The Vaccine that Nobody Wants

Fears of AstraZeneca Could Have Dangerous Consequences

Reports that the AstraZeneca vaccine is less effective that the ones from BioNTech and Moderna have fueled widespread reservations. Leading German health experts say they have faith in the company's product and that it is a key tool in the battle against COVID-19.

By Matthias Bartsch, Jan Friedmann, Hubert Gude, Philipp Kollenbroich, Julia Merlot, Andreas Wassermann, Alfred Weinzierl und Steffen Winter
19.02.2021, 

A "vaccine vending machine" in Berlin: A major debate has broken out over the differing efficacy of coronavirus vaccines. Foto: Fabrizio Bensch / REUTERS

No, Michael Golke stresses, he’s not an anti-vaxxer. How could he be? He works as a nurse in a Berlin hospital and has been in the profession for more than 20 years, specializing in intensive care. But he finds it offensive what politicians are asking of him.

"How can it be that the very people who have been fighting COVID-19 directly every day for almost a year, and who clearly have a very high risk of infection, are supposed to be protected with a less effective vaccine?” asks Golke, who requested that his name be changed for this story. He says he also wrote and asked the same question of German Health Minister Jens Spahn and Dilek Kalayci, the Berlin state government’s leading health official. Using his real name.

The nurse was to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. The product performed weaker in studies than the vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna. Golke declined the vaccine. And this week, he says, around 20 to 25 percent of his colleagues also rejected it.

In Germany, the vaccine from AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish company, is only recommended for people under 65 and has been deemed unsuitable for the elderly. It is instead being given to younger members of the group with the highest vaccination priority: Medical professionals and nurses.

"It’s sheer pragmatism,” says Golke. "I don’t expect any preferential treatment, but medical personnel should not be worse off than the general population.” He suspects that later, when more doses are available, the general population will receive a greater proportion of the more effective mRNA vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna.

Whether an injustice is really being done to Golke isn't the main issue. A lot has been asked of doctors and nurses in recent months and many of them are on edge, left with a feeling that politicians and society don't sufficiently value them. They also live with the constant fear of infection. And every patient expects the maximum level of care. Isn’t it only fair that they get the maximum possible protection?

DER SPIEGEL 8/2021

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 8/2021 (February 20, 2021) of DER SPIEGEL.SPIEGEL International

AstraZeneca's vaccine, approved in the European Union at the end of January and thus only in circulation for the last three weeks, doesn't have the best reputation among people in the health-care profession. Not all are skeptical, but enough are that it is causing a serious problem in Germany.

In an interview with the Rheinische Post newspaper, even Frank Ulrich Montgomery, the outspoken chair of the World Medical Association, basically declared that the vaccine is a second choice by default. "You can’t gloss over the fact that it’s less effective,” he said. He added that he believes people with a higher risk of infection like medical staff should be vaccinated with more effective vaccines.

Statements like that, combined with reports of supposedly strong side effects, have a viral effect in the internet. As such, i little surprise that people aren’t showing up for appointments to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine in Germany. In the state of Hesse, officials quietly admitted that they do not have enough under-65-year-olds in the highest priority category who want to take advantage of the offer. The state of Saxony has reported that it has appointments free in almost all of its vaccination centers. The German Red Cross has reported that in almost 50 instances, people didn’t show up for their vaccination appointment – or they attempted to get a different vaccine.

AstraZeneca has thus far delivered 736,800 doses of its vaccine to Germany, but the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the country’s center for disease control, says that only 106,586 doses of the vaccine have been administered. Some states are building up stockpiles of the medicine. Hesse has received 58,000 doses, but as of Monday, only 851 had been administered.

Frank Ulrich Montgomery, chair of the World Medical Association: Reports of supposedly strong side effects have increased skepticism. 

Foto: Benjamin Zibner/laif

For Health Minister Spahn, the chain of bad news doesn’t end there. Approvals for vaccines came late, supplies have been scarce and now health professionals are expressing skepticism about a vaccine – one that was ordered, bought, delivered and given the seal of approval by the highest authorities – and people appear to be rejecting it. As early as next week, the manufacturer will deliver a further 750,000 doses, with that figure expected to reach 5.6 million by the end of March.

Together with Spahn, the health ministers of the German states are now considering modifying the priority lists. In Saxony, for example, officials are pushing to move "educators, teachers and employees of the public health service” up on the priority list.

With all the negative PR coming from medical circles, it is not at all surprising that there is uncertainty among everyday people. But AstraZeneca’s vaccine is the one that is intended to help bring the pandemic to an end as quickly as possible. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plan to offer every person in Germany a vaccine by September will be jeopardized if not enough people want this one. In contrast to the substances from BioNTech and Modern, the AstraZeneca vaccine doesn’t have to be transported at extremely cold temperatures. It will also be possible to administer it in normal doctors’ offices soon.

Supplies of the BioNTech and Moderna vaccines may not be sufficient for vaccinating more than 50 million people in Germany by autumn. More education is thus needed about the different types of vaccines, because the cacophony of the past few weeks has been partly the result of a communications disaster in which almost everyone involved has some blame: the pharmaceuticals industry, politicians, the medical profession and the media.

Viewed objectively, AstraZeneca’s vaccine is quite capable of slowing down the pandemic, regardless whether it is administered to bus drivers, cashiers or nurses. The summary results of the studies conducted as part of the approval process showed 60 percent efficacy for the vaccine after the administration of two doses. That may sound low, especially when compared to BioNTech and Moderna, which came in at around 95 percent. However, the percentage does not indicate in how many people the vaccine works and in how many it does not. It describes the percentage by which vaccinated people’s risk of contracting COVID-19 decreases compared to unvaccinated people.

A little bit of math can contribute to a better understanding. It’s a subject that many doctors usually aren’t very well versed in, as Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development has discovered: "Many doctors don’t even understand basic statistics because they aren’t taught enough. There is a widespread and totally unnecessary collective blindness to numbers.”

