A 200 YEAR OLD MEDICAL CHARITY

Wellcome's opaque fossil fuel investments harm its global health mission

Investigation explores the charity's ongoing ties to the fossil fuel industry

BMJ

Research News

 

The Wellcome Trust's commitment to tackle the health impacts of carbon emissions is threatened by its own lingering investments in the fossil fuel industry.

So why does it continue to shun calls to divest while raising the status of climate change in its strategy?

In a special report published by The BMJ today, independent journalist Tim Schwab explains that Wellcome has long faced criticism about its £28 billion endowment's deep investments in fossil fuels. Its most recent annual report states that 4% of its public and private equity holdings are in "energy" equal to around £1bn, including a stake of more than £300m in BP and Shell.

But Schwab has uncovered that Wellcome's financial stake in the continued use of fossil fuels extends well beyond its shareholder positions in oil and gas companies.

In recent tax filings in the United States, Wellcome reported more than $130 million in deductible "qualified expenses" related to "intangible drilling" costs between 2014 and 2018.

Intangible drilling costs usually describe the expenses involved in constructing new oil wells, and the related tax deductions function as government subsidies that prop up the fossil fuel industry - and that can incentivize expanded oil and gas production.

Wellcome said the deductions detailed in its tax forms relate to "a number of legacy private equity positions through funds and co-investments in energy-related businesses," but would not provide The BMJ with details, nor would it agree to interviews.

Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Global Wallace Fund, a US-based charity that chose to divest its endowment from oil, gas, and coal a decade ago, described the news as "absolutely unbelievable." She said: "We receive charitable tax status to serve the public good, and our investments shouldn't be undercutting the public good. There isn't a significant foundation that works on climate or health and doesn't know that this debate is happening, and that they should make the decision to divest."

Robin Stott, a member of the executive committee of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, said: "It worries me that Wellcome may be engaging in this kind of rather covert or oblique way of supporting the fossil fuel industries."

Worldwide, more than 1300 large institutions, including 200 philanthropies, have announced their commitment to divest a total wealth of more than $14trn.

Yet Wellcome has pushed back on divestment as far back as 2015 when the Guardian newspaper announced a campaign targeting Wellcome and the Gates Foundation.

At the time, Wellcome's director Jeremy Farrar called divestment a "grand gesture," arguing that the charity can be far more effective at fighting climate change by having a seat at the table and pressuring fossil fuel companies to change their business practices. However, Wellcome refused to specify what the trust had achieved through his strategy.

Brett Fleishman, head of global finance campaigns at environmental group 350.org, says "nothing has been achieved at the table through shareholder action ... that meaningfully aligns with climate science."

In 2015, Wellcome announced a £75m five year programme called Our Planet, Our Health, described as "a new initiative to investigate the connections between environment and health."

Yet this commitment represented a minuscule portion of the billions of pounds in charitable expenditures Wellcome had made over the previous five years - and seems like a strikingly small sum, considering how prominently the charity promotes its work on climate change, notes Schwab.

Saskia Heijnen, a former Wellcome staffer who helped get the Our Planet, Our Health programme off the ground, notes that while the trust has immense resources at its disposal to aggressively tackle health crises - which it has done in epidemics such as Ebola, Zika, and covid-19 - it hasn't put its full weight behind fighting climate change.

By the end of 2019, the Gates Foundation had divested its $50bn endowment from fossil fuels which could put new pressure on Wellcome to extricate its endowment from fossil fuels, suggests Schwab.

But tax records from 2019 report the foundation having many investments in fossil fuels, including some of the world's largest oil, gas, and coal companies such as Exxon, Chevron, and Glencore, raising questions about what it means to divest.

Brett Fleishman of 350.org, which maintains a database of groups that have pledged to divest, explains: "It would be very weird for an institutional investor to announce divestment but fake it. We are happy to make the adjustment on our database if the Gates Foundation can't meaningfully respond to requests for clarification."

###

Externally peer reviewed? No
Evidence type: Investigation
Subject: The Wellcome Trust

STATIST WAR ON THE POOR

Tensions flare as Toronto homeless camp cleared




Duration: 01:25


Tensions flared at a homeless encampment in Toronto on Wednesday as city officials, flanked by dozens of police officers, moved in to clear the site. Residents and their supporters shouted at police, who in turn threatened many with arrest. At least three activists were handcuffed and taken away from the encampment at Lamport Stadium before city officials moved out. Several hours later, police and the city gave up after clearing out one tent and two small wooden shelters. About two dozen remain.

