MOGADISHU, Somalia

Through Turkish sponsorship, students, Turks and Somalis came out in large numbers Wednesday to mark National Forestation Day by planting trees in the capital of arid Somalia.

“We celebrated National Forestation Day in Mogadishu with the support of @tikasomalia and with the participation of Maarif Schools, Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital and Faculty of Health Sciences. Planted tree saplings in order to build a green future for our world,” the Turkish Embassy in Mogadishu said in a post on its Facebook page.

According to a statement by the UN, Somalia generally has an arid to semi-arid climate. Rainfall in the country is low and has high spatial and temporal variability.

The terrain of Somalia consists of mainly arid and semi-arid plateaus, plains and highlands. Arid and semi-arid lands make up more than 80% of Somalia’s landmass.

The initiative by the Turkish people was aimed at rehabilitating the ecosystem to bring back the tree population in the country, where the few trees that are available have been mostly felled through deforestation for firewood, shelter and fencing./aa

ANKARA(AA)

Investment demand in Turkey this January to September was 13% higher than the same period last year, the country’s industry and technology minister said on Thursday.

At 73%, the manufacturing sector accounted for the lion’s share of the demand, Mustafa Varank said on Twitter.

“Confidence in Turkey’s present and future is increasing,” he said.

Some 13% of the investments are in the energy sector, followed by the services industry at 10%, and agriculture and mining with 2% each.

The Turkish Coast Guard rescued at least 21 asylum seekers who were pushed back by Greek authorities into Turkish waters off the Aegean coast, officials said Wednesday.

Acting on an intelligence tip that a life-boat was stranded off the coast of Kusadasi in the Aydin province, the Turkish Coast Guard launched a search operation to rescue the asylum seekers.

After routine checks, the asylum seekers were transferred to the provincial migration authority.

Turkey has been a key transit point for asylum seekers wanting to cross to Europe to start new lives, especially those fleeing war and persecution./aa

 The EU Wednesday proposed to build a “European Health Union” to protect European citizens from health risks and crises, including pandemics such as COVID-19. 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced: “Our aim is to protect the health of all European citizens. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the need for more coordination in the EU, more resilient health systems, and better preparation for future crises.

“We are changing the way we address cross-border health threats. Today, we start building a European Health Union, to protect citizens with high quality care in a crisis, and equip the Union and its Member States to prevent and manage health emergencies that affect the whole of Europe,” she added.

According to the new proposal, the EU will further strengthen its preparedness against the pandemic.

“EU health crisis and pandemic preparedness plan and recommendations will be developed for the adoption of plans at national levels, coupled with comprehensive and transparent frameworks for reporting and auditing,” said the EU in a press release.

“The preparation of national plans would be supported by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and other EU agencies. The plans would be audited and stress tested by the Commission and EU agencies,” it added.

The EU member states will also improve data sharing in areas such as hospital bed availability, specialized treatment, intensive care capacity, and number of medically trained staff.

“The declaration of an EU emergency situation would trigger increased coordination and allow for the development, stockpiling and procurement of crisis relevant products,” the EU said.

The EU Commission is also preparing to set out main elements of Health Emergency Response Authority (HERA) which will be presented by the end of 2021.

Contract for 200M vaccine doses approved

In a separate statement, the EU announced approval of a contract with the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech and Pfizer, which provides for the initial procurement of 200 million doses on behalf of all EU member states. In addition, the EU will have an option to further request 100 million more doses once the vaccine proves to be safe and effective against COVID-19.

“Member States can decide to donate the vaccine to lower and middle-income countries or to re-direct it to other European countries,” it added.

“With this fourth contract we are now consolidating an extremely solid vaccine candidate portfolio, most of them in advanced trials phase. Once authorised, they will be quickly deployed and bring us closer to a sustainable solution of the pandemic,” said von der Leyen in the statement.

“Today's agreement follows the encouraging first indications from the clinical trial results and is further evidence of our commitment to putting more Europe in the area of health,” said Stella Kyriakides, the commissioner for health and food safety.

“It is a very telling example of what the EU can achieve when working together, as a Union, and a case in point of what a future European Health Union will be able to deliver,” she added.

The US and German pharmaceutical giants announced Monday that their vaccine candidate is 90% effective against COVID-19.

