The Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship 2022/2023 for Ph.D. students ($15,000 USD & 12-week paid Internship)

Application Deadline: June 30th 2021 

The Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship is a global program that identifies and empowers the next generation of exceptional computing research talent. Microsoft recognizes the value of diversity in computing and aims to increase the pipeline of talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields to build a stronger and inclusive computing-related research community. Microsoft Research is currently offer PhD fellowships in Asia-Pacific, Canada and the United States, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), and Latin America.

Requirements

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Students should support this mission and embrace opportunities to foster diverse and inclusive cultures within their communities.

PhD students must be enrolled at a university in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, or Africa).
Proposed research must be closely related to one of the themes at Microsoft Research Cambridge:
Cloud Infrastructure
Confidential Computing
Future of Work
Health Intelligence
Machine Intelligence

Benefits

$15,000 USD is provided to help complete research as part of their doctoral thesis work for academic year 2022–23.

Eligible recipients will be offered a 12-week paid internship with Microsoft Research’s Cambridge, UK lab, or the Microsoft Africa Research Institute (MARI).
Opportunities will be provided to build relationships with research teams at Microsoft and receive mentorship.

Click Here to apply: https://bit.ly/3flI8w2

COVID-19 ANGOLA: 442 RECOVERIES, 290 NEW INFECTIONS

Luanda - Angola has reported 442 recoveries, 290 new infections and four deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the clinical bulletin that reached Angop on Thursday evening.

According to the source, the recoveries have been reported in the provinces of Luanda (412),   Huambo (14 ),  Huíla (06),  Benguela (03), Cuanza Sul (02), Bengo (02),  Moxico (01), Cuanza Norte (01) and Lunda Sul (01).

As for the infections, the source states that 235 cases were detected in Luanda, followed by Huíla with 16, Namibe (08), Bié (06), Cuanza Sul (06), Uíge (06), Huambo (05), Cabinda (02), Cunene (02), Zaire (02), Bengo (01) and  Benguela (01).

The new cases involves 158 men and 132 women, with ages ranging from 14 days to 98 years.

The deaths have been reported in Luanda (03) and Huambo (01), all nationals.

So far, Angola has 29,695 positive cases, 649 deaths, 25,629 recoveries and 3,417 active patients.

FOREIGN MINISTER ATTENDS INAUGURATION CEREMONY OF YOWERI MUSEVENI

Luanda - Angolan minister of Foreign Affairs Téte António attended Wednesday, on behalf of the Head of State João Lourenço, the inauguration of the re-elected President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni.

A note from the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, released this Friday, states that Téte António is being accompanied by senior officials of his sector. 

Eleven heads of State and representatives from various countries attended the inauguration ceremony held in the Kololo Independence ceremonial square, under preventive measures due to Covid-19. 

Uganda’s Museveni, 76, who has been in power since 1986, secured his sixth term in office. 

White people rescued before Black people in Palma: Amnesty

Rights group alleges in report citing survivors that white contractors were airlifted to safety before local Black people after March attack on Mozambican town.

White contractors were prioritised for evacuation ahead of Black locals during a rescue operation following an attack in March by an armed group known locally as al-Shabab on the Mozambican town of Palma, according to Amnesty International.

In a report compiled from interviews with 11 Black survivors, Amnesty on Thursday charged that even dogs were pulled to safety before Black people by a helicopter that airlifted civilians from a hotel where they had sought refuge.

“White contractors [were] airlifted to safety before local Black people,” said Amnesty, adding the hotel manager took his two German Shepherd dogs on the rescue helicopter, leaving people behind.

Dyck Advisory Group (DAG), a South Africa private company hired to help the Mozambique government fight the armed group and which was involved in the rescue operation, rejected the allegations.

DAG founder Lionel Dyck told AFP news agency in a texted response that the allegations were “not at all accurate”, promising to issue a statement later.

Some 200 people, mainly civil servants and foreigners working on a nearby gas project, sheltered in the Amarula Palma Hotel during the attack on Palma that began on March 24.

Amnesty said there were about 20 white workers among the group holed up in the beachfront hotel.

“While the white contractors were prioritised to be airlifted to safety, the Black nationals were left to fend for themselves. After the majority of the white contractors and a few well-off Black nationals – among them the Administrator for Palma – were rescued, those left behind attempted to flee by ground convoy” but were ambushed by al-Shabab, Amnesty said.

Deprose Muchena, the rights watchdog’s regional director for east and southern Africa, said “these are alarming allegations that the rescue plan was racially segregated.”

