NEW DELHI: India will carry out a deeper review of post-vaccination side effects from the AstraZeneca shot next week although no cases of blood clots have been reported so far, an official told AFP Saturday.
New Delhi decided to conduct the review after several countries suspended rollout over blood clot fears even as the World Health Organization said there was no reason to stop using AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 jab.
Denmark, Norway and Iceland paused use of the drugmaker’s shot as a precaution after isolated reports of recipients developing blood clots.
“We are looking at all the adverse events, particularly serious adverse events like deaths and hospitalization. We will come back if we find anything of concern,” N.K. Arora, a member of India’s national task force on COVID-19, said.
India has given at least 28 million shots in its vast vaccination program, most of them AstraZeneca’s which are produced at the Serum Institute of India.
New Delhi has also gifted and allowed exports of millions of these jabs to around 70 countries over the last few weeks as a part of its vaccine diplomacy.
Arora said there was “no immediate issue of concern as number of adverse events (in India) is very, very low. We are relooking at (adverse events that were reported) to see if there was any issue of blood clotting.”
“As of yesterday there were 59 or 60 deaths, and they were all coincidental,” the doctor said, adding hospitalization cases were being re-examined.
“In fact there is a real effort from our side that once complete investigation is done, to put its results in public domain, on the ministry of health website,” Arora added.
India has been using AstraZeneca and indigenous vaccine giant Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin in its rapidly expanding vaccination drive at home.
At least two million people were vaccinated on Friday alone, and this ramp up comes at a time when COVID-19 cases are rising across different Indian states after weeks of decline.
The western state of Maharashtra has announced fresh restrictions and a week-long lockdown in one of its big cities, Nagpur, after the recent spike across the region.
Fresh restrictions including curbs on movement and public gatherings were also reintroduced in some pockets of the state, which is also expected to impact the economic recovery in its industrial belt.
“Some states in the country have been reporting very high number of daily new COVID cases. Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu continue to report a surge in COVID daily cases,” the health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
India had registered 23,285 new cases in the last 24 hours, with the six states accounting for 85.6 percent of the new infections, it added.
India reviews AstraZeneca side effects after concerns in Europe
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India reviews AstraZeneca side effects after concerns in Europe
- New Delhi decided to conduct the review after several countries suspended rollout over blood clot fears
- India had registered 23,285 new cases in the last 24 hours
US newspapers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training
- The newspaper cases are among several potential landmark lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies over the data used to train their generative AI systems
WASHINGTON: A group of newspapers, including the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, sued Microsoft and OpenAI in New York federal court on Tuesday, accusing them of misusing reporters' work to train their generative artificial-intelligence systems.
The eight newspapers, owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital's MediaNews Group, said in the lawsuit that the companies unlawfully copied millions of their articles to train AI products, including Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The complaint follows similar ongoing lawsuits against Microsoft and OpenAI, which has received billions in financial backing from Microsoft, brought by the New York Times and news outlets The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet.
An OpenAI spokesperson said on Tuesday that the company takes "great care in our products and design process to support news organizations." A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment on the complaint.
The newspaper cases are among several potential landmark lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies over the data used to train their generative AI systems.
A lawyer for the MediaNews publications, Steven Lieberman, told Reuters that OpenAI owed its runaway success to the works of others. The defendants know they have to pay for computers, chips, and employee salaries, but "think somehow they can get away with taking content" without permission or payment, he said.
The lawsuit said Microsoft and OpenAI's systems reproduce the newspapers' copyrighted content "verbatim" when prompted. It said ChatGPT also "hallucinates" articles attributed to the newspapers that harm their reputations, including a fake Denver Post article touting smoking as an asthma cure and a bogus Chicago Tribune recommendation for an infant lounger that was recalled after being linked to child deaths.
The plaintiffs also include the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register and Twin Cities Pioneer Press. They asked the court for unspecified monetary damages and an order blocking any further infringement.
UN Human Rights Chief troubled by ‘heavy-handed’ action against protesters at US colleges
- Volker Turk says ‘freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues’
- Protests have taken place on campuses in several states as students demand colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s assault on Gaza
NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s high commissioner for human rights on Tuesday said he is troubled by “a series of heavy-handed steps” taken by education authorities and law enforcement officials to break up protests at college campuses in the US.
Volker Turk said: “freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues, as there are in relation to the conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have spread across college campuses in Texas, New York, Atlanta, Utah, Virginia, New Jersey, California and other parts of the US as students protest against the death toll during the war in Gaza, call for a ceasefire and demand authorities at their colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
Though largely peaceful, at some locations the protests have been dispersed or dismantled by security forces. Hundreds of students and teachers have been arrested, some of whom face charges or academic sanctions.
Turk expressed concern that some of the responses by law enforcement authorities at several colleges might have been disproportionate, and called for such actions to be scrutinized to ensure they do not exceed what is necessary “to protect the rights and freedoms of others.”
He added that all such actions must be guided by human rights law, while “allowing vibrant debate and protecting safe spaces for all.”
He reiterated that antisemitic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian activities and speech are “totally unacceptable, deeply disturbing (and) reprehensible.” However, the conduct of protesters must be assessed and addressed individually rather than through “sweeping measures that impute to all members of a protest the unacceptable viewpoints of a few,” Turk added.
“Incitement to violence or hatred on grounds of identity or viewpoints, whether real or assumed, must be strongly repudiated. We have already seen such dangerous rhetoric can quickly lead to real violence.”
