Lifeboat Foundation

AP Exclusive: The Chinese government is tightly controlling all COVID-19 research under orders from President Xi Jinping, internal documents obtained by The AP show. As a result, China’s search for the origins of the virus has been cloaked in secrecy. In a sign of how sensitive research has become, police stopped scientists and confiscated their samples at a mineshaft where the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus was found.

MOJIANG, China (AP) — Deep in the lush mountain valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harbored bats with the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus.

The area is of intense scientific interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. Yet for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.

Continue reading “China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins” »

A scary prediction of our near future when acquiesce to government authority will be tracked, much like a credit score, by central authorities intent on controlling our every action and thought.

Here’s a scary vision of our future, based on the Chinese social credit model, from Bertelsmann Stiggung, an independent foundation under private law based in Gütersloh, Germany with offices in Washington DC and Barcelona Spain.

For more, check out the Berttelsmann Stiggung blog, focused on the European Union.

Continue reading “Chinese Social Media Tracking System is a Vision of our Future” »

^The end of the year in cybersecurity mirrored the wider world by concluding in catastrophe: With more than 10000 people dying every day from Covid-19, a highly sophisticated electronic espionage campaign targeted U.S. government agencies and critical private industry, all customers of a single company: SolarWinds.

But there are some champions trying to make the online world a safer place. Our inaugural Forbes Cybersecurity Awards celebrate their achievements.

HONG KONG—China is aggressively advancing alternative theories about the source of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, muddying the waters as the World Health Organization prepares to launch a long-awaited investigation into the origins of the pandemic. In recent weeks, Chinese state media, often suggesting the virus came from outside China, have seized on a series of recent studies that show it was spreading outside the country earlier than first assumed. Government officials have also pushed the theory that the virus could have hitched a ride into the central Chinese city of Wuhan on frozen-food imports. After outbreaks in multiple Chinese cities in recent months including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and elsewhere, authorities pointed to frozen-food packaging as the potential origin. https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pushes-alternative-theori…1607445463

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Federal officials are disappointed to find that the monoclonal antibody drugs they’ve shipped across the country aren’t being used rapidly.

These drugs are designed to prevent people recently diagnosed with COVID-19 from ending up in the hospital. But hospitals are finding it cumbersome to use these medicines, which must be given by IV infusion. And some patients and doctors are lukewarm about drugs that have an uncertain benefit.

Doctors hope that as word gets out, more people will end up trying these drugs. They are provided to health systems free by the federal government, but it costs money to administer the medication. At first, Medicare set a price that would require many patients to pay a $60 copay, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services later found a way to waive that fee.

Continue reading “Low Demand For Antibody Drugs Against COVID-19” »

There are many reasons why hackers might want to get into a big tech company’s systems.

Big tech companies like Intel and Nvidia had their computers hacked, along with the departments of the US federal government, in the SolarWinds hack.

The Canadian government has launched a strategy that sees low-carbon and zero-emission hydrogen fuel technology as a key part of the nation’s path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The strategy is underpinned by a federal investment of CAD1.5 billion (USD1.2 billion) in a Low-carbon and Zero-emissions Fuels Fund to increase the production and use of low-carbon fuels, including hydrogen.

“Hydrogen’s moment has come. The economic and environmental opportunities for our workers and communities are real. There is global momentum, and Canada is harnessing it,” Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan said as he a launched the strategy on 16 December.

Hydrogen Strategy for Canada is designed to spur investment and partnerships to establish Canada as a global supplier of hydrogen and to increase domestic production. This will transform the Canadian energy sector, NRCan — the federal department of natural resources — said.

The money will go towards fuel cells powerful enough to fly a passenger plane.

And why it could take months more to discover how many other governments and companies have been breached.

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