France ‘shocked' over US spy claims, demands answers

October 21, 2013
Paris, Oct 21: France and Mexico have angrily demanded prompt explanations from the United States after new spying allegations leaked by former US security contractor Edward Snowden.

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The reports published in French daily Le Mondeand German weekly Der Spiegel claim that the US National Security Agency (NSA) secretly monitored tens of millions of phone calls in France and hacked into former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's email account.

They come on top of revelations already leaked by Snowden and published in June that the US had a vast, secret programme called PRISM to monitor internet users, which French prosecutors are already investigating.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he was "deeply shocked" by the revelations — the same word used by interior minister Manuel Valls — and demanded an explanation from US authorities.

"It's incredible that an allied country like the United States at this point goes as far as spying on private communications that have no strategic justification, no justification on the basis of national defence," he told journalists in Copenhagen

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, on a trip to Luxembourg for a meeting with his EU counterparts, said the US ambassador had been summoned to his ministry for a meeting Monday morning.

"These kinds of practices between partners that harm privacy are totally unacceptable. We have to rapidly make sure that they are no longer implemented in any circumstance," he told reporters.

It was the second time in less than four months that the American ambassador in Paris has been hauled in over revelations about US snooping.

The latest leak is also expected to prove embarrassing for US secretary of state John Kerry, who was due in Paris on Monday for talks with Arab officials.

Fabius will raise the issue with him in talks planned for Tuesday morning, a ministry spokesman said.

The NSA monitored 70.3 million phone calls in France over a 30-day period between December 10 and January 8 this year, Le Monde reported in its online version, citing documents from Snowden.

According to the paper, the spy agency automatically picked up communications from certain phone numbers in France and recorded certain text messages under a programme code-named "US-985D".

Le Monde said the documents gave grounds to believe that the NSA targeted not only people suspected of being involved in terrorism but also high-profile individuals in business and politics.

US authorities declined comment to the French daily on the "classified" documents.

The Le Monde article followed revelations by Der Spiegel — also based on documents provided by Snowden — that US agents had hacked into the Mexican presidency's network, gaining access to Calderon's account.

According to the report, the NSA said this contained "diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability."

The agency reportedly said the president's office was now "a lucrative source."

Mexican authorities said they would be seeking answers from US officials "as soon as possible" following the allegations.

"The Mexican government reiterates its categorical condemnation of the violation of privacy of institutional communications and Mexican citizens," the foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

"This practice is unacceptable, illegitimate and contrary to Mexican law and international law."

This is not the first time that France and Mexico have been hit by allegations of spying by the NSA since information leaked by Snowden first emerged in June.

Mexico's current President Enrique Pena Nieto has already complained to his US counterpartBarack Obama over reports US spies have gone through his emails.

And Der Spiegel reported last month that in 2010 the NSA monitored the internal computer network of France's diplomats and that of the foreign ministry itself.

But France itself has also been accused of spying. Le Monde reported over the summer that intelligence services intercepted all communications in the country, stocking telephone and computer data for years — accusations denied by the government.

Snowden, who has taken refuge in Russia, is wanted in the United States for espionage and other charges after the leaks.

The fugitive went into hiding in Hong Kong in May and flew to Moscow on June 23, where he stayed in the transit area for more than a month before being given temporary asylum and leaving the airport for a safe location.

Snowden's revelations have caused Obama acute embarrassment in his relations with other allies.

He has since proposed reforms of US surveillance programmes in the wake of the furore.

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News Network
April 17,2020

Paris, Apr 17: The number of coronavirus-related deaths in France has increased by 753 to 17,920 over the past 24 hours, with the total case count now standing at 108,847, Jerome Salomon, the head of the state health agency, said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the country reported a total of 106,206 cases, including a record 1,438 new fatalities. Salomon specified that it was not the daily death toll, as the data had been compiled over the last three-day weekend.

"The total number of victims since March 1 is 17,920," Salomon said at a briefing on Thursday.
He noted that 11,060 of them had died in hospitals, and 6,860 others in social and medical-social facilities.

President Emmanuel Macron on Monday extended nationwide movement restrictions, which had been introduced due to the epidemic, until May 11. Afterwards, the country is set to gradually reopen kindergartens, schools and universities.

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Agencies
March 28,2020

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.

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News Network
March 21,2020

Beijing, Mar 21: China reported no domestically transmitted coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day even as seven more fatalities have been confirmed, taking the death toll in the country to 3255.

No new domestically transmitted cases of COVID-19 were reported on the Chinese mainland for the third day in a row on Friday, China's National Health Commission (NHC) said on Saturday.

The overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 81,008 by the end of Friday, which included 3,255 who died, 6,013 patients still undergoing treatment, 71,740 patients who had been discharged after recovery, the NHC said.

The NHC said 41 new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported on the Chinese mainland on Friday from the people arriving from abroad, taking the total number of imported cases to 269.

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