In the coronavirus pandemic, and this is the basic consideration of any risk calculation, the risk of getting sick isn’t 100 percent, even without the vaccine. Not every infected person falls ill; in many cases, the virus remains undetected.

So, to find out how well a vaccine works, manufacturers divide up to tens of thousands of test subjects into two comparable groups in large studies. One group receives the vaccine and the other gets the placebo. Then it is a matter of waiting until a statistical meaningful number of illnesses have occurred.

A comparison of the two groups reveals how many cases of disease the vaccine prevented. If it is ineffective, then you see about the same number of sufferers in both groups. If it provides protection, then the number of people who get infected is lower in the vaccinated group than it is in the placebo group.

The AstraZeneca vaccine: In Berlin, people are no longer given a choice as to the vaccine they receive. Foto: Jens Schlueter / AFP


AstraZeneca supplied around 10,500 people with the active ingredient or a placebo during the pre-authorization trials. Some 218 subjects developed COVID-19, with 154 in the placebo group and 64 in the vaccine group. So, during the study period, the vaccination prevented 90 cases of the disease and reduced the risk of contracting the disease by around 60 percent.

There is no question: The results from BioNTech and Moderna are better, but the AstraZeneca vaccine still significantly reduces the risk. Even more important is the rate of severe illness prevented by vaccination. And it is becoming apparent that all vaccines that have been approved in the European Union to date provide almost 100 percent protection against severe courses of the disease. This is particularly true for AstraZeneca: According to a recent review, after the second dose, not a single study participant became so severely ill with COVID-19 that they had to be hospitalized or died.

This week, the three leading voices in Germany on health policy right now – Health Minister Jens Spahn, Christian Drosten and Karl Lauterbach – all hastened to confirm the reliability of a vaccine of which the German government has purchased millions of doses. Spahn assured that he would get vaccinated immediately with AstraZeneca once it was his turn. Drosten, who has gained fame in Germany not only for his science, but also for his highly regarded explanatory podcast about developments in the pandemic, said that many things had been misunderstood in the public discussion in Germany and that AstraZeneca’s vaccine was very good and not "second rate.” Lauterbach, a member of parliament and health policy expert with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), said he would return to work starting next week as a doctor administering vaccinations in the city of Leverkusen, his electoral district. "The whole team, including myself, will be vaccinated using the Astra vaccine,” he said. "We trust it.”

The pleas in support of the product seemed urgently necessary after medical staff at German hospitals and ambulance services started refusing to take the AstraZeneca vaccine. Within days, reports of severe side effects popped up around the country.

Herzogin Elisabeth Hospital in the city of Braunschweig was hit especially hard. The hospital had set up a special vaccination station for employees, with a staff member receiving an injection every five minutes. At shortly before 10 a.m., Hristina Markova freed her upper arm. She thought it would be a small prick and nothing more. "Then, about 12 hours later, I suddenly got chills and a fever, and at night it went up to 40.3 degrees," the resident reports. The next morning, she had dragged herself to the hospital on fever-reducing medication, before calling in sick at noon. "I just couldn’t do it.”

Many have had experiences similar to Markova’s. Of 88 employees who were vaccinated, 37 called in sick. "I felt like someone had put me through a meat grinder,” says intensive care nurse Kati Schmidt. She spent two days in bed. As word of the side effects spread through the hospital and the number of people calling in sick grew, no one wanted to be vaccinated anymore. Senior physician Nikolas Bollenbach, a passionate cyclist, was one of the last to get his shot – and he, too, suffered the usual symptoms the following night. "On Saturday, I was exhausted, like I'd done a 200-kilometer bike race,” he says.

Strictly speaking, neither Bollenbach nor his colleagues had any side effects. They aren’t really side effects – they are reactions to the vaccine that were observed and published in all studies that, as in Braunschweig, went away after a few days.

As early as last year, New York researcher Florian Krammer noted that both the mRNA vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna and DNA vector vaccines like the one from AstraZeneca cause stronger reactions than classical vaccines made from attenuated viruses. "This has to be communicated very clearly,” says Krammer, otherwise people who get vaccinated will think, "the vaccination has made me sick.”

To prevent hospital departments or ambulance services from suddenly being understaffed for a day or two, government ministries are now recommending that vaccinations be spread out to a greater degree. Microbiologist Christian Bogdan, a member of the Standing Committee on Vaccination, an independent scientific advisory group that is part of RKI, says that because AstraZeneca’s drug is being administered mainly to younger people, there are more reactions among them. "Their immune systems are more active than those of older people, which is why they have stronger reactions to vaccinations.”

“Germany needs to make every effort to vaccinate widely as quickly as possible.”

But will scientific explanations like that suffice when large numbers of people already have it in their heads that AstraZeneca is second-rate compared to BioNTech or Moderna?

At the beginning of the week, a union representing police officers in Bavaria demanded that only "the best vaccine” be used for police employees. "The constant operational readiness of the police must not be endangered by a possibly unreliable vaccine under any circumstances," the organization stated. And a dentist in Saarland addressed his health minister directly: "I have the most dangerous job in the world, you can't give me the worst vaccine." In the forum of the Ärztezeitung, a publication for doctors, a physician from Dortmund complained that the AstraZeneca vaccine shouldn’t have been approved because of the "extremely poor quality of the data.”

Is it any wonder then, that the German Red Cross in Saxony says that in some vaccination centers, the consultations with doctors administering the vaccines "take longer” if the vaccine being administered is from AstraZeneca? Or that, according to a survey taken by online pollster Civey, only 2.8 percent of Germans willing to get vaccinated would be most likely to choose the AstraZeneca vaccine?
Related Articles

The Third Wave: Coronavirus Mutants Are Spreading Fast By Rafaela von Bredow und Veronika Hackenbroch

BioNTech Executive on New Vaccine Plant: "It Will Take a Few Months before We Reach Full Capacity" Interview Conducted by Martin U. Müller und Thomas Schulz


In Berlin, there was so little demand for appointments to get the AstraZeneca vaccine that the city’s health minister, Kalayci, felt compelled to abolish any right to what vaccine people choose. Effective immediately, residents of Berlin must accept the vaccine that is offered to them. Virologist Drosten just shakes his head at such news. "Germany needs to make every effort to vaccinate as widely and as quickly as possible.”

