VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) claims the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Institute of Microbiology is safe for humans, according to the results of clinical trials by the institute.

The results of phase I and phase II trials have resulted in safety and health for people who received the vaccine injection and found no serious side effects, the Institute of Microbiology, an institution under CAS, was quoted by local media on Monday.

The Institute of Microbiology in collaboration with Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products Co Ltd has obtained permission to develop the COVID-19 vaccine from the Chinese National Medical Products Agency (NMPA) on June 19.

Researchers began conducting clinical trials on June 23 to make sure the vaccine is safe to administer to humans. The volunteers who are willing to receive the vaccine are aged 18-59 years from Beijing, Chongqing, and Hunan.

They received injections at hospitals in Beijing and Chongqing.

Then a second clinical trial was conducted on July 10 to evaluate the immunity power and safety of the vaccine. According to the development agency, clinical trials are conducted randomly to determine the effectiveness of vaccines before they are mass-produced.

The vaccine is patented and the developer is preparing a phase III clinical trial to confirm its efficacy. To date, in China, there have been 13 COVID-19 vaccines developed by several research institutes and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology said that there have been four COVID-19 vaccine candidates that have conducted fae III clinical trials.

Chinese people are looking forward to the vaccine. Sinovac and Sinopharm, China's largest vaccine company, recently started offering a limited amount via online platforms. (Antaranews)

Two more men were arrested in connection with a knife attack that left three dead at a church in Nice, bringing the number of people in custody to six as investigators look at the suspected assailant’s last known contacts, a French police source said.

The latest arrests took place on Saturday, the source said.

An assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in Nice on Thursday, in France’s second deadly knife attack in two weeks with a suspected Islamist motive.

The suspected attacker, a 21-year-old from Tunisia, was shot by police and is now in critical condition in a hospital.

The latest arrests in the case involved two men from the town of Grasse, near the southern French coast close to Nice, BFM TV reported.

France’s chief anti-terrorism prosecutor has said the man suspected of carrying out the Nice attack had arrived in Europe on Sept. 20 in Lampedusa, the Italian island off Tunisia.

Investigators in Italy are also stepping up inquiries about the suspected assailant’s movements and contacts on the island of Sicily. They believe he may have spent time there after going from Lampedusa to Bari in early October on a ship used to quarantine migrants, judicial sources said.

In Bari, he is believed to have been handed an expulsion order obliging him to leave Italy within a week, the judicial sources said. Investigators are looking into the possibility the suspected attacker stayed in the Sicilian town of Alcamo for a 10 day period, the sources added. (Reuters)

The UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations Miguel Angel Moratinos calls on the world to respect each other of religions and faiths, to foster a culture of brotherhood and peace.

In a statement, Moratinos said he was following with deep concern the growing tensions and instances of intolerance fueled by the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo which published satirical caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

"The seditious caricature has also provoked acts of violence against innocent civilians, who were attacked because of their religion, belief or ethnicity," Moratinos said.

He underlined that contempt for religion and sacred religious symbols provokes hatred and violent extremism, leading to polarization and fragmentation of society.

Freedom of expression must be exercised in a way that fully respects the religious beliefs and principles of all religions, he said.

"Acts of violence cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group," said Moratinos.

Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron described Islam as a "religion in crisis" and announced plans for tougher laws to tackle "Islamic separatism" in France.

Tensions have escalated after the case of the beheading of a high school teacher, Samuel Paty, on October 16 in a Paris suburb after he showed him a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in one of his classes about freedom of expression.

The attacker, Abdullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old man from Chechnya, was then shot dead by police. Macron paid tribute to Paty, and the cartoon released by Charlie Hebdo was also projected on buildings in several cities.

The French president defended the caricature, saying France "will not stop our cartoons". The remarks sparked outrage across the Muslim world.

In addition to condemnation from several countries including Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, there have been calls to boycott products, protests and French attacks on French websites. (Antaranews)

A knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday.

A defiant President Emmanuel Macron, declaring that France had been subject to an Islamist terrorist attack, said he would deploy thousands more soldiers to protect important French sites, such as places of worship and schools.

Speaking from the scene, he said France had been attacked “over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief”.

“And I say it with lots of clarity again today: we will not give any ground.”

A police source told Reuters the assailant was believed by law enforcement to be a 21-year-old Tunisian national who had recently entered France from Italy. A Tunisian security source and a French police source later named the suspect as Brahim Aouissaoui.

Tunisia’s anti-terrorism court prosecutor began a forensic investigation into “the suspicion that a Tunisian committed a terrorist operation abroad”, Mohsen Dali, spokesman for the specialised counter-militancy court, said in Tunis.

In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, state television reported that a Saudi man had been arrested in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after attacking and injuring a guard at the French consulate. The French Embassy said he was in the hospital after a knife assault though his life was not in danger.

Within hours of the Nice attack, French police killed a man who had threatened passersby with a handgun in Montfavet, near the southern city of Avignon.

France’s Le Figaro newspaper quoted a prosecution source as saying the man was undergoing psychiatric treatment, and that they did not believe there was a terrorism motive.

Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, said the attack in his city had happened at Notre Dame church and was similar to the beheading earlier this month near Paris of teacher Samuel Paty, who had used cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics class.

Thursday’s attacks, on the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad, came at a time of growing Muslim anger at France’s defence of the right to publish the cartoons, and protesters have denounced France in street rallies in several Muslim-majority countries. (Reuters)