Day: August 26, 2022

US biotechnology firm Moderna is suing rivals Pfizer and BioNTech for infringing patents central to its COVID-19 vaccine technology.

In the statement on Friday, the US pharmaceutical accused Pfizer and BioNTech of copying its “groundbreaking technology” in the development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine without Moderna’s permission.

The lawsuit, which seeks compensation, was filed in the US district court in Massachusetts and the regional court of Dusseldorf in Germany.

“We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel.

Moderna is using its mRNA technology platform to develop medicines that could treat and prevent infectious diseases like influenza and HIV, as well as autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases and rare forms of cancer, Bancel added.

“We believe that Pfizer and BioNTech unlawfully copied Moderna’s inventions, and they have continued to use them without permission,” said Moderna Chief Legal Officer Shannon Thyme Klinger.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Türkiye and North Macedonia marked the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties on Friday, expressing the resolve to further strengthen “current excellent relations.”

“We are determined to strengthen current excellent relations between Türkiye and North Macedonia, and bring new dimension to them and to further these relations for the benefit of our two peoples and our partners,” according to a joint statement released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

It added that the deep-rooted historical and cultural ties make the bilateral relations “exceptional.”

“We will strengthen our cooperation with an understanding that pays regard to stability, prosperity and progress of the Balkans, of which we are a part. In the upcoming period, we will continue to contribute to the development of regional cooperation in fields such as trade, investment, energy, transportation, culture and education,” the statement said.

The two NATO allies also vowed to enhance joint efforts in facing the challenges to regional and international security, and act in solidarity against all forms of terror.

“We see the common future of our countries and region in the EU. In this context, we welcome the holding of the first intergovernmental conference on the commencement of the accession negotiations with North Macedonia,” the statement read.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The UN health agency chief said people in his embattled hometown of Tigray in Ethiopia have been cut off from the outside world, with no communication, electricity, or financial services.

“I will tell you my own story. I have many relatives there. I want to send them money but I cannot,” Tedros Ghebreyesus told a media briefing in Geneva.

Ghebreyesus said he knows his relatives are starving but he cannot help them because they are completely sealed off.

He said due to the communication cut-off, it has been a long time since he last spoke to them.

“I don’t know even who is dead or who is alive,” he said.

Ghebreyesus, an ethnic Tigrayan and former minister in Ethiopia, has been vocal about the situation in his native region.

In a press briefing last week, Ghebreyesus, said the situation caused by the conflict in Tigray was worse than any other humanitarian crisis in the world.

“I haven’t heard in the last few months any head of state talking about the Tigray situation anywhere in the developed world. Why?” Tedros asked. “Maybe the reason is the color of the skin of the people in Tigray.”

The Ethiopian government has not taken his criticism lightly. Last Thursday, Addis Ababa described his comments as “unethical.”

“The comment is one among many unethical ones being made by the WHO director general and is not surprising,” said Billene Seyoum, press secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office.

“Using a race card and one’s multilateral position to garner the sympathy of the global north for personal, partisan politics is quite unbecoming of such a high profile position,” she said, requesting the UN to take action.

Renewed hostilities between the government and Tigray rebels resumed this week Wednesday jeopardizing prospects for peace talks.

On Friday, local reports claimed an airstrike allegedly hit buildings in the capital of the rebel-held Tigray region in northern Ethiopia.

Collapsed buildings and medical personnel attending to injured people in the city of Mekele were shown in a report by Tigray TV, the broadcaster of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which has been engaged in armed conflict with the Ethiopian government since November 2020.

The government has so far neither confirmed nor denied the strike, which came a day after both sides declared that a five-month cease-fire had been broken.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has continued to send buses filled with migrants who illegally crossed the US-Mexico border to the nation’s capital, sparking condemnation from local officials.

Anadolu Agency photographed dozens of migrants being offloaded in Washington, D.C. on Friday morning, with some seen celebrating their arrival just feet (meters) away from the US Capitol.

Abbott has been accused of using migrants as a political weapon ahead of November’s midterm elections, busing thousands to Democratic-held jurisidictions, including the nation’s capital and New York City, since April without a plan for their settlement ahead of court proceedings.

Many have taken to sleeping on the streets, including in city parks and parking lots near Union Station, Washington, D.C., a central transportation hub. For many migrants, D.C. is a midway point on their way to their final destination.

Critics have said Abbott is using migrants to further antagonize US President Joe Biden and Democrats more generally in a cynical ploy to win votes.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has repeatedly called the situation a “humanitarian crisis” for which the city is ill-prepared.

She has twice appealed to the Pentagon to authorize a National Guard deployment to help the city deal with the mass influx, and has been turned down both times. The Defense Department says its troops are ill-suited to perform the tasks necessary to help the migrants.

“We know that these unannounced buses are a politically motivated stunt, one that could very quickly lead to a crisis within our own systems. We struggle with a broken immigration system in our country, and we know that cities alone cannot fix it,” she wrote on Twitter on Aug. 22.

“We remain focused on working with District agencies and local providers to ensure our local systems can continue to function and that we can continue to meet the very real and significant needs of DC residents. And, of course, we will continue fighting for DC statehood so that, in the future, when the Mayor of DC says that we need the support of the DC National Guard, she has the ability to deploy the Guard,” she added.

Source: Anadolu Agency

European Union (EU) energy ministers will convene for an urgent meeting to discuss specific emergency measures to address the recent energy crisis, the Czech Republic’s Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced Friday on his Twitter account.

“We are in an energy war with Russia and it is damaging the whole. In agreement with the European Commission and Prime Minister Petr Fiala, I will propose to convene an extraordinary meeting of the EU Energy Council at the earliest possible date,” Josef Sikela, minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, also said on his social media account.

