concludes.

The study is published in Ocular Immunology and Inflammation.

There’s a big obstacle looming for coronavirus vaccines — a stronger antivaccine movement

By Jazmine Ulloa  Boston Globe Staff,Updated November 28, 2020

Demonstrators gathered to protest a mandatory flu vaccine order, outside the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse in Boston in October.JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


WASHINGTON — For as long as there have been vaccines, there have been people like Winnie Harrison who shun them.

Harrison, 67, a former educator and mother of four, became an ardent disbeliever in immunizations after her first child had an adverse reaction to a measles, mumps, and rubella shot some three decades ago. But it wasn’t until recent years that she and other skeptics began to forge online connections, fostering fear about vaccines and what doctors call a growing ecosystem of health misinformation that has only ramped up amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The founder of the Connecticut Vaccine Rights League, Harrison administers her group’s Facebook page, one of hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, nationwide that dole out testimonials from antivaccine activists and celebrities, memes of doctors sharing now discredited claims about vaccines — and, more recently, warnings about the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines.


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“I would never take it,” she said in an interview. “Most people recover from this virus. I am not dismissing it. It is very real. But so are vaccine problems.”
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As drugmakers close in on vaccines to tame an outbreak that has killed more than 260,000 people in the United States alone, medical professionals and online disinformation researchers are warning that an expanding antivaccine movement — bolstered by far-right opponents of coronavirus lockdowns — could undermine efforts to get Americans to take the shots and end the pandemic. They are urging health authorities, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies to invest heavily in public education to counter the misinformation, build confidence in the vaccines, and explain how they could help save lives, reopen schools and businesses, and return the US to normal.

“Vaccines are one of our greatest health care achievements,” said Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals. “The same energy that was placed into development and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine should have been placed in messaging and community engagement.”


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Excitement in the medical community has been building as three companies — Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca — recently released data showing their COVID-19 vaccines were highly effective.

But doctors and disinformation researchers have seen trouble looming since the earliest days of pandemic shutdowns, as misinformed or intentionally false and deceptive content spread through the internet like wildfire and conspiracy theories abounded over the virus’s origins, symptoms, and cures. Around that time, antivaccine groups saw huge increases in content and engagement, and started to merge efforts with conspiratorial actors, far-right groups, and activists protesting health measures ordering schools and businesses to close, researchers said.

The environment of fear and uncertainty created prime conditions for some of the top antivaccine activists to make an even broader push against science and government measures to protect public health.

“They are downplaying the pandemic, they are encouraging people not to wear masks, they are leading reopening protests, and then they also see this as an opportunity to erode confidence in vaccinations overall,” said Renée DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and one of the lead experts in the study of online narrative manipulation and the so-called antivaxxer movement.

Some public health experts are urging President-elect Joe Biden to add misinformation researchers to his coronavirus task force. But complicating any efforts to respond to the outbreak has been President Trump, who has frequently minimized the dangers of the pandemic, fueled political polarization in the nation’s response, and had, until this week, held up the presidential transition. In the midst of it all, doctors and researchers have often referred to him as the “disinformation super spreader.”

Trump has a history of sharing falsehoods to undermine vaccines dating to at least 2007. But this year he has boasted about the speed with which some vaccines have been created under a federal initiative known as “Operation Warp Speed” in an attempt to claim credit for the achievement.

Since the early 1800s, antivaccine activists have opposed immunizations based on largely the same themes, such as pseudoscientific claims that they are unsafe and harmful, causing sudden infant death syndrome, autism, and other side effects. But in more recent years, many vaccine opponents now also argue that policies requiring vaccination for school or work are a violation of their freedom of choice and civil liberties, according to research by DiResta.

Some believe businesses that manufacture vaccines are motivated by profits and can easily escape liability should something go wrong. Increasingly, outlandish conspiracy theories are circulating that the coronavirus vaccine in particular could alter people’s DNA or even transform them into 5G wireless antennas, DiResta said.

In many ways, “vaccines are a victim of their own success,” she wrote in a 2018 paper. “Absent the sight of individuals afflicted by communicable diseases, increasing numbers of people seem to be more afraid of vaccines than of the diseases they prevent.”

Vaccination has made major contributions to world health, eradicating polio and smallpox in the US, and eliminating a deadly cattle virus around the world known as rinderpest. Doctors also have seen its success in controlling measles, spurring hope that disease, too, could possibly be completely stamped out from society one day.

But the latest push against vaccines began to take shape after Andrew Wakefield, a former British physician, and other colleagues released a now discredited 1998 study that falsely linked the measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine to behavioral regression and developmental disorder. Vaccination rates for MMR dropped by about 2 percent in the US, and even more in the United Kingdom and Ireland, in the wake of the study.

