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New Delhi, Jul 6: The Indian Academy of Sciences, a Bengaluru-based body of scientists, has said the Indian Council for Medical Research's (ICMR) target to launch a coronavirus vaccine by August 15 is "unfeasible" and "unrealistic".

The IASc said while there is an unquestioned urgent need, vaccine development for use in humans requires scientifically executed clinical trials in a phased manner.

While administrative approvals can be expedited, the "scientific processes of experimentation and data collection have a natural time span that cannot be hastened without compromising standards of scientific rigour", the IASc said in a statement.

In its statement, the IASc referred to the ICMR's letter which states that "it is envisaged to launch the vaccine for public health use latest by 15th August 2020 after completion of all clinical trials".

The ICMR and Bharat Biotech India Limited, a private pharmaceutical company, are jointly developing the vaccine against the novel coronavirus -- SARS-CoV-2.

The IASc welcomes the exciting development of a candidate vaccine and wishes that the vaccine is quickly made available for public use, the statement said.

"However, as a body of scientists including many who are engaged in vaccine development IASc strongly believes that the announced timeline is unfeasible. This timeline has raised unrealistic hope and expectations in the minds of our citizens," it said.

Aiming to launch an indigenous COVID-19 vaccine by August 15, the ICMR had written to select medical institutions and hospitals to fast-track clinical trial approvals for the vaccine candidate, COVAXIN.

Experts have also cautioned against rushing the process for developing a COVID-19 vaccine and stressed that it is not in accordance with the globally accepted norms to fast-track vaccine development for diseases of pandemic potential.

The IASc said trials for a vaccine involve evaluation of safety (Phase 1 trial), efficacy and side effects at different dose levels (Phase 2 trial), and confirmation of safety and efficacy in thousands of healthy people (Phase 3 trial) before its release for public use.

Clinical trials for a candidate vaccine require participation of healthy human volunteers. Therefore, many ethical and regulatory approvals need to be obtained prior to the initiation of the trials, it added.

The IASc said the immune responses usually take several weeks to develop and relevant data should not be collected earlier.

"Moreover, data collected in one phase must be adequately analysed before the next phase can be initiated. If the data of any phase are unacceptable then the clinical trial is required to be immediately aborted," it said.

For example, if the data collected from Phase 1 of the clinical trial show that the vaccine is not adequately safe, then Phase 2 cannot be initiated and the candidate vaccine must be discarded.

For these reasons, the Indian Academy of Sciences believes that the announced timeline is "unreasonable and without precedent", the statement said.

"The Academy strongly believes that any hasty solution that may compromise rigorous scientific processes and standards will likely have long-term adverse impacts of unforeseen magnitude on citizens of India," it said.

Apr 23: Mukesh Ambani is again Asia's richest person after a deal with Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Inc. sent his conglomerate's stock surging.

Ambani's fortune rose about $4.7 billion to $49.2 billion on Wednesday, after Reliance Industries Ltd. gained 10%. The jump put Ambani about $3.2 billion ahead of China's Jack Ma, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The ranking updates after the close of each trading day in the U.S.

Facebook Inc. will invest $5.7 billion in the U.S. social-networking giant's biggest deal since the 2014 purchase of WhatsApp as it seeks a broader foothold in its biggest global market. The U.S. company will buy about 10% of Jio Platforms, which brings together digital apps and a wireless platform under one umbrella, the Mumbai-based company said in a statement Wednesday.

Before Wednesday, Ambani -- who owns the world's largest oil refinery -- had declined by $14 billion on the index in 2020, the biggest dollar fall of anyone in Asia. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Ma, whose foundation this week donated 100 million masks to the World Health Organization to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, had lost almost $1 billion through Tuesday.

"At the core of our partnership is the commitment that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and I share for the all-around digital transformation of India," Ambani said in a web video posted on Jio's Facebook page, adding that Facebook's brands have become household names in India. "WhatsApp in particular, has entered our people's daily vocabulary in all the 23 official languages of India."