Israeli city where Jews and Arabs have lived as neighbours now seeing unprecedented violence

Margaret Evans 

CBC NEWS

20/5/2021

© Stephanie Jenzer/CBC A burnt-out car sits on a street near a mosque in Lod, a mixed city in Israel, after violence broke out between Jewish and Arab Israelis last week. Rioting started after police ended a protest organized by Palestinian Arab Israelis over fighting…

At first glance, the Israeli city of Lod in central Israel seems like it's just shut down for a siesta. The weather is hot, the shops are shuttered and even the call to prayer from a nearby mosque seems ready for a nap.

But the husk of a burnt-out car sits on one street in the centre of town, and there are scorch marks on a synagogue just around the corner from it. An unusually large number of Israeli police officers are stationed on mostly empty streets.

Lod has been under a state of emergency since last week, when a bout of vicious and unprecedented inter-communal violence broke out between Jewish and Arab Israelis.


Suliman Zabarqa is confronting some of the officers leaning against the walls outside his restaurant, also shuttered. He's asking why they stood by when Jewish rioters burned his property.

A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Zabarqa says the police didn't act the way they should have, allowing hard-line Israeli nationalists "from outside Lod" to take the law into their own hands.

Neighbours now frightened of each other

The rioting started after Israeli police broke up a demonstration organized by Palestinian Arab Israelis at the start of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza that began more than a week ago.

A man named Musa Hassuna was shot and killed on May 10, reportedly by a Jewish man. The next day, Yigal Yehoshua, a Jewish man, was hit in the head by a brick and attacked by Arab youths, according to reports. He died on Monday of his injuries.

The anger was out of the bottle. Five synagogues were set on fire while Arab Israelis reported firebomb attacks on their homes. Mobs took over the streets, and the unrest quickly spread to other mixed cities in Israel.

© Ammar Awad/Reuters A Jewish settler and a Palestinian protester take pictures of each other with their phones on May 5 amid ongoing tension over a land-ownership dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem. Settlers want to evict Palestinian families, claiming the land is theirs.

Now, people who once called each other neighbour are frightened of each other.

"I'm scared for our lives. I have two kids, and I'm unarmed," said Tamer Nafar, standing on the edge of a plaza known as the "Triangle of Religions" in Hebrew.

"Look how beautiful it is," he said. "You have a mosque, you have a church, and you have a synagogue."

Nafar is a well-known Palestinian rapper, born in Lod. He's also an activist who says the anger that recently boiled over onto the streets among Arab Israelis is born of decades of racism and discrimination.  

© Stephanie Jenzer/CBC

 Tamer Nafar, a well-known Palestinian rapper who was born in Lod, says the anger that recently boiled over onto the streets among Arab Israelis is born of decades of racism and discrimination.

"I mean, Israel doesn't consider me Israeli. The [national] anthem says land for the Jews, ignoring the Muslims," he said.

"The things we are going through here, from housing, from demolishing houses, the media only sees it when it escalates, and we've been trying to create a dialogue for years."

On the second day of rioting, Nafar says, he and his wife witnessed armed Jewish hardliners arriving on the scene.

"So, I call the cops because I'm a f--kin' taxpayer, and they take my money every week."

He says the police eventually hung up on him.
Arrival of settlers has changed city's character

Palestinian Arabs make up about 20 per cent of Israel's population and 30 per cent of Lod's.

But in recent years, there's been an addition to the mix in Lod in the form of hardline nationalist and religious settlers moving to the city, part of the Garin Torani movement.

"The main strategy was to establish settlements in the mixed cities," said Amnon Be'eri-Sulitzeanu of the Abraham Initiatives, an Israeli think-tank promoting equality for Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens.

© Heidi Levine/The Associated Press Israeli paramilitary border police detain Jewish settlers during clashes between Israeli Arabs, Jews and police in Lod on May 12.

"To Judaize those places where there is more Arab presence or there is ongoing conflict between the communities or there is a need to demonstrate Jewish sovereignty or to reclaim, if you like, the area," he said.