The arrival of social media accelerated interconnections among activists’ and created fresh forms of opposition, with those on the left shifting their message to appeal to the libertarian right, DiResta said.

Opponents now span class and political lines, including celebrities like Alicia Silverstone and Jim Carey, as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has become one of the top antivaccine influencers on Instagram. An order just last summer by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker that nearly all students in the state under the age of 30 get a flu vaccine this year sparked protests outside the State House.

And in the wake of the pandemic, antivaccine activists have not only increasingly “discovered, engaged with, and amplified” each other but also other far-right and extreme conspiracy groups, such as QAnon, said Graham Brookie, director and managing editor of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. One rabbit hole, he said, can easily lead to the next.

An October report by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate found 31 million people follow antivaccine Facebook groups and 17 million people subscribe to similar channels on YouTube. Antivaccine activists saw followings of their social media accounts grow by at least 7 million people since 2019, it said. Doctors who publicly urge vaccinations have reported being harassed online by those activists in recent years, making some physicians hesitant to speak out.

There is little coherency to how people are drawn into opposition, said Jonathan Corpus Ong, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Some vaccine opponents fall in through wellness and alternative medicine culture; others are believers in conspiracy theories about the pharmaceutical industry, the influence of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, and 5G wireless signals. Some support Trump but oppose his push for a coronavirus vaccine. Others might cheer the president’s vaccine efforts but are skeptical about immunization plans will fall to Biden to implement.

Researchers with the nonprofit First Draft — which collected 14 million tweets and posts from Facebook and Instagram about vaccination in English, Spanish, and French ― found a large amount of the content fell under a common theme: perpetuating the unsubstantiated claim that the quest for profits by pharmaceutical companies undermined the safety of all vaccines.

As the US prepares to distribute coronavirus vaccines, researchers said policymakers need to understand how even innocuous-seeming posts work in tandem across social media sites to shape people’s attitudes, said Seb Cubbon, one of the research analysts on the study.

Doctors and researchers see some positive signs. A Gallup poll released this month found about 58 percent of Americans were willing to get a COVID-19 vaccination, up from a low of 50 percent in September. Studies show about 75 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated to control the outbreak.

A poll of nearly 20,000 adults in 27 countries released in August by the World Economic Forum found 74 percent said they would get a vaccine if it were available. The US figure then was 67 percent, roughly where it was in a late July Gallup poll.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is developing education materials on coronavirus vaccination, according to its COVID-19 handbook. Twitter and Facebook have implemented stricter controls to keep coronavirus falsehoods and conspiracy theories from spreading on their social networks.

But doctors and disinformation researchers said those measures will not suffice and are likely to leave large information gaps or “data voids” in search engines, which could lead people down the wrong path. Health and government officials must also understand how internet users could be micro-targeted. “We will see all the same tactics and trends that went after voters pivot to going to vaccines,” said P.W. Singer, a political scientist and author of “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.”

In Black communities, a sordid history of racial experimentation and continued barriers to health because of structural racism have contributed to a justifiable distrust in vaccines, doctors said. In Latino communities, Spanish-language medical disinformation has largely gone unchecked and narratives “are receiving high levels of engagement ... where there are low health literacy skills,” said Jacobo Licona, who leads disinformation research at the firm EquisLabs.

To reach people across communities, doctors emphasized the importance of recruiting trusted and popular messengers with varied cultural backgrounds and language skills. Vaccinations, they said, should be widely available not only in local pharmacies and medical clinics but also in schools and on college campuses.

Ong, the UMass professor, urged that public education campaigns point to history, to the immense benefits of past immunization campaigns. “We have been vaccinated against polio and hepatitis, so many have worked over time,” he said.

The longer it takes to develop accurate and positive vaccine messages, the harder it will be for them to break through with some people. Harrison started her Facebook group in 2015, about a year after a measles outbreak at Disneyland spurred mostly Democratic legislators in California and other state legislatures to expand vaccine requirements.

To critics that say she is spreading disinformation, Harrison responds that people are entitled to express their opinions. Hers, she adds, are based on personal experience: Two years in and out of hospitals with her son after he fell ill with pneumonia, allergies, and asthma following an MMR vaccination.

“This wasn’t just something that I just woke up one day and said I am going to listen to whoever — some stranger — on the internet,” she said, adding that she doesn’t believe large pharmaceutical companies have people’s best interests in mind.

Ojikutu, the MGH specialist, and other doctors stressed that there can be medical complications with vaccines — although rare and often mild — but that investment in vaccines benefits the public in huge ways.

