Day: October 18, 2022

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African Union calls for ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray region

ADDIS ABABA— The call for a truce comes as the pan-African body African Union makes efforts to bring the warring sides to negotiating table.

The African Union’s chief has called for an “immediate, unconditional ceasefire” in the two-year-old conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.

An AU statement said Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat is “following with great concern reports of increased fighting in the Tigray Region”, and is calling for an immediate ceasefire and urging the resumption of humanitarian services.

“The Chairperson urges the Parties to recommit to dialogue as per their agreement,” added the statement.

Ethiopian government forces have been engaged in fighting with Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebels since November 2020.

The text refers to AU-led peace talks that are expected to take place in South Africa in what would be the first formal negotiations between the two sides since the start of the conflict in 2020.

No date has been fixed yet for the meeting after it was postponed, with no new date set, in early October for logistical reasons.

The negotiations will be led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU’s high representative for the Horn of Africa, supported by former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and former South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, according to an AU invitation letter.

While both sides have committed to participate in the peace effort, fighting has continued to rage across Tigray.

The AU call comes as it has been pushing for talks after fighting in Tigray renewed in August following months of relative calm as both sides accused the other of firing first and breaking a March truce.

Forces from neighboring Eritrea, allied with Ethiopia’s government, are again joining the fighting in what Tigrayan forces have described as a large-scale offensive.

The combat first broke out around Tigray’s southeastern border but has since spread along to areas west and north of the initial clashes, with the TPLF accusing Ethiopian and Eritrean forces of launching a massive joint offensive on Sept 1.

The Tigray region has been largely cut off from the world since the war broke out in 2020 with more than five million people without basic services including electricity, phone, internet, and banking. Medicines have run desperately low.

The region has been facing starvation as the aid supply has been disrupted due to the fighting.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

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UN Rights Chief: Fighting in Tigray Taking Toll on Civilians

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, says the escalating hostilities in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are taking a devastating toll on the civilian population and must stop. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

U.N. rights chief Volker Turk is alarmed at the latest surge of airstrikes launched on the Tigray region by the Ethiopian air force. He warns the attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure risks worsening what already is a catastrophic situation.

The High Commissioner’s spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, says numerous reports have been received since August 31 of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian objects due to airstrikes and artillery strikes in Tigray.

“On civilian casualties, because of the communication, disruptions and difficulty accessing the sites, we do not have a comprehensive figure,” said Shamdasani. “What we have managed to document from the 31st of August to date, there have reportedly been at least 31 civilians, including children killed and 73 others wounded in 14 separate airstrikes launched by the Ethiopian Airforce in the Tigray region, including in Mekelle, Shire, and other parts of Tigray. But, of course this is very likely to be extremely underestimated because of the constraints that I mentioned.”

Fighting between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan rebels resumed August 24, ending a five-month long humanitarian truce.

Since the conflict began nearly two years ago, millions of Tigrayans have been displaced. The United Nations estimates half a million people have died from conflict, hunger, disease, and lack of medical care. More than five million people need humanitarian assistance.

Shamdasani says the High Commissioner is concerned by mobilization exercises involving military reservists in Eritrea as well as the Tigrayan armed forces and the Ethiopian armed forces. She says the High Commissioner is appealing to all parties

to stop fighting and work towards a peaceful and lasting solution.

“Parties to the conflict must respect international human rights law and international humanitarian law by taking all feasible measures to protect civilians and civilian objects, and allowing humanitarian assistance to reach those in need…The High Commissioner stressed the need to support all efforts towards ensuring accountability for gross violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law committed during the conflict,” said Shamdasani.


Shamdasani says the Human Rights Office has raised its concerns with the Ethiopian government.

She says it has been urging the government to hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights violations in Tigray. Unfortunately, she notes, progress in this regard has been extremely slow.

Source: Voice of America

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Who Donated Wheat to Afghanistan — Ukraine or US?

As the cold season starts in landlocked Afghanistan, concerns are mounting about widespread hunger, particularly in the rugged parts of the country where the first snowfall blocks the roads.

