WORLD / AFRICA
By Wan Lin Published: May 11, 2021 11:47 PM
President of Seychelles Wavel Ramkalawan (right) answers a practitioner prior to receive the first dose of the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine produced by Sinopharm at the Seychelles Hospital in Victoria on January 10, 2021. Photo: AFP
The president of Seychelles has refuted doubts over the effectiveness of China s COVID-19 vaccine produced by Sinopharm amid the epidemic surge in the country. President Wavel Ramkalawan said the vaccine is effectively helping to protect people from getting sick.
Chinese experts said that questioning by foreign media over the effectiveness of Sinopharm s vaccine is arbitrary and the surge of COVID-19 cases in Seychelles is fueled by multiple factors, such as mutant strains and the level of protective antibodies in the population.
Peter Biello: Natasha, thank you very much for speaking with me.
Natasha Singer: Thank you for having me on.
Peter Biello: Lots of colleges and universities have used some form of software to monitor students during exams that because of the pandemic needed to be taken remotely. Dartmouth was using a software called Canvas. How did Canvas enable Dartmouth to identify what seemed to the school like evidence of cheating?
Natasha Singer: It s a fascinating story because Dartmouth actually require students to use a separate software called Exam Soft that locks down the devices they re taking exams on. But they notice that even though the student s primary devices were locked, there seemed to be activity on different software called Canvas, and students are required to have a secondary device nearby. So they thought that students were looking up stuff on Canvas, which is, of course, software platform that millions of students use. And so Dartmouth decided that there was enough eviden
Seychelles, which has vaccinated more of its population against Covid-19 than any other country, saw active cases more than double in the week to May 7, raising concerns that inoculation is not helping turn the tide in some places.
The World Health Organization said vaccine failure couldn’t be determined without a detailed assessment and that it was working on evaluating the situation.
Kate O’Brien, director of the the WHO’s department of immunization, vaccines and biologicals, told a briefing on Monday that the body was in direct communication with Seychelles and that a detailed assessment was needed looking at factors like strains of the virus and the severity of cases.
Online cheating charges upend Dartmouth Medical School
The university accused 17 students of cheating on remote exams, raising questions about data mining and sowing mistrust on campus. Students at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine protesting outside the dean’s office after administrators accused 17 of their classmates of cheating during remote exams. Kelly Burgess/The New York Times May 9, 2021
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HANOVER, N.H. Sirey Zhang, a first-year student at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, was on spring break in March when he received an email from administrators accusing him of cheating.
Dartmouth had reviewed Zhang’s online activity on Canvas, its learning management system, during three remote exams, the email said. The data indicated that he had looked up course material related to one question during each test, honor code violations that could lead to expulsion, the email said.
De Blasio unclear on fall remote option for schools
05/10/2021 10:00 AM EDT
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As students, families and staff prepare for the summer and look ahead to fall, the city still has not indicated whether it will offer a fully remote option in the fall.