The partnership with Jio would allow Zuckerberg to step up his expansion in a country that is rapidly embracing online payment and e-commerce as more people get smartphones. Jio Infocomm quickly moved into a position of dominance by offering free plans and undercutting wireless market rivals.

With its half-billion internet users, the South Asian country is a key market for the world's largest technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. In India, Facebook has about 250 million users, while WhatsApp has more than 400 million.

That should help Jio bolster its reach, according to James Crabtree, author of 'The Billionaire Raj,' a book on the country's wealthiest people. But the transaction also shows the extent of Ambani's own influence, he said.

"This deal clearly shows that if you want to play big in Indian tech, you need to play nice with Mukesh Ambani."

Ambani's fortune rose about $4.7 billion to $49.2 billion on Wednesday, after Reliance Industries Ltd. gained 10%. The jump put Ambani about $3.2 billion ahead of China's Jack Ma, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The ranking updates after the close of each trading day in the U.S.

Facebook Inc. will invest $5.7 billion in the U.S. social-networking giant's biggest deal since the 2014 purchase of WhatsApp as it seeks a broader foothold in its biggest global market. The U.S. company will buy about 10% of Jio Platforms, which brings together digital apps and a wireless platform under one umbrella, the Mumbai-based company said in a statement Wednesday.

Before Wednesday, Ambani -- who owns the world's largest oil refinery -- had declined by $14 billion on the index in 2020, the biggest dollar fall of anyone in Asia. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Ma, whose foundation this week donated 100 million masks to the World Health Organization to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, had lost almost $1 billion through Tuesday.

"At the core of our partnership is the commitment that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and I share for the all-around digital transformation of India," Ambani said in a web video posted on Jio's Facebook page, adding that Facebook's brands have become household names in India. "WhatsApp in particular, has entered our people's daily vocabulary in all the 23 official languages of India."

The partnership with Jio would allow Zuckerberg to step up his expansion in a country that is rapidly embracing online payment and e-commerce as more people get smartphones. Jio Infocomm quickly moved into a position of dominance by offering free plans and undercutting wireless market rivals.

With its half-billion internet users, the South Asian country is a key market for the world's largest technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. In India, Facebook has about 250 million users, while WhatsApp has more than 400 million.

That should help Jio bolster its reach, according to James Crabtree, author of 'The Billionaire Raj,' a book on the country's wealthiest people. But the transaction also shows the extent of Ambani's own influence, he said.

"This deal clearly shows that if you want to play big in Indian tech, you need to play nice with Mukesh Ambani."

In a startling revelation, cybersecurity researchers have claimed that a hacker has posted personal details of nearly 2.9 crore Indian job seekers at one of the hacking forums on the Dark Web for free.

As part of the regular sweep over the Deep Web and Dark Web, researchers from cybersecurity firm Cyble came across an interesting item, where a threat actor posted 2.3GB (zipped) file on one of the hacking forums.

"The leak actually has a lot of personal details of millions of Indians Job seekers from different states," Cyble said in its blog on Friday.

This breach includes sensitive information such as email, phone, home address, qualification and work experience etc from job seekers spanning across states, from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for such personal information to conduct various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams, and corporate espionage.

"It appears to have originated from a resume aggregator service given the sheer volume and detailed information," it added.

Cyble indexed this information at ‘AmIbreached.com; – Cyble's data breach monitoring and notification platform.

Cyble researchers have identified a sensitive data breach on the dark web where an actor has leaked personal details of nearly 29 million Indian job seekers from various states. 

"Cyble's team is still investigating this further and will be updating their article as they bring more facts to the surface,” it said in a statement.

Cyble said it has acquired the leaked data. 

The same cyber security firm earlier exposed that Bengaluru-based edtech firm Unacademy was hacked.

According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web.

'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co- Founder and CTO, Unacademy, in a statement.

In April, hackers sold personal data of a whopping 267 million Facebook users for just Rs 41,500 (approximately 500 Euros) that includes email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.

No passwords of the 267 million Facebook users were exposed by the hacker, according to Cyble.