| | 16/December/21
| | Investigative journalist Paul Thacker wins prestigious award for “expertly researched” articles The investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker has won a prestigious British Journalism Award for a series of articles he wrote in the BMJ, one of the world's top general medical journals. The awards aim to recognise great journalism that is revelatory while serving the public interest. The three articles that won Thacker the Specialist Journalism 2021 award expose the lack of transparency among experts advising the UK and US governments on COVID policy and practice. GMWatch readers will know his work primarily from his pieces on pro-GMO activists. During the last year, he’s also begun reporting heavily on another topic of interest to many GMWatch readers – the distortions in the media’s coverage of the lab leak hypothesis on SARS-CoV-2. GMWatch Bayer faces German class action suit over Monsanto deal Bayer faces a billion-dollar investor class action lawsuit in Germany over the takeover of United States seed manufacturer Monsanto, specialist law firm Tilp Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft said. Tilp said it was representing more than 250 institutional investors and a large number of private investors who believed Bayer misled them about the economic risks of the $63bn acquisition and are demanding damages. Al Jazeera Monsanto will plead guilty to illegal use of pesticide in Hawaii and will pay additional $12m In court documents filed on 9 December in Hawaii, Monsanto agreed to plead guilty to 30 environmental crimes related to the illegal use of a pesticide on corn fields in Hawaii. After using the product in 2020 on corn fields in Oahu, Hawaii, Monsanto allowed workers to enter the fields during a six-day “restricted-entry interval” (REI) after the product was applied. The company further agreed to plead guilty to two other charges related to the storage of a banned pesticide. GMWatch India: Political organisation wants ban on glyphosate In India, the political organisation Swadeshi Jagaran Manch has demanded a complete ban on the use of glyphosate, saying it is carcinogenic and damaging to consumer health, ecology and interests of farmers, farm workers and their livelihoods. A memorandum with over 200,000 signatures of people favouring a complete ban on the herbicide has been submitted to India's farm minister Narendra Singh. Swadeshi Jagaran Manch said Indian government restrictions were meaningless and unenforceable, and that India's regulators were turning a blind eye to the illegal growing of GM glyphosate-tolerant seeds. Business Today (India) Wuhan lab leak "more likely" origin of COVID-19, says researcher A Canadian molecular biologist has told cross-party members of Parliament (MPs) on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan region of China is now the “more likely” origin of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Dr Alina Chan, specialising in gene therapy and cell engineering and co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, told the Parliament panel's evidence session on scientific research that the pandemic was being caused by the unique feature of the coronavirus called “furin cleavage site”, which has been linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Asked by the panel about the probability of a lab leak as the origin of the pandemic, Chan said a “lab origin is more likely than natural origin at this point”. NDTV DONATE TO GMWATCH __________________________________________________________ Website: http://www.gmwatch.org
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