Those making and knowingly using fake vaccination certificates in Germany could soon face up to five years behind bars, as the country’s likely future coalition government is looking to tighten the screws.
Coming under the same category are also fake test results and Covid recovery certificates, with similar penalties for the counterfeiters and the holders. Everything envisaged in the new guidelines was drafted by the Social Democrats, along with the Free Democratic and Green Parties. The three are currently in coalition talks and expected to form a new government as early as next week.
The German Parliament will decide on the regulations this Thursday, though a draft has already been seen by the media outlet DPA.
According to German media, the manufacturing and sale of fake certificates has become a booming black-market industry in the country. In just one such case reported by Der Spiegel in late October, a counterfeiter working at a pharmacy in Munich and her accomplice had churned out more than 500 fake digital certificates in the span of one month, raking in €350 for each one sold.
Meanwhile, Berlin authorities are planning to further ramp up restrictions in the city, where, starting Monday, having either a vaccination or recovery certificate is a must to enter restaurants, cinemas, theaters, museums, galleries, swimming pools, gyms, as well as hairdressers and beauty salons. On Tuesday, Berlin Mayor Michael Müller confirmed that authorities want to “have an additional instrument” to contain the spread of the virus. However, he declined to elaborate on what the new measures will be. Local media speculate that starting next week, in addition to the requirement to have a vaccination or recovery certificate to enter public places, people inside the venues will also need to practice social distancing and wear a mask, or have a recent negative test result.
This comes after Covid-19 numbers in Berlin hit an all-time high last Thursday, with 2,874 new cases reported that day.
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A gunman injured two civilians, one of them fatally, and two police officers before being shot dead by security forces near Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Sunday morning, Israeli police said.
The civilian victims were taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. One, who was in his 30s, succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. The other, a 46-year-old, is said to have suffered moderate injuries. Two police officers were hurt by shrapnel.
Two civilians were critically and seriously wounded this morning, Sunday, and two policemen were lightly wounded in a shooting attack in the area of the Chain Gate near the Western Wall and the entrance to the Temple Mount. pic.twitter.com/MRN6MLckj3
In a video clip shared on social media and purportedly filmed at the scene, multiple gunshots could be heard amid agitated shouting. Security officers could then be seen standing around what appears to be a dead body. Witnesses speculated it was that of a “terrorist.”
Scenes and sounds of shooting in the Old City of Jerusalem captured on Live Cam. Initial reports are attack is near the Temple Mount area 2 Israelis wounded one apparently seriously the terrorist has been neutralised pic.twitter.com/UKWSOqCu8D
— ElBluemountain MossadDolphin 🇮🇱🐬🇮🇱🐬🇮🇱 (@EBluemountain1) November 21, 2021
The gunman, whose identity was not immediately disclosed, was killed during the incident. Police said he had used a homemade submachine gun.
MADRID, Nov 19 (IPS) – Kailash Satyarthi,? an Indian social reformer and co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malala Yousafzai, spoke in a recent international forum about the devastating impacts of child labour.
Controversial psychologist and author Jordan Peterson claimed Western countries had no “moral right” to force developing nations to reduce pollution output, noting instead that improving their economies was key.
During an appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ show on Thursday, the Canadian professor noted that the focus of climate change policies should be on incentivizing the development of cheap energy in poorer polluter countries.
“The best long term solution is to try to make developing countries as rich as possible, and the best way to do that is not control their pollution output, but to help them develop the cheapest energy they can possibly manage as fast as they possibly can,” Peterson said.
The debate saw UK undersecretary for employment Mims Davies suggest that measures taken to tackle climate change should not come at the “expense of developing countries.” But Peterson countered that it “absolutely, 100% will be [at their expense].”
I don’t think we have any moral right in the West at all to do that.
He also criticized the recent COP26 climate change conference for failing to explore ideas on how best to improve national economies in the developing world, noting that he saw “very little of that sort of idea” coming out of the UN summit.
