Canada’s health regulator has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, the day after the UK became the first country in the world to roll it out. Health Canada called the authorisation a “milestone” in the country’s fight against coronavirus. The agency said the vaccine met its “stringent safety, efficacy and quality requirements”. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada is set to receive up to 249,000 doses of the vaccine this month. In total, the Canadian government has purchased 20 million doses of the vaccine – enough to inoculate 10 million people – with the option to buy 56 million more. On Tuesday, a UK grandmother was the first person in the world to be given the jab as part of a mass vaccination programme.(BBC)…[+]

Thieves have stolen radio equipment from a Russian military plane known as the “doomsday aircraft” for its role in the country’s nuclear arsenal, state media report.  The reports say unknown thieves broke into the Ilyushin Il-80 plane at an airfield in the southern Rostov region. They reportedly opened the cargo hatch and stole 39 pieces of radio equipment. The local government’s transport ministry said an investigation into the break-in was under way. Military experts say the aircraft is one of four Il-80s designed to be used as airborne command posts for Russian officials, including the president, in the event of a nuclear conflict.

Florida police have raided the home of data scientist Rebekah Jones, who built the state’s official Covid-19 database. Ms Jones has accused the US Department of Health of manipulating virus data in order to relax pandemic restrictions. She posted a series of videos of the raid on Twitter, in which armed officers seized her phone and laptop. The force said it was responding to a hack of the state’s emergency health alert system, which Ms Jones denies. Ms Jones was fired from her job at the Department of Health in May after making her accusations, and has since maintained her own database, independently tracking the spread of the virus.

At the time, a spokesperson for the department described her as “disruptive”. In the hack, which is said to have taken place in early November, an unauthorised message was sent to members of the emergency response team urging them to “speak up” before thousands more people died from Covid-19. The message was obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.(BBC)…[+]

US President-elect Joe Biden has chosen retired General Lloyd Austin as his defence secretary, US media report. If approved, the 67-year-old who retired in 2016 would become the first African-American to lead the Pentagon. He would need a congressional waiver as seven years are required between active duty and becoming military chief. Mr Biden has been facing calls including from Democratic Asian, Black and Latino caucuses to nominate minorities to senior cabinet posts. Veteran Pentagon official Michèle Flournoy, who would have been the first woman to hold the position, had also been considered a front-runner – as well as Jeh Johnson, a former Pentagon general counsel and former secretary of homeland security.(BBC)…[+]

South Korea is raising its Covid-19 alert levels, as it battles a rise in infections. Gatherings of more than 50 will be banned in the capital Seoul and surrounding areas from Tuesday, while gyms and karaoke bars be closed.

On Sunday 631 new infections were reported in one day, the highest number in nine months.  The country was widely praised for its virus response earlier this year, with aggressive testing and contact tracing. But the authorities have struggled in recent weeks. The number of active cases in South Korea now stands at 7,873, and there are concerns about rising numbers in hospitals. There have now been 37,546 cases in total, and 545 deaths. Health minister Park Neung-hoo said there was a risk of the virus spreading if nothing was done. “We concluded that this is a dangerous situation on the verge of expanding into a nationwide pandemic,” he told Reuters news agency.(BBC)…[+]

Mystery illness suffered by US diplomats in Cuba was most likely caused by directed microwave radiation, a US government report has found. The report by the National Academies of Sciences does not attribute blame for the directed energy waves. But it said research into the effects of pulsed radio frequency energy was carried out by the Soviet Union more than 50 years ago. The illnesses first affected people at the US embassy in Havana in 2016-17. Staff and some of their relatives complained of symptoms ranging from dizziness, loss of balance, hearing loss, anxiety and something they described as “cognitive fog”. It became known as “Havana syndrome”.

The US accused Cuba of carrying out “sonic attacks”, which it strongly denied, and the incident led to increased tension between the two nations. A 2019 US academic study found “brain abnormalities” in the diplomats who had fallen ill, but Cuba dismissed the report.(BBC)…[+]

The scientist in charge of the US push for a Covid-19 vaccine says there is “light at the end of the tunnel”. Moncef Slaoui said he hoped the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could give the go-ahead to a vaccine when it meets this week. But for life to get back to normal by the spring, Americans still needed to follow safety measures, he added. The US has seen record infections in recent days, with a daily death toll of more than 2,000. The latest surge in cases is putting strain on hospitals, with large parts of the state of California set to enter new lockdown restrictions on Sunday. States are also preparing to distribute a vaccine, with possible approval approaching. The FDA is meeting to discuss the UK-approved vaccine, made by Pfizer, on Thursday and will discuss approval of a second vaccine, made by Moderna, on 17 December.

Hundreds of Google staff have signed a letter backing a leading AI ethics researcher who was sacked by Google. Timnit Gebru says she was fired after sending an internal email that accused Google of “silencing marginalised voices”. Hundreds of colleagues have signed a letter accusing the search giant of racism and censorship, while Twitter users have rallied around Ms Gebru using the hashtag #BelieveBlackWomen.

Google disputes her version of events. Ms Gebru is a well-respected researcher in the field of ethics and the use of artificial intelligence. She is well-known for her work on racial bias in technology such as facial recognition, and has criticised systems that fail to recognise black faces. Her co-author on one of those well-known papers, Joy Buolamwini, said Ms Gebru “deserved more” from Google. “Ousting Timnit for having the audacity to demand research integrity severely undermines Google’s credibility for supporting rigorous research on AI ethics and algorithmic auditing,” she said.(BBC)…[+]

US President-elect Joe Biden has said he will ask Americans to wear masks for his first 100 days in office to curtail the spread of coronavirus. He told CNN he believed there would be a “significant reduction” in Covid-19 cases if every American wore a face covering. Mr Biden also said he would order masks to be worn in all government buildings. The US has recorded 14.1 million cases and 276,000 deaths from Covid-19 – the highest of any country in the world. Mr Biden is preparing to take office as pharmaceutical giants are poised to ship millions of doses of coronavirus vaccines to the American public. The UK on Wednesday became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer vaccine.(BBC)…[+]

One of three Americans hailed as heroes for overcoming a gunman on a train travelling to Paris has told a French court his main aim was to survive. Spencer Stone, a 28-year-old ex-serviceman, described via video from the US how he and his friends saw Ayoub El Khazzani pick up a Kalashnikov rifle and prepare to open fire. He counted three separate attempts the gunman made to try to kill him. Mr Stone was one of two people wounded in the August 2015 Thalys train attack. The other was fellow passenger Mark Magoolian. No-one died but Mr Stone rejected the defendant’s claim that he could not kill anyone. “I think we prevented a massacre,” French reports quoted him as telling the court.Ayoub El Khazzani, a 31-year-old Moroccan, is accused of attempted murder as part of a terrorist enterprise, three months before the deadly militant Islamist attacks in Paris.(BBC)…[+]