The EU energy ministers were due to meet in a meeting planned for Oct. 11-12 in Prague, but a date for an urgent meeting has yet to be announced.

The EU is trying hard to secure gas supplies ahead of the winter as natural gas flows from Russia to the EU continue to drop.

Natural gas prices in Europe increased by about 127.6% in the six months since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The price of natural gas per megawatt-hour for March contracts in Europe, trading on the Netherlands-based virtual natural gas trading point (TTF), reached €128.31 ($128.36) on Feb. 24, at the start of the war.

However, the price for September futures contracts, which opened at €272 ($272.12) per megawatt-hour on Wednesday, ended the day at €292.15 ($292.32) per megawatt-hour.

The EU’s post-war sanctions, the reduction in fossil fuels imported from Russia and reduced gas flow to Europe ramped up prices.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Russia on Friday slammed as “discriminatory” Latvia’s initiative to ban the Russian language at workplaces, saying the former member of the Soviet Union turned humiliation of ethnic minorities into a state policy.

In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said a draft law, that is being prepared in this connection, contradicts international rules.

“Such absurd, discriminatory initiatives, affecting the interests of almost half of the population of Latvia and going against numerous recommendations of relevant international structures, have long been a shameful practice,” she said.

“In this Baltic country, linguistic genocide and humiliation of ethnic minorities, whose representatives are considered second-class people by Latvian authorities, have been elevated to the rank of state policy.”

Zakharova added: “Unfortunately, the European ‘democratic’ structures are shamefully silent.”

Russian has a status of a foreign language in the Baltic country, which shares a border with Russia. About 40% of Latvia’s 1.9 million people are Russian-speaking.

Latvia is a member of both EU and NATO, and has condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine, which began in February.

Distancing itself from Russia and its past, it has taken down a number of Soviet monuments over the years, the latest one being a concrete obelisk that was the centerpiece of a monument commemorating the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany in the capital Riga.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Germany’s economy minister on Friday warned of energy price jumps this winter due to the volatile market conditions.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Robert Habeck said his government was taking measures to prevent a crisis, insisting that a new levy on natural gas use was necessary.

“We’re heading for a jump in energy prices in the winter, which will make the current discussions we’re having look smaller,” he said.

Despite criticism, Habeck argued that the planned gas levy was needed to help troubled energy companies avoid bankruptcy and to guarantee the security of gas supply.

He rejected calls to drop the planned gas levy but signaled that there could be some changes to the original plans, as critics say profitable energy firms will also benefit from it.

Source: Anadolu Agency

A polypill developed by Spanish researchers reduces the risk of cardiovascular death in people who have had heart attacks by 32%, according to a study published on Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The polypill combines three drugs — aspirin, a statin and an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor — that are commonly used to treat people at risk for or suffering from cardiovascular diseases.

After following nearly 2,500 patients recovering from a heart attack in a Phase 3, randomized trial for at least three years, researchers found that treatment with a polypill “resulted in a significantly lower risk of major adverse cardiovascular events than usual care.”

To be precise, 48 patients in the polypill group died from cardiovascular events compared to 71 patients in the traditional care group — a 32% reduction. Patients on the polypill also saw similar drops in negative events like non-fatal heart attacks and strokes.

The primary way the polypill works is by making it easier for patients to take their medications properly. Researchers found that 50% of patients who had a heart attack do not consistently take all their prescription drugs, but that adherence increases if they only have to take a single pill.

These were the results of the long-awaited SECURE trial, the first of its kind to study a polypill on post-heart attack patients.

“By simplifying treatment and improving adherence, this approach has the potential to reduce the risk of recurrent disease and cardiovascular death on a global scale,” Spanish researcher Valentin Fuster, who was involved in the study, told researchers at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Barcelona.

Fuster was also behind the development of polypills for heart conditions, which were available in 2008 but were not approved for commercialization in Spain until 2015. Today, the pills are available in more than 21 other countries.

Physicians are interested to see whether this polypill approach could help make treatment more accessible worldwide.

“The impact this could have on the developing world is important. It simplifies production, distribution and reduces costs,” José María Guerra, a Barcelona cardiologist who was not involved in the study, told Spanish daily El Pais.

Detractors of polypills, however, argue that they are not as flexible when it comes to the personalized medicine approach that sees doctors prescribing more targeted medication to patients.

According to the WHO, over three-quarters of cardiovascular deaths take place in low and middle-income countries.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally, according to the UN health body.

In 2019, 17.9 million people died from the diseases, representing 32% of all global deaths. Of these deaths, 85% were due to heart attack and stroke.

Source: Anadolu Agency

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday said that gas is not the top agenda of his visit to Algeria.

Instead, he announced fresh decisions regarding the movement of people between the two countries.

“We have taken decisions regarding the movement of people, we are working together on sensitive issues related to security, and we are making new plans for the movement of our artists, athletes, business people and political figures in order to build the broader partnership that we want,” Macron told reporters during his visit to the cemetery of St. Eugene in Bologna, northern Algeria.

In September, France reduced the number of visas issued to Algerians by 50%, citing what Paris attributed to Algeria’s lack of cooperation on irregular immigration.

Stating that irregular migration has “negative repercussions” on public security, Macron said “we present an approach to facilitate the movement of people linked to the two countries to build communication and cooperation.”

Brushing aside the perception that the French leader was visiting Algeria to address its energy needs, Macron said France’s energy needs rely only 20% on gas of which Algerian gas constitutes 8%.

“We will try to improve things in the future, but it is not true that Algeria’s gas is the main topic of the visit,” he said.

In his second visit to Algeria in five years, Macron is accompanied by a 90-person delegation, including ministers, business people and historians.

It also believed that the visit aims to overcome the tension that prevailed between the two countries for nearly a year over multiple colonial era issues, including the remembrance files.

Source: Anadolu Agency