“Abandoning people during an armed assault simply because of the colour of their skin is racism, and violates the obligation to protect civilians,” he said, adding that for the hotel manager to “choose to rescue his dogs instead of people is also extremely shocking”.

One survivor told Amnesty that “we didn’t want all white people to be rescued, because we knew that if all the whites left, we would be left there to die. We heard them talking about the plan to take all the whites and leave” the Black people.

But a white survivor, South African Wesley Nel, whose brother died in the attack, denied the discrimination claims.

“I was there. We all were abandoned black and white,” tweeted Nel, whose brother Adrian Nel was killed during a deadly ambush of a convoy of cars trying to flee from the hotel.

“But it was us ‘white’ people who saved 150 locals by driving us all out of there,” he wrote on Twitter following the publication of the report.

Several witnesses also told Amnesty the hotel manager took advantage of the chaotic situation to take his two German Shepherd dogs to safety via helicopter, leaving people behind. The helicopters could only transport six people at a time, and made a total of four trips, the rights group said.

“If the dogs hadn’t gone, about two or three more people could have gone on the helicopter,” one survivor said. “That dismayed people because some women didn’t get in the helicopter because of the dogs.”

Twelve decapitated bodies were found strewn in front of the hotel days after the attack, according to the army and private security sources.

The attack on Palma left dozens of Mozambicans and foreigners dead, according to the government, and displaced tens of thousands.

It marked a major intensification in a conflict that has wreaked havoc across Cabo Delgado province for more than three years.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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WTO can show ‘relevance’ with vaccine waiver, US trade rep says

For the second day in a row, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai heard criticism from Republican US lawmakers that the intellectual property rights waiver will give critical biopharmaceutical technology to China, Russia and other strategic rivals while failing to increase vaccine supplies.

United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai said on Thursday that World Trade Organization negotiations over intellectual property waivers for COVID-19 vaccines are a chance for the deeply divided trade body to make itself relevant to the world’s needs.

Tai, speaking to the House Ways and Means Committee, said she was committed to entering negotiations that take into account concerns from all sides, including drug companies.

“The WTO has not got a record of moving quickly, or getting to yes, across 164 members who must all agree, very often,” Tai said. “This is the opportunity for the WTO to show its relevance for mankind.”

For a second day in a row, Tai heard criticism from Republican lawmakers that the intellectual property rights waiver will give critical biopharmaceutical technology to China, Russia and other strategic rivals while failing to increase vaccine supplies.

Republican Representative Devin Nunes told Tai that he is concerned China is one of the few countries that could quickly manufacture messenger RNA vaccines, a technology partly developed with US tax dollars.

“It really seems like they [China] want to steal this very new technology, especially as it relates to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines,” he said.

Tai said the administration was working to exercise leadership on the issue to try to reach a solution that saves lives and puts the world back on a faster growth track, which will benefit the US.

India and South Africa, the proponents of the original, much broader proposal, are expressing “that they feel extremely vulnerable in not having access to vaccines and not being able to make them either,” Tai said.

On Wednesday, Tai told a Senate hearing that companies making vaccines could be “a hero” by helping the world gain increased access to COVID-19 vaccines.

She declined to discuss details of her consultations with drug companies before announcing the decision to join WTO waiver negotiations last week, but said that some are driven by more than their obligations to shareholders.

“Some of them do see themselves as important actors in the public health ecosystem in the world,” she said.

Tai said that the intellectual property waiver was just one of a number of actions that would be required to increase manufacturing and equitable distribution of vaccines around the world.

SOURCE: REUTERS

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Kenya leader’s constitutional reform bid illegal: High Court

Kenya’s High Court ruled a drive by President Uhuru Kenyatta to change the constitution was illegal, stopping a move critics say was designed to check his deputy, whom he has fallen out with publicly.

Parliament already passed the proposed amendments – popularly known as the Building Bridges Initiative – which mark the biggest change to the East African nation’s government structure since a new constitution was adopted in 2010.

However, issuing a ruling on several challenges lodged by various parties, a five-judge bench of the court said on Thursday that Kenyatta used a constitutional provision reserved for citizens to initiate the changes, making the process illegal.

“The constitutional amendment bill is an initiative of the president and the law is clear that the president does not have the constitutional mandate to initiate any constitutional changes through popular initiative,” the court said in its ruling.

As a result “civil proceedings can be instituted against the president for violating the constitution, by initiating its amendment,” the judges added.

“The president cannot be both player and umpire in the same match,” said Jairus Ngaah, one of the judges.

Power-sharing

The government, which wants to hold a referendum after Kenyatta signs the bill into law, said it will appeal the ruling.

Kenyatta says the bill promotes the sharing of power among competing ethnic groups to reduce cyclical election violence and is not targeting anyone.