“It is totally reasonable to have your own beliefs, but when those beliefs get in the way of yourself, your children, parents, or other people, that’s when it becomes problematic,” Ojikutu said.

Reach Jazmine Ulloa at jazmine.ulloa@globe.com or on Twitter: @jazmineulloa.

Oxford controversy is the first shot in international battle over vaccine efficacy

Trials will not reveal all the facts on prevention for each new drug – that process could last for years

A volunteer is given the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. 

Photograph: John Cairns/AP

Robin McKie, Science Editor THE GUARDIAN
Sat 28 Nov 2020 

In a few days, researchers plan to solve a medical mystery that threatens to erupt into a major transatlantic battle. Scientists at Oxford University say they intend to publish full, peer-reviewed data, in the journal Lancet, about trials they have completed on their Covid-19 vaccine.

The information, they say, should end mounting controversy about the vaccine’s effectiveness and explain apparent inconsistencies in trial results. Opponents, most of them American, say this is unlikely, and insist new phase 3 trials now need to be restarted from scratch to restore confidence in the vaccine.

An international vaccine battle has begun, one that is likely to be repeated many times over the next year as new, competing vaccines are produced to help rid the world of Covid-19 and doctors attempt to rate their usefulness. How the Oxford vaccine battle proceeds in the next few weeks will have a crucial bearing on the global battle against the pandemic.

“The trouble is that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine received a lot of publicity over the summer and expectations were high,” virologist Professor John Moore, of Weill Cornell Medicine college, New York, told the Observer. “These expectations have not been met and now there is a pushback.”

The Novavax vaccine has been developed from moths to manufacture pieces of coronavirus protein that will stimulate anti-Covid responses when injected. 

Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

On Monday, Oxford researchers announced their vaccine had 62% efficacy in most volunteers compared with the recently revealed efficacies of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which both topped 90%. But they also revealed that a sub-set of volunteers had been mistakenly given a lower dose of vaccine due to problems manufacturing it. Bizarrely, that lower dosage produced a higher vaccine efficacy: around 90%. The scientists had no explanation for this anomaly.

“The Oxford vaccine was generally not viewed as the best design worldwide, but it was thought it could be adequate for purpose – but now there’s so much uncertainty,” added Moore. “Other vaccines are going to be available in the UK and people are likely to want to use the strongest. That may not be this one.”

Other scientists have defended the Oxford vaccine. Timing was a particular problem, said Joy Leahy, of the Royal Statistical Society. She said: “The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines produced stronger results than expected. If the Oxford-AstraZeneca data had been released first, I believe they would have then met the scientific community’s expectations.”

Professor Helen Fletcher of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said it was remarkable that Oxford and AstraZeneca had gone from square one to creating 100 million doses of a new vaccine in less than a year, adding: “It’s not surprising if some manufacturing issues were still being ironed out when they started clinical trials.”

A researcher at the Jenner Institute in Oxford works on the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. Public health officials hope they may soon have access to a vaccine that is cheaper and easier to distribute than some of its rivals. Photograph: John Cairns/AP

The crucial factor is that Covid vaccines work, said Prof Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London. He said: “Each of the trials shows protection, which we did not know would be possible. We have been wanting vaccines for many diseases, such as HIV and malaria, and they haven’t arrived. Results seem to show it can be done for Covid, and that’s very good news.”

This was backed by Kate Bingham, who in May was made chair of the UK vaccine taskforce charged with ensuring Britain was supplied with a Covid vaccine as soon as possible. Bingham told the Observer: “Six months ago, when we started out, we faced the simple fact that no human coronavirus vaccines had ever been developed.

“It was daunting. Our experiences with other coronavirus vaccines, for Sars and for Mers, had been failures and plenty of my peers told me it would take years. Now we have three vaccine candidates from Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna, that have been proven to be highly effective against Covid-19 in clinical trials. What scientists have done is completely astonishing.”

Bingham’s taskforce spread its bets by seeking out, and backing, vaccines that were made by the widest variety of techniques, another factor in the current controversy. Pfizer’s vaccine uses virus genes directly to stimulate cells in our bodies to manufacture Covid protein pieces that trigger immune responses. The AstraZeneca vaccine uses another virus to carry those genes into the body.

Others use inactivated Covid viruses to stimulate immune responses, while the US firm Novavax uses a remarkable technique involving the genetic engineering of cells extracted from moths to manufacture pieces of coronavirus protein that will stimulate anti-Covid responses when injected.