This year there is hope that 30,000 metric tons of wheat coming from another war-torn country, Ukraine, will mitigate the hunger for some Afghans. The U.N. says hunger is nearly universal in Afghanistan with 97% of its population now living below the poverty line.

“Despite its own suffering in the face of Russia’s brutal invasion, Ukraine has donated 30,000 metric tons of grain through the WFP to alleviate Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis,” U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, tweeted last month.

The World Food Program says the wheat is being milled into flour in Turkey and will be then shipped to Pakistan from where it will be delivered to Afghanistan by trucks.

A spokesperson for WFP told VOA the aid shipment is funded by the U.S. “It is not a donation from Ukraine,” said the spokesperson, Annabel Symington.

VOA asked the State Department whether the U.S. offered any financial incentive to Ukraine for the wheat. The answer: No.

“The U.S. did not play a role in Ukraine’s decision to donate this 30,000 metric tons of wheat to Afghanistan and commends Ukraine for its generosity despite the trying circumstances imposed upon it by Russia’s unjust invasion,” the State Department spokesperson said.

Ukraine sells

In August, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced it was giving $68 million to the WFP to buy 150,000 metric tons of wheat from Ukraine to feed needy countries in Africa and Asia.

“Before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine was one of WFP’s top suppliers of grain and the fourth largest commercial exporter of wheat. Opening the Ukrainian market is a vital step forward in our emergency response,” USAID said in the statement.

Under a deal brokered by Turkey, Ukraine has exported more than 6.4 million metric tons of wheat and other food items in the past two months, according to the U.N.

The Ukrainian shipments have gone to different countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, where food prices have gone up markedly since Russia embarked on its war against Ukraine in February.

The U.S. has also provided aid to Ukrainian farmers to improve their agricultural products, such as spraying pesticides by drones.

“USAID is supporting the farmers of Ukraine in their efforts to continue feeding Ukrainians and feeding the world,” said Samantha Power, the USAID administrator, while visiting a farm in Ukraine on October 6.

In addition to humanitarian aid, the U.S. has given more than $17.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, according to figures from the State Department.

Why give credit to Ukraine?

While Ukraine has sold the wheat to WFP, why has the U.S. been praising Ukrainian “generosity” and “donation” rather than claiming credit for its own financial sponsorship of the wheat aid to Afghanistan?

“Ukraine is the source of this food,” James S. Gilmore, a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told VOA. “The goal here is to allow Ukraine to engage in international commerce. And, once that’s permitted, over top of this war, then I do think that the American people who are funding it and financing it ought to be given credit for that.”

Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, said the U.S. might have preferred to give credit to Ukraine in order to blunt Russia’s onslaught.

“At the moment, Russia is on the diplomatic offensive in among many developing nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, scoring points by saying that the U.S. has been imposing various conditionalities on aid and its double standards, etc. And the U.S. is very keen that Ukraine, with which it is allied, is seen in a more positive light among those developing countries,” de Waal told VOA.

Source: Voice of America

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SIT Rolos opens its Machine Intelligence Platform to academia and business to accelerate the research

SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, Oct. 18, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SIT Rolos announced today that it would bring research to a new level by opening its Machine Intelligence (MI) Platform to all scientific groups. Any researcher from academia or business can now configure, run and collaborate with others on their computational research project through Rolos Platform. Thanks to a user-friendly interface, no specific IT knowledge is required to use the Platform.

Rolos Platform addresses two major problems in research: infrastructure setup and teamwork. First, it provides premade infrastructure ready for research tasks with all the necessary resources out of the box – Graphics Processor Unit (GPU), Central Processing Unit (CPU), and storage. Researchers, therefore, no longer need to spend time on infrastructure setup and resource allocation. On the other hand, the Platform also ensures collaboration on a project – code and data versioning control, group editing, and consistent changes for all project participants.

Rolos allows its users to build their computational setups using the available cloud, on-premise servers, and High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters and save costs on running simulation experiments. SIT Rolos can also provide its own resources from the cloud infrastructure in SIT data centers.

Rolos Platform is available through two types of deployments:

  • as a SaaS solution (Software as a Service) in Rolos Cloud, that can be accessed at http://my.rolos.com; or
  • as an on-premises installation on the customer’s hardware cluster that provides the full stack of software to create a computational research lab.

