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US imposes restrictions on Chinese computer chip manufacturer https://ift.tt/33bFlRl

The United States has placed new sanctions on exports to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China's maker of computer chips. According to a report by South China Morning Post, the US Department of Commerce had imposed new restrictions on exports to SMIC, citing the "unacceptable risk" its products posed if they were used by the Chinese military.

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Vaccine nationalism will not shorten COVID pandemic, warns WHO chief https://ift.tt/3oqykEN

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called for solidarity in the rollout of future coronavirus vaccines. In a video address at the opening of the three-day World Health Summit in Berlin, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that it was natural for the countries to want to protect their own citizens first but, he urged, "we must also use it effectively". 

Black doctor dies of COVID-19 after racist treatment complaints https://ift.tt/3nR3RiK

A Black doctor who died battling COVID-19 complained of racist medical care in widely shared social media posts days before her death, prompting an Indiana hospital system to promise a “full external review" into her treatment.

New top story from Time: Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine Works for Teens, According to a New Study

https://ift.tt/39vkf3g Pfizer-BioNTech says their COVID-19 vaccine is 100% efficacious in protecting adolescents aged 12 to 15 years from COVID-19 disease. On March 31, the companies released a statement summarizing the results of their study of the safety and efficacy of their vaccine, which is already authorized in the U.S. and elsewhere for use in adults 16 years or older, in this younger age group. The results have been highly anticipated as state and local leaders—not to mention parents—are to keen send teens back to in-person school; this study suggests a path towards a return to pre-pandemic learning conditions, in which students won’t spread COVID-19 in the classroom. The trial involved 2,260 adolescents 12 to 15 years old, who were randomly assigned to get two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine or two doses of placebo. During the study, which began earlier this year, 18 teens developed COVID-19, all of them in the placebo group. The researchers found that the levels ...

New top story from Time: The Livestream Show Will Go On. How COVID Has Changed Live Music—Forever

https://ift.tt/3wlsGrR For 383 days and counting, Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern have stuck to a routine. At 1:00 p.m., they suit up—sometimes in sweatpants, sometimes in tropical-print shirts and funky robes—and descend to the living room of their Miami home, flick on the cameras for their livestreams to Instagram, Facebook and Twitch , and begin playing a DJ set. The pair, better known as Grammy-nominated electronic act Sofi Tukker , have not missed a day, although sometimes they ask their friends to guest star instead. The livestream sessions average thousands of viewers. There’s an always-on Zoom room where their fans, who call themselves the Freak Fam, congregate. The Freak Fam—an eclectic, international bunch—have set up their own Discord server and an Instagram account, and talk often on the Facebook group and Twitch chat associated with Sofi Tukker, congregating as a community outside of the stream. Sofi Tukker livestream viewers have met up, started dating, ...

New top story from Time: The Number of Journalists Murdered for Their Work Doubled in 2020

https://ift.tt/34vZ6mY The number of journalists killed in retaliation for their work more than doubled in 2020, a year when more news people than ever were jailed by authoritarian governments, according to new figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists . Twenty-one journalists were murdered because of their work—up from 10 the previous year, and the nonprofit advocacy group said it was investigating the circumstances of 15 other deaths. All told, between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15, at least 30 journalists were killed around the world, CPJ reports. Criminal groups were most often suspected in the deaths, notably in Mexico. Politics was the most dangerous beat. The three journalists killed in combat—all in Syria, apparently from Russian air strikes—was the lowest number since 2000. Earlier this month, the Committee to Protect Journalists released its annual tally of jailed journalists, which at 274 worldwide was the highest in the nearly three-decade history of that censu...