In the final hours of the two-week conference, China and India had intervened to soften the wording around the use of coal in the Glasgow Pact. The two countries demanded a change in the final text of the agreement that called for coal to be phased out, revising this to “phasing down unabated coal.”
The move prompted COP26 president and UK minister Alok Sharma to declare that China and India would have to “justify” their actions to countries that were more vulnerable to global warming effects. However, officials in both Beijing and New Delhi have countered that the criticism was unfair.
As information emerges about Islamic State of Khorasan, or ISIS-K – the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for last week’s suicide attack that killed 13 US service members and more than 160 Afghans – there is an increased effort to predict how Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, may emerge once again as a breeding ground for terrorist groups.
A United Nations report released in June estimates that thousands of fighters from the region had already poured into Afghanistan. Many of them are believed to be affiliated with either the Taliban – still seen as a terrorist organization – or al Qaeda or ISIS-K.
The New York Times reports that ISIS-K was created six years ago by members of the Pakistani branch of the Taliban. There is a range of thought among experts as to what their ability to successfully carry out a terrorist attack in a Taliban-ruled area means for the terrorist threat moving forward.
The Cipher Brief spoke with respected terrorism experts Bruce Hoffman, Mitch Silber and Colin Clarke to get their thoughts on the current risk of terrorist attacks against Americans both home and abroad.
Bruce Hoffman, Terrorism Expert and Professor, Georgetown University
Cipher Brief ExpertBruce Hoffmanis a professor at Georgetown University and served as a commissioner on the Independent Commission to Review the FBI’s Post-9/11 Response to Terrorism and Radicalization. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence for Counterterrorism at CIA.
Mitch Silber, Former Director of Analysis, NYPD
Cipher Brief Expert Mitch Silberserved as Director of Intelligence Analysis at the New York City Police Department and served as principal advisor to the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence on counterterrorism policy and analysis. He is now executive director of the Community Security Initiative.
Colin Clarke, Director of Policy and Research, The Soufan Group
Colin P. Clarke, Ph.D., is the Director of Policy and Research at The Soufan Group. Clarke’s research focuses on domestic and transnational terrorism, international security, and geopolitics. He is also a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center.
The Cipher Brief: If the United Nations Report issued in June is accurate, and there are thousands of fighters from the region who have poured into Afghanistan – many associated with known terrorist groups – is there any way that the administration can say ‘mission accomplished’ in terms of degrading terrorism’s presence in Afghanistan?
Hoffman: No. As those numbers from the report released by the United Nations Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team highlight, Afghanistan is again becoming a jihadi magnet and will likely continue to be so into the future. The suicide bomb attacks outside the gates of Kabul International Airport last Thursday underscore the multiplicity of terrorist groups already present in that country.
In addition to ISIS-K, there is the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda and, of course, the Taliban. Terrorism thrives in conditions of chaos and instability which the terrorists hope to spread to other countries and eventually across regions.
Much as Salafi-Jihadi terrorists migrated from existing battlefields in South Asia back to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus in the 1990s; spread to East and West Africa in the early 2000s; blossomed during the Arab Spring to wage civil wars in Syria, Libya, and the Sahel, in the early twenty-teens; the same phenomenon is unfolding in Afghanistan.
Silber: Frankly, I don’t think any of the four administrations can make the claim that the policy goal of making Afghanistan inhospitable to serve as a safe haven for Al Qaeda or other similarly oriented jihadist groups has been accomplished. Certainly, at a number of times during the last twenty years, the threat that jihadist groups, most importantly — Al Qaeda — has presented, in terms of their ability to project a threat to the United States has been diminished, the degradation of the threat was only temporary.
The Cipher Brief: How confident are you that Al Qaeda and ISIS are unable to plan and execute attacks against the U.S. domestically?
