Putin calls on rebels to ‘stop advancing’ as Ukraine, Russia in agreement on steps needed for cease-fire

Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling on rebels in eastern Ukraine to “stop advancing,” hours after Ukraine announced that steps have been agreed upon with Russia for a future cease-fire in the region.

Putin, speaking in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, said he came up with a 7-point peace plan on the plane trip there in which Kiev must withdraw its troops and stop its artillery strikes.

"The warring parties should immediately coordinate and do the following things together," Putin said in televised comments. "The first thing is for the armed forces and insurgents of the south-east of Ukraine to stop active advancing in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"Second is for the Ukrainian military to withdraw their troops at a safe distance that will make artillery and other strikes on populated areas impossible," he added.

Putin also urged an unconditional exchange of prisoners and said he expected a final agreement between Kiev and the rebels to be reached Friday at peace talks in Minsk, Belarus.

The remarks came after the office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko released a statement saying that "mutual understanding was reached regarding the steps that will contribute to the establishment of peace."

Initially, the statement said that there was "agreement on a permanent cease-fire in the Donbass" with Russia, but it was later revised to say "agreement on a cease-fire regime."

The changes appeared in Ukrainian, Russian and English-language versions issued by the office.

The statements appeared to indicate that both sides were in agreement on conditions necessary for a cease-fire, not that one would take effect soon.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was quoted by Russian news agencies on Wednesday as saying the leaders had "largely agreed on steps that would be conducive to a cease-fire," but repeated that Russia is not involved in the fighting.

Vladislav Brrig, a rebel official, told The Associated Press, "As long as Ukrainian forces are on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic there can be no cease-fire"

The rebels ignored a 10-day unilateral cease-fire that Poroshenko had called in June.

Russian markets jumped on first reports of an agreement. The MICEX benchmark was 3 percent higher while the ruble rose 1.2 percent against the U.S. dollar.

Germany's Dax index, which has been particularly sensitive to news regarding the Ukrainian crisis because of the country's economic ties with Russia, was up 1.6 percent.

At midday, the MICEX had eased to 2.7 percent higher and the DAX was up 1.2 percent.

Obama said it was too early to tell what the announcement meant. He noted previous unsuccessful attempts and questioned whether the separatists would abide by any cease-fire.

"We haven't seen a lot of follow-up on so-called announced cease-fires," Obama said. "Having said that, if in fact Russia is prepared to stop financing, arming, training, in many cases joining with Russian troops activities in Ukraine and is serious about a political settlement, that is something we all hope for."

Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to support pro-Russian insurgents who have been fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine since mid-April. Moscow has vehemently denied this charge.

That denial leaves unclear how effective the truce announced Wednesday would prove to be. After a meeting with Poroshenko last week, Putin had said a cease-fire was not discussed because Russia was not a party to the conflict.

Rebel leaders said earlier this week that they would respect Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for autonomy. The rebels previously have called for full independence for their regions or possible absorption into Russia. Poroshenko has spoken in favor of devolving some of the central government's power to regions, but that is far short of autonomy for the rebel regions.

Over the weekend, the European Union leaders agreed to prepare a new round of sanctions that could be enacted in a week, after NATO accused Russia of sending tanks and troops into southeastern Ukraine.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine has killed nearly 2,600 people and forced more than 340,000 to flee their homes, according to the U.N.

Earlier Wednesday, Reuters reported that separatist rebels in Ukraine were close to taking back control of the Donetsk airport from government forces in what would be the insurgents' most significant gain since their latest offensive began last week.

"The airport is 95 percent under our control. Practically, we are holding it by now. Some remaining Ukrainian troops need to be cleared," Aleksandar Timofeyev, a leader of one of the main rebel units in Donetsk, told Reuters. "The Ukrainian Army is retreating. It's more of a flight by now. Reasonable ones give up their weapons and go. Others stay in the ground for good."

A rebel source told the news agency that an attempt to storm the airport was under way: "It will soon be over."

Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry announced Wednesday that the forces in charge of its nuclear arsenal will conduct exercises this month involving more than 4,000 soldiers and 400 technical units, including aircraft.

The RIA Novosti news agency quoted the defense ministry as saying that the exercises will take place in the Altai region of south-central Russia, according to Reuters.

Dmitry Andreyev, a major in the strategic rocket forces, said troops will be "conducting combat missions in conditions of active radio-electronic jamming and intensive enemy actions in areas of troop deployment."

Preparations are also underway for a joint military exercise involving 1,000 U.S. troops and its allies near Ukraine’s western border, Reuters reports.

Obama to send approximately 350 additional military personnel to Iraq

President Obama announced Tuesday he is sending approximately 350 additional military personnel to Iraq to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities and workers in Baghdad.

The White House said in a press release that the personnel will not serve a combat role, and are fulfilling a request from the State Department for more protection as the country fights an insurgency from the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The White House said the additional personnel will be able to provide a “more robust, sustainable security force” and will allow previously deployed personnel to leave the country.

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement that Obama's authorization will result in a net increase of approximately 350 military personnel. Kirby said 405 personnel will be sent to Baghdad, and 55 will leave, leading to the net increase. 

Additionally, the White House said the U.S. is continuing to support the Iraqi government against the terror group, which it says “poses a threat not only to Iraq, but to the broader Middle East and U.S. personnel and interests in the region.”

“The president will be consulting this week with NATO allies regarding additional actions to take against ISIL and to develop a broad-based international coalition to implement a comprehensive strategy to protect our people and to support our partners in the fight against ISIL,” the release stated.

According to Kirby, the latest deployment means the number of U.S. forces responsible for providing security support in Baghdad will total approximately 820. 

Defense officials told Fox News that once the latest forces arrive, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be 1,213. 

The announcement came after U.S. military officials said Tuesday that an airstrike against Islamic State militants in Iraq had damaged or destroyed 16 armed vehicles near the Mosul Dam.

In a statement from U.S. Central Command, officials said an airstrike conducted Monday in northern Iraq involved fighters and attack aircraft.

By Central Command's count, that's the 124th airstrike in Iraq since operations against the Islamic State group began in early August.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Advertisement

See all Trends

Advertis

Celebrity hacking clouds Apple's upcoming product launch

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has often displayed uncanny timing, with its well-orchestrated end-of-year iPhone releases. But the leak of racy celebrity photos in the past few days put the company in the unusual position of having to mend its image just days before a highly anticipated Sept. 9 product launch.

Nude photos of Hollywood celebrities, including Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, posted on Internet forums by unknown hackers has sparked condemnation from stars and their publicists, and prompted an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In the wake of the breach, cybersecurity experts and mobile developers have called out inadequacies in Apple’s and, more generally, cloud-services security. Thousands have taken to Twitter to express their frustrations with the company.

Some security experts faulted Apple for failing to make its devices and software easier to secure through two-factor authentication, which requires a separate verification code after users log in initially. The process requires several steps and more than rudimentary knowledge of a phone's workings.

Apple could also do more to advertise that option, they said. Most people do not bother with security measures because of the extra hassle, experts say, and the leading phone makers are partly to blame.

"Making things more private or secure by default instead of having “security options” would go a long way. Most people won’t take those options and they aren’t necessarily advertised as available," said Matt Johansen, senior manager of the Threat Research Center at WhiteHat Security Inc.

"Most sites with two-factor authentication, you need to go to some very obscure options menu, multiple-clicks deep."

To be sure, the inadequacies identified in Apple's cloud and mobile security ring true of other cloud or Internet-storage services, experts said. Official and celebrity Twitter accounts for instance had been routinely hacked.

Apple said on Tuesday the hacks were the result of targeted attacks on accounts and not a direct breach of its systems. The company referred to such attempts as "all too common on the Internet."

