The Indian Weekender, Friday 18 September 2020

The Indian Weekender Friday, September 18, 2020
WORLD 15
Australia’s COVID-19 epicentre
reports no deaths from the virus
for first time in 2 months
Australia’s second-most
populous state Victoria,
the country’s COVID-19
epicentre, on Tuesday reported zero
deaths from the virus in the past 24
hours, a milestone not recorded for
two months.
Victoria state said 42 people have
been diagnosed with COVID-19 in
the past 24 hours, a small increase
from the figure posted one day earlier
and well below the peak of more than
700 infections detected in August.
Victoria last recorded no
COVID-19 deaths on July 13.
The result will buoy optimism
that a stringent lockdown of nearly
5 million people for nearly seven
weeks has curtailed the spread of
COVID-19.
Melbourne, Australia’s second
most populated city, is on an
extended hard lockdown until Sept.
28. But with the steady fall in cases,
some restrictions were relaxed from
Monday, allowing people to leave
their homes for longer periods for
exercise and authorities shortened a
night curfew.
Victoria, home to one-quarter of
Australia’s 26 million population,
now accounts for about 75% of
the country’s more than 26,700
coronavirus cases and 90% of its 816
deaths.
Queensland state reported one new
case on Tuesday, a returned traveller
from overseas and in quarantine.
New South Wales state, Australia’s
most populous, will report its case
numbers later in the day. The virus
has been effectively eliminated in all
other states and territories.
With dwindling numbers of
COVID-19, Australia’s Prime
Minister Scott Morrison has turned
to reviving an ailing national
economy, unveiling a series of
policies to lower the price of gas to
fuel a manufacturing recovery.
“We continue to do better than
almost every other developed
country in the world when it comes
to protecting lives and livelihoods,”
Morrison said in a speech in
Newcastle, 161 km (100 miles) north
of Sydney.
“If we are shut, we are not living
alongside the virus, the virus is
actually keeping us from living.”
Boeing's 'culture of concealment' to blame for 737 crashes
Two fatal crashes of Boeing
737 Max aircraft were
partly due to the planemaker’s
unwillingness to share
technical details, a congressional
investigation has found.
It blames a “culture of
concealment” at Boeing, but
says the regulatory system
was also “fundamentally
flawed”. Boeing said it had
“learned many hard lessons”
from the accidents. But families of
the victims accused the company and
the regulator of continuing to hide
information.
The US report is highly critical
of both Boeing and the regulator,
the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA).
“Boeing failed in its design
and development of the Max, and
the FAA failed in its oversight of
Boeing and its certification of the
aircraft,” the 18-month investigation
concluded. The Boeing 737 Max
has been grounded since March
2019 after two crashes, in Indonesia
and Ethiopia, caused the deaths of
346 people. The nearly 250-page
report found a series of failures in
the plane’s design, combined with
"Boeing
failed in
its design and
development of the
Max, and the FAA
failed in its oversight
of Boeing and its
certification of the
aircraft."
“regulatory capture”, an
overly close relationship between
Boeing and the federal regulator,
which compromised the process of
gaining safety certification.
“[The crashes] were the horrific
culmination of a series of faulty
technical assumptions by Boeing’s
engineers, a lack of transparency on
the part of Boeing’s management,
and grossly insufficient oversight by
the FAA.”
But the US aviation regulator, the
FAA, comes off almost as badly.
US representatives find it guilty of
“inherent conflicts of interest” and
“grossly insufficient oversight”.
More seriously, they say
the regulator was, in effect, in
Russia’s sovereign wealth fund has agreed to supply 100
million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik-V, to
Indian drug company Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, the fund
said, as Moscow speeds up plans to distribute its shot abroad.
The deal comes after the Russian Direct Investment Fund
(RDIF) reached agreements with Indian manufacturers to
produce 300 million doses of the vaccine in India, which is a
major consumer of Russian oil and arms.
Dr Reddy’s, one of India’s top pharmaceutical companies, will
carry out Phase III clinical trials of the vaccine in India, pending
regulatory approval, RDIF said in a statement.