In the words of Konstantin Novoselov, Nobel Prize Winner, Professor of Physics at the National University of Singapore, Rolos Platform is used “to unify data from different scientists, unleash the power of Big Data, and achieve exponential progress in research projects.”

Rolos Platform features include:

  • Computing and storage resources automatic provisioning
  • Research environment management
  • A workflow manager
  • An Interactive Papers publishing module

Join the introduction to Rolos Machine Intelligence Platform for Computation and Data Management on October 18 at 10 am CEST: https://web.sit.org/simplify-and-accelerate-research-lifecycle-rolos-webinar-oct-2022

During the webinar, you will see an overview of the Platform’s essential features and deep dive into the main current research scenarios.

About SIT Rolos

SIT Rolos is part of the Schaffhausen Institute of Technology (SIT) group. SIT Rolos provides a Machine Intelligence Platform with consulting and applications for academia and business. The company has strong expertise in Machine Intelligence and Data Science in various application areas, including Scientific Research, Business Analytics, Professional Sports, Driverless Mobility, Robotics, and others.

SIT Rolos is a global company headquartered in Switzerland with a presence in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Spain, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey.

Get in touch today and see how we can help you reach your business goals: https://rolos.com/about/

Natalia Tashkeeva
SIT VP of communications & events
+65 9643 9080 | nt@sit.org

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bioLytical Laboratories Inc. receives WHO PQ for its iStatis COVID-19 Antigen Home Test

bioLytical Laboratories Inc. announced its immediate entry into the African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and South American markets with its COVID-19 antigen self-test on its new lateral flow platform, iStatis

iStatis COVID-19 Antigen Home Test

iStatis COVID-19 Antigen Home Test Components

  • From the makers of INSTI®, bioLytical launches a new platform, iStatis, created to ensure every person in the world has access to reliable testing
  • bioLytical receives eligibility for its self-test, the iStatis COVID-19 Antigen Home Test, for international, regional, and national procurement agencies for immediate entry into the African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and South American markets
  • The test is portable and can be performed in a multitude of settings with easy-to-understand results
  • Test performance in clinical studies demonstrated high accuracy, with industry-leading sensitivity and specificity
  • bioLytical’s quality system is MDSAP: ISO 13485 certified

RICHMOND, British Columbia, Oct. 18, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — bioLytical Laboratories Inc. (“bioLytical”), a global leader in rapid in-vitro medical diagnostics, announced it has received its WHO PQ for its self-test, the iStatis COVID-19 Antigen Home Test, allowing its immediate entry into international markets.

Building on its innovative INSTI® testing platform, bioLytical launched iStatis to continue creating reliable access to testing. With new lateral flow technology in its portfolio, bioLytical can reach more people, creating equitable access to a rapid COVID-19 antigen self-test that provides peace of mind with industry-leading accuracy.

“We are excited to announce iStatis in additional global markets after receiving our WHO PQ with our COVID-19 rapid antigen self-test,” said Rob Mackie, Chief Executive Officer of bioLytical. “With various global regions with a low supply of high-quality tests, we saw an opportunity to provide rapid tests to more markets. We are proud to work with the WHO to help underserved markets and to open up equitable testing access globally.”

With the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, testing will continue to play an integral role in the fight against COVID-19 as an extra layer of defense to keep communities safe. With varying transmission levels in different global regions, the iStatis COVID-19 antigen self-test will help create certainty as a tool for identifying infection. Allowing individuals to test at home helps reduce the burden on busy medical facilities. With its high accuracy, portability, and ease of use, bioLytical is working to create global access for everyone who needs a rapid test with iStatis.

bioLytical will manufacture the iStatis COVID-19 self-tests in its MDSAP: ISO 13485-certified facility in Richmond, British Columbia. As a global leader in ultra-rapid infectious disease diagnostics, bioLytical is working to ensure our iStatis test kits are available across international markets such as Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. The iStatis COVID-19 Antigen Home Test also has received Health Canada authorization and its CE Mark for self-testing across Canada and Europe.