But the highly public affair remains potentially one of Apple's worst public crises in years. Speculation continues to spread on blogs about flaws in the iCloud service, which lets computer and mobile users store photos, documents and other data so they can be accessed from a plethora of devices they own.

Brandwatch, a company that analyzes sentiment on social media, blogs and other sites, found that prior to the hack, Apple received very few negative mentions on Twitter, a testament to its strong brand in the United States.

But in the past three days, 17,000 mentions on Twitter were related to the security breach as of Tuesday afternoon. 7,600 of these tweets specifically mention Apple. Some of the negative words associated with mentions of Apple's iCloud service include “violation,” “disgusting violation,” “criminality,” “failure,” “glitch” and “disappointment."

Brandwatch spokeswoman Dinah Alobeid said Brandwatch differentiates between negative and neutral tweets by analyzing keywords. There were three times as many negative mentions as positive mentions related to the incident.

Apple has dealt with several high-profile public faux-pas in past years, including a maps service criticized for lacking important geographic detail and "Antennagate," when experts exposed how a flaw in the latest iPhone led to dropped calls. Depending on how the hacks went down, this incident could be as damaging to its reputation, if not more.

“This could be a scary time publicly for Apple," JD Sherry, vice president of cybersecurity provider Trend Micro wrote in a Tuesday blogpost. "They haven't had many, Antennagate and Apple Maps come to mind, and this would most likely trump those."

BUILDING TRUST

The celebrity hacks underscore the longer-term risks for mobile users as smartphones increasingly become the repository for far more sensitive education, healthcare and banking data. And that data gets stored increasingly in personal cloud accounts, hosted on the public and private Internet.

"We need to get to a point where security is the standard (and) Apple could make it easier in the set up," said Branden Spikes, founder and CEO of Spikes Security and former chief information officer of Space Exploration Technologies.

At its upcoming event, Apple is expected to announce the launch of a mobile payments service alongside its iPhone 6.

BeyondTrust security expert Marc Maiffret expects the phone will someday replace the wallet, storing sensitive payments information such as credit card accounts - data that would prove increasingly tempting to hackers.

"How long after that does it make sense for your identity beyond your financial information to follow?" he said.

Apple has encouraged developers to use iCloud. But the leaks have left some app developers feeling uncertain.

West Africa struggles to contain Ebola as warnings and deaths mount

The United Nations said on Tuesday the spread of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa was causing food shortages in one of the world's poorest regions and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned the disease was threatening the stability of stricken countries and their neighbors.

Doctors in Liberia were out on strike as they struggled to cope with the worst outbreak of Ebola on record, while the global aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said 800 more beds for Ebola patients were urgently needed in the Liberian capital Monrovia alone, while in Sierra Leone highly infectious bodies were rotting in the streets.

Governments and aid organizations have scrambled to contain the disease, which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) has killed more than 1,500 in West Africa since March.

In an address to United Nations member states, MSF President Joanne Liu said, "Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it." She said aid charities and West African governments did not have the capacity to stem the outbreak and needed intervention by foreign states.

Slamming what she called "a global coalition of inaction," Liu called for the urgent dispatch of field hospitals with isolation wards and mobile medical laboratories.

MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said biological disaster response teams were needed to support West Africa's buckling healthcare systems.

There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments, but as hospitals and Ebola treatment centers battled to contain the disease and tend to the sick and dying, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said a federal contract worth up to $42.3 million would help accelerate testing of an experimental Ebola virus treatment being developed by privately held Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.

The agency said in a statement that Mapp, based in San Diego, California, would manufacture a small amount of its ZMapp drug, which uses antibodies manufactured in tobacco plants, for early stage safety studies and animal studies needed to prove its effectiveness and safety in people.

ZMapp is one of several treatments for Ebola under development. The drug, although never tested in humans, gained attention this summer when two American aid workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia were cured after receiving it. Their physicians said they did not know if the drug helped.