New top story from Time: At Thanksgiving, Biden Seeks Unity as Trump Stokes Fading Embers of a Campaign

https://ift.tt/3q4cU1i WILMINGTON, Del. — On a day of grace and grievance, President-elect Joe Biden summoned Americans to join in common purpose against the coronavirus pandemic and their political divisions while the man he will replace stoked the fading embers of his campaign to “turn the election over.” Biden, in a Thanksgiving-eve address to the nation, put the surging pandemic front and center, pledging to tap the “vast powers” of the federal government and to “change the course of the disease” once in office. But for that to work, he said, Americans must step up for their own safety and that of their fellow citizens. “I know the country has grown weary of the fight,” Biden said Wednesday. “We need to remember we’re at war with the virus, not with one another. Not with each other.” President Donald Trump, who has scarcely mentioned the pandemic in recent days even as it has achieved record heights, remained fixated on his election defeat. He sent his lawyer Rudy ...

New top story from Time: Pfizer-BioNTech Have Started Testing Their COVID-19 Vaccine in Children Under 12

https://ift.tt/3vWOQjL Alejandra and Marisol Gerardo are nine years old but already making a little bit of history. The twin sisters are among the first young children to get vaccinated with a COVID-19 shot in Pfizer-BioNTech’s study of its vaccine in kids under age 12. Alejandra and Marisol had their blood drawn in the morning on March 24, then got their first dose of the two-dose vaccine later that afternoon. “Their primary concern was, ‘is it going to hurt,’” says their father, Dr. Charles Gerardo, chief of emergency medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. “They’re not too worried about the long term side effects; they’re looking at the moment, not the future.” Testing the vaccine in younger children will answer critical questions about how much immunity the shots can provide, and potentially give parents and education officials more confidence in re-opening schools. While it appears that younger children don’t get as sick with COVID-19 as older teens and adult...

New top story from Time: I Found a Rainbow At the End of My Hunt For a Vaccine Appointment

https://ift.tt/3dt1i2v A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter. Sign up here to receive a new edition every Sunday. CHASING RAINBOWS (AND VACCINES) We humans are notoriously unreliable, superstitious narrators, always scanning the horizon for signs that validate what our hearts have already told us. Take me, for example. I keep telling people I was vaccinated at Hogwarts’ Manhattan campus under the waxing moon (it was a gibbous moon to be exact). How auspicious! Ok, so my COVID-vax site was really The City College of New York . But stepping through its big old gothic gates to receive a blessing of science was wondrous, maybe a little spiritual. There was even a rainbow-y halo around that big moon, another lucky omen if you’re hungry for such things. I started digging for lore on moons and rainbows and learned that the physics of rainbows doesn’t detract from the mythical place they have in our cultural imaginations. In fact ...

New coronavirus variant identified in UK; London to be put under highest level of restrictions https://ift.tt/3nkjcbp

A new variant of the novel coronavirus has been identified as responsible for 'faster spread' of the infection in the United Kingdom, the UK government said on Monday. This comes amid a very sharp spike in COVID-19 cases in London and its surrounding areas. According to the details, Britain's capital will now be placed under the highest level of coronavirus restrictions from Wednesday. Health Secretary Matt Hancock told MPs in the House of Commons that "swift and decisive action" was needed as the doubling rate of the deadly virus has hit just seven days in many of these areas.

New top story from Time: The Heartbreak and Horror of Being an EMT During the Pandemic—and Why I’m Still Working

https://ift.tt/3cC9fTO When COVID-19 erupted in New York City last spring , it forced me to make a decision as to whether or not I would work the disaster as an emergency medical technician. Unlike the thousands of New York City EMTs and paramedics who ride on ambulances for the city, private transport companies and hospitals, as a volunteer EMT I rode for free, so I had a choice about what part I would play in the pandemic. When calls for “sick-fever-cough” patients started to infiltrate the city’s 911 system last March, every first responder I know was terrified. I was, too. One night my EMT partner and I sat in my car after a tour and had a long existential conversation. Was volunteering to work as EMTs during a lethal contagion the stupidest thing we could do? Or was it the most self-sacrificing? In the end I decided to ride. I was far from the only rescuer who wanted to be of service when crisis struck. An army of almost 90,000 health care workers volunteered to ste...