India a big part of my plan, Obama tells PM

Washington, Jun 30: Indian-American Medha Raj has been named by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as his digital chief of staff, a key role in his election campaigns which are entirely going virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.

In this capacity, Raj will work across all facets of the digital department to streamline and coordinate how to maximise the impact of its digital outputs, the Biden campaign said.

“Excited to share that I've joined Joe Biden's campaign as the Digital Chief of Staff. 130 days to the election and we're not going to waste a minute!” she said on LinkedIn.

Raj comes from Pete Buttigieg's campaign, who has now endorsed Biden.

The news was first reported by CNN, which the news channel said is part of the efforts of the Biden campaign to adapt to an almost entirely virtual campaign trail brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

The US is the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 2.64 million official cases and over 128,000 deaths.

According to CNN, Clarke Humphrey, who previously worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, will act as the Biden campaign's new deputy digital director for the grassroots fundraising.

Jose Nunez is the campaign's new digital organising director.

He is from the Kamala Harris' campaign. Christian Tom is the new director of digital partnerships. Over the past few months, Biden has been relying more and more on digital campaigning and raising funds virtually.

A graduate in international politics from Georgetown University, Raj has earned her MBA from Stanford University.

Biden, 77, is challenging the 74-year-old Republican incumbent President Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential elections.

Former US vice president Biden would formally accept his Democratic presidential nomination at the party’s scaled back convention in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee city on August 20.

In view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) on Wednesday announced its convention plan to broadcast from Milwaukee and across the nation to reach out to all Americans.

According to some of the latest opinion polls, Biden is leading by more than eight percentage points over Trump.

London/Milan, Jun 2: World Health Organization experts and a range of other scientists said on Monday there was no evidence to support an assertion by a high profile Italian doctor that the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic has been losing potency.

Professor Alberto Zangrillo, head of intensive care at Italy's San Raffaele Hospital in Lombardy, which bore the brunt of Italy's COVID-19 epidemic, on Sunday told state television that the new coronavirus "clinically no longer exists".

But WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, as well as several other experts on viruses and infectious diseases, said Zangrillo's comments were not supported by scientific evidence.

There is no data to show the new coronavirus is changing significantly, either in its form of transmission or in the severity of the disease it causes, they said.

"In terms of transmissibility, that has not changed, in terms of severity, that has not changed," Van Kerkhove told reporters.

It is not unusual for viruses to mutate and adapt as they spread, and the debate on Monday highlights how scientists are monitoring and tracking the new virus. The COVID-19 pandemic has so far killed more than 370,000 people and infected more than 6 million.

Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said major studies looking at genetic changes in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 did not support the idea that it was becoming less potent, or weakening in any way.

"With data from more than 35,000 whole virus genomes, there is currently no evidence that there is any significant difference relating to severity," he said in an emailed comment.

Zangrillo, well known in Italy as the personal doctor of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said his comments were backed up by a study conducted by a fellow scientist, Massimo Clementi, which Zangrillo said would be published next week.

Zangrillo told Reuters: "We have never said that the virus has changed, we said that the interaction between the virus and the host has definitely changed."

He said this could be due either to different characteristics of the virus, which he said they had not yet identified, or different characteristics in those infected.

The study by Clementi, who is director of the microbiology and virology laboratory of San Raffaele, compared virus samples from COVID-19 patients at the Milan-based hospital in March with samples from patients with the disease in May.

"The result was unambiguous: an extremely significant difference between the viral load of patients admitted in March compared to" those admitted last month, Zangrillo said.

Oscar MacLean, an expert at the University of Glasgow's Centre for Virus Research, said suggestions that the virus was weakening were "not supported by anything in the scientific literature and also seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds."

Fifty-six journalists were killed in 2019 and most of them died outside conflict zones, a United Nations spokesperson said.

The number dropped by nearly half from the year 2018, but perpetrators enjoyed almost total impunity, Xinhua news agency quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as saying on Monday citing Unesco figures.

The figure was published in the 'Unesco Observatory of Killed Journalists' on Monday.

In total, Unesco recorded 894 journalist killings in the decade from 2010 to 2019, an average of almost 90 per year. The number in 2019 was 99.

Journalists were murdered in all regions of the world, with Latin America and the Caribbean recording 22 killings, the highest number, followed by 15 in Asia-Pacific, and 10 in Arab States.

"The figures show that journalists not only suffer extreme risks when covering violent conflict, but that they are also targeted when reporting on local politics, corruption and crime - often in their hometowns," the Unesco said.

Almost two thirds (61 per cent) of the cases in 2019 occurred in countries not experiencing armed conflict, a notable spike in a wider trend in recent years, and a reversal of the situation of 2014, when this figure was one third.

More than 90 per cent of cases recorded in 2019 concerned local journalists, consistent with previous years, it added.

In response to these figures, Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of Unesco, said: "Unesco remains deeply troubled by the hostility and violence directed at all too many journalists around the world.

"As long as this situation lasts, it will undermine democratic debate."