Experts like Drosten believe the real risks like in the virus mutants. More the one from South Africa than the British mutant, but also other variants that are to be expected.

It is still unclear how the vaccines approved so far will work against the mutations. South Africa has temporarily halted vaccinations with AstraZeneca after laboratory tests indicated the vaccine was only moderately effective against the variant first discovered there. BioNTech and Moderna were still exuding optimism after the first mutations were announced, but skepticism is now spreading. BioNTech CEO Uğur Şahin has assured that his company’s vaccine will be further developed to address the mutations, but that could take up to six weeks.

However, just adding a third, modified version on top of the first two doses may not easily lead to the desired result. In the case of the mRNA vaccines, for example, vaccination reactions could be so severe that the risk-benefit assessment becomes negative. Experts like Michael Hoelscher, an infectious diseases doctor in Munich, are therefore recommending a third way apart from mRNA or vector vaccines: protein vaccines.

The great advantage they offer, says Hoelscher, who is a professor at the city’s university hospital, is that they can be administered several times, probably without loss of efficacy or tolerability, and adapted to the new mutants. "This will prove to be an important feature as the epidemic progresses,” Hoelscher says.

Two pharmaceutical companies, Novavax and Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline, have been developing these protein vaccines for months. None has been authorized for use in the European Union yet. But the date doesn’t seem too far off when the rankings of vaccines will be reordered with the potential for new claims and myths about them.

Abuse and hate speech against LGBTQ people rises across Europe and Central Asia

By bne IntelliNews February 18, 2021

There has been a “stark rise” in abuse and hate speech against LGBTI people in the Europe and Central Asia region, including from politicians, says a new report from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association in Europe (ILGA-Europe). 

The Annual Review of the Human Rights Situation of LGBTI People in Europe and Central Asia 2021 shows the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic worsened the situation in the last year in multiple ways, from the use of emergency powers by governments – notably in Hungary – to hack away at trans rights, to the exclusion of LGBTI people from coronavirus support packages. 

“In reports from country after country, we see a stark rise in abuse and hate speech against LGBTI people,” said Evelyne Paradis, executive director of ILGA-Europe. “There has been a resurgence of authorities and officials using LGBT people as scapegoats while authoritarian regimes are empowered to isolate and legislate without due process. Overall, there has been a crackdown on democracy and civil society, and not just in Poland and Hungary, which made all the headlines in 2020. 

“The ILGA-Europe Annual Review 2021 shows a significant growth of opposition towards trans rights across Europe, which is beginning to have a wide and negative impact on legal gender recognition,” said Katrin Hugendubel, advocacy director at ILGA-Europe. 

“There is legal regression and stagnation in 19 countries, many of which have seen opposition forces become louder, saying that advancing the protection against discrimination and self-determination for trans people would harm women’s rights or ‘the protection of minors’.”

Among the 19 countries that have seen regression in this area are Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia, Slovakia and Slovenia, along with several Western European countries.

Abuse in Belarus 

“Attacks on freedom of assembly continue to be a growing trend,” says the report. It details the “brutal crackdown in Belarus for months, including arrests, detention, violence, and torture of LGBTI people”. Mass protests erupted in the East European country after the rigged August 2020 presidential election. 

“LGBTQI people and activists have participated in and supported the protests from the first day. Some have brought rainbow flags to the protests. LGBTQI activists warned that even if [Belarus’ self-declared president Alexander] Lukashenko resigned, their fight would be far from over,” said the report. 

Among those detained in the protests was LGBT+ activist Victoria Biran, who was arrested and put in administrative detention for 15 days, when on her way to the Minsk Women’s March.

“Being a peaceful protester these days in Belarus means to be a target of violence, to be terrorised, detained, attacked, beaten up, injured and murdered on the streets, or tortured in jail,” gay activist Andrei Zavalei told Politico. 

In addition to developments in Belarus, “events were attacked or disturbed by extremists in Bulgaria … in Poland anti-LGBT and anti-abortion rallies were rampant, while activists were arrested. In Russia activists were detained; in Turkey there are ongoing court cases against peaceful Pride marchers and other cases against human rights defenders, and in Ukraine the Odessa Pride event was attacked.”

In Azerbaijan “hate crimes against the LGBT community continued to be a serious issue [in 2020],” according to the report. 

Among several violent incidents, two gay men were attacked in Baku in May but the police failed to investigate; Aysu Mammadli, a trans woman and sex worker, was stabbed to death in Baku by an alleged client; 18-year-old Sevgia-Subkhani Ismayilova was subjected to family violence after coming out to her mother; and a young gay couple received multiple death threats after they shared a post of themselves on Valentine’s Day which went viral.

Abuse of emergency powers

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban used the emergency powers approved by the parliament in March to issue a decree that made it impossible for transgender people to legally change their gender.

At the end of the year, when Parliament again voted to give the government emergency powers, several constitutional amendments were put forward, including one that would ban adoption by same-sex couples. The proposed amendment would specify that "the mother is a woman, the father is a man" and permit only married couples to adopt children.

On December 14, MPs amended the Fundamental Law “to further entrench the anti-trans framework by establishing children’s “right” to identify with their birth sex, to be ‘protected’ from interventions to change it, and to be educated according to Christian values,” according to the report. 

Also in December, Parliament voted to abolish the Equal Treatment Authority (ETA), replacing it with the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, a post held by government loyalist Akos Kozma.