Hoffman: The credulous Doha negotiations with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan and subsequently to the Taliban’s blitzkrieg across Afghanistan and then to the shambolic evacuation of our diplomats and citizens, has painted a huge target on America’s back. Like sharks in the water, terrorists will smell blood. As my Council on Foreign Relations colleague, Jacob Ware, and I wrote in War on the Rocks, in May, every time terrorism has forced the U.S. to withdraw from a conflict zone where it had committed ground forces, whether in Lebanon in 1984; Somalia in 1993; and Iraq in 2011, it has led to more terrorism worldwide, not less, and thus made the U.S. less safe.
At a time when our country continues to grapple with the COVID pandemic; when climate change is pulverizing the Gulf States with Hurricane Ida and California with worsening wildfires; when the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building continues to smolder with incidents such as the bomb threat that paralyzed the area near the Library of Congress and Cannon House Office Building earlier this month; coupled with ongoing cyberattacks and peer competition from China and Russia and concerns over Iran’s nuclear aspirations; our terrorist adversaries may well conclude that the U.S. is sufficiently preoccupied or distracted by any or all of the preceding and therefore conclude that the time to strike the homeland is opportune. It would very unlikely entail a repeat of the catastrophic September 11th 2001 attacks. But a terrorist strike along the lines of the 2019 shootings at Naval Air Station Pensacola; the 2017 suicide bombing of a concert venue in Manchester, England; the coordinated suicide attacks on London transport in 2005; the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings; or any kind of significant lone wolf incident perpetrated in the name of some existing terrorist movement would likely re-create the widespread fear and anxiety that are terrorism’s stock-in-trade. Twice in the past three years, it should also be noted, members of al-Shabaab – perhaps al Qaeda’s least technologically proficient franchise – have been arrested both in the Philippines and in an undisclosed African country engaging in the same flight training that four of the 9/11 hijackers undertook before their fateful, history-changing coordinated attack.
Silber: At this very moment, it is unlikely that Al Qaeda or ISIS-K have the infrastructure, resources, recruits and external planning ability to strike the United States based on statements by the IC and senior DoD officials to Congress. However, without any, or only limited external pressure by the U.S. military as a result of the retreat from Afghanistan, these networks and capabilities can be reconstituted in the coming months and certainly groups like Al Qaeda have never given up their desire to strike the American homeland.
Clarke: I think it is unlikely that AQ or ISIS will be able to attack the U.S. homeland. We’ve spent the better part of the past two decades shoring up homeland defense. We’ve got CT tools now that we didn’t have twenty years ago. That said, the picture could look quite different 6, 12, 18 months from now. Both of those organizations are capable of regenerating an external operations planning capability. There is also the worry of inspired attacks.
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The Cipher Brief: Some analysts have said that morale among terrorist or Islamic extremist groups is extremely high due to the circumstances surrounding the US pullout in Afghanistan, do you agree and if so what does that mean?
Hoffman: Yes. Of course. Both Sunni and Shi’a terrorist movements around the globe have applauded the Taliban’s re-conquest of Afghanistan and routing of the U.S. military. For Sunni Salafi-Jihadi terrorists, the events there this past month validate the strategy articulated by Usama bin Laden just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election, when he described the ease with which al-Qaeda had been able to “bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat” from Afghanistan in 1989, and predicted that the same fate would eventually befall the U.S. And, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, a Shi’a terrorist organization, for instance, last week delivered a sermon where he described America’s “historic and humiliating defeat in Afghanistan as representing, “the moral downfall of America.”
Silber: Jihadi chat rooms and online extremist networks are feeling like they have the wind behind them. It took twenty years, but before the 20th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11 an Islamic emirate has been re-established in Afghanistan. Suddenly, what seemed impossible has become possible and Islamist insurgencies all throughout the Middle East and South Asia can take inspiration by the determination of the Taliban in their efforts to overthrow a secular democratic government and replace it with an Islamist one.