The settlers' arrival has slowly changed the character of some parts of the city, and when the rioting broke out in Lod, Be'eri-Sulitzeanu says that reinforcements were called in from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Around the corner from the Triangle of Religions, cars pull up to a large yeshiva still bearing the scars of last week's riots.

© Jean-François Bisson/CBC A yeshiva, where Jewish students study traditional religious texts, bears the scars of the violence in Lod.

Young men wearing the uniform of nationalist religious Jews — knitted kippas and long beards and earlocks — are arriving for a meeting of volunteers. They're setting up a sort of neighbourhood watch group to protect the property of Jewish families who fled during the unrest.

Police stand guard outside, and blocks of shabby-looking apartment buildings stand opposite, Israeli flags hanging out of some of the windows. Arab women carry groceries into the building and up the stairs.

"We're standing in front of a building [where] two Jewish families and four, six or seven Arab families have been living together for the past 10 years," said Ayelet Wadler, a physicist and mother of six who lives a few blocks away.

"They have been helping each other change tires, carry groceries. And on Tuesday night, on Monday night, suddenly they've had their neighbours who have been living with them for 10 years point out to rioters, 'Here, this is theirs, this is a Jewish car. Burn it.'"

© Jean-François Bisson/CBC Ayelet Wadler, a physicist and mother of six who has lived in Lod for 15 years, says she's distressed that a number of Jewish families who lived nearby didn't feel safe enough to stay in their homes because of the unrest, and she blames Arab Israelis.

Wadler has lived in Lod for 15 years. She says she believes Arab Israelis are the ones responsible for what happened and is happy to see the men across the street gathering, some of whom stare at bystanders and look menacing.

"I don't see vigilantes," she said. "I see people defending the house."

Wadler says she is extremely distressed that a number of Jewish families didn't feel safe enough to remain in their own homes.

"They were refugees in their own country. That is inconceivable. That's something that cannot happen."
'They are not going away, and we are not going away'

Her failure to connect her comments to the history of her fellow Palestinian citizens speaks volumes about the challenges of reconciliation and understanding in the country.

Palestinians on both sides of the green line between Israel and the occupied territories refer to the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 as al Nakba, the catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were forced to flee Israeli troops in the war that came with it.

Be'eri-Sulitzeanu says many Jewish Israelis simply don't know the history.

"They don't know that within Israel proper, about a fifth of the Arab population within Israel are internal refugees as well, including most of the Arabs who live in Lod. They themselves are refugees because they arrive in Lod after '48 from destroyed villages throughout Israel."

© Heidi Levine/The Associated Press Haha Nakib looks at one of the several vandalized graves in a Muslim cemetery in Lod on May 14, as fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza intensifies.

By the same token, many Palestinian Arab Israelis do not understand the heart-stopping shudder that many Jewish people will have felt at the mention of pogrom-like attacks against Jews.

"Most [Arab Israelis] don't understand the connotation and what I call the pain baggage that we Jews are carrying on our back," Be'eri-Sulitzeanu said. "They are simply not aware of it."

© Ronen Zvulun/Reuters Torah scrolls, Jewish holy scriptures, are removed on May 12 from a synagogue that was torched during violent confrontations in Lod between Arab-Israeli demonstrators and police.

It's hard to imagine how the city will move forward. Be'eri-Sulitzeanu says the Arab-Israeli community's problem is not with the Jewish community in Lod but with the national religious settlers who have infiltrated it.

But they appear increasingly entrenched, a settlement within an Israeli city.

Suliman Zabarqa is convinced it comes down to the local leadership, a mayor that serves only the interests of the Jewish community.

"I live in the state of Israel, and I have rights as any Israeli. But the state doesn't provide me with [them]. I hope the mayor of Lod will treat everyone in the same way. I hope he pays attention to the Arab sector in this town."

© Stephanie Jenzer/CBC Suliman Zabarqa is a Palestinian citizen of Israel who owns a restaurant in Lod and says Jewish rioters burned his property. He says he feels his rights aren't respected, and he hopes the city's mayor 'will treat everyone in the same way.'

Tamer Nafar says that's a symptom of a much deeper problem.

