Morgan Stanley Considers Bet on Bitcoin
By Emmanuel Young Updated by James Hydzik13 February 2021

The Trust Project is an international consortium of news organizations building standards of transparency.

IN BRIEF

Morgan Stanley investment arm Counterpoint Global is considering a move into Bitcoin.

The established and emerging businesses investor is worth over $150 billion.

A move from the arm would require the approval of both regulators and Morgan Stanley itself.

A famed $150 billion investment arm of the American bank Morgan Stanley is considering adding Bitcoin to its list of hedges.

Stanley Wants a Piece

According to a report by Bloomberg, an investment unit of Wall St. giant Morgan Stanley is considering adding Bitcoin to its portfolio pending an exploration of client needs.

The investment arm, called Counterpoint Global (CG), is worth over $150 billion and became famous in the mutual-fund world for its record of successful performance in the space.

In order to move forward with any investment in the top cryptocurrency, CG would need approval from Morgan Stanley and regulators.

However, if CG did go ahead, it would essentially mean that Morgan Stanley approves of an investment in the volatile cryptocurrency.

Counterpoint Global invests primarily in established and emerging companies of all sizes in the United States. It also invests in “large-cap” companies globally.

Wall St. Institutions Attack

Indeed, Morgan Stanley’s approval of Bitcoin would now not be considered an outlier. The Bloomberg report follows the news that BNY Mellon, another Wall St. giant, is launching cryptocurrency custody services for its clients.

The 247 year old banking giant has $2.2 trillion in assets under management, with over $41 trillion in custody. Its founder, Alexander Hamilton, also adorns the $10 bill.

If ever there was an embodiment of traditional banking, it would be BNY Mellon, and they now seemingly support cryptocurrencies.

Moreover, globally, a number of the oldest banks in the world are following suit. Italy’s largest bank, Banca Generali, revealed plans last year to offer cryptocurrency custody as part of its efforts to serve clients interested in the industry.

Additionally, cryptocurrencies were the hottest topic in finance at the establishment-laden World Economic Forum meeting in Davis this year.

The Market Grows

All of this comes as the cryptocurrency market continues to grow, with interest coming from every direction, including institutions.

Early last week, Tesla revealed a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase in a filing made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This prompted the top cryptocurrency to break out of a week of ranging, soaring past $42,000.

Currently, Bitcoin is settling at $47,300, just $1000 away from its all-time high. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization is also at a record high, hovering at $1.49 trillion.

As we welcome BNY Mellon and potentially Morgan Stanley by proxy, expect the optimism behind these record performances to continue.

Get ready for Covid-19 digital passports and new world order

By MUGAMBI LAIBUTA | February 14th 2021 

Governments and companies are racing to develop and deploy Covid-19 digital passports that would store information about a person’s status, whether they have been vaccinated and their immunity level. The data would be generally processed through a mobile phone application and accessible to among other agencies border control, port health and immigration officials.

One justification for the Covid-19 digital passports is the need for verifiable and safe data on an individual’s Covid-19 status. There have been reports of travellers possessing fake Covid-19 certificates. Digital passports could contain tamper proof information that would be encrypted.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) launched the IATA Travel Pass which is one of the initiatives for a Covid-19 digital passport. On its website, IATA indicates that its Travel Pass would provide a global and standardised solution to validate and authenticate all country regulations regarding Covid-19 passenger travel requirements. The IATA Travel Pass would enable passengers find accurate information on travel, testing and vaccine requirements for their journey and find testing centres and labs at their departure location which meet the standards for testing/vaccination requirements of their destination. The Travel Pass would also enable authorised labs and test centres to securely send test results or vaccination certificates to passengers and enable passengers create a ‘digital passport’, verify their test/vaccination meets the regulations and share test or vaccination certificates with authorities to facilitate travel.

While the Covid-19 digital passports/passes are welcome, it is instructive to note that in many countries contact tracing applications have generally failed to gain notoriety with the masses. One, Covid-19 apps have failed due to low uptake despite Google and Apple providing platforms to host applications developed and deployed by governments. There has been mistrust on real intention of governments deploying these apps. It is said data from the apps would be used for unregulated government surveillance. There is also the technical question of whether the apps would adopt a centralised or decentralised database.