Orban has sought to build an alliance among the new EU members against the liberal values of the older EU members in Western Europe. The Hungarian strongman called on neighbouring governments to stand up for Christian values, warning against Western efforts to “experiment with a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies”.

A separate dispute broke out over ‘Wonderland is for Everyone’, a children’s book published by Labrisz Lesbian Association that became an online bestseller. Our Homeland Movement MP Dora Duro publicly shredded the book, and Orban said homosexuals should “leave our kids alone”. 

“More destructive” than Communism

As Poland’s June 2020 presidential election approached, incumbent President Andrzej Duda said that the Polish LGBT rights movement peddles an “ideology” that is “more destructive” than Communism. 

“There are attempts to convince us that [LGBT] are people but this is simply an ideology,” Duda said.

“My parents’ generation didn’t fight the communist ideology for 40 years to … now allow another, even more destructive, ideology to come,” the president added.

Duda’s message was calculated to pander to the core of his electorate, conservative Catholic Poles, as he presented himself as the defender of family and traditional values. 

“The hate campaign against the LGBTI community in Poland, which started in October 2018, resulted in LGBTI people becoming a dominant issue during [2020]’s presidential elections, in which President Duda degraded and scapegoated the LGBTI community on his way to election victory,” said the report.

He won a narrow victory and in protest against his anti-LGBT rhetoric, the parliamentary representation of the Left showed up at the swearing-in in

Moreover, dozens of Polish municipalities have adopted declarations they are “free of LGBT ideology”, a concept peddled by the government led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party. This resulted in some being denied applications for EU grants under the twinning programme, with Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli commenting: "EU values and fundamental rights must be respected by member states and public authorities.”

The gender issue 

Several contributors to the review expressed fears their countries could follow in the footsteps of Hungary and Poland. 

Elsewhere among the newer EU member states, the Romanian parliament approved a law banning the teaching of gender studies in schools and universities, and forbade teachers and professors even to address the subject of being trans. Proposed by the centre-right Popular Movement Party and publicly supported by the orthodox church, the law sparked widespread criticism. In December, the Constitutional Court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional. 

The issue of gender also continues to loom large in Bulgaria, which has seen growing anti-gender rhetoric focused on the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention. 

This was "to a large extent due to the efforts of the nationalist and populist Bulgarian National Movement (IMRO) party, which is the coalition partner of the ruling conservative GERB party”. The report quoted Defence Minister Krasimir Karakachanov from the far right IMRO party as saying about anti-government protesters in September: “We cannot let a few Sorosoid NGOs and small parties, that are not even in the parliament, get in power and destroy the country. In the name of what? To introduce gay marriage and to create a gender republic.”

In Croatia an effigy of a gay couple and a child was burnt at a festival in Imotski shortly after a ruling by the Supreme Court on the right of same-sex couples to foster children. 

Hate speech from politicians 

“The review shows a substantial rise in hate speech across the regions, both from official sources, in the media and online. The trend of politicians verbally attacking LGBTI people has grown considerably and spread widely, while many religious leaders have directly blamed LGBTI people for COVID-19,” said Paradis.

According to the report, “The trend of politicians verbally attacking LGBTI people has grown sizeably and spread in countries including Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Turkey.” 

Among the many examples of hate speech by politicians, in October 2020, Estonia’s then interior minister Mart Helme made disrespectful comments about same-sex couples in an interview with Deutsche Welle. Helme, the outspoken leader of the far right Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE), opined that Estonian gay people "could run to Sweden" as they are looked upon more favourably there.

On EKRE’s urging, the government led by Juri Ratas planned to hold a referendum in April 2021 to ask Estonian citizens: “Should marriage in Estonia remain as a union between one man and one woman?” However, the government collapsed at the beginning of 2021.

In Latvia, far-right MP Janis Iesalnieks retweeted a post of an “LGBT-Free zone” sign in Latvian, similar to those used in Poland. 

Moldova’s incumbent president Igor Dodon used anti-LGBT rhetoric in an attempt to discredit his rival Maia Sandu ahead of the presidential election. 

“I have not participated in any gay marches, like Maia Sandu has done in recent years. Think very carefully, dear parents, what we will achieve in schools with such a president,” Dodon, who went on to lose the election, told a press conference.

Civil partnerships in the Western Balkans 

In the EU-aspiring Western Balkans, Montenegro became the first country to introduce civil partnerships, and the Serbian government has promised to take steps toward introducing civil partnerships in 2021. 

Meanwhile, talks on a potential marriage equality law stalled in Czechia, and in Latvia the parliament rejected a proposal for same-sex marriage to be legalised. “[Latvia’s] first initiative to legalise civil partnerships or same-sex marriage was launched in 1997, but all have failed to date,” the report noted. 

Many countries have “more progressive laws on the books than there were five years ago, but in too many places we’re still waiting for those laws to translate into real change in the lived experience of LGBTI people”, according to LIGA-Europe. At the same time, “in a substantial number of countries, legislative change is lagging, stagnant or backsliding”.

Pride cancelled  

In recent years there have been a growing number of Pride events in emerging Europe. In 2020, there were very few Pride events, as most were cancelled due to the lockdowns – indeed, many LGBTI organisations had to turn their energies to providing basic necessities like food and shelter when governments left LGBTI people out of their relief packages. 

. “The absence of Pride events matters not just as a test of free assembly, but because of the potential longer-term impact on the visibility and presence of LGBTI people and communities in the public space, which will only be seen as we move into the years beyond the pandemic,” said the report. 

Bulgaria considers building small nuclear reactor

By Denitsa Koseva in Sofia February 18, 2021

US-based NuScale Power said it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bulgaria’s Kozloduy nuclear power plant (NPP) on the possible deployment of NuScale’s small modular reactor (SMR) technology at the Bulgarian plant.

The news comes several weeks after Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said that Kozloduy NPP will use Russian equipment, purchased for the planned Belene NPP, to build two new units.