Human safety trials are due to begin this week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc GSK.L and later this year on one from NewLink Genetics Corp NLNK.O.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa could infect more than 20,000 people and spread to more countries, the World Health Organization warned last week. With a fatality rate of 52 percent, the death toll stood at 1,552 as of Aug. 26.

Cases of Ebola have been reported in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, and Democratic Republic of Congo. The cases in Congo, which include 31 deaths, are thought to be a separate outbreak and not related to the West African cases.

AMERICAN STRICKEN, MEDICAL STAFF STRIKE

U.S. missionary organization SIM USA said on Tuesday that an American doctor treating obstetrics patients at the ELWA hospital in Monrovia had tested positive for Ebola. The doctor, who was not working in the hospital's Ebola treatment center, was in an isolation ward at the hospital and responding well so far, SIM said on its website.

At Monrovia's John F. Kennedy Medical Center (JFK) scores of staff went on strike to protest against working conditions and unpaid bonuses. Amid shortages of equipment and trained staff, more than 120 healthcare workers have died in West Africa in the Ebola outbreak.

"Health workers have died (fighting Ebola), including medical doctors at ... JFK and to have them come to work without food on their table, we think that is pathetic," George Williams, secretary general of the Health Workers Association of Liberia, told Reuters.

Williams said healthcare workers at JFK, the country's largest referral hospital, had gone unpaid for two months.

The Liberian strike came a day after healthcare workers at the Connaught hospital in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown held a one-day protest over pay and conditions.

Staff there returned to work on Tuesday after they said the government settled a backlog of hazard pay and agreed to raise the weekly risk bonus to $100 from $40 for nurses working in Ebola wards and members of burial crews.

Separately, the Liberian government began offering a $1,000 bonus to any healthcare workers who agreed to work in Ebola treatment facilities.

The World Health Organization and other international bodies have rushed to support healthcare systems in affected countries, but additional staff and resources have been slow to arrive.

PRICES SURGE, OBAMA ADDRESSES WEST AFRICANS

In Monrovia, Medecins Sans Frontieres said its new ELWA 3 center, which has 160 beds, was overflowing with patients. "Every day we have to turn sick people away because we are too full," said Stefan Liljegren, MSF coordinator at the site.

Further pressuring the ability of the region's governments to spend money on healthcare, the epidemic has put harvests at risk and sent food prices soaring in West Africa, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. The agency issued an alert over food security for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, which are most affected by the outbreak.

Restrictions on people's movements and establishment of quarantine zones to contain the spread of the haemorrhagic fever have led to panic buying, food shortages and price hikes.

"Even prior to the Ebola outbreak, households in some of the most affected areas were spending up to 80 percent of their incomes on food," said Vincent Martin, head of an FAO unit in Dakar coordinating the agency's response. "Now these latest price spikes are effectively putting food completely out of their reach."

The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas Frieden, said he expected the outbreak to accelerate and urged governments to act now.

"We're likely to see significant increases in cases. Already we have widespread transmission Liberia. In Sierra Leone, we're seeing strong signs that that will happen in the near future," he said.

Frieden said the outbreak was the first epidemic of Ebola the world has ever known, meaning it was spreading widely in society and "threatening the stability" of affected and neighboring countries.

Frieden, who has been briefing U.S. President Barack Obama on the outbreak, said there was still a window of opportunity, but "that window is closing."

"We need action now to scale up the response. We know how to stop Ebola. The challenge is to scale it up to the massive levels needed to stop this outbreak," he said.

"The virus is moving faster than anyone anticipated. We need to move fast."

In a video message to West Africans in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria and released on YouTube, Obama affirmed the United States' support in the fight against Ebola and attempted to dispel some myths about how it is spread. here

    "Ebola is not spread through the air like the flu. You cannot get it from casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus," he said.

    Instead, he said the most common way people become infected "is by touching the body fluids of someone who is sick or has died from it, like their sweat, saliva or blood, or through a contaminated item, like a needle."

    Obama said that was why so many people were becoming infected while caring for Ebola patients at home, and he urged people who felt sick to get prompt treatment because half of the people who become ill recover.

