BRASILIA: The Brazilian government said Thursday that a shipment of two million doses of the British AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine was finally set to arrive in the country from India.The delivery Friday would be a much-needed boost to Brazil's vaccination program."The two million doses of AstraZeneca should arrive in Brazil Friday in the late afternoon," the ministry of health said in a statement.The doses were originally set to arrive in Brazil last week.President Jair Bolsonaro blamed the delay on "political pressures" on the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prioritize vaccinations in his own country first.Brazil is the second-worst hit country by the coronavirus in the world -- only behind the United States -- with more than 214,000 deaths among its 212 million inhabitants.The government had been relying on the vaccine developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in collaboration with Oxford University and the Fiocruz Foundation of the Brazilian Ministry of Health to launch its inoculation drive.But it had to be satisfied with the release last week of six million doses of CoronaVac, which was developed by the Chinese lab Sinovac with the Brazilian Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo.That shot has been promoted by the governor of the state
WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - Ford Motor Co must recall 3 million vehicles with potentially defective driver-side Takata air bags, the US auto safety regulator said on Tuesday (Jan 19), rejecting a bid by the second-largest US automaker to avoid a recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was denying petitions filed by Ford and Mazda Motor Corp in 2017 seeking to avoid recalling vehicles with potentially dangerous inflators. The decision also will require Mazda to recall and repair driver air bags in approximately 5,800 vehicles. The recalls will cover various vehicles from the 2006 through 2012 model years. The defect, which leads in rare instances to air bag inflators rupturing and sending potentially deadly metal fragments flying - especially after long-term exposure to high humidity - prompted the largest automotive recall in US history of more than 67 million inflators. Worldwide, about 100 million inflators installed by 19 major automakers have been recalled. The NHTSA said the "evidence makes clear that these inflators pose a significant safety risk." Earlier this month, the auto safety agency said at least 17 million vehicles with Takata air bags remain unrepaired. Takata
CARAL (AFP) - Having survived for 5,000 years, the oldest archeological site in the Americas is under threat from squatters claiming the coronavirus pandemic has left them with no other option but to occupy the sacred city. The situation has become so bad that archaeologist Ruth Shady, who discovered the Caral site in Peru, has been threatened with death if she doesn't abandon investigating its treasures. Archaeologists told an AFP team visiting Caral that squatter invasions and destruction began in March when the pandemic forced a nationwide lockdown. "There are people who come and invade this site, which is state property, and they use it to plant," archaeologist Daniel Mayta told AFP. "It's hugely harmful because they're destroying 5,000-year-old cultural evidence." Caral is situated in the valley of the Supe river some 182km north of the capital Lima and 20km from the Pacific Ocean to the west. Developed between 3,000 and 1,800 BC in an arid desert, Caral is the cradle of civilisation in the Americas. Its people were contemporaries of Pharaonic Egypt and the great Mesopotamian civilisations. It pre-dates the far better known Inca empire by 45 centuries. None
