Russia vetoes for 8th time UN resolution on Syria

April 13, 2017

New York, Apr 13: Russia vetoed Wednesday a UN draft resolution demanding the Syrian regime cooperate with an investigation of a deadly toxic gas attack on Syrian civilians last week which the West blames on the regime of Bashar Assad.

veto

It was the eighth time that Russia has used its veto power at the UN Security Council (UNSC) to block action directed at its ally in Damascus.

The US told Russia at the UN that it is isolating itself by continuing to support the Syrian president, while Britain said its scientists found that sarin was used in a deadly toxic gas attack on Syrian civilians last week.

“To my colleagues from Russia, you are isolating yourselves from the international community every time one of Assad's planes drops another barrel bomb on civilians, and every time Assad tries to starve another community to death,” US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told the UNSC.

During a heated UNSC meeting, Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the 15-member body that Western countries were wrong to blame Assad for the attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. “I'm amazed that this was the conclusion. No one has yet visited the site of the crime. How do you know that?” he said.

Britain's UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told the UNSC that samples taken from the site of the gas attack, in an opposition-held area of northern Syria, have tested positive for the nerve gas sarin. He accused Russia of siding with “a murderous, barbaric criminal, rather than with their international peers.”

Haley accused Iran of being “Assad's chief accomplice in the regime's horrific acts,” adding: “Iran is dumping fuel on the flames of this war in Syria so it can expand its own reach.”

UN Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura warned the UNSC on Wednesday that fragile progress in peace talks was now “in grave danger.”

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson battled to overcome differences with his Russian counterpart on Wednesday. They remained split over the chemical attack in Syria after talks in Moscow.

“Despite the quantity of existing problems... there are considerable prospects for joint work,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference after talks with Tillerson and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Russia is open to this, open to dialogue with the US in all different areas, not only to dialogue but to joint action aimed at results in the areas where this corresponds to the interests of both countries,” said Lavrov.

Tillerson, who met with Putin earlier on Wednesday, deplored the “low level of trust” between the countries, whose relations have dropped to a post-Cold War low over Ukraine and Syria. “The world's two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship,” Tillerson said.

He said working groups would be established to improve US-Russian ties and identify problems, adding that the two sides would discuss disagreements on Syria and how to end its six-year civil war.

Tillerson said Syria's regime had committed more than 50 attacks using chlorine or other chemical weapons during the conflict. He suggested that possible war crimes charges could be levied against Assad.

Russia has never publicly acknowledged any such attack by Assad's forces, and has tried for the past 18 months to help him expand his authority in Syria.

Lavrov said Moscow was ready to resume a deal with Washington to avoid incidents in Syrian airspace as the two countries lead separate bombing campaigns.

“Today the president confirmed our readiness to return to its implementation on the understanding that the original aims of the air forces of the American coalition are reaffirmed, namely the fight with IS (Daesh) and Al-Nusra,” Lavrov said.

The deal was suspended after US strikes against a Syrian air base following last week's gas attack in Idlib province, in an act Moscow labeled “aggression against a sovereign state.” The two sides agreed to work together on an international investigation of the gas attack.

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Agencies
July 24,2020

The total number of global coronavirus cases has topped 15.4 million, while the deaths have increased to over 631,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

As of Friday morning, the total number of cases stood at 15,439,456, while the fatalities rose to 631,926, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections and fatalities at 4,034,831 and 144,242, respectively, according to the CSSE.

Brazil came in the second place with 2,287,475 infections and 84,082 deaths.

In terms of cases, India ranks third (1,238,798), and is followed by Russia (793,720), South Africa (408,052), Peru (371,096), Mexico (370,712), Chile (334,683), the UK (298,721), Iran (284,034), Spain (270,166), Pakistan (269,191), Saudi Arabia (260,394), Italy (245,338), Turkey (223,315), Colombia (218,428), France (216,667), Bangladesh (216,110), Germany (204,881), Argentina (148,027), Canada (114,398), Qatar (108,244) and Iraq (102,226), the CSSE figures showed.

The other countries with over 10,000 deaths are the UK (45,639), Mexico (41,908), Italy (35,092), France (30,185), India (29,861), Spain (28,429), Iran (15,074), Peru (17,654) and Russia (12,873).

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Agencies
July 7,2020

Washington, Jul 7: The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee will grill the CEOs of US tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon during an antitrust hearing on July 27.

Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Amazon's Jeff Bezos will testify before the antitrust panel that is working on proposals to reform and regulate the digital market.

The hearing would mark the first time all four top executives testify together in front of Congress, virtually or in-person depending on the panel's call in the COVID-19 pandemic times.

"Since last June, the Subcommittee has been investigating the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) said in a statement on Monday.

"Given the central role these corporations play in the lives of the American people, it is critical that their CEOs are forthcoming. As we have said from the start, their testimony is essential for us to complete this investigation.”

The House Judiciary Committee announced its antitrust probe into the four tech giants in June last year.

Last month, the committee sent letters to technology giants Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet (Google's parent company), asking them to confirm if their chief executives will testify as part of the committee's tech competition investigation.

Committee chair David Cicilline said the documents that the investigators sought were "essential" to the probe and that requests like this were part of the "appropriate process" to obtain them.

"The only CEO who has expressed reservation about appearing, through a representative, has been Amazon," Cicilline said. "No one in this country is above the law ... nobody is above answering a congressional subpoena".

The lawmakers want the tech giants to furnish documents that have been produced in relation to other competition probes and internal communications.

The letters that the committee sent also posed questions related to possible harms to competition in the market.

In addition to the antitrust probe, Apple's App Store policies are also facing scrutiny from the US Department of Justice.

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News Network
March 4,2020

Beijing/Zurich, Mar 4: China has approved the use of Swiss drugmaker Roche's anti-inflammation drug Actemra for patients who develop severe complications from the coronavirus as it urgently hunts for new ways to combat the deadly infection that is spreading worldwide.

China is hoping that some older drugs could stop severe cytokine release syndrome (CRS), or cytokine storms, an overreaction of the immune system which is considered a major factor behind catastrophic organ failure and death in some coronavirus patients.

Actemra, a biologic drug approved in 2010 in the United States for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), inhibits high Interleukin 6 (IL-6) protein levels that drive some inflammatory diseases.

China's National Health Commission said in treatment guidelines published online on Wednesday that Actemra can now be used to treat coronavirus patients with serious lung damage and high IL-6 levels.

Separately, researchers in the country are testing Actemra, known generically as tocilizumab, in a clinical trial expected to include 188 coronavirus patients and running until May 10.

Roche, which donated 14 million yuan ($2.02 million) worth of Actemra during February, said the trial was initiated independently by a third party with the aim of exploring the efficacy and safety of the drug in coronavirus patients with CRS.

It added that there was currently no published clinical trial data on the drug's safety or efficacy against the virus.

More than 3,000 people have died and 93,000 have been infected by the novel coronavirus thought to have originated in Wuhan, China, before spreading to around 90 countries including the United States, Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany.

The Swiss company, for which China is its No. 2 market behind the United States, also makes diagnostic gear to detect the coronavirus.

Since Actemra's approval a decade ago, it has become a go-to drug against other inflammatory conditions, including cytokine storms in cancer patients receiving cell therapies from Novartis and Gilead Sciences.

In 2012 it helped save the life of a young U.S. girl, the first child to be treated for leukaemia with Novatis' Kymriah, from a post-treatment rush of IL-6.

Priced at between $20-30,000 annually for RA according to SSR Health, Roche's medicine is also used for rare juvenile arthritis and giant cell arteritis, or inflammation of the blood vessels.

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