NuScale Power is developing a modular light water reactor that it says will supply “reliable and abundant” carbon-free nuclear energy. Its first SMR power plant will begin operation in the Idaho Falls in the US by 2030. It has also signed MoUs with power companies in Czechia, Romania and Ukraine. 

In Bulgaria, “The goal of the agreement is to evaluate NuScale’s SMR technology for its suitability to be deployed at the Kozloduy site. Under the MoU, NuScale will support KNPP-NB [Kozloduy NPP- New Builds] as they conduct a number of studies and analyses including the development of a project timeline with milestone deliverables for a feasibility study, a project specific cost estimate, and engineering, planning, licensing, and other activities as mutually agreed upon by the parties supporting the potential implementation of a NuScale plant,” the company said in a press release.

KNPP-NB, which is wholly-owned by Kozloduy NPP, manages a project to build a new nuclear power unit for the production of electricity and heat at the site of the existing power plant.

“The NuScale SMR is one of the best options to achieve European and Bulgaria policy goals in a liberalised power market, improve the security of energy supply, and add sufficient value in national gross domestic product,” KNPP-NB’s CEO Lyuben Marinov said in the press release.

Earlier in February, Kozloduy NPP hired Westinghouse Electric Sweden to conduct an analysis of an alternative fuel type for its Unit 5. The contract is part of the procedure for licensing an alternative fuel type for Unit 5, which is part of Sofia’s efforts to diversify its nuclear fuel suppliers, the government said in the statement.

The NPP has only two operational units, 5 and 6, both built by the ex-Soviet Union.

Meanwhile plans to build Bulgaria’s second nuclear power plant at Belene are in question. While Borissov didn’t say so explicitly, the discussion of using equipment purchased for Belene at Kozloduy NPP indicates the new power plant — the subject of repeated government u-turns in recent years — could again be scrapped. 

As well as its MoU with NuScale, Czech state energy company CEZ has signed an MoU with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy on mutual agreement to examine the economic and technical feasibility of the potential construction of the BWRX-300 SMR in the Czech Republic. 

Estonian firm Fermi Energia announced on February 8 that it was raising capital to take on the designing process for a new generation small modular reactor (SMR), which, if built, would be one of the first of the kind in Europe and the first nuclear plant in Estonia.

NOT AN  IPO OR SPAC

Russian message service Telegram hopes to raise $1bn with a convertible bond private placement 

After the US SEC ordered Telegram to pay back investors $1.2bn it raised from the world's biggest ICO the company is looking for investment, but is not in a rush.

By Ben Aris in Berlin February 18, 2021

The super secure Telegram messenger service, developed by Russian-born software icon Pavel Durov, is looking to raise $1bn through a bond placement to a limited number of investors from Russia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, the Kommersant daily reported citing unnamed sources on February 18.

The issue reportedly comprises exchange bonds that could be converted into equity in the messaging service that is currently 100% owned by Durov and his brother Nikolai.

Kommersant reports that the price of the conversion would be at a 10% discount to a potential IPO should it happen within five years.

The minimum bond placement is said to be set at $50mn, but could be lowered to $10mn. Five-year bonds could carry an annual coupon of 7-8%. 

In Russia, potential investors have received offers to buy bonds from VTB and Aton, which are the financial agents for the Russian market, reports Kommersant. Aton declined to comment and VTB did not respond to Kommersant's requests for information.

Durov has already raised $1.7bn from the biggest ICO (Initial Coin Offering) in history to fund the development of his Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain, but he later abandoned the project due to objections by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which said the sale of its GRAM coins was the sale of an unregulated security.

As bne IntelliNews reported in January, Durov was already in talks with potential investors to raise fresh investment capital using debt when the SEC ordered him to return $1.2bn of the $1.7bn he raised in the ICO by April this year, as reported by The Bell.

Investors are very keen to get their hands on Telegram’s equity as emerging markets (EMs) have seen a string of mega-IPOs in the last six months and tech stocks are currently hot. Telegram is one of the few companies working in the social media sphere that remains 100% privately owned. At the moment Telegram makes no money at all, being privately funded by Durov and the capital he has raised.

Analysts surveyed by Kommersant believe that raising funds through an IPO would not be beneficial at this stage, as Telegram could monetise its services and improve on the $30bn that market participants currently estimate it is worth.

Exchange bond borrowing is common for venture deals with a small number of participants, but they remain rare for a Russian company.

Telegram on the rise

Telegram has been on something of a roll recently, as it is the service of choice for democracy protesters around the world from Hong Kong to Tehran, Minsk and Moscow.

Its privately owned status and Durov’s promise not to co-operate with governments’ security services and his lack of contact with Big Tech corporates has created a bond of trust between him and his users.

And in January the service got yet another boost after the popular messaging service WhatsApp – one of Telegram's main rivals – suffered from an exodus of users after it changed its terms of service. Media reports suggested the service would share its users’ data with its parent company Facebook. With more than 2bn users around the world, millions deserted the WhatsApp platform and the message service of choice they went to was Telegram: 25mn users downloaded the Telegram app in 72 hours alone.

Durov is also the author of the wildly popular VKontakte.ru (vk.ru), the Russian speaking world’s answer to Facebook, that was launched in 2006, and built Telegram while he was still running vk.ru.

The service has been gathering new users at a rapid pace thanks to its reputation for being uncrackable.

In 2019 the Federal Security Service (FSB) demanded that Durov hand over the digital keys to Telegram and allow it to read messages transmitted by the service. Durov refused and the authorities tried to block Telegram. And failed miserably.

Roskomnadzor, the Russian media watchdog, failed to shut Telegram down as the service flipped from one server to the next, but Roskomnadzor did manage to shut down its own site, and hundreds of others, by mistake.

After humiliating the Russian authorities and the FSB, two years later the government finally gave up and the message service was unblocked again. 