    "Stopping this disease won't be easy, but we know how to do it. You are not alone," Obama said.

To try to ease the strain on their economies, Ivory Coast, which closed its borders with Liberia and Guinea last month, announced on Tuesday it would open humanitarian and economic corridors to its two western neighbours.

The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in the Djera region of northern Democratic Republic of Congo has risen to 31, Minister of Health Felix Kabange Numbi told Reuters on Tuesday. The outbreak in Congo's Equateur province is thought to be separate from the West African epidemic.

Islamic State issues video of beheading of U.S. hostage

 The Islamic State militant group released a video on Tuesday purporting to show the beheading of a second American hostage, journalist Steven Sotloff, raising the stakes in its confrontation with Washington over U.S. air strikes on its insurgents in Iraq.

A masked figure in the video seen by Reuters also issued a threat against a British hostage, a man the group named as David Haines, and warned governments to back off "this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State".

A statement released by Sotloff's family through a spokesman indicated the family considered the video to be authentic. "The family knows of this horrific tragedy and is grieving privately. There will be no public comment from the family during this difficult time," family spokesman Barak Barfi said.

The purported executioner appeared to be the same British-accented man who appeared in an Aug. 19 video showing the killing of American journalist James Foley, and it showed a similar desert setting. In both videos, the captives wore orange jumpsuits.

In Washington, the White House said it could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the video of Sotloff's beheading. But several U.S. government sources said it appeared to be authentic.

Sotloff, a 31-year-old freelance journalist from Florida, was kidnapped in Syria in August 2013.

"I'm back, Obama, and I'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings and in Amerli, Zumar and the Mosul Dam, despite our serious warnings," the masked man said in the video, addressing U.S. President Barack Obama.

"So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people."

In the video, Sotloff describes himself as "paying the price" with his life for the U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Sotloff's mother, Shirley, appealed last Wednesday in a videotaped message to Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appealing for her son's release.

In the video it released last month, Islamic State said Foley's death was in retaliation for U.S. air strikes on its insurgents who have overrun wide areas of northern Iraq.

The United States resumed air strikes in Iraq in August for the first time since the withdrawal of the final U.S. troops from the country in 2011.

The raids followed major gains by Islamic State, which has declared an Islamic Caliphate in areas it controls in Syria and Iraq.

“We have seen a video that purports to be the murder of U.S. citizen Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The intelligence community is working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity," White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement.

"If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends. We will provide more information when it is available.”

'SAVAGE KILLING'

Iraq’s outgoing foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, condemned what he called "this savage killing ... an example of savagery and evil,” and said it was evidence of the need for Iraq and the West to defeat the Islamic State.

“We have a common enemy and the whole world is moving in the right direction to stop this savagery and brutality,” Zebari said. “The whole world is standing united against IS. They must be defeated so these horrid scenes will not be repeated."

Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim politician Sami Askari, who is close to outgoing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said: “They are trying to scare the Americans not to intervene. I don’t think Washington will be scared and stop. ... This is evil. Every human being has to fight this phenomenon. Like cancer, there is no cure. You have to fight it.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned Sotloff's apparent decapitation as "an absolutely disgusting and despicable act (by) barbaric terrorists". He said he would hold a meeting of his security crisis team on Wednesday.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the killing was a "further illustration of the barbarity without limit of this caliphate of terror that must be fought with the utmost determination".

The video triggered new calls from Obama's critics in the U.S. Congress for him to take more decisive action against Islamic State forces.

"Whenever American air power has been employed, in coordination with reliable partners on the ground, ISIL has been devastated. It’s a tactic that should be aggressively pursued both in Syria and Iraq," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican voice on foreign policy, using an acronym for the Sunni militant group.

Sotloff’s colleagues described him as a dedicated journalist and gifted writer who had filed in-depth reports from across the Middle East. He covered unrest in Libya for Time magazine in 2012 before his kidnapping in Syria.

