18 March 20
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17 March 20
Germany Confirms That Trump Tried to Buy Firm Working on Coronavirus Vaccine
Aitor Hernandez-Morales, POLITICO
Hernandez-Morales writes: "The Donald Trump administration offered 'large sums of money' to get exclusive access to a coronavirus vaccine being developed by a German company, Die Welt reported Sunday."
he Donald Trump administration offered "large sums of money" to get exclusive access to a coronavirus vaccine being developed by a German company, Die Welt reported Sunday.
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Aitor Hernandez-Morales, POLITICO
Hernandez-Morales writes: "The Donald Trump administration offered 'large sums of money' to get exclusive access to a coronavirus vaccine being developed by a German company, Die Welt reported Sunday."
CureVac boss was at the White House last week to discuss its vaccines plans.
he Donald Trump administration offered "large sums of money" to get exclusive access to a coronavirus vaccine being developed by a German company, Die Welt reported Sunday.
According to the article, Trump was trying to get the Tübingen-based CureVac company — which also has sites in Frankfurt and Boston — to move its research wing to the United States and develop the vaccine "for the U.S. only."
A spokesperson for Germany's Health Ministry quoted in the article appeared to acknowledge the U.S. approach and said that Berlin was "very interested in ensuring that vaccines and active substances against the new coronavirus are also developed in Germany and Europe."
On Sunday afternoon, Germany's Health Ministry told Reuters that its spokesperson had been quoted correctly in the newspaper article, confirming that Washington had attempted to take over the biopharmaceutical company. Government sources indicated that Berlin was now offering CureVac financial incentives to remain in Germany.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said at a press conference Sunday that he had heard about the CureVac reports and that it would be discussed at a crisis team meeting Monday.
Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, said on Twitter that the Welt report was "wrong."
Last week CureVac CEO Daniel Menichella was among the pharmaceutical representatives invited to the White House to discuss coronavirus vaccine development with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and members of the president's Coronavirus Task Force.
In a press release, the company said that Menichella had told U.S. officials about the vaccines it had in development, and revealed its hope to have an experimental vaccine ready by early summer.
The news prompted angry reactions from German politicians who demanded that Berlin do everything possible to prevent the U.S. from controlling access to an eventual coronavirus vaccine.
"The American regime has committed an extremely unfriendly act," said Social Democrat MP Karl Lauterbach, who said that German health workers on the front lines — as well as people around the world — needed to have access to something developed in Germany, and that no country should be able to purchase exclusive access to the vaccine.
"Capitalism has limits," he said.
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Voting in Ohio. (photo: David Goldman/AP)
ALSO SEE: Three States Hold Primaries Today
ALSO SEE: Poll Workers Stay Home in Droves, Hindering US Elections
Pandemic Planning Should Ensure All Votes Can Be Cast by Mail in November, Experts Say
Robert Mackey, The Intercept
Mackey writes: "Senate Democrats and election experts pressed Congress to act immediately on legislation to ensure that voters in all 50 states will be able to cast ballots by mail or vote early in the general election if the public health emergency lasts into November."
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Robert Mackey, The Intercept
Mackey writes: "Senate Democrats and election experts pressed Congress to act immediately on legislation to ensure that voters in all 50 states will be able to cast ballots by mail or vote early in the general election if the public health emergency lasts into November."
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A family shopping for food. (photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture/Flickr)
The Economy Is Crashing Again. This Time, Let's Bail Out Ordinary Americans.
Joel Mathis, The Week
Mathis writes: "The banks were bailed out. The auto industry was bailed out. And that was the right thing to do - economies don't work very well if there are no banks, and if whole industries collapse overnight. Those efforts were good. They just weren't enough."
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Joel Mathis, The Week
Mathis writes: "The banks were bailed out. The auto industry was bailed out. And that was the right thing to do - economies don't work very well if there are no banks, and if whole industries collapse overnight. Those efforts were good. They just weren't enough."
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Patrons socialize and drink together at Nick's Beer Garden in Chicago on Sunday. Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker ordered all restaurants and bars to close Monday evening as part of efforts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. (photo: Joshua Lott/Reuters)
Social Distancing Is So Hard Because It's Contrary to Human Nature
Karin Brulliard, The Washington Post
Brulliard writes: "Consider the wild tiger. It consorts with fellow tigers only to mate or, if female, to briefly raise cubs. Otherwise, the tiger roams solo. Tigers are great at social distancing."
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Karin Brulliard, The Washington Post
Brulliard writes: "Consider the wild tiger. It consorts with fellow tigers only to mate or, if female, to briefly raise cubs. Otherwise, the tiger roams solo. Tigers are great at social distancing."
