Thursday, November 26, 2020

Indian farmers clash with police over farm reforms

Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 
Indian police use water cannon to disperse farmers marching to New Delhi to protest against recent agricultural reforms - AFP


New Delhi (AFP)

Indian police fired tear gas and water cannon on Thursday in clashes with several thousand farmers marching to New Delhi to protest against recent agricultural reforms.

The confrontation happened when police tried to stop the farmers, from the northern state of Punjab, crossing a bridge about 200 kilometres (120 miles) from Delhi.

Armed with sticks and rocks, some of the farmers threw police barriers into the river below. The police opened fire with water cannon and tear gas, further enraging the protestors.

After a two-hour stand-off, police eventually allowed the marchers to continue towards the capital.

The plight of farmers is a major political issue in India, with about 70 percent of rural households depending primarily on agriculture. Issues such as drought and mounting debt have been blamed for the suicides of thousands of farmers in recent years.

Legislation passed earlier this year means that farmers are now free to sell their produce to anyone at any price, instead of to state-controlled markets at fixed rates.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed this as a "complete transformation of the agriculture sector" that would empower "tens of millions of farmers" and encourage much-needed investment and modernisation.

But the main opposition Congress party, which is in power in Punjab and backs the protests, has argued the change leaves farmers at the mercy of large corporations.

"For nearly two months, farmers have been protesting peacefully in Punjab without any problem," Amarinder Singh, chief minister of Punjab, said on Thursday.

"I urge the BJP to direct their state governments not to indulge in such strong-arm tactics against the farmers. The hands that feed the nation deserve to be held, not pushed aside," he added.

The protesting farmers had also blocked the movement of trains in Punjab for the last two months, before yielding to public and government pressure and lifting the blockade.

Thursday's stand-off resulted in a long traffic hold-up on one of India's busiest national highways linking New Delhi to several northern states.

© 2020 AFP
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Israel frees Palestinian who waged 103-day hunger strike

Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 
Pals festinian detainee Maher al-Akhras at Al-Najah Hospital
 in the West Bank city of Nablus following his release by Israeli authorities

 JAAFAR ASHTIYEH AFP

Nablus (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)

Israel on Thursday released a Palestinian who waged a 103-day hunger strike to protest Israeli rules allowing his detention without charge, the Palestinian Prisoner's Club said.

Maher al-Akhras, arrested over alleged membership of a militia group, was transferred from a Tel Aviv hospital to Nablus's Al-Najah University Hospital in the occupied West Bank, the prisoners' rights group said in a statement.

A decision on releasing him to return home will follow "a medical assessment of his condition", Al-Najah hospital medical director Abdul-Karim Al-Barqawi said.

Akhras, 49, was arrested near Nablus in July and put in administrative detention, a policy that Israel uses to hold suspected militants without charge.

He is suspected of links to the armed Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, labelled a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

The father of six launched his fast to protest a four-month detention order, which had been due to end on November 26.

Akhras, who been arrested by Israel several times previously, ended his hunger strike after Israeli authorities committed to not extending his detention beyond that date.

Israel's administrative detention policy, inherited from the British mandate of Palestine, allows the internment of prisoners without charge for renewable periods of up to six months each time.

Israel says the procedure allows authorities to hold suspects and prevent attacks while continuing to gather evidence, but critics and rights groups say the system is abused.

Around 355 Palestinians were being held under administrative detention orders as of August, including two minors, according to Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

© 2020 AFP
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Australian scholar Kylie Moore-Gilbert freed after two years in Iranian jail

Issued on: 26/11/2020 -

Text by:NEWS WIRES|

Video by:FRANCE 24


An Australian-British lecturer jailed for spying by Iran has been released after two “traumatic” years, part of a swap for three Iranian prisoners reportedly linked to a botched Bangkok bomb plot.

Middle East scholar Kylie Moore-Gilbert said leaving Iran was “bittersweet” despite the “injustices” she had endured during more than 800 days detained in some of Iran’s toughest prisons.

“I came to Iran as a friend and with friendly intentions,” she said, praising the “warm-hearted, generous and brave” Iranian people.

After what she called a “long and traumatic ordeal”, the University of Melbourne Islamic studies lecturer said she faced a “challenging period of adjustment” at home in Australia.

The 33-year-old was arrested by Iran’s hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2018, after attending an academic conference in the holy city of Qom in central Iran. She was later charged with espionage and sentenced to ten years in jail.




The first images of a freed Moore-Gilbert emerged from Iranian state television late Wednesday, sparking elation from friends and family who had campaigned for her freedom and maintain her innocence.

“We are relieved and ecstatic,” the family said in a statement. “We cannot convey the overwhelming happiness that each of us feel at this incredible news.”

In footage broadcast by Iran’s Irib news agency from Tehran airport, Moore-Gilbert was seen wearing a headscarf and a face mask, accompanied by the Australian ambassador.

Seemingly aware of the camera, she removed the mask to confirm her identity.

The outlet also showed a video of three unidentified men—one of them in a wheelchair—draped in Iranian flags and being met by officials, including deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.

There was no immediate confirmation of the identity of the trio, but they were said to be part of a prisoner swap.

The Sydney Morning Herald named the three as Mohammad Khazaei, Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh and Saeed Moradi. All three were being held in Thailand after a failed plot to assassinate Israeli diplomats in 2012. Moradi lost both legs in a botched explosion.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison would only say that Australia had not released any prisoners.

He added that he had spoken to Moore-Gilbert and confirmed she would receive health and psychological support on her return.

“She is an amazing Australian who has gone through an ordeal that we can only imagine and it will be a tough transition for her,” he said at a virtual press conference.
‘Kylie, you’re amazing’: Australian PM cheers news of academic freed in Iran




Prison letters

Letters smuggled out of prison told of Moore-Gilbert’s deep psychological and legal struggles.

She wrote that the first 10 months she spent in a wing of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison had “gravely damaged” her mental health.