Generally it said that a decentralised database provides better protection for personal health data especially if such data is anonymised or pseudonymised.

Two, there has been scant public information and education on the use of the Covid-19 mobile phone applications. For example, in Kenya, the Ministry of Health developed and deployed the ‘Jitenge’ mobile application. According to the Ministry’s website, ‘Jitenge’ allows users to either self-register or are registered by various ministry officials at the quarantine initiation point for home quarantine, at the quarantine facilities, and of the point of entries by port health officials.

Registered users are to receive daily reminders and prompts to report on their health status including symptoms or any other information. Unless one has been tested for Covid-19 or travelled into the country recently it is unlikely they will have interacted with the ‘jitenge’ app. There is no information publicly available on whether the Kenya government will use the IATA Travel Pass to screen travellers getting into the country, whether ‘jitenge’ will be upgraded or a Kenya specific Covid-19 digital pass will be developed. Notwithstanding, Kenyan travellers to destinations around the world will not avoid use of either the IATA Travel Pass or a country specific Covid-19 digital pass the same way one must have a yellow fever vaccination certificate to travel to and from certain countries.

The above is happening over the background of recently drafted guidance note on access to personal data during Covid-19 pandemic by the Office of the Data Commissioner.

Hopefully as the Office of the Data Commissioner is operationalised, we will have data protection regulations specific to different sectors. To illustrate, data processed in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic is broadly sensitive personal data as it includes health data and requires more stringent protection under the Data Protection Act.

In fact, all institutions whether public of private wishing to collect, analyse, store or share Covid-19 data ought by now to have publicly published data protection impact assessment reports.

Regulations on sensitive personal data ought to be specific on whether the data is being processed for a private, public or commercial purpose. Further due to the inevitable sharing of Covid-19 data across borders, we require specific guidance on why the data is to be shared, who shares the data, who has access to the data, what protections would be available for the data.

-The writer is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a privacy and data protection specialist.

UK

HS2 tunnel protest will be first of many, says activist

February 13, 2021
3:32 pm



Lazer Sandford says subterranean tactics are likely to feature in new wave of climate emergency protests

An environmental activist who spent 12 days in a tunnel network underneath Euston Square Gardens in central London says the protest is likely to be the first of a new wave against the climate emergency using subterranean tactics.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian in his first interview since leaving the tunnel network on 6 February, Lachlan Sandford, 20, known as Lazer, said the protest to raise awareness about the environmental destruction that activists believe the high-speed rail link HS2 will cause would not be a one-off.

He highlighted the construction of a second, smaller tunnel at Highbury Corner, also in central London, from where protesters were evicted after a few hours.

As you can see from the recent Highbury Corner eviction, this tunnel is just a start,” said Sandford. “There are countless people I know who will do what it takes to stop HS2.”

Phase 2a of HS2 connecting the West Midlands and Crewe received royal assent in parliament on 11 February.

Sandford’s actions in the tunnel hit the headlines after he was locked to a complex steel and concrete device, which activists underground referred to as “a concrete cake”. It consisted of a metal safe encased in concrete, with more concrete inside, and Sandford locked to an “arm tube”. He also had a lock on his ankle.

“It was an incredibly uncomfortable and painful thing to endure,” he said. “But nothing like the pain and discomfort that the climate and ecological energy is bringing and other people around the world are already feeling.”

There are seven of the original nine activists left in the tunnel, including Sandford’s sister Blue Sandford, 18, Dan Hooper, known as Swampy, 47, and Swampy’s 16-year-old son, Rory.

The plan was for Sandford to be the first to leave, but a 17-year-old activist left the tunnel the evening before because she was feeling unwell.

“That was my job from the start, to be the person holding the down shaft and protecting the entrance to the tunnels at the bottom. We were thinking it would only take them three days to get to me but actually it took them 11,” he said.

As supporters followed news updates on the lengthy process of removing Sandford from the “lock on” – he was locked on for 30 hours and it took the bailiffs 25 hours to extract him from it – they expected the bailiffs to bring him up from the tunnel.