Intriguingly, Novavax was facing bleak times at the start of 2020 after the failure of two different vaccine trials using similar technology. Then the pandemic arrived and its moth cell technique was swiftly transferred to Covid-19 vaccine production. Early trials provided strong results and Novavax has since attracted more than $2bn backing from the US government and other agencies.

“This vaccine looks as if it is going to be relatively easy to manufacture,” said virologist Angela Rasmussen, of Columbia University. “Its drawback is that similar protein subunit vaccines – for instance, the hepatitis B vaccine – take multiple shots to build up immunity.”

In Britain, 15,000 volunteers (including Bingham) have been enrolled in phase 3 trials of the Novavax vaccine. The company says it expects to get key data from this group in early 2021 and use that to gain approval for the vaccine. Britain has agreed to buy 60 million doses.

Just how these different vaccines are greeted by scientists remains to be seen. Trial results will be pursued energetically – and the controversy that has surrounded the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will be repeated. One vaccine may appear to be good at stopping people succumbing to serious illness, but how long might it provide protection? And how good will a vaccine be at preventing virus transmission, and how well will it work in higher-risk groups, such as the elderly? How easy will it be to administer and transport? It will take months if not years to answer all these questions for each vaccine.

The good news for Britain is that it is very well placed to make major contributions to resolving these issues, said Jonathan Pearce, interim director of the Medical Research Council’s Covid-19 response. He added: “The UK has superb medical data resources and an integrated healthcare system which have already allowed us to set up a world-leading study for rating Covid-19 treatments. Our opportunity to contribute to the global good is going to be very high.”

Lame-Duck Trump Makes Legal Moves to Fire Federal Employees in Possible Attempt to Sabotage Biden Admin

JERRY LAMBE Nov 28th, 2020


As President Donald Trump’s tenure in the oval office winds down, his administration is apparently looking to leave a lasting effect on federal civil service employment. The administration is seeking to remove legal protections for 88 percent of the federal workforce and ultimately make it much easier for career employees to be fired, several news outlets reported this week. At least one congressional Democrat said the move appears calculated to undermine the incoming Biden administration.

The effort to destabilize tens of thousands of federal jobs stems from an executive order signed by the president late last month. The Office of Management and Budget is reportedly moving swiftly to ensure that it’s implemented before Trump leaves office on Jan. 20.

Under the order, political appointees in the White House sent every federal agency a list of positions that should be reclassified as “Schedule F” roles, meaning the employees could be terminated for a number of reasons including poor performance or failing to carry out the administration’s stated priorities. The deadline for the reclassification is Jan. 19, one day prior to inauguration.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) on Friday said that Trump put the order in motion—believing he would win a second term—in order to oust Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading virologist and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, over his refusal to tow the administration’s line regarding the resurgent coronavirus pandemic. However, as it’s become increasingly clear that President-elect Joe Biden will take office in January, Beyer said Trump’s plan is likely geared towards sabotaging the new administration by embedding political loyalists into previously protected positions.

“But once it became clear Trump lost the election, a new goal came into view: sabotaging President-elect Biden. Sometime in the last week, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) produced a memo which reclassified **88%** of its workers as Schedule F,” Beyer wrote. “Trump now believes he can fire nearly everyone at OMB at will. More agencies are likely to follow OMB in reclassifying portions of their workforces as Schedule F soon. Trump likely hopes to replace swathes of the career federal workforce with loyalists.”

Trump now believes he can fire nearly everyone at OMB at will. More agencies are likely to follow OMB in reclassifying portions of their workforces as Schedule F soon. Trump likely hopes to replace swathes of the career federal workforce with loyalists. 8/ https://t.co/puCK6CVNZf
— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) November 27, 2020

Ronald Sanders, one of the administration’s top civil service advisors, resigned in protest last month over the directive, saying it was “nothing more than a smoke screen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process.”

“I simply cannot be part of an Administration that seeks . . . to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance. Career Federal employees are legally and duty-bound to be nonpartisan; they take an oath to preserve and protect our Constitution and the rule of law . . . not to be loyal to a particular President or Administration,” Sanders wrote in his letter of resignation.

House Democrats are attempting to block the order from taking effect, with 24 committee chairs on Wednesday signing onto a letter demanding a “full accounting of political appointees who have already been hired into career positions or are being considered for such conversions.”

[Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

China's manned submersible completes historic deep-sea mission
Updated 28-Nov-2020
CGTN

Fendouzhe, China's deep-sea manned submersible, successfully ended its ocean expedition on Saturday.

The submersible, which name means "striver" in Chinese, dived to a depth of 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench on November 10 and returned to the Nanshan port in Sanya City, south China's Hainan Province at 8:30 am BJT on Saturday.

