Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have donated $25 million through their foundation to a philanthropic effort organized by Bill Gates to explore new coronavirus treatments.
The Gates Foundation donated $50 million last week to what it’s calling the “COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.” The initiative brings together life sciences companies to collaborate on the development of new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments for COVID-19.
“The Therapeutics Accelerator will enable researchers to quickly determine whether or not existing drugs have a potential benefit against COVID-19,” Chan and Zuckerberg said in a press release. “We hope these coordinated efforts will help stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as provide shared, reusable strategies to respond to future pandemics.”
The two donations are the largest from tech billionaires since the coronavirus outbreak. Wellcome and Mastercard are supporting the effort as well.
The goal of the initiative is to either develop a new drug or adapt an existing treatment that it could help distribute alongside partnering pharmaceutical companies.
The 15 companies participating in the project kicked off the effort by sharing their proprietary libraries of molecular compounds that have some history of being tested with COVID-19.
The lineup includes big names in biotech such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. is imposing travel bans on employees of the Chinese technology giant Huawei and other companies the U.S. determines are assisting authoritarian governments in cracking down on human rights.
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Hope is set to reach Mars in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates 50 years since its formation. Two other Mars missions are planned in coming days by the U.S. and China.
Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group talks dating during the coronavirus pandemic. The company has rolled out new features on it's apps to enhance the dating experience.
Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365, talked to Cheddar about the tech giant's new virtual reality and A.I. voice assistance features in its Teams product.
More than a decade after the term was coined by columnist Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, there is a Green New Deal proposal in Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) have proposed a formal resolution that would frame climate change, economic sustainability and social justice together under a unifying theme, calling for a Depression-era national mobilization similar to FDR's New Deal, and serving as a litmus test for Democratic presidential candidates going forward.
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TikTok says it will stop operations in Hong Kong after the city enacted a sweeping national security law last week.
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The Supreme Court has upheld a 1991 law that bars robocalls to cellphones.