Poland says it is probing alleged links between Orlen unit’s ex-CEO and ‘terrorist organizations’
- Polish website Onet had reported on Monday that the former CEO of Orlen Trading Switzerland was suspected by Orlen’s internal security unit of having had contacts with Hezbollah
- The ex-CEO denied in an interview with Polish private radio RMF on Tuesday that he had any connections with Hezbollah
WARSAW: Poland has launched an investigation into multi-million-dollar cash losses by Polish refiner Orlen’s Swiss unit and allegations that its former CEO had ties to “terrorist organizations,” Warsaw chief prosecutor Malgorzata Adamajtys said on Tuesday.
Polish website Onet had reported on Monday that the former CEO of Orlen Trading Switzerland, referred to only as Samer A. due to local privacy laws, was suspected by Orlen’s internal security unit of having had contacts with Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.
Samer A., the ex-CEO of Orlen’s Swiss subsidiary OTS, denied in an interview with Polish private radio RMF on Tuesday that he had any connections with Hezbollah.
“I have been to Poland many times, I am a Polish citizen, I have a Polish passport. I am treated by the current authorities as a second-class citizen,” he said, adding that though he was currently abroad, he was not hiding from Polish law enforcement.
Asked at a press conference for details of the investigation, chief prosecutor Adamajtys said: “We are looking into all information, some of which is known to prosecutors from the press, radio and television, including on connections with terrorist organizations.”
Western countries including the US designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The European Union classifies Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist group, but not its political wing.
Adamajtys said OTS was established as a business despite a warning by Orlen’s internal security unit not to do so. It operated, according to Adamajtys, without proper supervision, documentation and verification of contractors. She said this showed that Samer A. should not have been appointed as CEO.
“A person who makes advance payments without completion of the first tranches of certain deliveries is not a good CEO and should not be the CEO of this or any other company,” she said.
Reuters sought to contact Samer A. for comment on Adamajtys’ remarks about OTS operations, but he could not be reached. In his conversation with RMF, he denied that there had been any warning from Orlen’s internal security unit.
OTS LOSSES
Orlen has said OTS was behind the loss of around $400 million linked to contracts to buy Venezuelan oil and oil products.
OTS has said it tried to benefit from a temporary window in US sanctions against Venezuela and paid cash advances to intermediaries it never worked with before. The contracts were canceled, it said, as a closure of the window was nearing, and tankers weren’t loading.
Orlen has said it is currently auditing OTS operations.
Adamajtys said Orlen also faced questions over the alleged manipulation of fuel prices to artificially low levels ahead of last year’s national election and a sale of some assets that investigators suspect were below market level.
In February, Orlen rejected an allegation of below-market asset sales from the state audit office, saying it gained as much as 9 billion zloty ($2.2 billion) in one corporate merger. The company also denied lowering fuel prices artificially.
Samer A. has been charged in a separate probe with VAT fraud between 2008-2013, a regional prosecutor in Bydgoszcz said on Monday. He was detained by police and questioned by a prosecutor in February, and released on bail, the prosecutor added.
Opposition critics said that under the previous, nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government, which lost power in that vote, Orlen had helped financed the party’s policy agenda, including taking control of some media outlets.
On Monday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had called the country’s chief prosecutor and secret services coordinator to discuss potential links between the former CEO of Orlen, Daniel Obajtek, and Hezbollah.
Obajtek, a close associate of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, responded on social media platform X that Tusk was “looking for scandals where there are none.”
Polish media have reported that PiS might put up Obajtek as a candidate in June’s European Parliament election.
Forest fires raze parts of India amid heat, dry weather
- As of 2021, 54.4 percent of forests in India experienced occasional fires, most of them due to man-made factors
- These fires have picked up again this year, with 653 incidents in Uttarakhand alone, government data shows
NEW DELHI: Frequent fires are razing forests in India’s Uttarakhand state in the north and Odisha in the east amid high temperatures and long dry spells, and the blazes have been worsened by people burning the forest to collect a flower used to brew alcohol.
Data from the state-run Forest Survey of India shows that as of 2021, 54.4 percent of forests in India experienced occasional fires, most of them due to man-made factors.
“Agriculture stubble burning, misconceptions and burning of shrubs to shoo away wildlife are major reasons behind the forest fires,” Swapnil Aniruddh, a forest official in Uttarakhand, told Reuters.
After a brief respite during the previous season from November to April, forest fires have picked up again this year, with 653 incidents in Uttarakhand alone, government data shows.
Odisha’s fires have been exacerbated by people setting parts of the forest ablaze to collect Mahua flowers, which are highly sought after as they are used to brew a popular liquor.
During the current season, 10,163 fire points in Uttarakhand have been detected using the government’s imaging radiometer.
Overall, loss of significant forest cover is a big worry for India as it tries to dramatically reduce its climate-changing emissions.
Among the organizations helping to curb the fires is the Indian Air Force, which has used the aerial firefighting ‘Bambi Bucket’ technique of collecting water from a nearby lake to spray over the region.
The situation may get worse, with India’s weather department predicting more heat-wave days than normal between April and June this year, along with a longer dry spell for Uttarakhand.
Pentagon chief pushes for donation of more Patriot systems to Kyiv
- “There are countries that have Patriots, and so what we’re doing is continuing to engage those countries,” Austin told a House Armed Services Committee hearing
WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday he has been encouraging countries with Patriot missile systems to donate them to Ukraine, which has appealed for more of the air defense batteries.
“There are countries that have Patriots, and so what we’re doing is continuing to engage those countries,” Austin told a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
“I have talked to the leaders of several countries... myself here in the last two weeks, encouraging them to give up more capability or provide more capability,” he said, without identifying the countries by name.
Various European Union countries possess the systems, including Spain, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told NATO members earlier this month that his country needed a minimum of seven additional Patriot or other high-end air defense systems to counter Russian air strikes, urging them to step up their military assistance for Kyiv.
