ALEX BLOG

SHANGHAI, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Eli Lilly has won Chinese regulators' approval for ‌its drug to treat chronic inflammatory ‌bowel disease, expanding the treatment's use to the world's ​second-largest pharmaceutical market, it said on Wednesday.

The drug, mirikizumab, is authorised as a treatment for moderately-to-severely active Crohn's disease and ‌ulcerative colitis, the ⁠U.S. drugmaker said in a statement on its official WeChat account.

The ⁠decision marks its China branch's first approval for an innovative medicine in the ​digestive immunity ​field, according to ​the statement. The drug ‌is already approved for treatment in several other countries, including the U.S.

Lilly, which also sells drugs in China for other diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes and obesity, did ‌not immediately respond to ​a Reuters request for ​comment on ​a launch date or costs.

The ulcerative ‌colitis therapy market in ​China will ​see "considerable growth" over the next decade, fueled by the launch and adoption ​of targeted ‌medicines like Lilly's drug, according to Clarivate.

(Reporting ​by Andrew Silver in Shanghai; ​Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)

HONG KONG (AP) — A Chinese sea captain of a Hong Kong-flagged vessel accused ofdamaging undersea cablesand a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea in 2023 pleaded not guilty Wednesday in a Hong Kong court.

Wan Wenguo, captain of the Newnew Polar Bear container ship, appeared at a Hong Kong magistrate court and pleaded not guilty to one count of criminal damage. He also pleaded not guilty to two separate charges relating to violations of marine safety requirements for his vessel.

Cases of critical undersea cable and gas pipelines sabotaged in the Baltic Sea since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have raised security concerns among governments.

Finnish authorities previously determined the Newnew Polar Bear vessel was responsible for damaging the Balticconnector gas pipeline, which connects Finland and Estonia, in October 2023. Finland also sought China's cooperation in the investigation.

A charge sheet seen by The Associated Press accused Wan, who is in his 40s, of damaging a natural gas pipeline and submarine telecom cables between Finland and Estonia "without lawful excuse" and said he was "reckless as to whether such property would be damaged."

The case was heard at a Hong Kong court because the vessel was registered there. Around 18 witnesses could be called to testify, the court heard Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is refusing to consider Moderna's application for a new flu vaccine made with Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology, the company announced Tuesday.

The news is the latest sign of the FDA'sheightened scrutiny of vaccinesunder Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., particularly thoseusing mRNA technology, which he has criticized before and after becoming the nation's top health official.

Moderna received what's called a "refusal-to-file" letter from the FDA that objected to how it conducted a 40,000-person clinical trial comparing its new vaccine to one of the standard flu shots used today. That trial concluded the new vaccine was somewhat more effective in adults 50 and older than that standard shot.

The letter from FDA vaccine director Dr. Vinay Prasad said the agency doesn't consider the application to contain an "adequate and well-controlled trial" because it didn't compare the new shot to "the best-available standard of care in the United States at the time of the study." Prasad's letter pointed to some advice FDA officials gave Moderna in 2024, under the Biden administration, which Moderna didn't follow.

According to Moderna, that feedback said it was acceptable to use the standard-dose flu shot the company had chosen — but that another brand specifically recommended for seniors would be preferred for anyone 65 and older in the study. Still, Moderna said, the FDA did agree to let the study proceed as originally planned.

The company said it also had shared with FDA additional data from a separate trial comparing the new vaccine against a licensed high-dose shot used for seniors.

The FDA "did not identify any safety or efficacy concerns with our product" and "does not further our shared goal of enhancing America's leadership in developing innovative medicines," Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

It's rare that FDA refuses to file an application, particularly for a new vaccine, which requires companies and FDA staff to engage in months or years of discussions.

Moderna has requested an urgent meeting with FDA, and noted that it has applied for the vaccine's approval in Europe, Canada and Australia.

In the last year, FDA officials working under Kennedy have rolled back recommendations around COVID-19 shots, added extra warnings to the two leading COVID vaccines — which are made with mRNA technology — and removed critics of the administration's approach from an FDA advisory panel.

Kennedy announced last year that his department would cancel more than$500 million in contractsand funding for the development of vaccines using mRNA.

FDA for decades has allowed vaccine makers to quickly update their annual flu shots to target the latest strains by showing that they trigger an immune response in patients. That's a far more efficient approach than running long-term studies tracking whether patients get the flu and how they fare. In an internal memo last year, Prasad wrote that the streamlined method would no longer be permitted – leadingmore than a dozen former FDA commissionersto pen an editorial condemning the statements.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

At least two dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and contractors have been charged with crimes since 2020, and the wrongdoing includes patterns of physical and sexual abuse, corruption and other misuses of authority,a review by The Associated Press found.