“I am still denied phone calls and visitations, and I am afraid that my mental and emotional state may further deteriorate if I remain in this extremely restrictive detention ward,” she said.

She also recounted rejecting Tehran’s offer to work as a spy.

“I am not a spy. I have never been a spy and I have no interest to work for a spying organisation in any country.”

>> Detained academics in Iran on hunger strike to protest imprisonment

She said she had been shown two different draft decisions to her appeal—one for a 13-month sentence, another confirming the original sentence of 10 years.

She was eventually transferred to the general women’s section of Evin prison, where British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was held until being granted temporary leave because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband said she was “really happy” when he told her about Moore-Gilbert’s release.

Throughout Moore-Gilbert’s internment, friends and family had become increasingly critical of Australia’s diplomatic approach.

Australian foreign minister Marise Payne said the release followed “determined work” and described the case as “complex and sensitive”.

The US State Department welcomed Moore-Gilbert’s release but said “she should never have been imprisoned,” accusing Iran of “hostage diplomacy”.

British foreign secretary Dominic Raab, in a tweet, called on Iran to “release all the remaining British dual nationals” detained in the country.

I welcome news that Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been able to return to Australia and her family. I call on the Iranian government to release all the remaining dual British nationals arbitrarily detained and allow them to reunite with their loved ones.— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) November 25, 2020

Iran, which has tense relations with the West, has over the years arrested several foreign nationals, often on accusations of spying.

(AFP)
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AUSTRALIA

Food delivery deaths spark NSW government to set up investigation taskforce

The taskforce will examine whether recent fatalities could have been avoided and if improvements need to be made to enhance the safety of gig economy worker

THE BEST HEALTH AND SAFETY IS A UNION!
By Aimee Chanthadavong | November 24, 2020 -- | Topic: Tech Industry


Image: Deliveroo

The recent fatalities of food delivery riders have prompted the NSW government to set up a taskforce to investigate whether improvements need to be made to enhance the safety of gig economy workers.

To be led by SafeWork NSW and Transport for NSW, the taskforce will examine whether any avoidable risks may have contributed to the death of recent food delivery riders. It will also explore any similarities between the recent fatalities.

"We have moved to set up this joint taskforce, that will see SafeWork investigate each incident and make findings for any immediate improvements or compliance activity that can be implemented to better protect these workers," Minister for Better Regulation Kevin Anderson said.

"The taskforce will assess the safety measures currently implemented by each food delivery operator and advise on any improvements needed to prevent further incidents."

Five delivery riders have died nationally in the past three months, four of them in Sydney, including one on Monday evening after being struck by a truck and another who was hit by a car on Saturday.

Minister for Transport and Roads Andrew Constance said more needed to be done to avoid any further tragedies.

"The deaths of these delivery riders are absolutely tragic and if action needs to be taken we will do that," he said.


Anderson said the findings of the taskforce would be used to inform existing research being carried out by the NSW government's Centre for Work Health and Safety into the gig economy. The investigation is also examining if there are potential regulatory reforms that could be made to improve safety for gig economy workers.

"It has taken four rider deaths in Sydney for the NSW Government to set up a taskforce. The state government needs to get on with this taskforce and ensure workers are central to it," The Transport Workers' Union (TWU) national secretary Michael Kaine said.

It is, however, unclear when the taskforce will report back on its investigation.

Read also: Victorian government gig economy survey shows workers missing out on insurance

The TWU has called on the federal government to intervene as it believes an investigation into Uber and other food delivery companies is necessary.

"Food delivery riders are literally dying because of the Federal Government's inaction. … the law has not kept up and is failing to protect workers. It is no longer an option for the federal government and the states to pass the buck between them, we need action now," Kaine said.

"As a matter of urgency, we want the federal government to investigate the safety measures Uber and other companies have in place for their riders and whether they meet workplace standards.

"But the federal government now must begin looking at regulating these companies and putting in place an independent tribunal which workers can turn to for the rights and protections they need."

Similar remarks were made by the Victorian government earlier this year when it put forward 20 recommendations as part of its inquiry into the On-Demand Workforce.

It said involving the federal government would ensure existing tests, remedies, and work standards could be revised to improve certainty, choice, and conduct for gig economy workers.

The inquiry was launched back in September 2018 to specifically examine the treatment of workers and how they are remunerated. It was chaired by former Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James.

If the federal government does not act, the report recommended that Victoria take the lead by collaborating with other states to develop administrative and legislative options focused on improving choice, fairness, and certainty for gig economy workers.

The inquiry also uncovered how platforms have been deliberate in framing their arrangements with workers to avoid complying with workplace laws and paying associated costs.

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Willyama's role in helping Indigenous Australians secure a career in cybersecurity

The company also has its sight set on becoming the first 100% Aboriginal-owned IT company to list on the ASX.

By Aimee Chanthadavong | November 26, 2020 -- 04:33 GMT (20:33 PST) | Topic: Security


Willyama Services might be in the IT and cybersecurity business, but founder Kieran Hynes, a Woromi man from the Willyama region at Broken Hill, believes because it's a 100% Aboriginal-owned business, the company has a greater role to play than just servicing customers. That is, to get more Indigenous people into the field.

"We're a commercial business with a social conscience," he told ZDNet.

He explained how the Indigenous community is significantly underrepresented within the IT sector and that lack of IT access in Indigenous communities is a "by-product of not only isolation but economic ability".

"IT for whatever reason is not attractive to the Indigenous community. I don't know if it's a lack of access to IT or lack of awareness of what IT is beyond a mobile device or Xbox. Either way, IT is not resonating with the Indigenous sector broadly," he said.

However, Hynes is determined to help shrink that gap, starting with a "training continuum" that was established by Willyama earlier this year. The program is targeted at Indigenous school children to "get them interested in IT" and "get the students at the right time so they're not dropping out of STEM courses". Under this program, students are paired up with Indigenous mentors to help keep them in school and focused on the training.