Time Editor Nancy Gibbs said that Sotloff "gave his life so readers would have access to information from some of the most dangerous places in the world."

On Aug. 24, al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants in Syria freed an American writer, Peter Theo Curtis, who had been missing since 2012, following what officials said were efforts by the Gulf Arab state of Qatar to secure his release.

A U.S. government source told Reuters that a criminal investigation being conducted by the Justice Department into the killing of Foley was certain to be extended to include Sotloff.

A person with ties to Islamic State in Diyala province said the group had suffered badly in northern Iraq since U.S. air strikes began last month, ahead of the filmed execution of Foley and grisly video of the beheading of a Kurdish soldier.

“The defeat of the Islamic State in the battle of Mosul Dam contributed to a deflating of the morale of its fighters and the American strikes have also succeeded in restricting their field operations," the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

"The initiative is not with Islamic State anymore, it’s with their enemy now.

Here’s the current status of new drugs to fight Ebola virus and what works best now

Experts will be meeting this week at the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss the role of new drugs and vaccines to help control the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Last month, the WHO said that it is ethical to provide experimental drugs and vaccines for Ebola, but that there’s also a “moral duty” to conduct clinical trials of these experimental drugs and vaccines to determine whether they’re safe and effective. At the same time, a new study released last week shows that the Ebola virus is mutating rapidly, which could make it more transmissible or reduce the effectiveness of drugs and vaccines in the pipeline.

ZMapp is the drug that’s gotten the most attention so far. It’s a combination of three antibodies, proteins that bind and neutralize the Ebola virus. ZMapp has been administered to seven Ebola patients, and the manufacturer says its supplies have been exhausted. It is too early to know whether Will Pooley—the British nurse who contracted Ebola while caring for patients in Sierra Leone—will survive the disease. Two of the other six ZMapp recipients have died. Those who survived may have done so because they received good supportive treatment, because they were younger and didn’t have other medical problems, or by random chance (which is more likely to happen when you’re dealing with such small numbers). While ZMapp cured 18 primates infected with Ebola virus, there’s still much we don’t know. ZMapp still hasn’t yet been studied in humans.

Other candidate treatments for Ebola include TKM-Ebola, AVI-7537, favipiravir, selective estrogen receptor modulators like clomiphene and toremifene, BCX-4430 and ST-383. In July, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put on hold a small trial of TKM-Ebola in healthy volunteers because the drug caused an inflammatory, flu-like response at higher doses—inflammation is also how Ebola causes disease and kills. TKM-Ebola works by shutting down the Ebola virus’ genes through a new technology called RNA interference. The FDA has since modified that hold to allow patients sick with Ebola to receive TKM-Ebola. Early human studies of AVI-7537 were stopped due to budget cuts at the U. S. Department of Defense, which was funding the trials. Favipiravir is used to treat influenza, and selective estrogen receptor modulators have been used to treat female infertility and breast cancer, so we know they are safe to use in humans. And while they show promise as Ebola drugs, they haven’t yet been studied in Ebola patients. BCX-4430 and ST-383 have yet to be studied in humans.

Vaccines to prevent Ebola are also being developed. Ebola vaccines were first tested in humans beginning in 2003. Human safety studies of an experimental Ebola vaccine developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GlaxoSmithKline will launch this week. If the vaccine appears safe, GSK plans to donate up to 10,000 doses of the vaccine to protect those at highest risk. NIH is also working with Crucell, Profectus Biosciences, Immunovaccine and researchers at Thomas Jefferson University to develop other candidate vaccines for Ebola. Human trials of the Crucell vaccine are planned for late 2015 or early 2016. Another experimental Ebola vaccine, VSV-EBOV, has been developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and is licensed to NewLink Genetics.  Studies of VSV-EBOV among healthy human volunteers will start in October at the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research. In addition, the Canadian government is donating up to a thousand doses of VSV-EBOV to the WHO, and NewLink Genetics is trying to ramp up production of its vaccine over the coming months. Researchers have estimated that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of doses of a new Ebola drug or vaccine would be needed to help those in need.