"When the dialogue between us is 'This is my country, the land for the Jews, not for you,' the whole dialogue has the colour of being superior," he said.

"They need to understand that co-existence needs two sides to exist. They are not going away, and we are not going away."

WW3.0

China Says US 'Creating Risks' With South China Sea Warship Sail-bys

05/20/21
China on Thursday branded the United States an "out-and-out security risk creator" in the South China Sea, after an American warship sailed through waters near the disputed Paracel Islands.

Tensions in maritime waters claimed by both China and many of its neighbours have ratcheted up recently, with Beijing staging live-fire drills and sending hundreds of fishing vessels to a reef claimed by the Philippines.

China's military said the USS Curtis Wilbur, a guided missile destroyer, was warned and driven away from the contested waters near the islands, which are claimed by China.

US actions "increase regional security risks, which easily causes misunderstandings, misjudgements and unforeseen maritime incidents", People's Liberation Army Southern Theatre Command spokesman Colonel Tian Junli said in a notice posted on social media.

China accused the United States of 'creating risks' in the South China Sea after the USS Curtis Wilbur (pictured here in 2018) sailed through disputed waters Photo: US NAVY / Benjamin DOBBS

"This is unprofessional and irresponsible, and fully demonstrates that the US is an out-and-out 'South China Sea security risk creator'."

Beijing on Wednesday had chastised Washington for sailing the USS Curtis Wilbur through the Taiwan Strait earlier this week.

The US Seventh Fleet described it as a "routine" transit.

The United States frequently conducts what it calls "Freedom of Navigation Operations" in the flashpoint waterway.

The South China Sea and its various islands are claimed by multiple countries including China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines. It is home to some of the world's most resource-rich waterways.

US destroyer backs up Biden's tough words in South China Sea


By Brad Lendon, CNN
Published May 20, 2021 





(CNN) -- A United States Navy warship sailed near disputed Beijing-controlled islands in the South China Sea on Thursday -- just hours after US President Joe Biden said the US must protect open access to the waterway.

The guided-missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur performed what the US Navy calls a "freedom of navigation" operation near the Paracel Islands, asserting "navigational rights and freedoms... consistent with international law," Lt. j.g. Nicholas Lingo, spokesperson for the US 7th Fleet, said in a statement.

China calls the Paracels, in the northwestern portion of the South China Sea, the Xisha Islands. They have been under Beijing's control for more than four decades -- despite competing claims from Vietnam and Taiwan -- and China has fortified them with military installations.

Beijing, which claims almost all of the South China Sea as its territory, said the movement of the US warship violated its sovereignty.

PLA warships and planes followed the US ship, a statement from China's People's Liberation Army said.

"US behavior violates international law and basic norms of international relations, increases regional security risks, and are prone to misunderstandings, misjudgments, and accidents at sea," Tian Junli, spokesperson of the PLA's Southern Theater Command, said in the statement.

But Biden, in a speech at the US Coast Guard Academy on Wednesday, accused China -- and also Russia -- of "disruptive actions" challenging decades-old international rules protecting maritime commerce in the South China Sea and other waterways.

"Longstanding, basic maritime principles like freedom of navigation are a bedrock of a global economic and global security. When nations try to game the system or tip the rules in their favor, it throws everything off balance," Biden told the graduating class at the academy in New London, Connecticut.

"It's of vital interest to America's foreign policy to secure unimpeded flow of global commerce. And it won't happen without us taking an active role to set the norms of conduct, to shape them around democratic values, not those of autocrats."

Lingo, the US Navy spokesperson, emphasized that point in his statement Thursday.

"Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight, free trade and unimpeded commerce, and freedom of economic opportunity for South China Sea littoral nations," Lingo's statement said.

Thursday's operation was the third conducted against Chinese claims in the South China Sea this year, a Department of Defense spokesperson told CNN.

The last challenge to the Chinese, Vietnamese and Taiwanese claims in the Paracels was in February, the spokesperson said

The Paracels were the second US-China hotspot the Curtis Wilbur had visited in three days.

On Tuesday, it transited the Taiwan Strait, the waterway separating democratically controlled Taiwan from mainland China. Beijing also says Taiwan is part of its sovereign territory, but the self-ruled island's autonomy is supported by Washington.