"The plan we're hoping to execute over the next couple of years is to get these students either straight into university in a mentored way, or if they're not ready for university straight away, through the Canberra Institute of Technology and develop IT competency and awareness for these students," Hynes said.

"But instead of potentially working a job that is not aligned to pay their way through studies, we provide them with legitimate vocational employment opportunities. The whole time we're embedded in this program as the vocational provider. We want to make sure what they learn while they're working is consistent with the training programs they are doing."

The Canberra-based company has four trainees but has had about a dozen already come through the door. Although not all of them have been able to commit to the program for various reasons. For those who have, they have gone on to secure some significant work, according to Hynes, highlighting how two recent trainees "have just been engaged on a significant multinational piece of Defence work".

"It's the first time -- as far as I'm aware -- that Defence has identified Indigenous IT trainees from an external provider as opposed to internal cadets," he said.

Over the next few years, Hynes wants to see at least another 20 Indigenous trainees join Willyama and hopes they will go on to land a career in cyber.

"We hope to change the narrative around closing the gap," he said.

But it's not just about building skills. It's also making sure Indigenous students have access to proper IT equipment and bandwidth in the first place, particularly those living in remote and rural parts of Australia.

"We recently supported DXC to roll out PCs to disadvantage communities, including quite remote areas like Coober Pedy. We're trying to do many things at once, and one of them is if you don't have access to IT, you don't know whether you like it or not. So, we need to build the foundation of access to IT," Hynes said.

Beyond helping students, Willyama recently stepped up to open an Indigenous Business Precinct in Canberra. It forms part of a wider network of Indigenous precincts that have also opened in Melbourne and Brisbane, which are supported by other established Indigenous organisations.

Hynes described the precinct as a place to "provide culturally appropriate and professional office space" for other Indigenous-owned businesses to "grow in a supportive environment and have full access to professional services, meeting rooms, teleconference facilities, and NBN that they may not have access to when trying to start a business or take the next step".

The company has also been working for the last two years with Samsung and SupplyAus, another Indigenous-owned company, to integrate a Samsung developed heart monitoring system into the 190 Indigenous health centres across Australia.

The motivation for Hynes to start these initiatives come down to his personal experience.

"I've had siblings who have been in out of jail, other siblings that were adopted as kids who have been in jail, a whole lot of problematic issues, so there was an opportunity to see if we could make a difference and provide more career opportunities for Aboriginal people and also [army] veterans where we could," he said.

Fortunately for Hynes though, he managed to steer clear of any trouble. Instead, he was introduced to technology early on his life, recalling being one of few kids at school to own a Commodore 64.

"That sparked -- for better or for worse -- a life-long interest in IT. I joined to become a trainee army officer, went through the Defence Force Academy, and graduated into signal corps. At the time in the army, signal corps had to just been given the role to be the whole-of-army IT provider," he said.

The first role Hynes took on when he joined signal corps was information officer for the Australian Army 6th Brigade.

"I was fresh out of training and responsible for networking, deploying computers, making sure we had the appropriate security controls in place for a brigade of 5,000 people. That was my first job," Hynes said.

"It was back when optic fibre could be bent more than 30 degrees, and we were doing 'innovative' things like taking Novel Network devices, taking them out into the field in a rack, and we'd just bolt to the back of the vehicle … so we learned a lot in those early years … it was a fascinating period of my life," Hynes said.

It's these learnings and his background as an army officer that built the foundation for Hynes to establish Willyama nearly five years ago. These days the company has contracts with customers such as the Australian Department of Defence and DXC Technology.

"50% of our revenue comes directly from Department of Defence and we're on track to doing nearly AU$6 million this year with DXC," he said.

Some of the specific work that has been undertaken has included helping Defence carry out a PC refresh just over four years ago.

"We had a combined team of veteran and Indigenous staff delivering 125,000 PCs to 400 Defence sites nationally, and covering replacement computers and managing a million stock items, like cables, card readers, DVD drives," Hynes said.

Willyama has also been providing cybersecurity and general security advice to Infosys as part of its contract to overhaul the entitlement calculation engine used by Service Australia to calculate welfare entitlements for Australians.

Other contract wins have seen Willyama been charged with assisting the Defence Industry Security Office with auditing the cybersecurity maturity of businesses that supply services to Defence under the Defence Industry Security Program, as well as Indigenous Defence and Infrastructure Consortium with auditing the cybersecurity systems of its Industry Capability Development Program.

Being a 100% Aboriginal-owned business, however, has not come without its challenges.

"Identifying as an Aboriginal person working in cybersecurity is quite confronting for many people to consider … once we get through that, there's still potential corporate bias that makes it a challenge for us to be engaged to deliver services, especially because we do call out we are 100% Aboriginal-owned," Hynes explained.

"The common question is, 'Who delivers your services?' I say we do, and they ask how. I tell them we have staff and all of a sudden we get into what do you mean you've got staff. Once we get through that point, we finally get where there's potentially commercial opportunities to be discussed.

"It's quite a journey."

Hynes is nonetheless determined to open an office in every state and more than double the company's 40-person headcount to 100 by the end of next year, while also maintain the target of having Indigenous Australians and army veterans make up 20%, respectively, of all company staff.

The other major goal Hynes has its sight set on is becoming the first 100% Aboriginal-owned IT company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange in three years.

"The expectation is to have 100% Aboriginal board membership when we do list," he said.
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YouTube suspends OANN for allegedly peddling fake COVID-19 cures



If the outlet wants to monetize videos in the future, it must reapply to YouTube’s member program.


By Charlie Osborne for Zero Day | November 25, 2020 --  | Topic: Security


YouTube has temporarily suspended OANN for promoting a fake COVID-19 cure on its channel.