Telegram couldn't have organised a better marketing stunt if it had tried. New users flocked to the service during the showdown and government officials continued to use it while the campaign against the service was still on – for the very reason that made the service so popular in the first place: it is impossible for the FSB to eavesdrop on your conversations, but the most popular Telegram channels reached millions of people.

For these reasons Telegram has been the preferred service in Iran, where the opposition use it to communicate and the government there was similarly frustrated in its effort to ban the service. In the mass protests that broke out in Belarus following the disputed August 9 presidential elections the go to news service was Nexta – a Telegram channel, which briefly became the most read news service in the world. Try as he might, Belarus' self-appointed President Alexander Lukashenko was also unable to shut the service down. As a result of all this Durov has emerged as a sort of folk hero to many in Eastern Europe.

Since the Russian government dropped its effort to ban Telegram it appears that Durov is now a bit of a poacher turned gamekeeper. Last August Durov submitted an anti-trust complaint against Apple to the European Commission, the Financial Times reported on July 30 citing the text of the complaint. Telegram urged the EC to push Apple to “allow users to have the opportunity of downloading software outside of the App Store”. The Kremlin has been pushing the same line as a way of breaking Apple’s hegemony for Russian companies like Yandex.

Shortly afterwards, Telegram VP Ilya Perekopsky was invited to participate in the panel on IT development with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the first official contact with the authorities since Durov's self-exile in 2014.

VK.ru

Durov has already got one tech deal under his belt after a shareholder dispute over VK.ru nearly brought Telegram down in its earliest days.

In 2013 Russia’s UCP fund amassed a 48% stake in VK.ru and took Durov to court, arguing that Telegram had been developed using VKontakte resources and therefore was UCP’s property.

It looked like Durov was going to lose control of Telegram, until Russian tech tycoon Alisher Usmanov’s Mail.ru Group came in as a white knight, along with Usmanov’s partner Ivan Tavrin, and acquired Durov’s shares in Vk.ru in the middle of the showdown.

While some have claimed that Durov was forced into the sale, a claim that he has denied, the buyout by Usmanov effectively ended UCP’s claim on Telegram. Mail.ru Group, part-owned by Usmanov, already held 52% of VKontakte and bought the remaining 48% of the social network in a $1.47bn all-cash transaction, which emerged from the duel independent and unscathed. Durov then turned his full attention to developing Telegram.

Big business

With Telegram up and running, Durov, who now lives and works in the UAE, launched his next big project: the TON blockchain that promised to work many times faster than existing versions and could potentially disrupt the entire global banking and credit card system by offering an alternative platform for financial transactions.

In 2018 Durov held the biggest ICO ever and raised $1.7bn to fund the work. However, TON eventually ran aground, and Durov halted his TON blockchain project in May 2020, after a prolonged struggle with the US SEC, which banned the blockchain.

In 2017 Telegram has spent $70mn, and planned expenditures for 2018 were $100mn, $130mn in 2019 and $170mn in 2020.

Under the out-of-court agreement in the US Telegram was ordered to pay a fine of $18.5mn as well as being ordered to pay back $1.2bn of investment in the GRAM tokens that were sold during the ICO.

The $1bn of convertible debt the company reportedly intends to issue will presumably be used to pay back Durov’s investors into TON and continue the development of the blockchain.

As a result, Durov's estimated worth has gone up ten-fold. As Telegram doesn't actually make any money, the way these companies are valued is assessing the value on the basis of the number of users. Typically, a large social media network values each user as worth $35-$40 of potential monetisation. With over 500mn users worldwide that would value Telegram on the order of $17.5bn to $20bn, although other estimates now value the company at closer to $30bn.

Raising the money should be easy, as tech companies are hot at the moment. In just the last six months Kaspi.kz, a Kazakh-based fintech company, and Ozon.ru, a Russian e-commerce company, have both pulled off spectacular IPOs, raising $870mn and $1.2bn respectively. Capital markets have massive excess liquidity thanks to all the anti-coronavirus (COVID-19) stimulus programmes being run around the world, and with the developed equity markets already over-bought investors are risk-on for new equity offerings, especially from the sexy tech sector. Investors are salivating at the prospect of getting access to Telegram’s equity, but there will still be a while to wait.

Egypt approves promotion of birth control

February 19, 2021 

A person shows third-generation contraceptive pills in a pharmacy on January 2, 2013 [PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP via Getty Images]

February 19, 2021 at 3:18 pm

Egypt's Dar Al-Ifta, the national body responsible for issuing religious edicts, said yesterday that there is no objection to the state taking whatever means and measures it deems necessary to regulate the country's birth rate.

"Islam differentiates between preventing pregnancy and abortion, and it permits the former if there is a fear that a large number of children will not be able to be looked after," explained Dar Al-Ifta. "Birth control because of fear of hardship is not forbidden by Islam because it is a matter of considering the consequences of having many children."

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has warned citizens repeatedly about the danger of population growth, stressing that the matter is very important for "a better and more prosperous" country. "Trust me, having more than two children is a big problem," he said at a recent event.

Egypt is one of the most populous countries in the Arab world with a total of 101.5 million citizens, according to official data. The North African country's population is predicted to reach 153.7 million by 2050.

Turkey hires top US law firm to lobby Biden for re-entry into F-35 jet program

February 19, 2021

F-35 Lightning fighter jet on March 01, 2019 [Recep Şakar/Anadolu Agency]

February 19, 2021 

Turkey's defence industry has hired one of the United States' most prestigious law firms in efforts to re-enter into the F-35 fighter jet programme it was kicked out of almost two years ago.

The US removed Turkey from the programme in July 2019 after Ankara purchased Russia's S-400 air defence system, setting a course which severely damaged relations between the NATO allies.

Turkey is now trying to regain entry into the program, with the state-owned Defence Industry Technologies – Savunma Sanayi Teknolojiler (SSTEK) – hiring Washington-based law firm Arnold & Porter for strategic advice and outreach to the programme's partners and stakeholders.