Clarke: I do expect morale to be high among terrorist and especially Islamic extremists given the turn of events we’ve seen in Afghanistan. We’re a week and a half out from the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, and Al Qaeda leaders are returning to Afghanistan (this is being displayed in AQ propaganda). We’ve seen al-Qaeda affiliates all over the globe congratulating the Taliban for their victory. I don’t want to overstate the case here, but I do believe that what has occurred in Afghanistan will be a serious boost for the global jihadist movement right at the same time the U.S. and its allies are shifting from counterterrorism to great power competition. There will be fewer resources and energy to deal with terrorists, right at the time we have major threats metastasizing in Afghanistan, potentially with both a reinvigorated al-Qaeda and a stubbornly resilient ISKP.
Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast. Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
France shouldn’t remain silent on Julian Assange, leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has said, after the imprisoned WikiLeaks co-founder’s father suggested that Paris could offer asylum to his son.
The life of Assange – who is being held in solitary confinement at London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison while a British court considers an extradition request by the US – is under threat, Melenchon wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
“For years, we’ve been calling for France to accept him,” the head of the leftist La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party said, insisting that “France shouldn’t remain silent.”
The statement by Melenchon, who won 19.6% of the ballot in the first round of the French presidential election in 2017, follows a visit by Assange’s father, John Shipton, to the Whistleblower Meeting in Paris on Monday.
During the event, Shipton told Sputnik news agency that it would be “an honorable thing” for the French government to grant his son asylum.
“I feel that France hasn’t attacked Julian over the last 12 years and consequently France is free to act in return for the information that WikiLeaks and Julian brought to France,” he said, referring to the website’s revelations of the US intelligence agencies spying on French presidents and hacking into local banks.
🔴 John #Shipton : «La France n’a pas attaqué #Julian pendant les dernières années difficiles, donc la France est libre d’agir en échange des informations que #WikiLeaks et Julian ont apportées à la France. Ce serait honorable pour la #France d’offrir [l’asile] à Julian #Assange» pic.twitter.com/ceZ7qTARua
Several dozen French lawmakers have also recently called upon Paris to take Assange in, with the Australian-born publisher’s legal team saying last year that their client was hoping to find asylum on French soil.
Assange could face up to 175 years behind bars if he’s extradited to the US, where he’s wanted on espionage charges over the release by WikiLeaks of classified documents on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and others.
He was placed in Belmarsh in April 2019 over breach of bail, after being holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years.
The publisher had been fleeing an arrest warrant issued over sexual assault allegations which he has always denied, and which failed to result in any actual charges due to lack of evidence.
Assange’s supporters insist that he has actually been persecuted over his legitimate journalistic activities and revealing the truth to the public.
The UK High Court is expected to rule on the appeal by the US against a lower court decision to bar the WikiLeaks co-founder’s extradition to America due to the 50-year-old’s poor health condition and risk of suicide.
Assange’s team will then be able to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court if it’s not favorable.
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A pack of wild boars were rounded up and euthanized after one of the animals attacked a police officer in the streets of Hong Kong – the opening shot in a pitched battle between the feral hogs and the city’s law enforcement.
A group of veterinarians took seven wild boars into custody, euthanizing the beasts after knocking them out with dart guns in an area near the financial center of the city, according to a statement from Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department on Thursday.
The pigs were captured after one attacked a police officer last week, an act which reflects the city’s new policy toward the animals: stop them before they attack again.
The aggressive boar knocked down a police officer by biting his leg last week as the two faced off in a residential car park, the pig only losing the battle after falling off the building to its death. The wild boars are apparently “accustomed” to wandering back and forth along the roadway, begging for food from pedestrians and vehicles alike. Previously, the city had handled the population by capturing and sedating the animals, then relocating them to “remote areas,” according to the the department.
Hong Kong CEO Carrie Lam vowed to increase penalties for those citizens found feeding the boars, which have reportedly been responsible for some 30 attacks in recent years. While residents are warned not to feed the boars so as not to encourage population growth or disease outbreaks, the animals are a favorite among some visitors. Still, Lam insisted “we can’t simply sit on our hands while things deteriorate.”