While most cases happened before Congress voted last yearto give ICE $75 billionto hire more agents anddetain more people, experts say such crimes could accelerate given the volume of new employees and their empowerment touse aggressive tacticsto deport people.

Almost every law enforcement agency contends with bad employees. But ICE's rapid growth and mission to deport millions are unprecedented, and the immense power that officers exercise over vulnerable populations can lead to abuses.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that wrongdoing was not widespread in the agency, and that ICE "takes allegations of misconduct by its employees extremely seriously." She said that most new hires have worked for other law enforcement agencies, and that their backgrounds were thoroughly vetted.

"America can be proud of the professionalism our officers bring to the job day-in and day-out," she said.

Here are some takeaways from AP's findings:

ICE's growth could lead to problems like the Border Patrol saw

ICE announced last month that it had doubled in size in less than one year, to 22,000 employees, after a frenetic hiring spree.

After the Border Patrol doubled in size to more than 20,000 agents over a 7-year period ending in 2011, it was embarrassed by a wave of corruption, abuse and other misconduct by some of the new employees.

Former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske recalled cases of agents who accepted bribes to let cars carrying drugs enter the U.S. or who became involved in human trafficking. He said ICE will likely see even more serious problems.

ICE agents are particularly "vulnerable to unnecessary use of force issues," given that they are conducting enforcement operations while facing protests, Kerlikowske said. With the number of people in ICE detention rapidly growing to 70,000, there are more opportunities for misconduct involving employees and contractors responsible for overseeing detainees.

Several ICE officials have been arrested in the last year

Arrests of ICE personnel over the last year have been a headache for the agency, which has labeled many of the people they deport as the "worst of the worst" because of their rap sheets.

The AP found at least nine such arrests across the country. They include the assistant ICE field office supervisor in Cincinnati, who has been jailed since December after a judge found he was a danger to the public who had violently assaulted his girlfriend for years.

Two ICE employees in Minnesota faced federal sexual misconduct charges related to underage girls last year, including an employment eligibility auditor arrested in a sting operation in November. The auditor has pleaded not guilty. An ICE investigator in the state pleaded guilty to sending images and videos of himself having sex with a 17-year-old girl, whose background he searched in a law enforcement database.

Two ICE agents face charges for incidents that occurred outside Chicago while they were off-duty but which involved their agency work. One was charged last month with assaulting a protester who was filming him at a gas station. Another was cited for driving drunk shortly after leaving work at a detention center with his government firearm in the vehicle.

Many of the cases involve violence and sexual abuse

The AP's review found a pattern of charges involving ICE employees and contractors who mistreated vulnerable people in their care.

A former top official at an ICE contract facility in Texas was sentenced to probation on Feb. 4 after acknowledging he grabbed a handcuffed detainee by the neck and slammed him into a wall last year. Prosecutors had downgraded the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.

In December, an ICE contractor pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a detainee at a detention facility in Louisiana. Prosecutors said the man had sexual encounters with a Nicaraguan national over a five-month period in 2025 as he instructed other detainees to act as lookouts.

Other charges involved corruption

Other similarities involved ICE officials charged with abusing their power for financial gain.

A deportation officer in Houston was indicted last year on charges that he repeatedly accepted cash bribes from bail bondsmen in exchange for removing detainers ICE had placed on their clients targeting them for deportation. He has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of accepting bribes and was released from custody while awaiting trial.

Two Utah-based ICE investigators were sentenced to prison last year for a scheme in which they made hundreds of thousands of dollars stealing synthetic drugs known as "bath salts" from government custody and selling them for profit through government informants.

PARIS (AP) — Amine Kessaci has been targeted with death threats and lost two brothers to drug gang violence.

France Elections Drug Trafficking

But that has not silenced the 22-year-old activist who's running on an anti-drug platform in next month's municipal elections in Marseille, the French port city long known asa hub for the drug trade.

"At 17, I buried my older brother, Brahim, who was found burned. Less than three months ago, I buried my younger brother, Mehdi, who had done nothing, who died justbecause he was my little brother," Kessaci told The Associated Press.

"In the mourning I'm going through, the message I want to convey is that I will not be silent," the son of Algerian immigrants said.

In November, thousands marched in Marseille, France's second-most populous city, to denounce drug trafficking following the killing of 20-year-old Mehdi Kessaci in a shooting authorities suspect was a hit by drug gangs to intimidate and punish his activist brother.