However, he grabbed the lock-on after he was released and ran back into the tunnel, evading capture by the bailiffs.

He said the decision to do that was not premeditated. “That was spur of the moment,” he said. “I escaped back into the tunnels for a rest. I was pleased I got a chance to say goodbye to Blue and the others properly.”

Bailiffs clear the HS2 protest camp near Euston station.

He said he negotiated lights and other essentials for the tunnellers before leaving the tunnel voluntarily. HS2 says it provided lights but not other essentials.

The time Sandford spent in the tunnel is far from his first brush with activism. His father, Roc Sandford, is a Scottish laird who lives off grid on the small Hebridean island of Gometra, pursuing a carbon-neutral way of life. He has also been active in XR Youth.

“With my sister Blue and others, we chained ourselves across the entrance to a fracking conference a couple of years ago,” said Sandford. “I think it was hard for Blue to lose me from the tunnel community. I love them all dearly and I’m looking forward to when I see them again.

“The HS2 bailiffs are hardcore. They are being fairly heavy with us and it’s pretty extreme, but nothing like what is coming if we don’t get our voices heard. People of my age are not being given a choice because the government isn’t doing what’s needed and that’s when I started protesting more. We need to figure out how to get more MPs to back the climate and ecological emergency bill, there’s about 100 so far, so get on to your MP, and get them to scrap HS2 as well.”

Roc Sandford said of his two children involved in the tunnel protest: “I’m so proud of them, they are standing up for what they believe in. But they shouldn’t have to, it’s too much for young shoulders like theirs to carry. We all need to help them.”

One of the first things Sandford did after leaving the tunnel was get some falafel from his favourite place in west London. But the rigours of life underground have not deterred him from environmental activism.

“I can’t divulge any of my future plans for tactical reasons, but I’m nowhere near finished with protesting,” he said.

source: Diane Taylor

Levant

Oldest conch shell in the world uncovered in French museum – and it still plays a tune

12-Feb-2021
Jim Drury

Guillaume Fleury, from Toulouse's Museum of Natural History, shows the Charonia lampas trumpet shell, played for the first time after 18,000 years of silence and decades forgotten in a French museum. /Georges Gobet/AFP


An 18,000-year-old large conch shell overlooked in a French museum for 90 years has being named the oldest known seashell instrument in the world by archaeologists.

The rudimentary wind instrument still works, producing a deep, plaintive bleat.

The Charonia lampas shell was found during the 1931 excavation of the Marsoulas cave, which features prehistoric wall paintings, in the French Pyrenees. For 90 years it was assumed to be a ceremonial drinking cup but archaeologists from the University of Toulouse recently re-examined it and determined it had been modified thousands of years ago for musical use.

Having identified the 31cm shell, they invited a French horn player to blow it.

00:57 Marsoulas Shell Conch Sound by CNRS | Free Listening on SoundCloud 

Lead researcher, archaeologist Carole Fritz, felt huge relief when the horn produced clear C, C sharp and D notes, having feared that playing the conch shell might destroy it.

"Hearing it for the first time, for me it was a big emotion – and a big stress," she said.

The researchers published their findings on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. The previous oldest known conch shell, found in Syria, is thought to be 6,000 years old.

The discovery was made during an inventory at the Natural History Museum of Toulouse, when researchers noticed some unusual holes in the shell. Microscopic inspection revealed an opening at the tip of the shell had been deliberately crafted, creating a hole large enough to blow through.

By inserting a tiny medical camera, they found another hole carefully drilled in the shell's inner chamber. Traces of red pigment were detected on the conch’s mouth, matching a decorative pattern found on the wall of the Marsoulas cave.

The cave is not located near an ocean, so researchers believe prehistoric people must have either moved around widely or used trading networks to obtain the shell.

Using a 3D replica, the archaeologists plan to continue studying the horn's range of notes.



The conch sea shell has a large, crafted, hole large enough to blow through. /Georges Gobet/AFP

The musical origins of the conch shell

Conch or conque, also known as a "seashell horn" or "shell trumpet," have been used widely in musical and ceremonial traditions for millennia, including in ancient Greece, Japan, India and Peru.