During the expedition, which started on October 10, Fendouzhe successfully completed 13 dives, icluding eight ones deeper than 10,000 meters, according to Xinhua News Agency.

China's Ministry of Science and Technology said the expedition team overcame difficulties such as typhoons, rain and high temperatures, conducted multiple tests and obtained a batch of sediment, rock and seabed biological samples.

(Cover: China's new deep-sea manned submersible Fendouzhe, onboard the scientific research ship Tansuo-1, returned to the port in the city of Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, November 28, 2020. /Xinhua)

Xi Jinping congratulates China's successful deep-sea mission team
28-Nov-2020
CGTN

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday congratulated Chinese scientists on the successful completion of a manned deep-sea mission, which dived to a national record depth of 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench, at the Pacific Ocean.

The country's new manned submersible "Fendouzhe," which means "striver" in Chinese, concluded the historic dive. It returned to Nanshan Port in Sanya City, south China's Hainan Province at 8:30 a.m. BJT on Saturday.

In a congratulatory letter, Xi said the operation has embodied China's comprehensive strength in the field of marine high-tech.

He also extended warm congratulations and sincere greetings to scientific researchers who are committed to the deep-sea equipment development and scientific studies.

Xi encouraged scientists and researchers to make greater contributions to China's development, as well as to humankind's understanding, protection and utilization of the ocean.

The Fendouzhe project was launched in 2016, with some of the best submersible engineers in China involved.

Since October 10 this year, the submersible has conducted 13 successful dives at Mariana Trench, including eight ones deeper than 10,000 meters.

On November 10, the submersible dived to a depth of 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench, a new record for China's manned deep-sea diving operation. The previous record was 10,058 meters set on October 27, by the same vehicle at the same trench.


China's deep-sea manned submersible "Fendouzhe," which means "striver" in Chinese, descended 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench on Tuesday. How did the vessel withstand the enormous pressure at the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the Pacific Ocean? Take a look.

VIDEO

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-10/How-does-China-s-Fendouzhe-withstand-the-pressure-at-Challenger-Deep-Vj2EP199rG/index.html

New rule could allow poison gas, firing squads for US executions


By Associated Press Nov 28, 2020

The US Justice Department is quietly amending its execution protocols, no longer requiring federal death sentences to be carried out by lethal injection and clearing the way to use other methods like firing squads and poison gas.

The amended rule, published Friday in the Federal Register, allows the U.S. government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.” A number of states allow other methods of execution, including electrocution, inhaling nitrogen gas or death by firing squad.

It remains unclear whether the Justice Department will seek to use any methods other than lethal injection for executions in the future. The rule – which goes into effect on Christmas Eve – comes as the Justice Department has scheduled five executions during the lame-duck period, including three just days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

Protester Sylvester Edwards holds a sign up opposing the death penalty from across the street from the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. (AP)

A Justice Department official said the change was made to account for the fact the Federal Death Penalty Act requires sentences be carried out in the “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed,'' and some of those states use methods other than lethal injection.

The official told the AP the federal government “will never execute an inmate by firing squad or electrocution unless the relevant state has itself authorised that method of execution.”
The official said two executions scheduled in December would be done by lethal injection but didn’t provide information about three others scheduled in January. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the internal department protocols.

The change is likely to set off intense criticism from Democrats and anti-death penalty advocates, as the Trump administration tries to push through a number of rule changes before Trump leaves office. A spokesperson for Biden told the AP earlier this month that the president-elect “opposes the death penalty now and in the future” and would work to end its use. But he did not say whether executions would be paused immediately once Biden takes office

.

Donald Trump spent his Friday (AND SATURDAY AND SUNDAY) playing golf. (AP)

Attorney General William Barr restarted federal executions this year after a 17-year hiatus. This year, the Justice Department has put to death more people than during the previous half-century, despite waning public support from both Democrats and Republicans for its use.
All states that use the death penalty allow lethal injection – and that is the primary method in all states where other methods are allowed, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Centre. As lethal injection drugs become difficult to obtain, some states have begun looking at alternative methods for carrying out death sentences. Alabama joined Oklahoma and Mississippi in 2018 approving the use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoners, allowing the state to asphyxiate condemned inmates with the gas in some cases.

All federal executions are conducted at this prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. (AP)

In some states, inmates can choose the method of their execution. In Florida, for example, an inmate can specifically ask to be put to death by electrocution and in Washington state, inmates can ask to be put to death by hanging. In Utah, prisoners sentenced before May 2004 can choose to be killed by a firing squad. The state law there also authorises the use of a firing squad if lethal injection drugs aren’t available.