It will create 70 new constituencies, return the role of cabinet ministers to elected members of parliament, and create several powerful new posts: a prime minister, two deputies and an official leader of the parliamentary opposition.

Allies of Deputy President William Ruto, right, have loudly opposed the constitutional changes bill [File: Reuters]

Kenyatta-Odinga cooperation

Kenyatta initiated the changes with the backing of former prime minister Raila Odinga, after the two made peace in January 2018 following a divisive presidential election the previous year in which the president beat Odinga.

The rapprochement isolated Kenyatta’s deputy, William Ruto, who wants to succeed his boss when he steps down next year after serving the two constitutionally allowed five-year terms.

The constitutional amendments are partly designed to tame the political ambitions of the Kalenjin ethnic group’s Ruto, by making it possible to cobble together an alliance against him, said John Githongo, a prominent anti-graft campaigner.

“It is very clear that some of these alignments are to sideline him,” he said.

Ruto’s allies have loudly opposed the constitutional changes bill in parliament and outside.

“I don’t think we have a constitutional problem in Kenya… The biggest problem in Kenya is an economic problem,” Ndindi Nyoro, a pro-Ruto parliamentarian, said on the local Citizen TV.

The next presidential election will be held in 2022 and Kenyatta, having served two terms, is not eligible to stand again.

Ruto said the constitutional reform will create a system allowing Kenyatta and Odinga, respectively Kikuyu and Luo, the two main ethnic groups in the country, to share power.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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India COVID cases above 24 million as mutant spreads across globe

India records 4,000 deaths and 343,144 infections in last 24 hours amid reports that strain first detected in the country is spreading across the globe.

The number of recorded COVID-19 infections in India has climbed above 24 million amid reports on Friday that the highly transmissible coronavirus mutant first detected in the country was spreading across the globe.

The B.1.617 variant of the virus, first identified in India, has been found in cases in eight countries of the Americas, including Canada and the United States, Jairo Mendez, a World Health Organization (WHO) infectious diseases expert said on Friday.

People infected by the variant included travellers in Panama and Argentina who had arrived from India or Europe. In the Caribbean, cases of the Indian variant have been detected in Aruba, Dutch Sint Maarten and the French department of Guadeloupe.

The mutant strain has also been detected in Britain, as well as in Singapore.

“These variants have a greater capacity for transmission but so far we have not found any collateral consequences,” Mendez said. “The only worry is that they spread faster.”

Public Health England said the total number of confirmed cases of the variant had more than doubled in the past week to 1,313 across the United Kingdom.

“We are anxious about it – it has been spreading,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, adding that there would be meetings to discuss what to do. “We’re ruling nothing out,” he added.

According to health ministry data, India recorded 4,000 deaths and 343,144 infections in the last 24 hours. It was the third consecutive day of 4,000 or more deaths but daily infections have stayed below a peak of 414,188 last week.

While the total number of recorded infections crossed 24 million, the number of people confirmed to have died from COVID-19 stood at 262,317 since the pandemic first struck India more than a year ago.

But a lack of testing in many places meant a lot of deaths and infections were omitted from the official count, and experts say the real numbers could be five to 10 times higher.

Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said most models had predicted a peak this week and that the country’s infections could be nearing an apex.

Still, the number of new cases each day is large enough to overwhelm hospitals, she said on Twitter on Thursday. “The keyword is cautious optimism.”

The situation is particularly bad in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with a population of more than 240 million. Television pictures have shown families weeping over the dead in rural hospitals or camping in wards to tend the sick.

Bodies have washed up in the Ganges, the river that flows through the state, as crematoriums are overwhelmed and wood for funeral pyres is in short supply.

A healthcare worker checks the temperature of a rice mill worker during a COVID-19 vaccination drive at Bavla village on the outskirts of Ahmedabad [File: Amit Dave/Reuters]

The second wave of infections, which erupted in February, has been accompanied by a slowdown in vaccinations, although Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that vaccinations would be open to all adults from May 1.India is the world’s largest vaccine producer but has run low on stocks in the face of the huge demand. As of Thursday, it had fully vaccinated just over 38.2 million people, or about 2.8 percent of a population of about 1.35 billion, government data shows.

More than two billion doses of coronavirus vaccines will likely be available in India between August to December this year, top government adviser VK Paul told reporters amid criticism that the government had mishandled the vaccine plan.

Those doses would include 750 million of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, as well as 550 million doses of Covaxin, made by Bharat Biotech.

“We are going through a phase of finite supply. The entire world is going through this. It takes time to come out of this phase,” Paul said.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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