Made from the shell of different kinds of sea snails, their natural conical bore is used to produce a musical tone.

The Middle Eastern Charonia tritonis nodifera conch trumpet shell dates from approximately the third millennium BC, while the ancient Peruvian Moche people depicted conch shells in their art.

The shell has considerable significance in Hinduism and is considered one of Buddhism's eight auspicious symbols.

Source(s): AFP

Don't look down! Stockholm's rooftop snow 'sweepers' brave dizzying heights for public safety

Thomas Wintle CGTN 2/13/2021



As heavy snowfall continues to pummel Sweden, an army of so-called "sweepers" are braving dizzying heights in Stockholm to clear the city's roofs of snow – all in the name of public safety.

Scurrying along the black tin roofs of Stockholm's historic Old Town – up to 10 meters above ground – Andrei Plian and Alex Lupu shift thick white blankets of snow from the urban canopy down to street level.

To some this vertigo-inducing work would be too much, but for roofers Plian and Lupu, they are performing a public service by maintaining "the safety of the people" – and they say the stunning views are one of the job's benefits.




Roofer Andrei Plian says he is performing a public service by maintaining "the safety of the people." Helene Dauschy / AFPTV / AFP

"Being here on the roof and looking up at the sky, you feel that freedom," says Plian.

He adds that when he first started the job, "Working on the roof was scary. But after a while you get used to it – it's like usual work, you don't think so much about it."

Still, after 10 years of roofing he is aware of the dangers of working so high up, especially in snowy conditions: "Every time, you have to think about safety – it's the number one rule."

Earlier in February, another snow clearer was seriously injured in the northern Swedish town of Umea while clearing roofs. Initial findings showed he wasn't wearing his safety harness.



Plian attaches himself to the buildings with ropes, carabiners and a safety harness. /Helene Dauschy/AFPTV/AFP


Plian always takes the precaution of attaching himself to the buildings with ropes and carabiners.

"You don't have room for mistakes here," he says. "If you make one mistake, it can be your last."

Their coworkers down below also take the job seriously. Fredrik Ericsson is charged with making sure pedestrians don't get hit by any of the ice and snow his colleagues have dislodged from the roofs.

Using a high-pitched whistle to signal when people are passing, he blows once to stop the work above and twice to signal the all-clear.



The sweepers say that sometimes pedestrians are oblivious to the work going on overhead. /Helene Dauschy/AFPTV/AFP

Ericsson says it can be a tricky task as people are often oblivious, sometimes wilfully, to the work going on.

"They don't show that much respect, they just walk past, so I have to stop and yell at them," he says. "They don't see the danger."

In 2002, a 14-year-old died after being hit by a large block of ice that broke off a building on Stockholm's main shopping street. But accidents are rare in Sweden, according to Staffan Moberg, a spokesperson for the insurer industry group Svensk Forsakring.


For many Stockholmers, the rooftop sweepers act as the city's watchful protectors. /Helene Dauschy/AFPTV/AFP

"As far as I can remember, there have only been two deaths in the last 20-30 years or so," he says.

Moberg adds that they don't keep data on incidents, and while accidents do happen now and again, "the consequences are mostly not lethal and very seldom even severe."

Still, many Stockholmers will be reassured that the rooftop sweepers, perched high above the snow-capped capital, continue to keep them safe, acting as Stockholm's quiet guardians, the city's watchful protectors.


Video editing: Riaz Jugon
Source(s): AFP

Rare books: far more than paper and ink

By Stephen Crafti

THE AGE, AUSTRALIA
February 13, 2021 —

When rockstar and poet Patti Smith first moved to New York in the late 1960s she worked as a waitress. She also boosted her income by discovering rare books, many of which were on-sold to help establish her artistic career.

At about the same time, Kay Craddock, owner of Kay Craddock-Antiquarian Bookseller, established a family bookstore in Melbourne’s suburban Essendon (now at 156 Collins Street).

The Schoeffer bible, circa 1472, was sold to the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne for $200,000. CREDIT:KAY CRADDOCK ANTIQUARIUN BOOKSELLER.

“When we first opened, the locals didn’t think our venture would last six months,” says Craddock.