Animal rights groups have responded with a protest letter against a policy of euthanasia, pointing out that most visitors do not feed the boars and arguing resources should be directed toward stopping the human activity rather than blaming all the boars. Allowing the boars to be captured and killed “ignores their right to live and considers their existence in urban areas as a capital offense,” the letter read.
The EU Commission has released draft legislation aimed at tackling the destruction of woodland by introducing import restrictions on products not certified as ‘deforestation-free’.
The draft proposal, which the commission hopes will become binding rules for all member states, seeks to limit the import of beef, cocoa, coffee, palm, soy, and wood if it is not proven “deforestation-free.”
Outlining the legislation, the EU commissioner for climate action policy, Virginijus Sinkevicius, called it a “ground-breaking” proposal that will help fight “illegal deforestation” and “deforestation driven by agricultural expansion.”
Our proposal to fight deforestation will help us protect 1/3 of 🌎 lands.
We don’t only target illegal deforestation but 𝙖𝙡𝙡 deforestation driven by agricultural expansion.
We start with 6 products that must be deforestation-free 👉🏼 beef, wood, palm oil, soya, coffee, cocoa. pic.twitter.com/Cs9POoydNX
The bill comes after nations at the COP26 summit agreed to work to end deforestation by 2030. It would impose two criteria on imports, requiring items to have been produced in accordance with the origin country’s laws, and not on land that has been deforested or degraded since the start of 2021.
It is not clear when the rules would come into effect; legislative proposals by the commission have to be debated and considered by both the EU Parliament and the Council of the EU before they are passed. The implementation of measures could potentially impact the EU’s trade relations with countries like Brazil, where clearing of the Amazon rainforest hit a new record in October.
During the recent COP26 climate summit, 110 world leaders – whose countries contain around 85% of the world’s woodland – committed to ending and reversing deforestation by 2030, pledging around £14 billion ($18.84 billion) of public and private funds towards the goal.
Nadya Zafira, an international relations student at Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University, won a writing competition for her letter to UN chief António Guterres, in which she addressed the inequalities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how indigenous communities and youth are marginalized in global conversations on climate crisis.
As infections are rising again, scientists all around the world are rushing to fight the danger, offering a choice of new treatments and unusual variants of vaccines.
Levels of contagion are setting new records, hospitals are overwhelmed, governments are starting to introduce lockdowns, and not only for unvaccinated people – the picture of the fight against Covid-19 looks quite disappointing. However, there’s still a place for good news: Research teams report positive results while trialling new medicines and vaccine types.
Nasal vaccines
Vaccination will remain one of the most effective tools against Covid-19. As Professor David Dockrell, from the Center for Inflammation Research of the University of Edinburgh, told RT, “vaccines will continue to be a central part of how we control the virus.”
“If we can dampen down the number of infections, and the severity of infections, and also the extent to which the virus can replicate in people when they become infected, then we are slowing down the ability of the virus to change and to mutate,” he explains.
So I think the vaccines still will be a very important part of the preventive strategy. It’s vital that they are available to all the world’s population, irrespective of where people live, and the wealth of the country in which they live.
However, vaccination doesn’t always mean you have to get an injection. For instance, several intranasal Covid-19 vaccines are currently being developed. As the virus gets into the body through the nose, a nasal spray or drops are aimed to produce mucosal immune response and prevent it from getting into the lungs.
In India, a vaccine of this type is already completing Phase 2 of clinical trials. In Russia, a nasal vaccine is undergoing a clinical trial on volunteers. In Thailand, a home-developed product is expected to be trialed on humans next spring. In the US, Universities of Houston and Stanford recently reported good results of their experiments carried out on mice.
Intranasal vaccines can have several potential benefits compared to inoculation.
