Angola Newswire

There was a heavy police presence in Cuba’s capital, Havana, on Monday, with the streets calm following Sunday’s anti-government protests.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel gave a nationally broadcast speech in which he blamed the unrest on “a policy of economic suppression” by the United States. He said the origins of problems cited by the protesters, including shortages of food, electricity and medicine, are all the result of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected that position, saying “it would be a grievous mistake for the Cuban regime to interpret what is happening in dozens of towns and cities across the island as the result or product of anything the United States has done.”

U.S. President Joe Biden said those protesting “are demanding their freedom from an authoritarian regime.” He added that the United States “stands firmly with the people of Cuba as they assert their universal rights, and we call on the government of Cuba to refrain from violence in their attempt to silence the voices of the people of Cuba.”

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expressed his government’s support for Díaz-Canel on Monday and said, “If the U.S. really wants to help Cuba, let it immediately lift the sanctions and the blockade against its people.”

The protests were the largest anti-government demonstrations in Cuba in decades.

Source: Voice of America

TOKYO – Japan will make additional donations of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan and other Asian neighbors this week, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Tuesday.

Japan will ship 1 million doses each to Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam on Thursday as part of bilateral deals with those governments, Motegi told reporters.

An additional 11 million doses donated through the COVAX sharing scheme will be sent this month to Bangladesh, Cambodia, Iran, Laos, Nepal and Sri Lanka, as well as various Pacific Island states, he said.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry expressed thanks for the gesture, particularly at a serious stage in Japan’s own coronavirus battle. Japan has donated about 3.4 million doses to Taiwan in a show of support for the Chinese-claimed island.

“The friendship between Taiwan and Japan is unwavering,” the Taiwan ministry said in a statement. “The Foreign Ministry once again thanks our partners in freedom and democracy for their warm assistance and strong support.”

In a statement, Vietnam said it would receive a million doses from Japan on Friday in Ho Chi Minh City, where it is fighting its largest outbreak yet after months of successful containment.

“It is encouraging that a number of richer countries have made generous pledges and donations of vaccines to countries in Asia in recent weeks,” said Alexander Matheou of aid group the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

“We need to speed up the delivery of these lifesaving doses so that we can get them into people’s arms, giving us a genuine shot at containing this pandemic once and for all.”

Taiwan has complained that Chinese interference blocked its deal this year to secure vaccines from Germany’s BioNTech, charges Beijing has denied. Since then, vaccine donations have rolled into Taiwan.

Taiwan’s relatively small domestic COVID-19 outbreak has generally been brought under control, except for a few sporadic community infections.

Japan has pledged $1 billion and 30 million doses to COVAX. Motegi said on Tuesday the AstraZeneca doses made in Japan were approved by the World Health Organization on July 9 for use in COVAX.

Source: Voice of America

The World Health Organization has issued its first global recommendations on human genome editing aimed at ensuring these public health tools are ethically sound and of benefit to all people around the world.

Exciting advances are being made in human genome editing. This technology has the potential to treat and cure diseases and prevent genetic disorders.

For example, somatic gene therapies, which involve modifying a patient’s DNA, have been successfully used to treat HIV and sickle cell disease. Scientists say the technique also could vastly improve treatment for a variety of cancers.

However, these technologies also involve risks as certain germline and heritable human genome editing can alter the genome of human embryos and pass this on to future generations in possibly unpredictable ways. The WHO committee agrees there should be a hold on germline editing until the safety implications are better known.

Scientists also express ethical concerns about this technology, which they say could be used to create so-called “designer babies,” endowed with special skills and physical attributes.

Professor at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain, Robin Lovell Badge is one of 18 Committee members advising the World Health Organization. The Committee has been working over the past two years on regulations for appropriately harnessing this technology.

During this period, he says several potentially dangerous experiments have been proposed in places such as Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. He says peer pressure from many eminent scientists who opposed these risky ventures stopped them from going ahead.

“Peer pressure is really important. But I think more formal mechanisms of whistleblowing, whatever you want to call it we are proposing in our report should really bring together all the different mechanisms that can be used to prevent inappropriate uses of technology,” he said.

The committee has issued a long list of recommendations to govern the safe, effective, and ethical use of human genome editing and that will benefit people in poor and rich countries alike.

For example, it notes intellectual property tends to favor research institutes in rich countries, who make a great deal of money off their patents. The committee proposes that intellectual property derived from human genome editing be applicable also in the poor countries that suffer most from diseases such as sickle cell anemia.

Source: Voice of America

The United Nations said Monday that global hunger grew dramatically in 2020, due in large part to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cost of and access to food.

“The reality is worse than expected,” World Food Program chief economist Arif Husain said. “In one year alone, the number of people in the grip of chronic hunger has risen more than in the previous five years combined.”

In its annual report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition, complied by five U.N. agencies, the findings were stark: Nearly one in three people across the planet — 2.37 billion people — did not have access to sufficient food last year, an increase of almost 320 million people in a single year. Reversing such high levels of chronic hunger could take decades.

The U.N. is also concerned this will take the world further off course for reaching the goal of eliminating hunger and malnutrition by 2030. The report warns that 660 million people may still face hunger by that target date, in part due to the lasting implications of the pandemic. The U.N. said that is 30 million more people than if the pandemic had not happened.

“If this is not a wake-up call, I don’t know what is,” said David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program.

Asia and Africa have been hit hardest.

“More than half of the world’s undernourished live in Asia — 418 million — and more than one-third in Africa — about 282 million,” said Qu Dongyu, director- general of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Children have been especially affected. Millions have been deprived of school lunches, due to closures during the pandemic. For many, this is their only reliable daily meal.

Stunting and wasting in children were up last year, as was being overweight — an effect of poor nutrition.

In addition to COVID-19, conflict, and the impact of climate change on agriculture also affected the global food supply.

In all, the U.N. has said some 41 million people in 43 countries are on the brink of famine, and it will not take much to push them over the edge.

“To think we are going to end hunger by 2030, that’s not even possible given the direction, the trajectory that we are on now,” Beasley said. “If we don’t address these issues in a very serious way, you are going to have mass famine, destabilization of nations and mass migration.”

Source: Voice of America