A spokesperson for the video platform told Axios on Tuesday that One America News Network (OANN), a conservative news outlet, will not be able to post any new content on its YouTube channel for a week -- and is also no longer able to monetize video content.

The one-week ban is considered a 'strike' under YouTube's COVID-19 misinformation policy. 


The policy was implemented by Google in an attempt to stem a wave of fake news across social media and video services at the time of the first coronavirus outbreak, including fake COVID-19 cures and treatments, conspiracy theories concerning the origin of the virus, and stories claiming COVID-19 is a bioweapon.

YouTube removes content deemed to "pose a serious risk of egregious harm," including videos peddling COVID-19 prevention, treatment, diagnoses, and transmission information that contradicts the World Health Organization (WHO) and local healthcare authorities.

The company has provided examples of content that violates these policies, including:
Claims that COVID-19 doesn't exist or that people do not die from it
Content that encourages the use of home remedies in place of medical treatment
Other content that discourages people from consulting a medical professional or seeking medical advice

Content that claims that any group or individual has immunity to the virus or cannot transmit the virus

The first time a YouTube channel goes against YouTube's stance on COVID-19 content, the company will send an emailed warning. Afterward, YouTube will 'strike' a channel up to three times to bring the message home, before deleting a repeat offender's channel entirely.

OANN's video claimed there was a guaranteed cure, and this content has now been taken down by YouTube.

According to Axios, the outlet has also been suspended from the YouTube Partner Program, which allows content creators to monetize their videos through adverts. In order to rejoin and monetize content in the future, OANN will have to reapply.

"After careful review, we removed a video from OANN and issued a strike on the channel for violating our COVID-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content claiming there's a guaranteed cure," YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said.

The suspension comes at the same time US Senator Bob Menendez, together with Democrat colleagues, wrote and published a letter to YouTube, urging the company to take a stronger stance against election misinformation.

The letter, sent to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, asks for "aggressive steps" to be taken to prevent election outcome misinformation from spreading across the platform -- ahead of upcoming Georgia run-off elections -- and says that "YouTube and its industry peers must take responsibility and immediately stop the spread of misinformation and manipulated media on their platforms."

See also: 






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Does the AstraZeneca Vaccine Also Stop Covid Transmission?

Vaccines can prevent symptoms, but some can also keep people from spreading infection. 

That’s critical, and no one knows if the new vaccines do it.


ADAM ROGERS WIRED SCIENCE11.25.2020 

PHOTOGRAPH: PAULO SOUSA/GETTY IMAGES

THREE MONDAYS IN a row have now yielded three apparently effective and safe vaccines against the pandemic disease Covid-19. Amid an unprecedented peak in cases in the United States and Europe, with US deaths pushing 250,000 and the country showing uncontrolled spread of the virus, that ain’t bad news.

But slightly hidden in that non-bad news was news even less bad. This week’s entrant, a vaccine from the drug company AstraZeneca and researchers at Oxford University, came with tantalizing hints of a particular capability that would, if it bears out, make a huge difference in fighting the pandemic. The makers of the two other vaccines in play have reported only evidence that their drugs keep people from getting sick—which is to say, fewer vaccinated people have moderate to severe symptoms and test positive for infection. The vaccines do this very well. But researchers working on the AstraZeneca version said they also had signs of reduced transmission, of people spreading the disease from one person to another. The AstraZeneca results have some perplexing elements, for sure, but if the transmission thing holds up, it’s going to matter. A lot.

Here’s what’s known (or at least announced) so far: The first two vaccines to complete their large-scale trials, one from the drug companies Pfizer and BioNTech and the other from Moderna, are a new kind of medicine. They use bits of genetic material called messenger RNA, in this case a sequence that codes for a part of the virus called a spike protein. That protein helps the SARS-CoV-2 virus attack people’s cells; the mRNA, enfolded in proprietary bubbles of fat, teaches the human immune system to fight the virus instead. Pfizer’s version has an efficacy of above 90 percent, says a company press release; a Moderna press release says its efficacy is 94.5 percent. If those results hold when more data becomes public, these vaccines would be extraordinary.

The one from AstraZeneca is a little more traditional, putting the gene for that spike protein into a sort of stealth carrier called a vector—in this case, an adenovirus that usually infects chimpanzees, modified so that it can’t replicate anymore. The company’s results—again, maddeningly, delivered via press release rather than peer-reviewed science—are a little more confusing. AstraZeneca is running different studies around the world, each with slightly different methodologies, which makes them hard to compare. But if you dump them all into the same pool, as AstraZeneca seems to have done, its two-dose regimen seems to have an efficacy of around 60 percent. That seems not great, though it’s higher than the 50 percent, plus or minus, that the US Food and Drug Administration was looking for. And in a group accidentally given a half-dose for the first shot and a full dose for the second, efficacy went up to 90 percent. Nobody knows why, and it is not good statistics to just average together a study done right with a study done wrong, re-analyzed after the fact.

But for the moment let’s not look this gift adenovirus in the mouth. The press release on the AstraZeneca vaccine from the Oxford side included this bulleted finding: “Early indication that vaccine could reduce virus transmission from an observed reduction in asymptomatic infections.” An Oxford immunologist told the news section of the journal Nature that some of the people in the UK part of the trial actually were testing themselves regularly for infection with the virus, and that different infection rates in the placebo and vaccine groups suggested that the drug was also blocking transmission of the disease. Researchers at Oxford also told reporters Monday that testing showed the vaccinated group in the UK had fewer asymptomatic infections, which means they'd be less likely to unwittingly spread the disease themselves.

Again: unpublished data, no details, no peer review, science-by-press-release. That ain’t good. But big, as political writers sometimes say, if true. People infected with the virus but without symptoms—asymptomatic spreaders—seem to be a reason the disease is pandemic-y. Nobody’s sure how big a reason, though.