In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, President Barack Obama directed the Justice Department to conduct a broad review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs.

Barr said in July 2019 that the review had been completed, allowing executions to resume and approved a new procedure for lethal injections that replaced the three-drug combination previously used in federal executions with one drug, pentobarbital. The one-drug protocol is similar to the procedure used in several states, including Georgia, Missouri and Texas.

Inside America's death chambers View Gallery

Before the Trump administration resumed executions this year, the federal government had put only three inmates to death since 1988. Though there hadn’t been a federal execution since 2003, until July, the Justice Department has continued to approve death penalty prosecutions, and federal courts had continued sentencing defendants to death.

Trump has spoken often about capital punishment and his belief that executions serve as an effective deterrent and an appropriate punishment for some crimes, including mass shootings and the killings of police officers.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Journalists and film company win £875k damages from police

Settlement: Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffery outside the High Court on Friday

David Young
November 27 2020 
BELFAST TELEGRAPH

Police are facing a multimillion-pound bill after settling a case taken by two journalists arrested over material used in a Troubles documentary.

The PSNI agreed to pay £875,000 in damages to Trevor Birney, Barry McCaffrey and the company behind the film on the Loughinisland massacre.

The PSNI will also have to foot both sides’ legal costs for the lengthy and complex judicial review proceedings that have been running for more than two years — a bill understood to run well into seven figures.

That is on top of the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on the botched arrest and search operation that prompted the journalists’ legal case.

The PSNI has also agreed to delete material it seized from Mr Birney and Mr McCaffrey when officers raided their homes and offices in August 2018.

The settlement comes after a court ruled last year that the warrants used by police to search the journalists’ homes and Fine Point Films had been “inappropriate”. The criminal probe into the journalists was discontinued following that ruling.

It is understood the £875,000 in damages includes £600,000 to Fine Point Films, £150,000 to Mr Birney and £125,000 to Mr McCaffrey.

News that a settlement has been reached was announced during a brief hearing at Belfast High Court on Friday.

DUP Policing Board member Mervyn Storey said it raised major questions for the PSNI.

He added: “This was a seriously botched operation. When I was briefed about this case in the immediate aftermath of the gentlemen being released it was clear to me the police approach seemed seriously suspect. It had all the hallmarks of taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Mr McCaffrey and Mr Birney were arrested over the alleged theft of a police watchdog document that appeared in their film No Stone Unturned about the notorious loyalist massacre in Loughinisland, Co Down, during the Troubles.

Six men were shot dead while watching the Republic of Ireland play Italy in a World Cup match at the Heights Bar in June 1994.

The original police operation had been undertaken by Durham Constabulary at the request of the PSNI amid conflict of interest concerns.

In the summer, Chief Constable Simon Byrne issued an unreserved apology to the two journalists.

Reacting to the settlement, Mr Birney said: “Journalists in this jurisdiction now need to see Simon Byrne take all steps necessary to ensure accountability for the PSNI’s despicable attack on press freedom and to assure the press that lessons have been learned.”

Mr McCaffrey questioned why it had taken the PSNI so long to settle with them.

He added: “This whole thing has cost the State millions.

“Millions of pounds wasted for what? This could have been spent on Covid and people in hospitals, but somebody within the PSNI decided that public money, millions of pounds of public money, was going to be wasted. Who’s going to be held to account?”

A PSNI spokesman said: “The Police Service of Northern Ireland is pleased that these matters have now been concluded.”

Our fear is that no one will be held to account

Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey

Barry McCaffrey (left) and Trevor Birney standing outside Belfast High Court (PA)

November 27 2020 

We weren’t the first local journalists to have our livelihoods threatened by police — but we must be the last.

The late Liam Clarke, Kathryn Johnston and Suzanne Breen each experienced what we have come through in the past two years.

Today, journalists in Belfast are still being threatened by paramilitaries. The PSNI have done little to investigate one threat to rape the child of a female journalist.

Almost 20 years after the journalist Martin O’Hagan was murdered by loyalists, his killers have yet to face justice.

Yet the threat against us emanated from the PSNI itself.

They raided our homes and offices and arrested us in front of our families and our neighbours in an operation designed to send a chill factor through local journalism, to send the message: “investigate legacy issues and this is what can happen to you.”

It is a huge relief for ourselves and our families that this nightmare has now finally been ended.

It has ended only because we launched a Judicial Review from the cells we were held in on August 31, 2018. We took the decision to stand up to the police, to force them to defend their egregious attack on our journalism, our company and our families.

We fought this case to protect press freedom and the right for journalists to be allowed to do their jobs, free from state persecution and threat.