It was the fifth time this year a US warship had transited the Taiwan Strait as the Biden administration strengthens ties with the island.

China on Wednesday denounced the presence of the US destroyer in the strait.

"The US warship's action sent erroneous signal to the 'Taiwan Independence' force, deliberately disrupted and undermined the regional situation, and jeopardized the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," read a report on the PLA's English-language website.

Biden told the new Coast Guard officers they would be needed to protect US interests in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere.

"As we work together with our democratic partners around the world to both update the rules for this new age... your mission will become even more global and even more important," Biden said. "You have an essential role in our efforts to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific."

The US President touted a recent pact between Taipei and Washington for their respective coast guards to work more closely together.

"Our new agreement for the Coast Guard to partner with Taiwan will help ensure that we're positioned to better respond to shared threats in the region and to conduct coordinated humanitarian and environmental missions," he said.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "US destroyer backs up Biden's tough words in South China Sea"

TOMB ROBBER

Kim Kardashian West Denies Purchasing 'Looted' Ancient Roman Statue

By Parul Soni
05/06/21 

KEY POINTS

The art piece in question is a limestone sculpture, dating back to the 1st or 2nd century

Kardashian says she has no knowledge of the transaction

The statue, seized in the U.S. in 2016, is allegedly stolen from Italy

Kim Kardashian West is in the news again; this time, she has landed herself in an illegal art smuggling controversy after an ancient Roman sculpture was imported in her name to California. According to U.S. officials, the statue was stolen from Italy. But the 40-year-old reality TV star denies purchasing the art piece.

According to court documents filed on Friday in California, the U.S. government has sought the forfeiture of a "looted, smuggled and illegally exported" antique that it believes was being delivered to Kardashian, CNN reported.

A spokesperson for Kardashian told CNN that the star "never purchased this piece" and that "this is the first that she has learned of its existence." The spokesperson, encouraging the investigation into the matter, said that the sculpture “may have been purchased using her (Kim’s) name without authorization and because it was never received (and) she was unaware of the transaction."

News broke in February 2021 that Kim Kardashian West and had filed for divorce from husband of six years rapper Kanye West Photo: GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Dimitrios Kambouris

According to the court documents, the limestone sculpture -- Fragment of Myron’s Samian Athena -- dates back to the 1st or 2nd century AD and was bought by Kardashian from a Belgian art dealer, the Guardian reported.

The statue, which is said to be from the early-to mid-Roman Empire, was seized at Los Angeles port in June 2016 and Italian officials believe it was originally looted from Italy. The art piece was part of a 5.5-ton shipment having 40 objects valued at a total of $745,882, described as antiques, furniture and decorations rather than archaeological finds.

An AFP report said that a form submitted by a customs broker lists the importer and consignee of the items as "Kim Kardashian dba (doing business as) Noel Roberts Trust," of Woodland Hills, California. The Noel Roberts Trust is an entity associated with Kardashian and her estranged husband Kanye West's U.S. real estate purchases, the report added.

According to the CNN report, art dealer and interior designer Axel Vervoordt was identified in the court documents as one of the item's shippers. Vervoordt has earlier worked with Kardashian and West on their properties.

A representative for Vervoodt said that "there is no evidence that this piece was illegally imported from Italy. Our client, as well as our gallery and the gallery from whom we've bought the piece, have always acted in good faith when dealing with the work."

An archaeologist from Italy said the sculpture had been made in a "classical Peplophoros style (early to mid-Roman Empire), which represents a copy of an original Greek sculpture," the filing stated. It added that Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage has requested that "all efforts be made for the return of the ... statue to Italy."

$25 BY 2025 A LIVING WAGE

Bank Of America Raises US Minimum Wage To $25 An Hour

By AFP News
05/18/21 
Bank of America announced plans to lift its minimum

wage to $25 an hour and said Tuesday 

it is requiring US vendors to pay employees at least $15 an hour.

The salary hike for employees will take place by 2025, the company said. In March 2020, the giant US bank lifted its minimum wage to $20 an hour from $17 an hour.

"A core tenet of responsible growth is our commitment to being a great place to work which means investing in the people who serve our clients," said Sheri Bronstein, chief human resources officer.