More than five decades later, the business now attracts regular customers from all over Australia and overseas.

There is a signed black-and-white photo of Barry Humphries on the wall of the store and Smith, who still maintains a keen interest in rare books, once dropped in to peruse the shelves while on tour.

Craddock’s store covers many decades and subjects, including golf, cars, children’s books and the military. Well-known Australian authors such as Tim Winton and David Malouf can be found, along with a first edition of Patrick White’s Happy Valley in its original dust jacket, priced at $6000.

There are also works by English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, with the store stocking 37 volumes, circa 1919, valued at $7500 and a copy of US cartoonist Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, circa 1935, with a price tag of $950.

However, they are far from some of the top-of-the-line rare books that have passed through Craddock’s fingers. She sold a copy of a bible printed in Mainz in 1472 by Peter Schoeffer, an apprentice to Johann Gutenberg, to the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne in the early 1990s for about $200,000.

Craddock also recalls a time where she was contacted to buy a collection of rare books that once graced the library of Thomas Scott, who emigrated to Australia in 1820 and was assistant to famed pioneer, surveyor and explorer George William Evans.


An 1895 edition of Northanger Abbey.

CREDIT:CHRISTOPHER BROWNE

Now in the collection of the State Library of Victoria, “on one inside cover there was a skin of a mouse, the species unidentified,” says Craddock, who was delighted these books were in the original “boards”. Whether wood, paste-board or other materials, “boards” provide cover protection.

“It’s not just seeing the original bindings, however simple they are, but importantly, seeing a snapshot of Scott’s time and his interests,” Craddock says.

Emeritus Professor Christopher Browne, who had a career in academic medicine at Monash University, first started collecting rare books as a post-graduate student at Oxford University.

His initial purchase came in the 1970s when he snapped up a first edition of Ian Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun for just five pence. The same book is now worth between $500 and $600.

More valuable in his collection of about 1300 books is a first edition of Northanger Abbey, one of Jane Austen’s last books before she died in 1817. In its original “board”, Browne values the book at about $10,000. His oldest book in a series of letters by Cicero from the mid-16th Century published by Aldus Manutius.

“People often make the mistake of thinking that if a book is bound in lustrous leather, with perhaps a coat of arms [many collectors from the 19th Century came from titled families], it’s more valuable,” Browne says. “But this isn’t the case, with many of these books rebound in the 1930s in an art-deco style.”

“The price paid is what people are prepared to pay and how rare it is,” says Browne.

The renowned collector was once contacted by an overseas bookseller to see if he was interested in purchasing a first edition of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – asking price £90,000.

While tempted – he mulled it over for a few weeks – it was eventually sold to another collector.

And what’s the main attraction for Browne in collecting rare books?

“It’s the pleasure of having a great object travel through your hands, whether or not it finally ends up on your bookshelves,” he says.

Stephen Crafti is a specialist in contemporary design, including architecture, furniture, fashion and decorative arts.

‘Child slaves’ sue chocolate giants for forced labour in cocoa plantations

By Marvin G. Perez
February 13, 2021 — 

New York: Eight former cocoa plantation child labourers are suing seven chocolate giants for alleged complicity in trafficking and forced labour.

International Rights Advocates, a human rights group, said it has filed a federal class action lawsuit in Washington, DC, on behalf of the eight Malian citizens who say they were forced to work and received no pay.

IRA said the plaintiffs were trafficked as children and forced to harvest cocoa in Ivory Coast, the fruit’s biggest producer and exporter. The case is based on a law that allows victims to sue companies that participate in a venture that benefits from trafficking and forced labour.

Nestlé is among seven companies named in the lawsuit.

CREDIT:BLOOMBERG

Nestle, Hershey, Mars and Cargill are among the companies named in the suit.

“They benefit by continuing to profit from selling cheap cocoa harvested by child slaves,” IRA said in a statement.

“We don’t comment on any possible pending litigation,” Jessica Adelman, a Mars spokeswoman said.

Mars Wrigley said this week in a report that it had expanded coverage of child labour monitoring.


Mars and other companies say they constantly work to stamp out child labour.

CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES

A Cargill spokesperson said in a statement: “We are aware of the filing and while we cannot comment on specifics of this case right now, I want to reinforce we have no tolerance for child labour in cocoa production”. “Our resolve to address this has never been stronger and we are accelerating our efforts to address the root causes of child labour.”

A Nestle spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company had explicit policies against child labour and was working to end it. The lawsuit “does not advance the shared goal of ending child labour in the cocoa industry.”

Multinational companies have faced dozens of suits accusing them of playing a role in human rights violations, environmental wrongdoing and labour abuses. IRA has also filed a case on behalf of six former child slaves against Nestle and Cargill. The case was argued in the US Supreme Court on December 1 and is still pending.

Oxford-AstraZeneca begins a vaccine trial for children,

 the youngest group yet tested

By Kim Bellware
February 14, 2021 —

Washington: Oxford University has started testing its coronavirus vaccine in children as young as six in a move that expands coronavirus vaccine trials to the youngest age group yet.

The Oxford trial will include 300 child volunteers ages 6 to 17, with 240 of them receiving the vaccine co-developed with drugmaker AstraZeneca; the remaining participants will receive a control meningitis vaccine that has been proven safe in children but is expected to mimic similar side effects of a COVID-19 shot, the university said in a statement.

The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine will be the first 

to be tested on children younger than 12.CREDIT:AP

Before the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial, testing had not included children younger than 12. Three other companies – Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen – have announced plans to start trials for younger children this spring.

Only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been authorised in the United States thus far. Johnson & Johnson has a single-shot vaccine that could be authorised in March. US regulators are still waiting for more trial data before approving the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is already in use in the European Union.

Even with clinical trials for younger patients under way, children are not expected to widely receive the vaccine for months and may not until 2022. Richard Malley, a senior physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital said he does not expect vaccinations in children to start until next calendar year.

“We really want to make sure they’re safe and well-tolerated in children, particularly when there’s a low risk-benefit ratio,” Malley said. Coronavirus has not shown itself to be as dangerous in most children as it is in older adults, making it less critical to race out testing for children.

“The risk-benefit calculus you have to do should lead you to want to do this only if it’s extraordinarily safe in pediatric populations,” he said.

The Oxford trial’s small sample size of 300 children who span a decade in age is meant to serve as a jumping-off point and not the final word on how the vaccine will be tolerated by young patients.

Malley said in a 300-person trial, the purpose is to determine what he called a “global response” and tell researchers at a high level if the vaccine is safe, well-tolerated and able to produce an immune response in children.

While the development and rollout of various coronavirus vaccine candidates has occurred at an unprecedented speed, clinical trials expanding now to younger children follow the standard pattern of all vaccine testing, Malley said.

“In any vaccine study, you’re generally starting with healthy adults and slowly move into different age categories going up or down to make sure it’s safe for other adults,” Malley said.

For some health experts, the timeline of expanding clinical trials to teenage and younger patients has been disappointingly slow, particularly given the strength of the safety data for adults who have taken the vaccine.

American Association of Pediatrics president Sally Goza wrote to federal leaders in September arguing paediatric trials were essential for curbing the pandemic, given the potential of older children to be vectors for the disease.

“While some studies have shown that children under the age of 10 may be less likely to become infected and less likely to spread the virus to others, more recent data suggest children older than 10 years may spread SARS-CoV-2 as efficiently as adults,” Goza wrote.

Malley, the Boston Children’s Hospital doctor, said even though children are roughly half as likely as an adult to transmit coronavirus, inoculating younger populations is crucial to achieving herd immunity.

“When you read that kids are less likely to transmit, it’s roughly by a factor of two – so it’s not zero,” he said, noting that the virus variants that have emerged may further change the equation.

Malley also points to the fact that while children broadly have not suffered severe or lingering illness from COVID-19 the way adults have, some children have developed acute respiratory failure and multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C – a rare but serious illness than be fatal or leave children with lasting heart damage.

So far in the United States, at least 11,000 children and teenagers have been hospitalised and at least 215have died, according to a January 28 report from the American Academy of Paediatrics.

“Even though these are rare, they can be catastrophic,” Malley said. “If the vaccine is safe and can be tolerated, it can save lives.”