Lots of other respiratory viruses overlap symptoms and transmission—sometimes the symptoms themselves, like coughing, are the way the virus gets from an infected person to others. The time between infection and symptoms, called the incubation period, doesn’t last long. “We know with flu, the incubation period is relatively short, and people may shed virus for a day or so,” says Arnold Monto, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who chairs the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which helps make decisions on approving new vaccines. “We can infect a ferret with flu and they get sick, but if they’re not coughing or doing whatever ferrets do when they’re symptomatic, they don’t transmit as well.”

The assumption that this was also true for Covid-19 provided the stitching for a lot of pandemic protection cosplay—like temperature checks and symptom surveys. “A lot of the things we did early were based on the fact that with traditional SARS, there was not a whole lot of transmission from asymptomatic individuals,” Monto says. “Symptomatic people tend to transmit more than asymptomatic people for respiratory infections. We think that’s probably true with Covid, but it is becoming more clear that asymptomatic people are also involved in transmission.”

The problem is, a Covid-19 vaccine that only prevents illness—which is to say, symptoms—might not prevent infection with the virus or transmission of it to other people. Worst case, a vaccinated person could still be an asymptomatic carrier. That could be bad. More younger people tend to get the virus, but more older people tend to die from it; socioeconomic status and ethnicity also have an impact on death rates. Some people have relatively light symptoms; other people have symptoms that hang on for months. And perhaps most importantly, a vaccine is the only way to reach herd immunity without a bloodbath. As politicized as the notion has become, herd immunity is essentially the sum of direct protection—what you might get if you’re vaccinated—and indirect protection, safety afforded by the fact that people around you aren’t transmitting the disease to you because they either already had the disease themselves or because they got vaccinated against it. If vaccinated people can still be asymptomatic spreaders, that means less indirect protection for the herd.

That really matters, because there isn’t enough vaccine to go around. Not yet, anyway. Some groups of people will go first. The characteristics of the available vaccines would, in a perfect world, determine who those people should be. One that only prevented illness might go first to the elderly, in whom severe illness is more likely to lead to death. One that prevented infection and transmission might go to essential workers and frontline caregivers. “Part of our worry is, we want to get it right in the early allocation phase, making sure we’re targeting the vaccine as best as you can,” says Grace Lee, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine and a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. “If the only thing it did was protect against severe disease, you’d want to look at the population that has severe disease and only use it there, and nowhere else.”

That’s almost certainly not going to be the situation. The vaccines will probably all have some effect on transmission. But right now no one knows how much, or which one is better, or for whom—because so far only AstraZeneca has even a hint of data studying the problem.

(How good is that data? Well, about that: Ann Falsey, a physician at the University of Rochester School of Medicine who’s leading the US portion of the AstraZeneca vaccine trial, told me via email that “the Oxford study press release hinted at some transmission data, but I am not privileged to that data so I really can’t offer much to say.” A few hours after this story first published, Falsey emailed to add that her study and the Oxford one "are funded and run separately.“ Spokespeople for AstraZeneca didn’t return my requests for more information. Neither did anyone at Moderna. Jerica Pitts, a spokesperson at Pfizer, did, but with nothing yet to report. “In the coming months we will test participants’ blood samples for antibodies that recognize a part of the virus that is not in the vaccine. If fewer participants in the vaccine group than in the placebo group develop such antibodies, we will have evidence that the vaccine can prevent infection as well as disease,” Pitts wrote me in an email. “We do not yet have those data.”)

Different levels of protection against transmission could make a big difference in how well a vaccine will tamp down the pandemic. As part of the work of the vaccines committee that Lee is on, disease modelers spun out scenarios for the use of a vaccine that stopped 95 percent of transmission, versus one that stopped no transmission at all. (You can see some of the results starting on the 19th slide in this deck.) Given to high-risk adults and people older than 65 when incidence of the disease is rising, a vaccine that blocked infection (and therefore also transmission) could avert twice as many deaths as one that kept people from getting sick but allowed transmission.

That’s a model; in real life the differences won’t be so stark, because all the vaccines will almost certainly have some effect on transmission. The fact is, no one’s really sure how asymptomatic transmission works. It might be due to “expiratory particles” given off during talking and breathing, so maybe a vaccine that reduces symptoms would also reduce that. Or maybe just cutting down a person’s “viral load,” or the amount of virus they are carrying, also cuts the amount they can transmit. Maybe a vaccine that confers mucosal immunity, keeping the snot in someone’s nose and lungs free of virus, would lessen how much that person can send virus spreading into the universe. “Big-picture principle stuff would be: It’d be great if it eliminated transmission by eliminating asymptomatic carriers,” Lee says. “It would be great, if that weren’t true, for it to reduce your viral load, and that would in essence reduce your transmissibility.”


This wouldn’t be the first time that different vaccines had different effects. Some researchers have hypothesized that a recent resurgence of pertussis—whooping cough, a respiratory bacterial infection—might be due to a switch to a new vaccine that doesn’t address asymptomatic transmission. (That’s not the only hypothesis, but just stick with me for a second.) A model built by Sam Scarpino, director of the Emergent Epidemics Lab at Northeastern University, suggested that a switch back to the old formulation would lead to a significant drop in deaths and illnesses. Given the speed and severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, the importance of this effect could be even greater. “Especially in a country like the US with so much vaccine hesitancy, and coupled with how severe the disease can be especially in older adults, transmission block is a huge deal,” Scarpino says. “We don’t have any reason to think the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines won’t block transmission. It’s just not what has actually been measured, and something we aren’t likely to find out until we either start mass vaccination and/or they release more detailed information on the study locations—and epidemiologists start looking for effects of herd immunity.”



This absence of data on transmission was, to be clear, on purpose. The FDA laid out to vaccine makers what it was going to be looking for back in the summer, when the pandemic looked like it was peaking and hospitals were full of people on ventilators. The most important problems to focus on were severe illness and safety—because back then researchers were worried about the possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement, a rare side effect of viral illnesses in which vaccine-made tweaks to the immune system could actually cause worse problems later. And remember that Covid testing shortage? It applied to people in vaccine trials, too, which made it hard to do the kind of regular infection checks that the AstraZeneca UK wing was apparently able to do.