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A restaurant in New York's Chinatown has no customers. (photo: Getty Images)
What's Spreading Faster Than Coronavirus in the US? Racist Assaults and Ignorant Attacks Against Asians
Holly Yan, Natasha Chen and Dushyant Naresh, CNN
Excerpt: "In New York City, a man assaults a woman wearing a face mask, calling her a 'diseased b****.'"
Holly Yan, Natasha Chen and Dushyant Naresh, CNN
Excerpt: "In New York City, a man assaults a woman wearing a face mask, calling her a 'diseased b****.'"
Prison. (photo: Jacobin)
Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration Is Wrong
Adaner Usmani, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history - destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades."
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Adaner Usmani, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history - destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades."
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A farmer and his dog in a burnt region of the Amazon rainforest in Rondônia state, Brazil. (photo: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images)
Amazon Rainforest Reaches Point of No Return
Jessica Rawnsley, Climate News Network
Rawnsley writes: "Antonio Donato Nobre is passionate about the Amazon region and despairs about the level of deforestation taking place in what is the world's biggest rainforest."
Jessica Rawnsley, Climate News Network
Rawnsley writes: "Antonio Donato Nobre is passionate about the Amazon region and despairs about the level of deforestation taking place in what is the world's biggest rainforest."
"Just when I thought the destruction couldn't get any worse, it has," says Nobre, one of Brazil's leading scientists who has studied the Amazon — its unique flora and fauna, and its influence on both the local and global climate — for more than 40 years.
"In terms of the Earth's climate, we have gone beyond the point of no return. There's no doubt about this."
For decades, he has fought against deforestation. There have been considerable ups and downs in that time, but he points out that Brazil was once a world-leader in controlling deforestation.
"We developed the system that's now being used by other countries," he told Climate News Network in an interview during his lecture tour of the UK.
"Using satellite data, we monitored and we controlled. From 2005 to 2012, Brazil managed to reduce up to 83% of deforestation."
Dramatic Increase
Then the law on land use was relaxed, and deforestation increased dramatically — by as much as 200 percent between 2017 and 2018.
It's all become much worse since Jair Bolsonaro became Brazilian president at the beginning of last year, Nobre says.
"There are some dangerous people in office," he says. "The Minister of Environment is a convicted criminal. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is a climate sceptic."
Nobre argues that Bolsonaro doesn't care about the Amazon and has contempt for environmentalists.
His administration is encouraging the land grabbers who illegally take over protected or indigenous tribal land, which they then sell on to cattle ranchers and soybean conglomerates.
For indigenous tribes, life has become more dangerous. "They are being murdered, their land is being invaded," Nobre says.
In August last year, the world watched as large areas of the Amazon region — a vital carbon sink sucking up and recycling global greenhouse gases — went up in flames.
Nobre says the land grabbers had organised what they called a "day of fires" in August last year to honour Bolsonaro.
"Thousands of people organized, through WhatsApp, to make something visible from space," he says. "They hired people on motorbikes with gasoline jugs to set fire to any land they could."
The impact on the Amazon is catastrophic, Nobre says. "Half of the Amazon rainforest to the east is gone — it's losing the battle, going in the direction of a savanna.
"When you clear land in a healthy system, it bounces back. But once you cross a certain threshold, a tipping point, it turns into a different kind of equilibrium. It becomes drier, there's less rain. It's no longer a forest."
As well as storing and recycling vast amounts of greenhouse gas, the trees in the Amazon play a vital role in harvesting heat from the Earth's surface and transforming water vapour into condensation above the forest. This acts like a giant sprinkler system in the sky, Nobre explains..
When the trees go and this system breaks down, the climate alters not only in the Amazon region but over a much wider area.
Time Running Out
"We used to say the Amazon had two seasons: the wet season and the wetter season," Nobre says. "Now, you have many months without a drop of water."
Nobre spent many years living and carrying out research in the rainforest and is now attached to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
The vast majority of Brazilians, he says, are against deforestation and are concerned about climate change — but while he believes that there is still hope for the rainforest, he says that time is fast running out.
Many leading figures in Brazil, including a group of powerful generals, have been shocked by the international reaction to the recent spate of fires in the Amazon and fear that the country is becoming a pariah on the global stage.
Nobre is angry with his own government, but also with what he describes as the massive conspiracy on climate change perpetrated over the years by the oil, gas and coal lobbies.
Ever since the late 1970s, the fossil fuel companies' scientists have known about the consequences of the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"They brought us to this situation knowingly," Nobre says. "It's not something they did out of irresponsible ignorance. They paid to bash the science."
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