Twitter drops the slogans "funded by the government" and "belonging to the state of China" from media accounts

Twitter has dropped the slogans "funded by the government" and "belonging to the state of China," which refer to the government's participation in editorial content, from the accounts of many international media organizations, according to what the accounts of these organizations showed today, Friday.

Twitter has dropped the slogan "funded by the government" and "belonging to the state of China," which refer to the government's participation in the editorial content of the accounts of many international media organizations, according to what the accounts of these organizations showed today, Friday.

Among the accounts that Twitter dropped the "government-funded media" tag were those of National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

It also removed the "China State Media" label from the accounts of Xinhua, as well as journalists associated with state-backed newspapers.

Twitter, NPR, CBC and the BBC did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the tag's removal.

Twitter marked NPR and CBC's accounts as "government-funded" earlier this month, causing them to stop posting on their Twitter accounts because the description did not accurately reflect the private governance structure. with them.

In an interview with the BBC last week, billionaire Elon Musk, owner of  Twitter, said the social media platform was trying to be "accurate" and was considering revising the name.

Scientists are one step closer to a "comprehensive" influenza vaccine that may give the world a "weapon" against upcoming epidemics

Researchers have reported progress on a "universal" influenza vaccine that would combat all strains of the virus and give the world a "weapon" against future influenza pandemics.

In an early clinical trial, US scientists found that their experimental flu vaccine was able to convince recipients' immune systems to produce "reactive" antibodies, meaning they made antibodies against several strains of influenza A, one of the two main groups of the virus.

Experts described the results as promising, in that the vaccine did exactly what you wanted at this early stage of testing.

Researcher Sarah Andrews of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Vaccine Research Center confirmed, however, that it has not yet been proven that it actually protects people from influenza.

She estimated that it could take another 5 to 10 years of development before a vaccine is ready for the real world if all goes well.

Currently, available influenza vaccines stimulate the body to fight four strains of influenza: two strains of influenza type A and two strains of type B.

The problem is that there are many strains within these two groups, and different strains circulate a great deal each flu season. Therefore, the flu vaccine must be updated annually to include the four strains that scientists believe are likely to dominate next season.

A universal flu vaccine can not only eliminate the annual guessing game, but also help arm people to confront the influenza pandemic, said Dr. Mirella Salvatore, assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and spokeswoman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, who was not involved in the new research. coming.

Many of these vaccines are in various stages of development. According to Salvatore, the vaccine Andrews and her colleagues are working on has passed early testing.

"They show that it produces an antibody response, and the antibodies last a long time," she said.

One year after vaccination, the study participants were still showing neutralizing antibodies to the influenza A strains, according to the findings, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

There are many reasons why a universal flu vaccine has eluded us, but the main hurdle is the complexity of the influenza virus.

Andrews explained that the new vaccine is designed to get around a major roadblock. Current flu vaccines contain weakened or inactivated influenza viruses with an admixture of hemagglutinin (HA), a major protein on the surface of the virus. When people get a flu shot, or a flu infection, the immune system creates antibodies against hemagglutinin, especially against the top, or "head," of the protein.

However, this is a problem, because parts of the head of hemagglutinin often change, fueling the need for an annual vaccine update.

But hemagglutinin doesn't just have a head, it has a "leg". This stem remains relatively stable and "conserved" across different influenza strains.

Andrews explains that getting the immune system to respond to "the leg" is difficult. Human immune systems are primed, through lifelong exposure to the influenza virus, to go all the way to the head of the hemagglutinin, leaving the stem neglected.

So Andrews and her colleagues tried a new tactic: decapitating the protein. Then they replaced it with an engineered upper to give the torso stability but not attract the wrath of the immune system.

"The only thing the immune system can see is the stem," Andrews explains.

To put decapitated hemagglutinin into an initial human test, the researchers recruited 52 healthy adults and gave each of two doses of the vaccine. Most received a high dose, given as an initial injection followed by a booster dose.

The researchers first found that the vaccine appeared to be safe, with about a fifth of recipients experiencing injection site pain or headache, which are standard side effects of the flu vaccine.

As for their immune responses, the participants showed a broad antibody response against the type A influenza strains, not the type B. This is to be expected, Andrews explained, because the vaccine contained hemagglutinin from the type A strain.

The "bivalent" vaccine (containing hemagglutinins from both influenza groups) is expected to "expand," the researchers said.

Dr. Aaron Glatt, an infectious disease specialist who was not involved in the trial, agreed that the initial immune responses looked promising.