Which means nobody yet has transmission data beyond AstraZeneca’s vague hints. That’s suboptimal. The millions of people who may well start getting vaccinated as soon as December will also be a kind of Phase IV trial, an aftermarket test group in which scientists can observe what the vaccine does to transmission of the disease in the real world. “I do think we’re going to need that information over time,” Lee says. “But I feel like in this part of the pandemic, given the context we’re living in right now, it does feel like making vaccination a key component of protection of the population is going to be an important tool.”

It’d be better for planning to have that information in advance. But it’s not a deal breaker. “Could we refine that tool to optimize getting data? Yes, absolutely. Are we going to have that data? No. Are we going to stop and wait for that data? No,” Lee says. “Clearly, at this point the benefits of being able to protect part of the population are going to outweigh the downsides of not having perfect information.” Just because the news isn’t all good doesn’t mean it isn’t actionable.

Adam Rogers writes about science and miscellaneous geekery. Before coming to WIRED, Rogers was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a reporter for Newsweek. He is the author of The New York Times science bestseller Proof: The Science of Booze.

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The AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Data Isn't Up to Snuff
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES

THE MAKERS OF a third coronavirus vaccine announced positive results in clinical trials on Monday, setting off yet another round of excited news reports. This one, produced by a partnership between a University of Oxford research institute, its spinout company Vaccitech, and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, does not need to be stored at freezing temperatures and would be cheaper and easier to produce than the high-efficacy vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna. Indeed, according to an initial write-up in The New York Times, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s is “expected to be relied upon heavily across the globe, to help curb a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people.”

Sounds like great news, right? Monday’s press release from AstraZeneca presents “convincing evidence that [the vaccine] works,” said Science. But not everyone has been convinced. The price of AstraZeneca’s shares actually dropped on the news, and an analysis from an investment bank concluded, “We believe that this product will never be licensed in the US.” Over at STAT News, Anthony Fauci cautioned that we’ll need to see more data before coming to a conclusion. The skeptics have strong reasons to be concerned: This week’s “promising” results are nothing like the others that we’ve been hearing about in November—and the claims that have been drawn from them are based on very shaky science.



The problems start with the fact that Monday’s announcement did not present results from a single, large-scale, Phase 3 clinical trial, as was the case for earlier bulletins about the BNT-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Instead, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s data came out of two separate studies: one in the UK that began in May, and another in Brazil, which got started at the end of June. These two studies were substantially different from one another: They didn’t have standardized dosing schemes across the trials, for one thing, nor did they provide the same “control” injections to volunteers who were not getting the experimental Covid vaccine. The fact that they may have had to combine data from two trials in order to get a strong enough result raises the first red flag.

Consider that leading vaccine makers—including AstraZeneca—issued a scientific-rigor-and-integrity pledge back in September, in which they promised to submit their products for approval or emergency use authorization only “after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study that is designed and conducted to meet requirements of expert regulatory authorities such as FDA.” Note the wording here: These companies did not suggest that they might claim to have demonstrated efficacy through multiple, distinct clinical studies, combined together to get enough data. They said they would use a Phase 3 study—as in, one big one. Yet AstraZeneca has already applied on the basis of this data for approval in Canada, and has plans to do the same in Britain, Europe and Brazil. The company also says it will use the data to apply for emergency use authorization in the US.

The Food and Drug Administration’s guidance for Covid-19 vaccines does allow for emergency use authorization based on interim analyses, but the same document says this must be supported by a minimum level of vaccine efficacy “for a placebo-controlled efficacy trial.” Again: it refers to a trial. That is exactly what BNT-Pfizer and Moderna did. Both released the FDA-approved blueprints for their trials—called trial protocols—weeks ahead of time, with details of the calculations and statistical rules that they’d use to determine when to perform an interim analysis and how much certainty could be attached to those results. When BNT-Pfizer’s discussions with the FDA led to changes in this plan, BNT-Pfizer explained why, and released an updated protocol. That’s scientific rigor, and it matters a lot. When a vaccine-maker specifies the rules of the game before the results start coming in, we can check their work and be confident in what they tell us at the end. We can make sure they haven’t cherry-picked the data.

How did Oxford-AstraZeneca end up with this patched-together analysis instead of data from a single, large trial?

The Oxford-AstraZeneca story is very different, though. Presumably, neither of the two trials from which they combined data could have provided a clear answer on the vaccine’s efficacy on its own. To make things worse, Oxford-AstraZeneca reported only the results for certain subgroups of people within each one. (For perspective on this: The two subgroups chosen leave out perhaps half the people in the Brazilian trial.) Meanwhile, one of their key claims is that giving half a dose of the vaccine on the first injection, followed by a standard dose on the second one, led to better outcomes—but neither of these trials had been designed to test this hypothesis. In fact, it’s since emerged that the half-dose/full-dose option started out as a mistake, and one that was only caught when some people in the study didn’t have the usual high rate of adverse effects.

There were other dosing issues, too, that haven’t been explained even though dosing is the centerpiece of the press release. There are many different regimens in these trials—the UK study has more than two dozen arms, meaning the volunteers were divided into that many groups according to age and how much of the vaccine would be administered and when. The doses are measured by the number of altered viral particles they contain, and the developers decided that the standard dose would be 5 x 1010 viral particles. But for many of those arms in the UK trial—as well as everyone who got the vaccine in the Brazilian trial—publicly available trial information shows that the standard dose could be between 3.5 and 6.5 × 1010 viral particles. The lower end of that range isn’t far off from a half-dose.