“They would be easier to use, because they can be self-administered. They wouldn’t need a nurse or clinical settings,” Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology Marcello Ferrada de Noli explained to RT. As a result, he says, there’s hope that fewer people will be reluctant to be immunized. Not so many of us find it pleasant to get a jab – and after all, there are those who are just afraid of needles. Also, it would be much easier to vaccinate children with nasal substances.
However, what concerns Prof. de Noli the most is the duration of the effect of a vaccine of this type. Still, scientists can’t say for sure whether a nasal substance may completely replace a shot. According to Alexander Gintsburg, the head of Moscow’s Gamaleya Center biomedical research institute, which created the Sputnik V vaccine, the nasal version they are working on would serve for an additional protection against the virus, but would not replace the injections.
Chew the virus away?
A nasal vaccine is not the only one being developed. In summer, it was revealed that Russian Defense Ministry scientists were creating a ‘chewing gum’ vaccine, also targeting the mucosal immune response. Meanwhile, a UK firm announced this month that it would conduct a human trial of a skin patch that uses T-cells to confront the virus. Developers hope it would offer longer-lasting immunity than the existing vaccines. Work on a similar project is being done in the University of Queensland, Australia.
While it all looks so promising, Prof. de Noli warns that it would still take a lot of time until these products become available to the public. “I think that discoveries in this field are a very good thing. But if we say ‘We discovered a new type of vaccine’, people will say ‘Aha, so I’m going to wait’. But we need to vaccinate people now,” he points out.
Improving Covid treatment
Vaccines are not a silver bullet, unfortunately, given the not-so-high level of global immunization and the constantly emerging new strains of the virus. “People might get infected despite having had a vaccine, but I still think the vaccine strategy is going to be central to how we manage this kind of virus going forward,” Prof. Dockrell says. “But we will have other strategies that will be very important. We will have other elements. When we put them all together, it gives us the best opportunity that people can live with coronaviruses, and hopefully, the mortality can be limited to much lower extense than what we’ve sadly seen in the last eighteen months.”
Monoclonal antibodies will be central to the ongoing vaccine strategy, Prof. Dockrell explains. These are the antibodies similar to those the body uses to fight the virus. They are produced in labs and given via infusion or injection to boost the patient’s response against certain diseases. Monoclonal antibody treatment is used for people under a high risk of developing severe infection (including older patients 65+ years old or those with chronic medical conditions). It’s already being used in the US, following last year’s FDA approval. Earlier in November, the European Medicines agency recommended authorizing two monoclonal antibody medicines.
In October, UK’s AstraZeneca reported positive results of a Phase 3 study of its antibody combination, which, according to developers, is highly effective in both prevention and treatment of coronavirus.
Researchers are also working on a possibility to save Covid-infected patients from the so-called ‘cytokine storm’ – a situation when the immune system reacts so intensely that kills not only the virus, but the whole organism itself. A drug to ‘calm the storm’ was registered in Russia this year, and it’s already being used on patients.
Another way to fight Covid-19 is to use antiviral drugs. When the pandemic started, medics had to use something already existing (like anti-influenza Favipiravir) or something being authorized for emergency use (like remdesivir). Now, more than a year on, the work to create a special drug to specifically cure Covid-19 is giving its results. This month, Russia registered its first injectable anti-Covid medicine. A bit earlier, the UK became the first country to approve an antiviral pill produced by the US-based companies Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. Another American firm, Pfizer, got positive results from trials of its drug of the same kind. Both firms hope that with a drug in the form of a pill it would be easier to treat people at home.
Appreciating all the efforts on the field of developing anti-Covid treatment, Prof. de Noli points out that still, the key issue now is to reduce the spreading of the virus. “The new medicines are developed for people who already got the disease,” he says.
But we need to prevent people from getting the infection, not let them get infected because we have some new medicine that can cure them.
The same idea is echoed by scientists all over the world quoted in plenty of articles dedicated to the medical gains: it’s great to have the treatment, but none of the drugs may substitute vaccination, as first and foremost, humanity has to adopt preventive measures and stop the pandemic.