"That includes providing strong pay and competitive benefits to help them and their families, so that we continue to attract and retain the best talent."

The announcement on vendors means more than 2,000 contracter firms and some 43,000 workers from these companies are now paid at least $15 an hour, the bank said.

The announcement is the latest by a big company to lift wages amid a tightening labor market for hourly employees following moves last week by Amazon, McDonald's and others.

Pending legislation sponsored by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressives to lift the national minimum wage to $15 an hour has so far stalled in Congress despite support from President Joe Biden.

Copyright AFP. All rights reserved.

Obama Alleged R-Rated Criticism Of Trump Published In New Book: 'F---ing Lunatic'

By Danielle Ong

IBTIMES
05/19/21 

KEY POINTS

Obama reportedly called Trump a "madman" in conversations with donors

Obama initially preferred Trump over Sen. Ted Cruz as president

Trump had previously suggested that Obama was a Muslim

Former President Barack Obama reportedly had R-rated criticism of Donald Trump behind the scenes, a new book revealed.

The former president is known for being good-natured and has largely remained mum about former President Trump's administration. However, in a new book to be released next week, Obama reportedly voiced his dismay for the 45th president in scathing remarks.

Obama had R-rated criticisms of Trump in conversations with donors and political advisors, according to "Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump," a new book written by The Atlantic writer Edward-Isaac Dovere. The Guardian reported excerpts from the book.

Obama reportedly used terms like “corrupt motherf---er,” “madman” and “racist, sexist pig” to describe his successor. It is not clear when these donor events took place.

“I didn’t think we’d have a racist, sexist pig,” the former president reportedly said.

Obama’s strongest criticism came after reports revealed that Trump was speaking to foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, without any aides present on the call.

“That corrupt motherf---er,” Obama reportedly remarked.

In the book, Dovere also revealed that Obama initially preferred Trump as president over Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, who was the runner-up in the GOP primary in 2016.

Trump and Obama have had a contentious relationship in recent years. Trump had promoted a birther conspiracy theory questioning Obama’s citizenship before acknowledging Obama’s birthplace in 2016. He had previously suggested that Obama was a Muslim.

"President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period," he said in a statement. "Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again."

Trump had also launched efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which was Obama’s signature legislation.

PRIVATE PROFITS FROM TAXPAYER INVESTMENT

Covid-19 Vaccines Have Spawned Nine New Billionaires: Campaign Group

By AFP News
05/19/21 

Profits from Covid-19 jabs have helped at least nine people become billionaires, a campaign group said Thursday, calling for an end to pharmaceutical corporations' "monopoly control" on vaccine technology.

"Between them, the nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion (15.8 billion euros), enough to fully vaccinate all people in low-income countries 1.3 times," The People's Vaccine Alliance said in a statement.

The alliance, a network of organisations and activists campaigning for an end to property rights and patents for inoculations, said its figures were based on the Forbes Rich List data.

"These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines," said Anna Marriott from charity Oxfam, which is part of the alliance.

In addition to the new mega-rich, eight existing billionaires have seen their combined wealth increase by $32.2 billion thanks to the vaccine rollout, the alliance said.

Topping the list of new vaccine billionaires were the CEO of Moderna Stephane Bancel, and his BioNTech counterpart Ugur Sahin.

Three other neobillionaires are co-founders of the Chinese vaccine company CanSino Biologics.

The research comes ahead of the G20 Global Health Summit on Friday, which has been a lightning rod for growing calls to temporarily remove intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines.

Profits from Covid-19 jabs have created at least nine new billionaires, a campaign group says Photo: AFP / GUILLAUME SOUVANT

Proponents say doing so would boost production in developing countries and address the dramatic inequity in access.

The United States, as well as influential figures like Pope Francis, back the idea of a global waiver on patent protections.

At a Paris summit seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the pandemic on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the removal of "all these constraints in terms of intellectual property which blocks the production of certain types of vaccines".

The European Commission said Wednesday it would be a "constructive" voice in WTO talks on the issue.

"The highly effective vaccines we have are thanks to massive amounts of taxpayers' money so it can't be fair that private individuals are cashing in while hundreds of millions face second and third waves completely unprotected," said Heidi Chow, Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager at Global Justice Now, which helped analyse the billionaire data.

