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Reuters Health News Summary | Science-Environment
Following is a abstract of present well being information briefs.
Omicron-specific COVID photographs may improve safety as boosters – EMA
Coronavirus vaccines tweaked to incorporate the Omicron variant pressure can enhance safety when used as a booster, the European Medicines Company and different world well being regulators stated on Friday. Following a gathering on Thursday, the EMA stated world regulators had agreed on key ideas for updating COVID-19 photographs to answer rising variants.
U.S. orders 2.5 million extra doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine for monkeypox
The U.S. authorities has ordered 2.5 million extra doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine to be used towards monkeypox outbreaks, the Division of Well being and Human Providers stated on Friday. The shot has already been cleared for each smallpox and monkeypox in the USA, the place it’s referred to as Jynneos.
Novavax expects COVID vaccine focusing on Omicron in fourth quarter
Novavax Inc stated on Friday it expects to supply a COVID-19 vaccine focusing on Omicron within the fourth quarter because it accelerates growth of photographs to guard towards the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. The U.S. FDA on Thursday advisable COVID-19 vaccine producers change the design of their booster photographs starting this fall to incorporate parts tailor-made to fight the at the moment dominant Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
Monkeypox signs differ from earlier outbreaks – UK examine
Sufferers with monkeypox within the UK have noticeably totally different signs from these seen in earlier outbreaks, in keeping with researchers in London, elevating issues instances are being missed. Sufferers reported much less fever and tiredness and extra pores and skin lesions of their genital and anal areas than usually seen in monkeypox, the examine of 54 sufferers at London sexual well being clinics in Could this 12 months discovered.
Texas, Ohio high courts enable abortion bans to take impact
The highest courts in Texas and Ohio on Friday allowed the Republican-led states to implement restrictions and bans on abortions after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom final week overturned the nationwide constitutional proper to abortion. The Texas Supreme Courtroom late on Friday allowed an almost century-old abortion ban to take impact after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and erased ladies’s constitutional proper to abortion.
North Korea blames ‘alien issues’ close to border with South for COVID outbreak
North Korea claimed on Friday that the nation’s first COVID-19 outbreak started with sufferers touching “alien issues” close to the border with South Korea, apparently shifting blame to the neighbour for the wave of infections within the remoted nation. Asserting outcomes of an investigation, the North ordered folks to “vigilantly take care of alien issues coming by wind and different local weather phenomena and balloons within the areas alongside the demarcation line and borders,” the official KCNA information company stated.
U.S. abortion ruling ignites retail curiosity in ladies contraceptive makers – Vanda
Retail buyers have flocked to small biotech corporations that make ladies contraceptives after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom final week overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling that acknowledged the constitutional proper to abortion, Vanda Analysis stated on Friday.
The landmark choice has turned the highlight on contraception entry and led to a short lived spike in demand for over-the-counter emergency contraceptive drugs.
China reviews 268 new COVID instances on July 1 vs 245 day earlier
Mainland China reported 268 new COVID-19 instances for July 1, of which 72 had been symptomatic and 196 had been asymptomatic, the Nationwide Well being Fee stated on Saturday. That compares with 245 new instances a day earlier – 37 symptomatic and 208 asymptomatic infections, which China counts individually.
Abortion drug maker says Mississippi cannot ban tablet regardless of Supreme Courtroom ruling
The maker of a drug utilized in treatment abortions has instructed a federal decide that the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s latest ruling eliminating the nationwide proper to abortion doesn’t enable Mississippi to cease it from promoting the drugs within the state. GenBioPro Inc, which makes a generic model of the drug mifepristone, stated in a Thursday submitting in Jackson, Mississippi federal court docket that the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug ought to override any state ban.
Oxford Biomedica indicators new deal to make AstraZeneca COVID shot
Britain’s Oxford Biomedica stated on Friday it had signed a brand new three-year settlement to probably make AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine past 2022, however no volumes had been outlined in a sign of waning demand for the shot. Cell and gene remedy agency Oxford Biomedica stated in April that it had manufactured greater than 100 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine since their partnership started in September 2020. Commitments below the deal are scheduled to finish this 12 months.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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US journalist Gershkovich on trial in Russia over spying charges he denies
American journalist Evan Gershkovich went on trial behind closed doors in Russia on charges of espionage 15 months after he was arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg.
The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter appeared in a glass cage in the Yekaterinburg courtroom on Wednesday, with his head shaven clean and wearing a black-and-blue plaid shirt.
