Norway Muslims demand minister's resignation after pork post

Tokyo, Feb 26: Two more Indians onboard quarantined cruise ship -- Diamond Princess -- were tested positive for novel coronavirus, the Indian embassy here said on Tuesday, adding that those Indians not infected by the virus will be repatriated to the homeland on February 26.

A total of 16 Indian nationals onboard the luxury ship -- quarantined off the coast of Japan since February 5 -- have been tested positive for coronavirus so far, the embassy informed.

"A chartered flight is being arranged to repatriate Indian nationals onboard #DiamondPrincess, provided they have (a) consented; (b) not tested positive for #COVID19; (c) cleared by the medical team. An email advisory to this effect, with details, has been sent to them," the embassy tweeted.

The repatriation of the Indian nationals will be facilitated by the Indian government.

"PCR test results for ALL Indian nationals declared-02 more Indians tested positive to #COVID19, taking the total to 16. Those fulfilling conditions and consenting to repatriation to India on 26 Feb being facilitated by the Indian Government. Details shared with them," the following tweet read.

A total of 138 Indians, including 132 crew and 6 passengers, were among the 3,711 people on board the luxury cruise ship which was quarantine off Japan on February 5 after it emerged that a former passenger had tested positive for the virus.

United Nations, Mar 21: The UN has called on all nations to stop the use of capital punishment or put a moratorium on it, a day after four men convicted of gang-raping and murdering a 23-year-old woman were hanged in India.

Seven years after the rape and murder of the young medical student, who came to be known as 'Nirbhaya', sent shock waves across the country, the four convicts - Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) - were hanged to death on Friday at 5.30 am in New Delhi's Tihar Jail.

Responding to the hanging, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the world organisation calls on all nations to stop the use of capital punishment or put a moratorium on it.

"Our position has been clear, is that we call on all States to halt the use of capital punishment or at least put a moratorium on this," Dujarric said at the daily press briefing on Friday.

The horrific gang-rape and murder of the physiotherapy intern on December 16, 2012, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, the fearless, had seared the nation's soul and triggered countrywide outrage.

This was the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia's largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates.

The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22.

The execution of the four convicts brings the curtains down on the case that shook not just India but also the world with the details of its brutality The widespread protests subsequently paved the way for a change in India's rape laws.

Canadian researchers are developing a DNA vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and has currently infected nearly 5,00,000 people worldwide and crippled the global economy.

Entos Pharmaceuticals, a health-care biotechnology company headed by a University of Alberta researchers, develop new therapeutic compounds using the company's proprietary drug-delivery platform and has begun manufacturing vaccine candidates against the novel coronavirus.

"Given the urgency of the situation, we can have a lead candidate vaccine within two months. Once we have that it's a race to get it into clinical trials," said John Lewis, CEO of Entos and a Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Lewis said in comparison to a traditional vaccine, DNA-based vaccines hold several advantages.

Nucleic acids are introduced directly into the patient's own cells, causing them to make pieces of the virus--tricking the immune system into mounting a response without the full virus actually being present, the researcher said.

According to the company, the approach is recognised as being easier to move into large-scale manufacturing, offers improved vaccine stability and works without needing an infectious agent.

In the current absence of a vaccine for COVID-19, several companies around the world are mounting efforts to begin similar work.

The first clinical trial using a DNA-based vaccine developed by Moderna Inc.in the US on March 13.

Their approach allows for antibodies to be made in the human trial volunteers against a specific protein on the surface of the coronavirus that lets the virus enter human cells.

The hope is that the antibodies will stop the interaction.

Though this approach is designed to be effective against COVID-19 specifically, Lewis said Entos is taking a different tack.

The company plans to use plasmid DNA to amplify the production of key coronavirus surface and structural proteins with each injection, with an eye to the bigger picture.

"Many of the structural proteins in the virus are pretty well conserved across all the coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS," said Lewis.

"We're hoping that if we express more of the structural proteins that are common to most coronaviruses, we can inhibit the current COVID-19, and also potentially protect against all coronaviruses both past and future," Lewis added.

To move the project forward quickly, the company is seeking financial support from both provincial and federal levels of government.

"We have the opportunity to save a lot of lives, and I think it's really upon us and governments to find solutions for that," Lewis said.