How did Oxford-AstraZeneca end up with this patched-together analysis instead of data from a single, large trial? After all, this vaccine went into Phase 3 testing before either BNT-PFizer’s or Moderna’s did. But in the UK, where that testing started, the Covid-19 outbreak happened to be receding. That meant results would be coming in very slowly.

A month later, a second Phase 3 trial for the vaccine started in Brazil. That one was for healthcare workers, for whom the risk of being exposed to Covid was far higher than it was for the people in the UK trial. But the two trials had other substantive differences. In the UK, for example, the volunteers who did not get the experimental Covid vaccine were injected with meningococcal vaccine; in Brazil, those in the comparison group were given a saline injection as a placebo.

Meanwhile, BNT-Pfizer and Moderna began Phase 3 trials for their coronavirus vaccines on the same day in July: Both planned to include 30,000 volunteers at the time, and both trial plans were approved by the FDA. Oxford-AstraZeneca then announced they, too, would run a 30,000-person trial in the US.

But that research on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine quickly fell behind the others’. The US trial was approved by the FDA, but it didn’t start recruiting people until the end of August; and just a week later, it was put on hold so the FDA could investigate a serious adverse event in the UK trial. It wasn’t clear what caused the volunteer to get sick, but the FDA did not give the all-clear for Oxford-AstraZeneca’s US trial to resume until Oct. 23. By then the protocol for the trial had been publicly released. It says the plan is to inject the vaccine in two standard doses, a month apart; and two people will be vaccinated for every one who gets a placebo saline injection.

So here we are at the end of November. BNT-Pfizer and Moderna have offered up a masterclass in how to do major vaccine trials quickly in a pandemic, while Oxford-AstraZeneca has, for the moment, only an assortment of smaller ones ready to look at.

But wait, more red flags! Last week, Oxford-AstraZeneca published some results from earlier in the development of the UK trial. That paper included a trial protocol for the UK study, attached as an appendix. Deep in that document, and apparently overlooked by reporters and commentators, was an eyebrow-raising suggestion: Under a section marked “Interim and primary analyses of the primary outcome,” the trialists outline a plan to combine and analyze data from four clinical trials (only half of which are Phase 3), carried out in different ways on three different continents. The plan, they wrote, was to pull out results only for the people across these four trials who had gotten "two standard-dose vaccines," and then pool those together for what's called a meta-analysis.

The appendix doesn’t say when this became the plan. We don’t even know if the Oxford-AstraZeneca team followed it. In fact, it’s impossible to know, at this point, just how many analyses these researchers have run, and on which data. That’s a scientific red flag with flashing lights. (Again it’s useful to compare this work to the BNT-Pfizer and Moderna trials, where the analyses were clearly spelled out ahead of time for everyone to see.) All we know for sure is that on Monday, Oxford-AstraZeneca announced results of a different interim analysis that included only volunteers from the two trials in the UK and Brazil. As we’ve seen, this analysis was not limited to the people who got two standard doses of the vaccine.


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There are other problems, too. In the press release, Oxford-AstraZeneca reports that two of the dosing regimens “demonstrated efficacy.” Presumably, none of the others did, but they didn’t give specifics. Of the only two regimens they reported, one (the mistaken first half-dose, followed by a full dose at least a month later) came in at 90 percent, and the other (two standard doses at least a month apart) achieved only 62 percent efficacy. You’ll see reports that the vaccine had 70 percent efficacy, on average; but that’s un-knowable, because we only have numbers on these two regimens, as opposed to everyone in the trials—and how they arrived at those percentages isn’t explained. As far as we know, some of this analysis could hinge on data from just a few sick people. That means the findings could be a coincidence, or they could be biased by other factors. For example, it has since been revealed that the people who received an initial half-dose—and for whom the vaccine was said to have 90-percent efficacy—included no one over the age of 55. That was not the case for the standard-dosing group, however, where the reported efficacy was 62 percent. This demographic difference could be more important than the change to the size of the first dose.

That’s not the end of the problems. Overall, the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials appear to include relatively few participants over the age of 55, even though this group is especially vulnerable to Covid-19. (People over 55 were not originally eligible to join the Brazilian trial at all.) Compare that to BNT-Pfizer’s trial, where 41 percent of the volunteers were over 55. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine also seems to produce relatively high rates of adverse events. If you want to dig further into this vaccine’s story and issues, I’ve laid out a more detailed rundown of the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials and sources here.

Now it’s over to drug regulatory agencies around the world. They have to make a decision about this vaccine that was once ahead of the pack, but for which there are still no reliable and rigorous results from a single, large phase 3 trial. If anything short of that standard is accepted for this vaccine, it will be easy to stoke already widespread fears about corners being cut. A loss of trust would affect more than this one vaccine.

Hilda Bastian (@hildabast) has a PhD in health science, and expertise in assessing the validity of evidence for health claims.


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Mysterious obelisk in US desert captures conspiracy theorists' imaginations

Issued on: 25/11/2020 
This video grab image obtained November 24, 2020 shows a mysterious metal monolith that was discovered in Utah after public safety officers spotted the object while conducting a routine mission. © Utah Department of Public Safety, Handout, AFP

Text by: NEWS WIRES

A mysterious metal obelisk found buried in the remote western United States desert has inflamed the imaginations of UFO spotters, conspiracy theorists and Stanley Kubrick fans around the world.

The shiny, triangular pillar -- which protrudes approximately 12 feet from the red rocks of southern Utah -- was spotted last Wednesday by baffled local officials counting bighorn sheep from the air.

After landing their helicopter to investigate, Utah Department of Public Safety crew members found "a metal monolith installed in the ground" but "no obvious indication of who might have put the monolith there."

"It is illegal to install structures or art without authorization on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you're from," warned the agency in a tongue-in-cheek press release Monday.

News of the discovery quickly went viral online, with many noting the object's similarity with strange alien monoliths that trigger huge leaps in human progress in Kubrick's classic sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Others remarked on its discovery during a turbulent year that has seen the world gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic, and optimistically speculated it could have a different function entirely.