Kessaci, his brothers and three other siblings grew up in Frais Vallon, a sprawling housing project built in the 1960s to house Marseille's waves of North African immigrants. Some 6,000 people, many living in poverty, inhabit its 14 concrete apartment towers, which are controlled by drug gangs and are among the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in France.

Kessaci's 22-year-old brother, Brahim, was dealing drugs in Frais Vallon when he was killed in 2020, his body discovered in a burned-out car.

That year, when he was just 17, Amine Kessaci founded the non-profit groupConscienceto support families affected by drug violence, which the group says on its website too often condemns young people in housing projects "to failure, prison or the grave."

With cocaine trafficking at an all-time high in France, Kessaci, now a law student, said he wants to get involved in local politics to take on drug dealers. There were 110 drug-related homicides nationwide in 2024, according to the most recent statistics released by the Interior Ministry. An additional 341 people were wounded in drug-related crimes.

The government is particularly worried by the recruitment of minors into drug gangs, which lure them in because they receive lighter prison sentences than adults.

In 2024, a quarter of those imprisoned for murder or attempted murder were teenagers, including 16 minors. A year earlier, 19% of drug trafficking suspects were minors, some as young as 12 or 13. And in Marseille, a 14-year-old hired by gangsters killed a taxi driver in 2024, while another teenager was stabbed 50 times and then burned alive, the Interior Ministry said.

"Drug trafficking leaves a trail of grief and death," said Kessaci, who is running on the list of Marseille's outgoing left-wing mayor, Benoît Payan, in the March 15 and March 22 vote.

Bulletproof jacket and heavy police protection

Areportby the independent body that audits public funds in France says drug trafficking remains largely concentrated in just 10% of French municipalities, but that it is spreading rapidly — including into rural areas — raising concerns ahead of the March elections.

Even before his youngest brother's death, Kessaci was under police protection. He attended his brother's November funeral wearing a bulletproof vest. Last week, he was forced to leave a campaign event supporting the Socialist candidate in the Aix-en-Provence municipal elections. On Tuesday, the anti-organized crime prosecutors office announced an investigation into a plot targeting Kessaci.

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Kessaci has repeatedly said he won't be intimidated and will continue to campaign openly despite the threats.

"In France in 2026, in a state governed by the rule of law, you cannot prevent people from coming and going," Kessaci told the AP. "I will be in the field because my commitment was born in the field, and the ideology, the idea, the causes I defend, they are in the field and they require presence."

Kessaci is not new to politics.

Two years ago, when he was just 20 years old, he was a candidate for a coalition of left-leaning parties in national legislative elections, narrowly losing a National Assembly seat in the second round to the far-right candidate.

Unlike the far right, Kessaci champions a grass-roots approach focused on the communities the drug gangs prey on, including improving schools, public transportation and other services.

He wants to introduce locally based police forces into impoverished neighborhoods to work with communities to undermine the so-called "narcocracy" — the power drug traffickers wield to intimidate neighborhoods and draw young people into their networks with the lure of easy money in the drug trade.

"The 'narcocracy' is this power they have to influence our lives: to block entrances to housing projects, to control who can come and go, to instill a sense of terror," Kessaci said. "This is where drug traffickers show a certain intelligence."

'My only enemy is drug trafficking'

According to the European Union Drugs Agency, France is among the EU countries with the highest reported lifetime cocaine use.

While he acknowledges that a strong police response is necessary to fight drug traffickers, Kessaci also wants to transform low-income housing projects through education, job training, revitalizing local businesses and creating employment opportunities, especially for young people.

To improve communication between police officers and the local population, he proposes doubling the police force in Marseille to 1,600 officers, opening branches in every city district.

Kessaci also aims to enhance living conditions in housing projects by introducing green spaces and much-needed renovations.

His plans include things as simple as replacing mobile trash dumpsters with fixed bins. "This will allow us to restore recycling in neighborhoods and, more importantly, to remove equipment from drug dealers, since they use the bins to create blockades," Kessaci said.

French authorities have dealt some blows to organized crime — homicides in Marseille fell from 49 in 2023 to 24 in 2024, and drug-dealing spots were halved from 160 to around 80 — yet Kessaci won't let up.

"In this election, in this campaign, in this political struggle, my only enemy is drug trafficking," Kessaci said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is refusing to consider Moderna's application for a new flu vaccine made with Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology, the company announced Tuesday.

The news is the latest sign of the FDA'sheightened scrutiny of vaccinesunder Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., particularly thoseusing mRNA technology, which he has criticized before and after becoming the nation's top health official.