In the contract of the deal revealed by the site Foreign Lobby, Ankara paid $750,000 to the firm to "advise on a strategy for the SSB and Turkish contractors to remain within the Joint Strike Fighter Program, taking into consideration and addressing the complex geopolitical and commercial factors at play."

READ: Top Turkish, US diplomats discuss bilateral relations

Under the agreement, the firm also aims to "undertake a targeted outreach to the US commercial partners and stakeholders" within the programme in order to detect their understanding of Turkey's role as "a strategic ally and valued partner." The firm will also "continually monitor export controls and trade sanctions…that may be relevant and explain any said sanctions."

The removal of Turkey from the joint programme struck a major blow not only to bilateral relations and to its chance to acquire 100 F-35 jets, but also greatly worried Turkey's defence industry and the companies affiliated with it which manufacture many of the parts needed for the jets.

According to the American news outlet Bloomberg in 2018, ten Turkish companies were set to make approximately $12 billion worth of parts.

Last year, however, it was announced that the Pentagon would be working with Turkey and those companies to continue producing the parts until 2022.

In a press briefing earlier this month, US Ambassador to Turkey David Satterfield expressed the US' hope "that the issue of S-400 can be resolved." Satterfield stated that although the issue "regrettably compelled the previous US administration to execute US law and impose sanctions under the CAATSA legislation," Washington was careful about leaving Turkey's defence industry un-impacted. "We targeted on that sanction very precisely. We did not aim at affecting the Turkish defense sector as a whole, but rather specific licenses to SSB."

WORD OF THE DAY

Mongolia’s pitiless dzud


A herder collects snow to be melted down into drinking water.
By Anand Tumurtogoo in Ulaanbaatar February 20, 2021


The dzud is a peculiar weather phenomenon unique to Mongolia in which every few years a summer drought combines with a harsh winter. Nomadic herders can only despair as piles of dead, frozen sheep and goats stack up across the steppes, dead from either starvation or the cold. It is not uncommon to see a frozen animal dead on its feet.

Following the dry summer of 2020, most herders, mainly in the central provinces, were not able to prepare hay in the autumn because of degraded grazing lands. Thus, many were forced to buy fodder at high prices. This was a heavy blow to a great number of herders, particularly those who, given the disruption caused to trading by the coronavirus crisis, were unable to sell their primary source of income, cashmere wool.



Bones litter ground in Azraga Bag, Central Mongolia, the remnants of a dzud (Image: Taylor Weidman, The Vanishing Cultures Project, CC.Attrib.SA.3.0).

As of February 17, food and agriculture ministry data showed 402,300 livestock had died nationwide in Mongolia from the 2020/2021 dzud (sometimes spelt zud). The figures broke down to a list of devastation that included 2,100 camels, 17,200 horses, 36,600 cows, 123,300 sheep and 222,900 goats. In all, the dead animals were equivalent to 0.6% of the country’s livestock.

The highest number of livestock deaths were in the central regions, mainly in Arkhangai province (26,200 animals), Bayankhongor province (196,200), Gobi-Altai province (30,500), Uvurkhangai province (31,400) and Tuv province (35,600).

These numbers, however, are relatively low when held up against the more than 8mn livestock that perished in the dzud of 2010 or the more than 12mn lost from 1999 to 2001, infamous years that brought the worst dzud period in Mongolia’s history.

Towards 40% of Mongolia’s nomad population depend on animal husbandry for their livelihood.

In 2006, a UN research paper on Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC) noted the following in describing the three-year dzud: “More than 12,000 herders’ families lost all their animals, while thousands of families had to subsist below the poverty line. Some people who lost all their animals even committed suicide.

“Such a long-lasting (three consecutive years) winter dzud followed by summer drought had not occurred in Mongolia in the last 60 years. Mongolia’s gross agricultural output in 2003 decreased by 40% compared to that in 1999 and its contribution to the national gross domestic product (GDP) decreased from 38% to 20% (Mongolian Statistical Yearbook, 2003). The livestock sector has become more destitute.”

Accursed year

As Mongolia’s latest winter loomed closer, the signs of it fast becoming severe were unmistakable. Herders in the central regions realised they had no time to lose in moving their livestock to the northern regions for more natural shelter and better grazing, but the accursed year of 2020 wasn't about to make things easy. Herders found their movements constrained as the nation went into a lockdown in November after officials recorded the first domestic transmissions of the coronavirus.


"Khurjun", or blocks of sheep and goat dung, protect animals during the dzud winter of 2010 in South Gobi (Image: Brucke-Osteuropa, public domain).

However, December brought a little good fortune: the virus was from that month seen as contained within the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, and relatively free movement across other parts of the country became permissible.

Each year, the Mongolian Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environmental Research compiles land and satellite data on droughts, dzuds and pastures. It then develops and issues a dzud risk map.

According to the map as of January 10, more than 20% of the country faced a very high dzud risk, while almost 60% was classified as at high risk and 15% as at moderate risk.




About 11.7mn heads of livestock herded by 26,600 households were forced to on to the winter migration, Monstame reported on December 29. Some herders had to migrate more than 700 kilometres to find better winter grazing lands, known as otor. Those who travelled the furthest actually left their home region as early as May; as a result, they could not allow their animals the usual mating period.

Amid the bitter cold, it is not unusual to hear of dedicated herder families keeping some of their animals inside their tents. Many livestock that have been unable to put on enough weight to survive the winter months are victims of rapid desertification caused by over-grazing and global warming that has over time degraded Mongolia’s land. Herders have as a consequence become more territorial. Some herders block other herders that want to let animals graze on their territory during the winter. The altercations this provokes have steadily gotten worse. In 2019, there were reports of herders killing one another over winter grazing disputes. Such reports are becoming commonplace in Mongolia.