"This is the 'reset' button for 2020. Can someone please press it quickly?" joked one Instagram user.

"Up close it reads: 'Covid vaccine inside'" wrote another.

Although officials have refused to disclose the object's location out of fear that hordes of curious sightseers would flock to the remote wilderness, a Reddit user said they had managed to geo-locate the obelisk using surrounding rock formations.

Sharing the Google Earth location -- where a small structure can be seen, roughly six miles from the nearest road -- the user said the structure was first photographed by Google in 2016.

Bret Hutchings, the pilot who happened to fly over the obelisk, speculated that it had been planted by "some new wave artist."

Some observers pointed out the object's resemblance to the avant-garde work of John McCracken, a US artist who lived for a time in nearby New Mexico, and died in 2011.

On Tuesday a spokeswoman for his representative David Zwirner said it was not one of McCracken's works, but possibly by a fellow artist paying homage.

However later in the day Zwirner gave another statement in which he suggested the piece was indeed by McCracken, meaning it had lain undiscovered in the desert for nearly a decade.

"The gallery is divided on this," Zwirner said. "I believe this is definitely by John."

He added: "Who would have known that 2020 had yet another surprise for us. Just when we thought we had seen it all. Let's go see it."

Either way, Hutchings admitted it was "about the strangest thing I've come across out there, in all my years of flying."

"We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it," he told local news channel KSLTV.

(AFP)

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Pain and glory: The extraordinary life of Diego Maradona

Issued on: 25/11/2020 - 

Text by: Benjamin DODMAN

One of sport’s most cinematic (anti)heroes, Diego Maradona died of a heart attack on Wednesday, aged 60. His rise and demise was the subject of a documentary by Asif Kapadia, the third and last instalment in a trilogy about child prodigies consumed by stardom.



The scene is June 22, 1986, at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. On a sweltering afternoon, 114,000 dazzled fans have just witnessed Maradona score the greatest goal in World Cup history – and the Argentine commentator is waxing lyrical.

“Cosmic kite, what planet are you from that you can leave so many Englishmen in your wake?” the sportscaster yelps, sobbing with joy at a feat celebrated across Argentina as revenge for the Falklands War. “Thank you God for football and for Maradona!”

Maradona’s glorious run past England’s hapless defenders is the stuff of legend, second only in fame to the goal he scored minutes earlier with his hand – the “hand of God”, as he coined it. The outrageous one-two, which sealed Argentina’s quarter-final win over their bitter rivals, would define his career: the brilliance and the trickery, the prodigy and the myth.


The extraordinary case of Dr Diego and Mr Maradona is the subject of a documentary by Britain’s Asif Kapadia, which screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

The director has described “Diego Maradona” as the third and last instalment in a trilogy about child prodigies who struggled with fame. It follows “Senna”, his documentary on the racecar driver who died at 34 in a crash, and Oscar-winning “Amy”, about singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse and her tragic death at 27.

Maradona ultimately outlived them both, by a considerable margin, though for much of the past three decades his life seemed to be hanging by a thread.

'I’m after the glory, not the money'

A cinematic anti-hero, football's great prestidigitator was something of a Cannes habitué in his own right.

In 2015, a Maradona lookalike starred in Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth”, a meditation on aging. His juggling display, bouncing a tennis ball with still-agile feet while dragging his humongous belly around the court, was a delight to watch. Years before, the man himself hit the red carpet for a screening of Emir Kusturica’s biopic “Maradona by Kusturica” – which, as the title suggested, was as much about the director as the footballer.

With Kapadia, Maradona’s remarkable life is in more dependable hands. His documentary focuses on the footballer’s Neapolitan years, from his arrival as a godsend to his cocaine-fuelled downfall.



“I’m after the glory, not the money,” says a still-young Maradona, early on in the film, as he quits mighty Barcelona for Italian laggards Napoli in the summer of 1984. Back then, the Italian club were yet to win a title and the city and its people were the butt of every racist joke in the country (to this day, rival fans still taunt them with chants of “Vesuvius, wash them with fire”).

It was a preposterous career move, unthinkable today. But Maradona and Naples proved to be a perfect match, sharing the same humble origins, intoxicating passion, and rebellious streak. El pibe de oro (the golden boy) soon lifted the team’s fortunes and restored the city’s pride – becoming, in the process, a hero, a saint and a god.

Kapadia’s film opens with breathtaking footage of Maradona’s first arrival at the San Paolo stadium, crammed with 85,000 delirious fans. The pandemonium is exhilarating and overwhelming, as is the two-month-long rumpus that follows Napoli’s very first title win three years later. Never before had a sport star aroused such levels of devotion and hysteria (at one point a nurse takes a sample of his blood to a local church to mix it with relics of San Gennaro, the city’s patron saint).

Always a delight to be in his company. 🙌🏻 https://t.co/SfTo8SLqlR— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) November 25, 2020

But the flipside of fame and the dark side of Naples soon catch up with Maradona. He has a child out of wedlock (which he refuses to recognise), frequents the Camorra (the local mafia), and becomes a cocaine addict. And when Argentina knock Italy out of the 1990 World Cup at the San Paolo stadium – of all places – the country turns against him. He is a fallen god, and the backlash is vicious.

Kapadia has uncovered an extraordinary wealth of documentary material, from black-and-white footage of Maradona as a little boy knocking a ball around in the slums of Buenos Aires to an audio recording of his phone conversation with his elated mother shortly after Argentina won the World Cup.

His film follows a familiar pattern, distinguishing between Diego – the shy, insecure and good-natured kid who supported his family from the age of 15 – and Maradona – the god-like public persona he became. A beautiful homage to the most exceptional footballer of all time, it will leave viewers dazzled by the football, the passion and the aura, but yearning to dig deeper into the man’s inner turmoil.

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