Gershkovich is accused by prosecutors of gathering secret information about Uralvagonzavod, a plant manufacturing tanks for Russia’s war in Ukraine, on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Prosecutor Mikael Ozdoyev claimed there was proof that Gershkovich “on the instructions of the CIA … collected secret information about the activities of a defence enterprise about the production and repair of military equipment in the Sverdlovsk region”.
The court said the next hearing will be held on August 13.
The US Embassy in Russia on Wednesday called for Gershkovich’s release and said the “Russian authorities have failed to provide any evidence supporting the charges against him, failed to justify his continued detention, and failed to explain why Evan’s work as a journalist constitutes a crime”.
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Today, a Russian court began closed-door proceedings in the case of Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, who has been wrongfully detained by Russian authorities for more than a year. https://t.co/edWy9MGvPm— Посольство США в РФ/ U.S. Embassy Russia (@USEmbRu) June 26, 2024
The Journal said the “secret trial” will “offer him few, if any, of the legal protections he would be accorded in the US and other Western countries”.
The reporter, his employer and the United States government vigorously deny the allegations, saying he was just doing his job, with accreditation from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On Tuesday, the Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, wrote in a letter to readers that Russian judicial proceedings are “unfair to Evan and a continuation of this travesty of justice that already has gone on for far too long”.
Tucker said: “This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man.”
If convicted, Gershkovich faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. A verdict could be months away because Russian trials often adjourn for weeks.
Tucker noted that even covering Gershkovich’s trial “presents challenges to us” and other media “over how to report responsibly on the proceedings and the allegations”.
“Let us be very clear, once again: Evan is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal. He was on assignment in Russia, where he was an accredited journalist,” she wrote.
The case, the US Embassy wrote on X, “is not about evidence, procedural norms or the rule of law. It is about the Kremlin using American citizens to achieve its political objectives”.
‘Hostage diplomacy’
The American-born son of immigrants from the Soviet Union, Gershkovich is the first Western journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia.
His detention came about a year after President Vladimir Putin pushed through laws that chilled journalists, criminalising criticism of the war in Ukraine and statements seen as discrediting the military.
After his arrest on March 29, 2023, Gershkovich was held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. His appeals for release have been repeatedly rejected.
The proceedings will take place behind closed doors, meaning that the media is excluded and no friends, family members or US embassy staff are allowed in to support him.
Putin has indicated that Russia is open to the idea of a prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich and others, claiming that contacts with the US have taken place, but that they must remain secret.
The US has in turn accused Russia of conducting “hostage diplomacy”.
It has designated Gershkovich and another jailed American, security executive Paul Whelan, arrested in Moscow for espionage in 2018, as “wrongfully detained”, thereby committing the government to assertively seek their release.
In its statement, the US Embassy said Russia should stop using people like Gershkovich and Whelan “as bargaining chips”. “They should both be released immediately,” it said.
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WikiLeaks’ Assange is free after pleading guilty in deal with Justice Department
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty Tuesday in connection with a deal with federal prosecutors to close a drawn-out legal saga related to the leaking of military secrets that raised divisive questions about press freedom, national security and the traditional bounds of journalism.
The plea to a single count of conspiring to obtain and disclose information related to the national defense was entered Wednesday morning in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory in the Pacific.
Assange said that he believed that the Espionage Act under which he was charged contradicted his First Amendment rights but that he accepted that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication can be unlawful.
“I believe the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction with each other but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances,” he reportedly said in court.
Under the terms of the deal, Assange is permitted to return to his native Australia without spending any time in an American prison. He had been jailed in the United Kingdom for the last five years, while fighting extradition to the United States.
A conviction could have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence.
AUSTRALIAN LAWMAKERS SEND LETTER URGING BIDEN TO DROP CASE AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE ON WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY
WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling website that Assange founded in 2006, applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”
Federal prosecutors said Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, then a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, to steal diplomatic cables and military files published in 2010 by WikiLeaks. Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama commuted the sentence in 2017 in the final days of his presidency.
Assange has been celebrated by free press advocates as a transparency crusader but heavily criticized by national security hawks who say he put lives at risk and operated far beyond the bounds of journalism.
SUPPORTERS OF JULIAN ASSANGE RALLY AT JUSTICE DEPT. ON 4-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF DETAINMENT
Weeks after the 2010 document cache, Swedish prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Assange for allegedly raping a woman and an allegation of molestation. The case was later dropped. Assange has always maintained his innocence.
In 2012, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there.
The Ecuadorian government in 2019 allowed the British police to arrest Assange and he remained in custody for the next five years while fighting extradition to the U.S.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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