A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates in Texas schools violates the rights of students with disabilities, clearing the path for districts in the state to issue their own rules for face coverings, a decision that could affect more than 5 million students.

The ruling comes after months of politicized disputes over measures at the state level opposing mask-wearing policies that had been intended to prevent the spread of Covid.

The lawsuit, which sought to overturn the mandate, was filed on behalf of several families of students with disabilities and the organization Disability Rights Texas.

They stated that the defendants — the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton; the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, Mike Morath; and the Texas Education Agency — had put students with disabilities at risk through their complete erasure of mask mandates.

The first jab of a new Ebola vaccine that may protect against multiple species of the virus is to be given on Thursday, researchers have said, with the vaccine based on similar technology to the Oxford Covid jab.

Ebola haemorrhagic fever is caused by the Ebola virus and has caused devastation in some parts of the world. It is thought the outbreak in west Africa in 2014-16 may have led to more than 11,000 deaths, while the outbreak in the DRC between August 2018 and June 2020 claimed more than 2,200 lives.

Highly effective vaccines against Ebola have been developed in recent years but experts warn these have only been approved for one of the four species of the Ebola virus. This is the Zaire species that is responsible for many outbreaks, and has the highest mortality rate, with estimates of between 70% and 90%.

“There are three other important species of Ebola virus out there that these vaccines aren’t approved to prevent,” said Dr Daniel Jenkin, principal investigator of the trial at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford.

Source: Human trials of vaccine for multiple species of Ebola to begin soon | Ebola | The Guardian

Source: Belarus border chaos a ‘hybrid attack not a migration crisis’, says EU’s von der Leyen | Euronews

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A simple internet search quickly shows the biggest exporters of soy, coffee, cattle or iron ore in Brazil. But there is a strange silence when it comes to gold: heads of institutions in the sector say they do not know the exporters; the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service and the Central Bank claim tax confidentiality.

The mystery surrounding gold exports has been broken by an exclusive Repórter Brasil investigation that sheds light on the largest exporter of gold from Brazilian wildcat mines, known as garimpos. It reveals that some of the gold exported by a company known as BP Trading, one of Brazil’s top exporters, may have been of illegal origin, often clandestinely extracted from Indigenous lands and protected forests in the Amazon, causing irreversible social and environmental damage.

BP Trading saw strong growth in recent years, with revenue of 1.4 billion reais ($350 million) in 2019, more than double its 2018 results. Its founders were investigated under the Operation Car Wash anti-corruption sweep. They are accused by the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF) of laundering money when they worked at Banco Paulista, a lender with close links to the trading company of the same initials.

When contacted, BP Trading said that it “maintains strict controls over the origin of the mineral purchased from its suppliers.”

An analysis of BP’s financial statements reveals that the company’s main suppliers include two so-called security distributors, or DTVMs — financial companies authorized to purchase gold — accused by the Federal Prosecution Service of trading illegal gold extracted in Pará state. The DTVMs in question are FD’Gold and Carol DTVM.

Source: Top Brazil gold exporter leaves a trail of criminal probes and illegal mines