However, it is deeply disturbing that we have had to literally drag police kicking and screaming through endless court hearings.

At every turn police have attempted to block and frustrate any early resolution to this case.

What we have endured in the past couple of years has given us an insight into the trauma that has been inflicted on victims of the Troubles who have had to resort to the courts to seek truth but are frustrated by tactics deployed by the State to ensure a resolution is delayed and the answers they seek held beyond their reach. We salute those families for their integrity and determination.

We are humbled by the support and friendship of the Loughinisland victims who themselves have had shown incredible tenacity in their own search for the truth. They are simply inspiring.

Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was wasted on our arrests and the PSNI’s utterly futile legal challenge to defend their unlawful actions.

But who in the PSNI is going to be held to account for our unlawful arrests? Who thought it appropriate to arrest two journalists simply for doing their job? While grossly insulting the Loughinisland families by not going after those who murdered their loved ones, despite the “treasure trove” of evidence that is still available today.

We fear that no one will be held to account. It seems to be the way we do business in this part of the world.

Amnesty International’s Patrick Corrigan has called on the Northern Ireland Police Board to examine our case, to ensure that no other journalist is unlawfully arrested.

We fully support that call.

Belfast Telegraph

We weren’t the first local journalists to have our livelihoods threatened by police — but we must be the last.

Laughing Gas (NO2) Rise Leaves Climate Science Anxious

Atmospheric levels of laughing gas are on the increase, thanks to agriculture. This is no joke for climate change.

November 27, 2020 by Climate News Network Leave a Comment


By Tim Radford

If humans are to meet the global heating limits set by international agreement in 2015, they will have to think very hard about the effect of the supper table menu on laughing gas, more formally known as nitrous oxide.


That is because food production depends heavily on nitrogen fertilisers. But greenhouse gas emissions driven by agriculture are increasing atmospheric levels of nitrous oxide (N2O).

This is a greenhouse gas − popularly known as “laughing gas” − that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and it tends to stay in the atmosphere, driving up the thermometer, for at least 100 years. And in the 200 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric levels of nitrous oxide have risen by 20%, and are still rising.

Nitrous oxide is one of the six greenhouse gases identified in the Kyoto Protocol, the pioneering global climate agreement, as a danger whose emissions should be reduced by all its signatories.

The ratio of N2O to other gases is tiny, a thousand times lower than carbon dioxide, for instance, but an increase can still make a significant difference. In 1750 the ratio stood at 270 parts per billion. In 2018 it had reached 331 ppb, with the fastest growth all in the last 50 years, thanks to humankind’s demand for food.


“There is a conflict between the way we are feeding people and stabilising the climate”

And this, say 57 scientists from 14 nations in a report in the journal Nature, now threatens to eliminate any hope of containing global heating to “well below” 2°C by the year 2100. This is the target set in the Paris Agreement in 2015 by 195 nations.

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Right now, the world has already warmed by 1°C in the last century and on all the evidence so far it is heading by the end of the century to be at least 3°C hotter than the average for most of the last 10,000 years of human history.

“The dominant driver of the increase in atmospheric nitrous oxide comes from agriculture, and the growing demand for food and feed for animals will further increase global nitrous oxide emissions,” said Hanqin Tian, of Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences in Alabama in the US. “There is a conflict between the way we are feeding people and stabilising the climate.”

He and his colleagues call their research an inventory of the traffic in nitrous oxide from human and from natural sources. The most significant human source is the fertiliser added to croplands.

They found that the highest growth in nitrous oxide emissions came from emerging economies in East Asia, South Asia, Africa and South America, from synthetic fertilisers and from livestock manure. In the course of the next few decades global population will soar, and so will the demand for food.

Total rethink

Researchers have consistently argued for a new approach to agriculture, with ever-greater emphasis on plant-based diets, as a way to help contain climate change on a scale that is likely to actually threaten global food security.


“Europe is the only region in the world that has successfully reduced nitrous oxide emissions over the past two decades,” said Robert Jackson, of Stanford University in the US, who chairs the Global Carbon Project.

“Industrial and agricultural policies to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution and to optimise fertiliser use efficiencies have proven to be effective. Still, further efforts are required, in Europe as well as globally.”

And another author, Josep Canadell of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, said: “This new analysis calls for a full rethink in the ways we use and abuse nitrogen fertilisers globally and urges us to adopt more sustainable practices in the way we produce food, including the reduction of food waste.” − Climate News Network

—
This post was previously published on climatenewsnetwork.net with Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0.