Moderna received what's called a "refusal-to-file" letter from the FDA that objected to how it conducted a 40,000-person clinical trial comparing its new vaccine to one of the standard flu shots used today. That trial concluded the new vaccine was somewhat more effective in adults 50 and older than that standard shot.

The letter from FDA vaccine director Dr. Vinay Prasad said the agency doesn't consider the application to contain an "adequate and well-controlled trial" because it didn't compare the new shot to "the best-available standard of care in the United States at the time of the study." Prasad's letter pointed to some advice FDA officials gave Moderna in 2024, under the Biden administration, which Moderna didn't follow.

According to Moderna, that feedback said it was acceptable to use the standard-dose flu shot the company had chosen — but that another brand specifically recommended for seniors would be preferred for anyone 65 and older in the study. Still, Moderna said, the FDA did agree to let the study proceed as originally planned.

The company said it also had shared with FDA additional data from a separate trial comparing the new vaccine against a licensed high-dose shot used for seniors.

The FDA "did not identify any safety or efficacy concerns with our product" and "does not further our shared goal of enhancing America's leadership in developing innovative medicines," Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

It's rare that FDA refuses to file an application, particularly for a new vaccine, which requires companies and FDA staff to engage in months or years of discussions.

Moderna has requested an urgent meeting with FDA, and noted that it has applied for the vaccine's approval in Europe, Canada and Australia.

In the last year, FDA officials working under Kennedy have rolled back recommendations around COVID-19 shots, added extra warnings to the two leading COVID vaccines — which are made with mRNA technology — and removed critics of the administration's approach from an FDA advisory panel.

Kennedy announced last year that his department would cancel more than$500 million in contractsand funding for the development of vaccines using mRNA.

FDA for decades has allowed vaccine makers to quickly update their annual flu shots to target the latest strains by showing that they trigger an immune response in patients. That's a far more efficient approach than running long-term studies tracking whether patients get the flu and how they fare. In an internal memo last year, Prasad wrote that the streamlined method would no longer be permitted – leadingmore than a dozen former FDA commissionersto pen an editorial condemning the statements.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By Alasdair Pal

SYDNEY, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The secretary-general of the Commonwealth, a 56-nation group headed by Britain's King Charles, said on Wednesday she expected member nations to make progress towards beginning negotiations on reparations ‌for the transatlantic slave trade.

The Commonwealth, which grew out of the British Empire, is one of the world's ‌largest international organisations, representing around 2.7 billion people. Its members include Australia, India, 21 African nations and Caribbean states such as Barbados and Jamaica.

Charles has ​spoken of his profound regret over slavery and has backed research into the British monarchy's historical links to the trade. However, Britain, like most former colonial powers, has dismissed calls for reparations.

In an interview, Commonwealth Secretary-General Shirley Botchwey, a former foreign minister of Ghana who has publicly backed reparations from Great Britain, said she was supporting member countries in seeking redress.

"My understanding is that ‌there's some movement in terms of having ⁠parties around the table to decide on the way forward, and the different forms of reparations, how to deal with it going forward will be discussed," she told Reuters.

Discussions would be ⁠multi-lateral and would likely involve regional groups the Caribbean Community and the African Union, she added.

CALLS FOR COMPENSATION GROW

From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were abducted and sold into slavery by European merchants.

Britain was responsible for transporting an estimated ​3.2 million ​people, making it the second most active European nation after Portugal, ​which enslaved nearly six million.

The African Union last ‌year made reparations its theme of the year, and is working on developing a joint stance among member states.

The Caribbean Community has a 10-point reparation plan including a demand for debt forgiveness. That has been opposed by Britain, though Botchwey said she was open to other symbolic forms of redress.

"The UK is saying that probably we can't pay financial reparations. Reparations do not have to be only financial," Botchwey said.

"So once the parties sit, they will be able to come to mutual ‌understanding."

KING A 'GREAT ASSET'

Charles has been under pressure over his younger brother ​Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's friendship with convicted U.S. sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Buckingham ​Palace said on Monday it was ready to support ​any police inquiry after new documents suggested Mountbatten-Windsor may have shared confidential British trade documents with ‌Epstein.

He was cast out of the royal inner ​circle and stripped of many of ​his titles by the king over his close relationship with Epstein.

Charles, who became king in 2023 after the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth, has been a "great asset" to the Commonwealth, Botchwey said.

"What is happening outside the ​Commonwealth, I may not be able ‌to pronounce on it, but I am very grateful for the work that the King does to ensure ​the relevance of the Commonwealth and also to add value to the work that we do," she ​said.

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Kim Coghill)