bioLytical Laboratories Inc. is a privately-owned Canadian company focused on the research, development, and commercialization of rapid in-vitro medical diagnostics using its proprietary INSTI® technology platform and its lateral flow line iStatis. bioLytical has won several local and industry awards, including B.C. Exporter of the Year in 2019. We have been named Lifesciences B.C.’s Growth Stage Med Tech Company of the Year and are featured on B.C.’s Fastest-Growing Companies for six years in a row, including the Globe and Mail’s Fastest Growing Companies list in 2020. bioLytical moved to a significantly larger, state-of-the-art facility in Richmond, B.C., in 2020 to accommodate the extraordinary growth achieved through our team. Providing accurate results in one minute or less, the INSTI® range includes the INSTI® HIV-1/HIV-2 Antibody Test, INSTI® Multiplex HIV Syphilis Ab Test, INSTI® HIV Self Test, INSTI® Covid-19 Antibody Test, and the INSTI® HCV Antibody Test. bioLytical sells its products in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. In 2022, bioLytical launched iStatis, its new lateral flow testing platform to create additional access to testing worldwide.

By delivering accurate results in real-time, INSTI® and iStatis generate meaningful outcomes for medical professionals, patients, and public health organizations worldwide and is a key partner in tackling some of the world’s most severe healthcare challenges. Please visit www.istatis.com and www.insti.com and www.biolytical.com for more information.

References
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-2019-nCoV-SurveillanceGuidance-2022.1

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1f99cf04-8303-4204-8a66-fe352eb5f47e

Media Contact
Communications at bioLytical
press@biolytical.com
+1-778-238-9340
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Mosa Meat Scaling Beef Cultivation to Industrial Production Levels

Recent expansion to 77,000 sq ft. makes Mosa Meat the largest cultivated meat campus in the world.

Maastricht, The Netherlands, Oct. 18, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mosa Meat, a leader in the cultivated meat space that grows beef directly from animal cells, and unveiled the first cultivated hamburger in 2013, has announced the next step in the scale up of the company’s cultivated beef production facilities.

A new industrial production development center is being developed close to Mosa Meat’s existing pilot facility in Maastricht. After demonstrating the beef cultivation process at pilot scale, Mosa Meat is now ready for the next phase of expansion, housing industrial-size production lines and enabling larger production quantities of beef.

“We’ve expanded our space by 30,000 square feet in our next phase, which brings Mosa Meat’s total footprint to over 77,000 square feet,” shared Maarten Bosch, Mosa Meat’s CEO. “This makes us the largest cultivated meat campus in the world, and provides a solid foundation for our European and global commercialisation plans.”

Global meat consumption is projected to grow more than 40% by 2030, and Mosa Meat is part of a growing global movement to transform the way meat is produced. Beef specifically, is the protein with the highest carbon footprint, which is why Mosa Meat has focused on it since the company was founded in 2016.

Mosa Meat has grown to over 160 employees, with over 80 scientists and the largest number of PhDs in the industry in just a few years’ time. The production team has grown five-fold in the last three months to 15 members. Simultaneously the company has also expanded its footprint at existing locations, including operations at Brightlands and the current pilot facility in Maastricht, where R&D capacity continues to grow. Together, this brings Mosa Meat one step closer towards commercialisation.

Mosa Meat plans to announce the launch of its industrial production development center in 2023.

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About Mosa Meat

Mosa Meat is a global food technology company pioneering a cleaner, kinder way of making real beef. Our founders introduced the world’s first cultivated beef hamburger in 2013, by growing it directly from cow cells. Founded in 2016, Mosa Meat is now scaling up production of the same beef that people love, but in a way that is better for people, animals, and the planet. A diverse and growing team of food-loving problem-solvers, we are united in our mission to fundamentally reshape the global food system. Headquartered in Maastricht, The Netherlands, Mosa Meat is a privately held company backed by Blue Horizon, M Ventures, Bell Food Group, Nutreco, Mitsubishi Corporation, Leonardo DiCaprio and other high-caliber investors.

Follow Mosa Meat on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram or visit mosameat.com to learn more about why people #cravechange. Access the Mosa Meat press kit here.

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Tim van de Rijdt
Mosa Meat
press@mosameat.com

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