The companies said they will submit the vaccine candidate to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization by the third week of this month.

The 27-member bloc has also signed supply deals with AstraZeneca, Sanofi, and Johnson & Johnson for their potential COVID-19 shots.

There are currently more than 100 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 around the world but none has been approved yet for general use./aa

Ronald Klain, who oversaw the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak, will be President-elect Joe Biden’s White House chief of staff, HuffPost confirmed with Biden’s campaign.

Klain, a longtime Biden adviser who served as his vice presidential chief of staff from 2009 to 2011, has long been rumored as a top contender for the position. He played a lead role in Biden’s campaign, advising him on the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery.

The chief of staff is one of the most important positions in the White House. Klain will oversee the hiring and management of all White House personnel, be responsible for the president’s daily meetings and manage negotiations with Congress. The news was first reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Wednesday evening.

Biden emphasized Klain’s experience handling the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis as well as the the Ebola health crisis as his chief qualifications for the job.

“Ron has been invaluable to me over the many years that we have worked together, including as we rescued the American economy from one of the worst downturns in our history in 2009 and later overcame a daunting public health emergency in 2014,” Biden said in a statement. “His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again.”

Klain has had a long career in the public and private sector. He worked as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Byron White before entering politics. He worked for now-Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the 1980s and 1990s, then joined Bill Clinton’s presidential administration and oversaw his judicial nominations — including that of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He served as chief of staff for former Vice President Al Gore and Attorney General Janet Reno and had a stint at the official campaign arm for Senate Democrats. He has advised presidential nominees, including John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Biden, for more than a decade.

More recently, he’s been the top lawyer at a D.C.-based venture capital firm for startups called Revolution.

Notably, Klain is a consensus pick among Democrats. A longtime establishment Democratic aide, he is a welcome figure to many on the left wing of the party, who see him as the best option out of Biden’s inner circle.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) praised Biden’s choice Wednesday on Twitter, calling him a “superb choice for Chief of Staff.”

“He understands the magnitude of the health and economic crisis and he has the experience to lead this next administration through it,” Warren tweeted. “Ron has earned trust all across the entire Democratic Party.”

Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, a group that works to elect progressives to Congress, said previously that he hoped Klain would get the job, noting that Klain understood the leftward shift within the party.

“As Klain said himself in the primary, the party consensus has moved into a new era,” Shahid tweeted in October, a sentiment echoed by other progressive voices.

As the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalization rates hit record highs in the United States, the Biden administration has emphasized Klain’s background in handling infectious diseases.

Klain was tapped to coordinate the United States’ response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and he set up the White House pandemic office a year later. The Trump administration disbanded the office in 2018 during a reorganization under former national security adviser John Bolton.

Klain warned back in 2017 that the Trump administration was unprepared to handle a deadly infectious disease, and he continued to emphasize afterward that Trump’s policies and views “would lead to the loss of many lives in the event of an epidemic.”

In March, when it was clear that Biden would be the Democratic presidential nominee, Klain recorded a viral video in front of a whiteboard explaining how Trump had bungled the United States’ response to the public health crisis. The Trump campaign zeroed in on Klain, attempting to discredit him.

“I look forward to helping him and the Vice President-elect assemble a talented and diverse team to work in the White House, as we tackle their ambitious agenda for change, and seek to heal the divides in our country,” Klain said in a statement.

Charges have been filed against a 19-year-old man who prosecutors allege purchased and supplied the gun used by 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in the fatal shootings of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Dominick Black, of Kenosha, faces two felony counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor, causing death, according to a criminal complaint filed in Kenosha County Circuit Court. If he's found guilty, he faces up to 6 years in prison per count.

When reached by NBC News, Black’s attorney declined to comment on his client’s case at this time.

The complaint says Black told authorities that over the summer he received money for the Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifle from Rittenhouse, his friend, who was too young to have legally purchased the weapon himself.

Rittenhouse is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide and other charges after fatally shooting two men and injuring a third during a protest on Aug. 25 over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. While Rittenhouse admitted to the shootings, his lawyers claim he acted in self-defense.