It’s important to study and roll out new Ebola drugs and vaccines, but not at the expense of measures that we know work. We know that supportive care — to maintain adequate blood pressure, replenish lost electrolytes and treat complications — can reduce mortality from Ebola, but access to such care remains limited in West Africa. And while some of the new drugs may prove effective for treating Ebola patients, it’s unclear whether they will prevent spread of the virus from person-to-person. An epidemic can’t be contained if transmission isn’t blocked. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “we know the best way to prevent the spread of Ebola infection is through public health measures, including good infection control practices, isolation, contact tracing, quarantine, and provision of personal protective equipment.” He added, “However, a vaccine will ultimately be an be an important tool in the prevention effort. The launch of Phase 1 Ebola vaccine studies is the first step in a long process.”

In the meantime, priority must be given to identifying cases so that they may be given supportive care and isolated to prevent further spread, and to trace and test those who may have been in contact with Ebola victims. Healthcare workers need adequate supplies of personal protective equipment, and need to know how to use it to avoid being infected themselves. But it will be difficult to accomplish these goals, or to make use of new drugs and vaccines, without significant investment to strengthen health systems in the affected countries, above and beyond WHO’s US$489 million plan released last week. Meanwhile, many others are dying from malnutrition due to food scarcity, infections like malaria and typhoid, complications of childbirth and other conditions that overwhelmed, crumbling health systems are not treating.

New technologies are appealing, but they aren’t cure-alls, especially in poor, dysfunctional health systems. To illustrate this, I’ll draw from our experience with tuberculosis, which kills an estimated 1.3 million people per year globally. The most common test for tuberculosis dates back to the 1800s. Up until recently, it took up to two months to make a diagnosis of TB, allowing patients to get sicker and even die. But then scientists developed a new test, the GeneXpert, which could diagnose TB in less than two hours. Many infectious diseases and public health experts were convinced that using the GeneXpert would lead to more rapid treatment of patients, thereby saving lives. Some said that we had an ethical obligation to offer it to everyone because it was clearly so much better. In 2011, the South African Department of Health embarked on a real-life experiment of the GeneXpert. They found that using the new test made no impact on mortality. It’s not that the GeneXpert didn’t work, it’s that the test is only one small part of the process.

Diseases of the poor receive too little attention from medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies. We should be investing more to develop drugs and vaccines to combat diseases like Ebola. But we also can’t afford to wait. It’s urgent that we invest in strengthening health systems to make better use of existing tools, and eventually, new drugs and vaccines.

Nigerian Army Repels Boko Haram Attack In Bama, North Eastern Nigeria , Kills 45 Terrorists

No fewer than 45 suspected members of Boko Haram sect have been killed in an encounter with military troops when the terrorists attempted to invade and take over Bama Local Government Area of Borno State.
Over 30 of the insurgents were also injured in the fierce battle with security operatives that lasted for over 5 hours.
The incident according to sources started in the early hours ofMondayat about5:30am.
This is even as an unconfirmed report revealed that another group of the insurgents were sightedon Mondayaround Mafa Local Government Area and Kayamula villages of Konduga Local Government Area near Maiduguri metropolis, but the ones sighted around Kayamula village were killed by military troops, while those around Mafa were suspected to be making frantic effort to enter the metropolis.
Bama is about 76 kilometres drive and south east of Maiduguri, the state capital which had witnessed series of deadly attacks by suspected terrorists.
A competent source said, “the insurgents stormed the town through Bama-Banki-Gwoza Road but were intercepted by gallant military troops near the Bama Mobile Police Unit located about 5 kilometers away from Bama town.
The Boko Haram insurgents were said to have tactically attempted to enter Bama town in convoy of military vehicles and motorcycles wearing military uniform armed with sophisticated weapons and local Improved Explosive Devices (IEDs).

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/09/45-boko-haram-members-killed-army-repel-attack-bama/