Australia swelters under extreme heatwave as fire brigades on high alert
Temperatures reach into the mid-40s in some parts of Australia

Temperatures were expected to hit the mid-40s as parts of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria are hit by an extreme heatwave. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP


Guardian staff with AAP
Sat 28 Nov 2020

Much of Australia is in the grip of an extreme heatwave with temperatures reaching into the mid-40s and total fire bans in force in parts of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.

South Australia followed up a scorching Friday with a similarly warm Saturday, with temperatures hitting 46C in Port Augusta and Coober Pedy.

An extreme bushfire risk was declared for the Adelaide Hills. On Friday, a grassfire north of Adelaide burnt through 650 hectares.

⚠️Fire Weather Warnings⚠️ are in place for many SA districts today & Saturday due to very hot conditions and strong, gusty winds with tomorrow's change.
Latest warnings: https://t.co/QlFxIzbsKi

Stay safe in the heat and follow advice from @SA_SES, @CFSAlerts & @SAHealth pic.twitter.com/Kw6w10LJIg— Bureau of Meteorology, South Australia (@BOM_SA) November 27, 2020

The state’s Country Fire Service advised those in the at-risk districts to put their bushfire plan into action and keep track of any updates.


In the town of Coober Pedy in northern South Australia, where the temperature hit 46C on Saturday, about two-third of residents live in underground dug-outs.

“Whilst people in dug-outs will be fine today, we really are concerned about the people that live above ground in housing, in houses above ground and also people that are visiting from other parts of the state, particularly from up north,” the Coober Pedy district council chief executive, Dean Miller, told the ABC. “We’ll be looking out for people to make sure they stay hydrated and have access to water and shade.”

In the state of New South Wales, temperatures exceeded 40C across the west and in coastal areas on Saturday.

Most of Sydney, including the CBD, recorded temperatures of 40C on Saturday as strong north-westerly winds held back the sea breeze. The highest-recorded temperature was at the airport, at 41.7C.

The Bureau of Meteorology manager Jade Golding said November records for warmest overnight minimums in some parts of NSW likely tumbled on Friday night, while daytime records could also fall this weekend.

NSW and Sydney would swelter until at least late on Sunday afternoon, when a gusty southerly was expected to cool temperatures for Monday.

“It’ll be a really long, uncomfortable night (on Saturday) and then a really long hot day and then a really windy southerly change,” Golding said. “The body doesn’t really get much respite, it’s quite hard.”

Temperatures across NSW would then spike again on Tuesday as heatwave conditions enveloped inland areas.

Golding said the weekend swelter would likely spur bushfire concerns, with the Rural Fire Service forecasting severe danger across southern NSW regions on Saturday including the Riverina. She said fires would be fuelled by strong grass growth over a rainy winter.

The RFS issued a total fire ban for most of eastern and north-eastern NSW for Sunday, including Greater Sydney, Illawarra, the Hunter and north coast. No fires would be permitted out in the open.

One 416 hectare blaze at Myrtle Park, east of border town Deniliquin, was downgraded to “advice” level after being brought under control on Saturday afternoon. The RFS’s large air tanker was on scene to assist firefighters.

The RFS deputy commissioner, Peter McKechnie, urged residents to have a fire plan ready and prepare their properties.

“This is the first time since the devastating season last year we’ve seen widespread elevated fire danger,” he said. “Know what to do if a fire threatens you, know where you’ll go.”

North-west Victoria also felt the heat, with temperatures in Mildura on Saturday reaching 45C – its previous record for November was 45.5 in 2012. Swan Hill was forecast to hit 44C and Echuca was expecting 42.

The state’s Country Fire Authority declared fire bans for the Mallee, Wimmera and northern country regions. Gusty winds were also forecast for Saturday, particularly in the north-west, plus thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening.

“The Mallee district will reach an extreme fire danger rating for the first time this season due to the forecasted gusty winds and increased grassland curing in the area,” the CFA acting chief officer, Alen Slijepcevic, said.

“Northern country and Wimmera will also experience elevated dangerous fire conditions, with a severe fire danger rating.

“As a result, we have declared a total fire ban across all three weather districts.”

In south-east Queensland, the heatwave was expected to last into mid-next week.

Reinforcements were being sent to the state’s Fraser Island to help contain an out-of-control bushfire that has been burning for the past six weeks.

Tourists were ordered to stay away from the blaze, which had burned through 74,000 hectares so far, and stay off the island’s inland tracks and roads.

Hotter, drier winds with the potential to carry the fire in a southerly direction were forecast over the weekend.

The blaze is believed to have been started by an illegal campfire on 14 October.

Last summer’s bushfires in Australia destroyed 2,476 homes, claimed 26 lives and burned 5.5 million hectares of land.