Order not to expel

To help resolve the situation and to assist herders during the pandemic, the Mongolian State Emergency Commission and government advised provincial governors not to expel herders during the winter, but to provide moral support and cooperation. However, the herders have been informed that by government order they must return to their own land by April 1. This is a problem as livestock will in the coming weeks start to calve. If there is no vegetation, animals will be too weak to travel. But the government is aware of the issue and might adjust matters in response to the situation. Lawmaker Chinzorig Sodnom, who toured three provinces hit hard by the dzud in January, told local news outlet Zuunii Medee: “The herders voiced their concerns about high winter migration costs and rising fodder prices and on how they might not be able to travel back in April. Therefore, it is necessary to extend the implementation deadline of this law and provide more opportunities for these herders.”

Addressing the severity of this year’s dzud, with the help of the World Bank, the government since February 1 has provided Mongolian tugrik (MNT) 300,000 ($88) worth of fodder to each of the more than 45,000 herder households across the five provinces that have experienced the severest winter.

Heading to Ulaanbaatar

Suffering a lack of livestock, a substantial number of poverty-trapped nomadic herders—who rely on their animals for so much, from meat and milk, to the burning of their waste to heat their homes to selling their skins to buy food and pay children's education fees—have in recent times headed for Ulaanbaatar in search of economic prospects, but their lack of other job skills count against them.

The herders have generally settled in suburban areas of the capital known as "ger districts", which are largely slums with almost no public amenities and infrastructure, especially heating. During the winter months, the ger districts (a ger is a traditional yurt, or roundhouse) rely on coal for warmth. That makes Ulaanbaatar one of the most polluted cities in the world.

There is a backdrop of societal and economic change in Mongolia that has taken place since the 1990s, when the country became a democracy. The state stopped subsidising herders and the organisation that ran livestock population management was dissolved. Prior to Mongolia shifting away from the communist regime, the livestock head count never surpassed 25mn. In 2019, according to the national statistics office, it stood at 70.9mn.

This high number might stem from the introduced market economy and liberalisation of herding, but it is doubtful that herders are incentivised to keep a high number of animals because of actual market demand. The situation is more likely tied to fear—fear of suffering from a diminished number of livestock given the greater vulnerabilities now facing the nomadic herder.

The dzuds, the degradation of grazing land, the climate change causing desertification. Each of these growing woes interact with one another and it becomes more and more difficult to find sufficient sheltered lands with viable grazing. Keeping as much livestock as one can to survive the ever more treacherous steppes is grasped as a solution.

The prevailing perspective right now is that it seems many herders this winter escaped the bleak devastation of the dzud with swift action and some government intervention. The search for sustainable solutions, however, risks being overtaken by worsening events.



​
Only when the snows have melted will the full extent of the devastation become clear. Above, A young nomad pauses as he crosses a frozen stream. (Image: Taylor Weidman, The Vanishing Cultures Project, CC.Attrib.SA.3.0).

Saudi Arabia arrests female scholar for teaching Qur'an at home


A Holy Quran on display at Istanbul's Camlica Mosque courtyard in Istanbul, Turkey on 1 June, 2019 [İsa Terli/Anadolu Agency]

February 15, 2021 

The authorities in Saudi Arabia have arrested well-known scholar Aisha Al-Muhajiri, reportedly because she has continued to preach and teach the Qur'an at her home in the holy city of Makkah. The 65 year old was said to have been arrested by "20 members of the Saudi intelligence service."

According to Prisoners of Conscience, which reports on the Saudi government's arrest and repression of activists and public figures, two other women were arrested alongside Al-Muhajiri. "One of the two women is 80 years old, while the family of the other woman refused to reveal any information about her," the group said.

Following their arrests, it was reported that anyone who asks about the detentions or charges also face arrest, including Al-Muhajiri's own children. "We confirm that the sons of the preacher Aisha Al-Muhajiri were threatened with detention when they asked about her after she was arrested," said Prisoners of Conscience. The authorities are reported to have said, "We will arrest anyone asking about her."

The group has pointed out that Al-Muhajiri is being held in Dhahban Prison near the coastal city of Jeddah.

A number of scholars, activists, and critics of the Saudi regime have been arrested over the past few years. Even highly-regarded and well-known clerics having been detained simply for commenting on current affairs or government policy, among them Aid Al-Qarni, Ali Al-Omari, Safar Al-Hawali, Omar Al-Muqbil, and Salman al-Ouda. Many are known as reformists and are thus seen as a threat by de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

His crackdown on Muslim scholars who have long been a major voice in Saudi Arabia represents efforts to curb their influence. Bin Salman's foreign policy initiatives and his harsh efforts to modernise the Kingdom have been specific targets for critics.

Even foreign scholars have not escaped under the crackdown. Aimidoula Waili from China's persecuted Muslim Uyghur minority was arrested by the Saudi authorities in November at the request of the Chinese government. Having already been detained in China years ago before escaping to Turkey, Waili is reported to be at risk of being deported to China.

ROLL HER OUT FOR SUNNI SABRE RATTLING
Controversy as Saddam Hussein's daughter appears on Arab TV

February 16, 2021

Raghad Saddam Hussein on a programme aired by Saudi 

satellite channel Al Arabiya on 15 February 2021 

[RghadSaddam/Twitter]

February 16, 2021 

The appearance of the eldest daughter of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on Al Arabiya TV caused a diplomatic crisis between Baghdad, Riyadh and Amman, regional media reported yesterday.

Raghad Saddam Hussein appeared with Sohaib Charair on a programme aired by Saudi satellite channel Al Arabiya, saying it is possible for her to play a role in Iraqi politics.

Following the show, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoned the Jordanian and Saudi ambassadors to protest against Raghad's appearance on TV. Raghad has lived in the Jordanian capital Amman since 2003, when the US invaded Iraq and ousted her father.

Charair asked Raghad if she intended to play a more direct role in Iraqi politics soon. She replied: "Everything is possible."

She slammed Iranian interference in the region, noting that "the Iranians violated Iraq after the absence of a real power."