NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Moderna cut its 2021 forecast for Covid-19 vaccine deliveries on Thursday, pushing back some doses to next year and sending shares sharply lower. The biotech company, which has soared to prominence this year on the success of its coronavirus vaccine, cited longer delivery times for international shipments. Other factors concern “temporary” impacts associated with the ramp up of production, said Moderna, adding that some shipments would lapse until early […]
Life
HPV vaccines ‘substantially’ reduce cervical cancer risk: study
PARIS, France (AFP) — Cervical cancer cases plummeted among British women who received a vaccination against the human papillomavirus, according to a study published Thursday. In comparing cervical cancer and precancer rates before and after an HPV immunization program was introduced in England in 2008, the researchers found a “substantial reduction”, especially among the youngest women to have received the jab, according to results published in The Lancet medical journal. “Our study provides the first […]
Mexican president slams COP26 ‘hypocrisy’
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Wednesday slammed participants in a major UN climate summit for their “hypocrisy,” accusing them of failing to address the root causes of the crisis and pointing to their use of private jets. The world’s top business and political figures are gathered in Glasgow this week for COP26, which is aimed at forging an ambitious new climate agreement. But Mexico’s leftist leader — also known […]
Oil-rich UAE to burn waste to make power
by Carolyn Lamboley Agence France-Presse SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates (AFP) – With rubbish piling up in the desert, the United Arab Emirates has found a new way to get rid of its trash — incinerators that will turn it into electricity. The UAE, one of the world’s top oil exporters, is building the Gulf region’s first waste-to-power plants to ease its chronic trash problem and, at the same time, its reliance on gas-fuelled electricity stations. Green […]
Bulgaria coal miners brace for ‘disaster’ as phaseout looms
by Rossen BOSSEV Agence France-Presse STARA ZAGORA, Bulgaria (AFP) – Nikolay Dinev, 34, has worked as a coal miner for 12 years but now faces an uncertain future as an EU-wide exit from coal is being discussed at the UN’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. “It will be a disaster… The closure is inevitable,” Dinev told AFP on the outskirts of the Maritsa East complex in central Bulgaria. Bulgaria — which joined the EU in […]
Coal workers feel pain of France’s climate goals
by Estelle EMONET Agence France-Presse GARDANNE, France (AFP) – The Gardanne smokestack is the highest in France at 295 metres (975 feet) but the mood at the power station beneath the once-proud chimney has reached an all-time low. Gardanne is one of the last remaining French coal-fired stations. Ever since the government announced the closure of its coal plants three years ago to help meet climate goals, anger and despair has spread across this community of […]
Damaged Amazon rainforest teetering on the brink
by Joshua Howat Berger Agence France-Presse SAO FELIX DO XINGU, Brazil (AFP) – Something is wrong. Holed up in her lab, Brazilian atmospheric chemist Luciana Gatti crunches her numbers again and again, thinking there is a mistake. But the same bleak conclusion keeps popping up on her screen: the Amazon, the world’s biggest rainforest — the “lungs of the Earth,” the “green ocean,” the thing humanity is counting on to inhale our pollution and save us […]
Planet vs people as Panama’s mangroves are turned into coal
by Moises AVILA Agence France-Presse Elieser Rodriguez emerges blackened from the thick smoke of burning pyres slowly transforming the limbs of mangroves into charcoal — a livelihood much maligned by environmental and climate campaigners in Panama. He says he has no other choice for a living. “This is the daily survival of my family, of my children, of my wife,” Rodriguez told AFP in El Espave, a town about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Panama […]
For Stella McCartney, fashion must ditch leather or die trying
by Jordi ZAMORA Agence France-Presse GLASGOW, United Kingdom (AFP) – The fashion industry must prepare to eliminate waste and take radical stances such as ditching animal leather altogether, said British designer Stella McCartney. In an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the UN climate summit in Glasgow Wednesday, McCartney said that fashion houses must “swap out bad business with good business” for the sake of the planet. “Sadly we are one of the most […]
WHO grants India’s Covaxin jab emergency approval
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The World Health Organization on Wednesday issued an emergency use listing for the India-made Covaxin vaccine, in a move expected to increase Covid-19 jabs available in poor countries. The vaccine, made by India’s Bharat Biotech and with a 78-percent efficacy rate after two doses over a month “is extremely suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements,” the UN body said. Covaxin is the first vaccine completely developed […]
Insulin maker Novo Nordisk raises full-year targets
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) — Danish pharmaceuticals group Novo Nordisk, the world’s leading insulin maker, said Wednesday it is raising its full-year profit targets after sales of its anti-obesity and diabetics treatments boosted its bottom line in the third quarter. Novo Nordisk said in a statement that net profit rose by 18 percent to 12.119 billion kroner (1.6 billion euros, $1.9 billion) in the period from July to September on a 15-precent increase in sales to […]
US father of cognitive therapy dies at 100
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck, considered the father of cognitive therapy — an approach developed in the 1960s that revolutionized the field of psychotherapy — died Monday at age 100. He died at his home in Philadelphia, according to a statement from his daughter Judith Beck, the president of the Beck Institute, an organization of thousands of professionals practicing cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. “My father dedicated his life to […]