The Washington Post

UK's Johnson to host virtual G7 meeting to push for global vaccine roll-out

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will host a virtual meeting of G7 leaders next week to call for action to ensure equal global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, and to prevent future pandemics, his office said on Saturday.

The meeting of the leaders from the Group of Seven rich nations on Friday is the first since April last year, and will be Joe Biden’s first major multilateral engagement as U.S. president, Downing Street said.

“The solutions to the challenges we face – from the colossal mission to get vaccines to every single country, to the fight to reverse the damage done to our ecosystems and lead a sustainable recovery from coronavirus – lie in the discussions we have with our friends and partners around the world,” Johnson said.

Johnson will call for the G7 to work on a global approach to pandemics, such as designing an early warning system, which would bring to an end “the nationalist and divisive politics that marred the initial response to coronavirus”, his office said.

The World Health Organization has warned that a “me-first” policy towards vaccines by rich nations could leave the poorest and most vulnerable at risk, while also allowing a situation in which the virus could continue to spread and mutate.

Britain itself has been caught up in a row between the European Union and Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca over vaccine supplies, which almost led to the bloc imposing emergency measures to prevent exports of shots into the United Kingdom via Northern Ireland.

“Quantum leaps in science have given us the vaccines we need to end this pandemic for good,” Johnson said in a statement. “Now world governments have a responsibility to work together to put those vaccines to the best possible use.”

In June, Johnson is due to host the first in-person summit of G7 leaders in nearly two years in a seaside village in Cornwall, southwestern England, which will focus on rebuilding from the pandemic and climate change, a top priority for Britain ahead of the COP26 conference it is due to host in November.

USA

Are Cannabis Dispensaries Really Associated with Fewer Opioid Overdoses?

February 06, 2021

By Roger Chriss, PNN Columnist

A new study published in The BMJ claims that U.S. counties with medical and recreational cannabis dispensaries have fewer opioid-related deaths.

Researchers at Yale and University of California at Davis found that an increase of just one or two storefront dispensaries in a county was associated with a 17% reduction in all-opioid mortality rates. Deaths involving illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids fell by 21 percent.

Although the researchers cautioned that “the associations documented cannot be assumed to be causal,” cannabis supporters were quick to praise the findings.

“The data to date is consistent and persuasive: For many pain patients, cannabis offers a viable alternative to opioids, potentially improving their quality of life while possessing a superior safety profile,” said Paul Armentano, Deputy Director of NORML, a marijuana advocacy group.

While the study findings are interesting, they highlight the importance of considering the complex supply side of legal and illegal drug markets, and how it shapes opioid use and misuse. The study looked at data from over 800 counties with legal dispensaries, and compared them to counts of fatal overdoses between 2015 and 2018.

It turns out many of these counties were on the West Coast, where illicit fentanyl had yet to became as pervasive on the black market as it had in other parts of the country. Since 2018, deaths involving fentanyl have soared on the West Coast. 

“If you were to do the same study with current data, you’d find something different because of the way both opioid deaths and cannabis dispensaries have shifted since then,” Chelsea Shover, PhD, an assistant professor at UCLA School of Medicine told Healthline. 

In general, the opioid overdose crisis has gotten worse in the past couple of years. The CDC recently reported that in the 12 months ending in May 2020, ten western states reported a nearly 100 percent increase in deaths involving illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. The increase was particularly sharp in states that legalized recreational cannabis.  

This is the problem with ecological data and associational findings. If you pick the right time or place, you can get an appealing result. And you may ignore other important issues.  

States that legalized cannabis tend to have better public health and more addiction treatment services. They generally have adopted the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion, and have stronger social safety nets. All of these factors are believed to contribute to rates of substance use disorders and overdose risk.

Ecological data alone never proves anything. It merely suggests associations. If the association holds up over time, then researchers can look into a possible causal relation. If however, the association does not hold up, then claims about causality are pointless.

At this point cannabis does not seem to reliably reduce opioid overdose deaths. Further research will be needed to tease out the effects of cannabis legalization amid all the other factors involved in the overdose crisis.

Roger Chriss lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is a technical consultant in Washington state, where he specializes in mathematics and research.