Deliveries to India could begin in late 2020, it said, adding
this was subject to the completion of trials and the vaccine’s
registration by regulatory authorities in India.
Boeing’s pocket and that the FAA’s
management “overruled” its own
technical and safety experts “at the
behest of Boeing”.
Boeing admits “mistakes were
made” and it now wants to focus
on getting the 737-Max back in the
air, saying the “revised design” of
the aircraft has been “thoroughly
scrutinised”.
Regulators in Europe and the US
are relatively close to recertifying
the 737-Max. But this is one of the
biggest safety scandals facing a
private company in modern times.
And other investigations are
outstanding, including a giant lawsuit
from the relatives of those killed in
the second crash in Ethiopia.
Russia was the first country to license a novel coronavirus
vaccine before large-scale Phase III trials were complete,
stirring concern among scientists and doctors about the safety
and efficacy of the shot. The Phase I and II results had shown
World: Coronavirus cases
Confirmed: 30,037,107
Deaths: 945,097
Recovered: 21,804,247
NEWS in BRIEF
Potential sign of alien life detected on
inhospitable Venus
Scientists said they have detected in the harshly acidic clouds of Venus
a gas called phosphine that indicates microbes may inhabit Earth’s
inhospitable neighbor, a tantalizing sign of potential life beyond Earth.
The researchers did not discover actual life forms, but noted that on Earth
phosphine is produced by bacteria thriving in oxygen-starved environments.
The international scientific team first spotted the phosphine using the James
Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and confirmed it using the Atacama
Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile.
“I was very surprised – stunned, in fact,” said astronomer Jane Greaves
of Cardiff University in Wales, lead author of the research published in the
journal Nature Astronomy. The existence of extraterrestrial life long has
been one of the paramount questions of science. Scientists have used probes
and telescopes to seek “biosignatures” – indirect signs of life – on other
planets and moons in our solar system and beyond.
Yoshihide Suga elected Japan's new prime minister
succeeding Shinzo Abe
Japan's parliament has
elected Yoshihide Suga
as the country's new prime
minister, following the
resignation of Shinzo Abe.
After winning the leadership
of the governing party earlier
this week, Wednesday's vote
confirms the former Chief
Cabinet Secretary's new
position. A close ally of Abe, the new prime minister is expected to continue
his predecessor's policies. Shinzo Abe announced his resignation last month
citing ill health. Earlier on Wednesday, Abe held his final cabinet meeting
and told reporters he was proud of his achievements during his nearly eight
years in power.
California wildfire threatens Mount Wilson
Observatory and communications hub
Firefighters waged an
all-out ground and air
campaign on Tuesday to save
the famed Mount Wilson
Observatory and an adjacent
hub of communications
towers from a wildfire
roaring through rugged
peaks overlooking the
foothill suburbs north of
Los Angeles.
Flames from the blaze, dubbed the Bobcat Fire, crept to within just 500
feet (152 meters) of the evacuated observatory grounds during the day, said
David Dantic, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
The fire has scorched some 41,000 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains
since erupting on Sept. 6, belching smoke and ash over much of the greater
Los Angeles area for over a week and forcing evacuations of several
communities at the foot of the mountains.
The blaze was one of dozens of wildfires that broke out during the Labor
Day holiday weekend, stoked by a late-summer heat wave that baked much
of the U.S. West Coast.
Russia to sell 100m doses of COVID-19 vaccine to India
promise, G V Prasad, co-chairman of Dr Reddy’s, was cited in
the RDIF statement as saying.
“Sputnik V vaccine could provide a credible option in our fight
against COVID-19 in India,” he said.
There was no detail about the price of the vaccine but RDIF
has said previously it was not aiming at making a profit, just
covering costs. The agreement comes as India’s coronavirus
cases surged past 5 million on Wednesday, piling pressure on
hospitals grappling with unreliable supplies of oxygen that they
need to treat tens of thousands of critical patients.
India is only the second country in the world to cross the
grim milestone and said this week it is considering granting
an emergency authorisation for a vaccine, particularly for the
elderly and people in high-risk workplaces.