"As thousands of people die each day in India, it is utterly repugnant... to put the interests of the billionaire owners of Big Pharma ahead of the desperate needs of millions," she added.

Manufacturers have stressed that patent protection is not the limiting factor in ramping up vaccine production.

They say a wide range of issues -- from the set up of manufacturing sites, to the sourcing of raw materials, to the availability of qualified personnel -- are holding up the manufacturing process.

Plant That Ruined Millions Of J&J COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Had Very Poor Conditions

By Danielle Ong

IBTIMES
05/20/21 


KEY POINTS

A key House committee held a hearing to examine the facility’s role in ruining the J&J shots

Some employees at the Baltimore plant failed to shower or change clothes

Top executives of the company received bonuses despite the factory's poor conditions

Employees at a Baltimore plant that ruined millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses had poor hygiene conditions, with some staff members skipping showers or changing clothes, a memo released Wednesday by a key House committee found.

On March 31, federal officials revealed that at least 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were wasted after workers at the Emergent BioSolutions plant in Baltimore accidentally mixed up doses of the J&J and the AstraZeneca vaccines.

Inspections of the Emergent conducted between April 12 and April 20 had flagged the facility for problems with mold, poor disinfection of plant equipment, peeling paint, and black and brown residue on the floors and walls.

A review of security camera footage showed that employees carried unsealed bags of medical waste around the factory. Some bags had also touched materials ready to be used to make batches of coronavirus vaccines.

The inspection also found that employees did not follow procedures to prevent contamination, including failing to shower or change clothes, which is required when working in a factory, according to a 13-page report released by the Food and Drug Administration.

In more than three hours of testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Robert G. Kramer, chief executive of Emergent BioSolutions, acknowledged the unsanitary conditions at the plant.

He also disclosed that the incident led to the hold-up of more than 100 million doses of the J&J vaccines as regulators check them for possible contamination.

"No one is more disappointed than we are that we had to suspend our 24/7 manufacturing of new vaccine," Kramer said, adding: "I apologize for the failure of our controls.”

"We have made significant progress against all of those commitments, we are very close to completing them, and I would expect we would be in a position to resume production within a matter of days,” he added.

In his initial statement, Kramer claimed that Emergent’s quality control practices discovered the contamination. However, he later admitted that it was actually the J&J lab in the Netherlands that detected the contamination after Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill, pressed on the issue.

Despite the poor conditions at the plant, top company executives received bonuses last year. Documents released by the committee showed that Kramer received a $1.2 million bonus, while three other executives receiving more than $400,000 each.

The Wednesday hearing comes more than a month after the mix-up. The Biden administration has since put J&J in charge of the Baltimore plant.

Johnson & Johnson told AFP at the end of March it had identified a batch of doses at a plant in Baltimore run by Emergent BioSolutions "that did not meet quality standards" Photo: AFP / JUSTIN TALLIS

David Hogg Believes Marjorie Taylor Greene Shouldn't Have 'Access To Guns' After AOC Confrontation

By Megan Manning
05/13/21 AT 1:42 PM

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made headlines once again after she confronted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, which led David Hogg, who has also been targeted by the Congresswoman, to speak out against her.

After Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, left a meeting in the House chamber, Greene directly approached her by shouting and asking her why she supported “terrorist” groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter, according to Washington Post reporters who witnessed the exchange first hand.

"You don't care about the American people," Greene shouted. "Why do you support terrorists and Antifa?"

When Hogg, a gun control activist and Parkland school shooting survivor, caught wind of this altercation, he shared his opinion on the Representative, who publicly harassed the now 21-year-old in the past, calling him a “coward” and “#littleHitler.”

Many agreed with him and are sticking by his, and AOC’s side.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Mocked For Challenging AOC To Debate
Marjorie Taylor Greene Suspended From Twitter

While the 46-year-old hasn’t responded to Hogg’s comments, she’s still releasing statements on Twitter to share her opinion about AOC and the security concerns she’s raised since the encounter.

In February, Greene was removed from her committee assignments due to her past actions and violent public statements.

"If I was on a committee, I'd be wasting my time, because my conservative values wouldn't be heard and neither would my district's," Greene said in response at the time, via Politico.