According to the criminal complaint against Black, the weapon used in the shootings was purchased on May 1 at the Wisconsin gun store Ladysmith Ace Home Center by Black, who prosecutors claim was “aware” Rittenhouse could not have made the purchase himself. Since Rittenhouse was an Illinois resident he also did not have an Illinois Firearm Owner Identification card, so the pair agreed to have the weapon stored at Black’s stepfather’s house in Kenosha, the complaint says.

On Aug. 23, black Kenosha resident Jacob Blake was shot 7 times in the back by a white police officer. Protesters took to the streets after a video of the shooting began circulating online.

According to the criminal complaint, Black enlisted the help of Rittenhouse in guarding the Kenosha car dealership Car Source from property damage and looting. The complaint stated Black “volunteered to go out after curfew” and “asked Mr. Rittenhouse to join him.”

In interviews, the owner of Car Source has denied requesting help from either Black or Rittenhouse in protecting his dealership during the protests.

The pair went to Black’s stepfather’s house on Aug. 25, the complaint says, where Black gave Rittenhouse the gun. Hours later, Rittenhouse would allegedly use that gun to fatally shoot Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and injure a third, Gaige Grosskreutz, during the protests.

The shootings were captured on video and shared on social media.

At an initial court appearance via video on Monday, Black’s attorney, Robert Keller, said his client —who’s being held in Kenosha County Jail — lives with his mother in Kenosha and has no criminal history. Court Commissioner Loren Keating set Black’s bail at $2,500 and also ordered Black to have no contact with Rittenhouse or Gaige Grosskreutz, who was allegedly shot in the arm by Rittenhouse.

In that same court appearance, Rittenhouse —who’s also held at Kenosha County Jail — had his bail set to $2 million.

In addition to facing up to 12 years in prison, Black faces fines of up to $20,000 for both Class H felonies, according to the criminal complaint. He’s due back in court Nov. 19./NBC

Canadian drug company Medicago said Tuesday it developed a vaccine that stimulates antibody and cellular immune responses against COVID-19 in 100% of trial participants.

The results prompted optimism from the Quebec-based company.

“They’re even better than we had hoped,” Nathalie Landry, vice president of Medicago’s scientific and medical affairs, said in a news release. “When we talk about neutralizing responses, we say it’s quite remarkable, especially when we compare with a subject that recovered from the disease.”

But there will be no lineups to receive the vaccine anytime soon since it is phase 1 of 3 that the vaccine must be subjected to before being made available to the public, hopefully next year, the company said.

The Canadian government ordered 76 million doses of the vaccine should it prove effective and provided $173 million for research to Medicago.

Two doses of the adjuvanted vaccine “induced robust neutralizing antibody and cellular immune responses which is encouraging and support further clinical evaluation,” Landry said, explaining that antibodies “neutralize the virus.”

An adjuvant is an ingredient used in some vaccines that helps create a stronger immune response.

When the adjuvant used in GlaxoSmithKline trial was added to their vaccine, and two doses were administered in the phase 1 to the 180 adults aged 18-to 55, the antibodies that protect against the coronavirus rose to levels that exceeded those in people who recovered from the disease, Landry said.

The dosage of the adjuvanted vaccine administered was small and that means the vaccine can be produced in larger quantities.

“We need only 3.75 micrograms to get a very significant level of antibody and cellular immune responses,” Landry said.

The first phase also showed that participants had no adverse reactions to the vaccine.

Unlike most vaccines going through trials with other pharmaceutical firms, the Medicago product is plant-based and uses coronavirus-like particles to prompt an immune response without subjecting participants to an actual dose of the virus.

The antigen is manufactured by the introduction to the plant of a genetic code which stimulates the plant to create it as “if it was its own,” Landry said.

Phase 2 will involve more participants in a wider range of age groups, 18 to 64. Provided the vaccine passes the second stage hurdle, the final phase 3 will involve 30,000 participants from all across the world.

“Why we need to go global is that to prove the efficacy of the vaccine, you need to go in regions where the virus is circulating,” Landry said.

As of Tuesday, Canada had 272,034 coronavirus cases and 10,620 deaths, according to figures from US-based Johns Hopkins University, which keeps a worldwide running total.

The virus has surged recently, with Ontario, Canada’s most populated province, experiencing a record high of 1,388 infections Tuesday.

Officials in the 10 provinces are considering reintroducing measures or instituting new restrictions to curtail the spread of the virus./aa