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Public Citizen Calls for Urgent Support of WHO Vaccine Tech Transfer Hub
WASHINGTON
Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced plans to create a technology transfer hub in South Africa to facilitate mRNA vaccine production for Africa. Public Citizen recently issued a report describing how to retrofit vaccine production facilities on every continent and transfer technology to produce enough mRNA vaccine for the world in one year. Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines program, issued the following statement:
"WHO is forging a path to a world more resilient to pandemics and better able to make vaccines for all.
"Africa, Asia and Latin America have been left especially vulnerable to COVID-19, due to wealthy countries purchasing the available scarce supplies, and corporations holding secret the vaccine know-how that the world needs to expand production. WHO's regional vaccine production hubs could mitigate these travesties, which have contributed to suffering and death.
"It is possible to make enough mRNA vaccine for the world within a year. President Biden and other leaders should offer funding, technical capacity and political support to share vaccine recipes and accelerate WHO's plans to make a difference not only against future pandemics, but also against COVID-19 today.
"Vaccine production should be urgent and sustainable, decentralized and democratic. The fruits of research and manufacturing should be shared openly with humanity. National leaders should share technology, including via WHO's COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, and support a temporary waiver of intellectual property rules at the World Trade Organization to facilitate these goals."
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Amnesty Says US Must Be Held to Account for Bombing Iran School 'Packed Full of Children'
"This harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict."
Mar 16, 2026
Amnesty International on Monday published an investigation that found the United States violated international humanitarian law by failing to take measures to avoid harming civilians before bombing a girls' school in southern Iran last month and killing around 175 people, most of them children.
Evidence gathered by Amnesty "indicates that the school building was directly struck, alongside 12 other structures in an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound, with guided weapons," the group said. "This points to a failure by US forces to take feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm in carrying out the attack, which is a serious breach of international humanitarian law."
"The fact that the school building was directly targeted and was previously part of the IRGC compound raises concerns that US forces may have relied on outdated intelligence and failed in their obligation to do everything feasible to verify that the intended target was a military objective," Amnesty added.
NEW: Our in-depth investigation finds that US has violated international humanitarian law by failing to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. US is responsible for deadly attack on school in #Minab packed full of children.
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— Amnesty International (@amnesty.org) March 16, 2026 at 8:26 AM
Satellite imagery analyses confirmed eyewitness accounts that the February 28 attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab was a "triple-tap" airstrike, in which an initial bombing was followed up with two additional strikes meant to kill survivors and rescue workers.
Fragments of a Tomahawk cruise missile found at the school and marked with the names of US weapons companies, a Pentagon contract number, and "Made in USA" added to the body of evidence pointing to the United States as the perpetrator of what numerous experts have called a likely war crime.
President Donald Trump, who initially blamed Iran for the attack, later said he is "willing to live with" whatever the military's investigation concludes.
"US authorities must ensure that the investigation they have announced is impartial, independent, and transparent," Amnesty said. "Investigations into the strike must consider the intelligence gathering and assessments, targeting decisions, and precautions taken, as well as how artificial intelligence may have been employed in each of these steps, to evaluate how targeting decisions were made. The results of the investigation should be made public."
Both the US and Israel have increasingly relied upon artificial intelligence systems to select bombing targets, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) having first used Gaza as what on expert called "a live-fire, live-ordnance lab experiment on people." Proponents of these systems note that they can select targets and approve strikes exponentially faster than humans, enabling more strikes, but critics warn such targeting methods are inherently more dangerous, pointing to higher error rates which translate to more civilian casualties and less accountability.
In the case of the Minab strike, Amnesty said, "Where sufficient evidence exists, competent authorities should prosecute any person suspected of criminal responsibility. Victims and their families have the right to truth and justice and should receive full reparation, including restitution, rehabilitation, and compensation for civilian harm."
Erika Guevara-Rosas—Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns—said in a statement Monday that “this harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict."
"Schools must be places of safety and learning for children," she said. "Instead, this school in Minab became a site of mass killing. The US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building. Targeting a protected civilian object, such as a school, is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law."
"If the attackers failed to identify the building as a school and nevertheless proceeded with the attack, this would indicate gross negligence in the planning of the attack and would point to a shameful intelligence failure on the part of the US military and a serious violation of international humanitarian law," Guevara-Rosas continued.
"On the other hand," she said, "if the US was aware that the school was adjacent to the IRGC compound and proceeded to attack without taking all feasible precautions, such as striking at night when the school would have been empty, or giving effective advance warning to civilians likely to be affected, this would amount to recklessly launching an indiscriminate attack which killed and injured civilians and must be investigated as a war crime."
“For their part, Iranian authorities must immediately remove, to the extent feasible, civilians from the vicinity of military objectives and allow independent monitors into the country," Guevara-Rosas added. "They must also restore internet access to ensure that the 92 million people in Iran have access to life-saving information and be able to contact their loved ones.”
Amnesty joins other organizations—including the United Nations Human Rights Office, Human Rights Watch, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor—in urging accountability for the officials responsible for planning and executing the school strike.
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'Dark Day for California' as Oil Flows Through Pipeline Behind Major Spill After Trump War Order
One conservation campaigner said that "the cynical misuse of a national security law" for the oil company that owns the system and "has repeatedly broken the law is a shocking development, even from this administration."
Mar 16, 2026
As Sable Offshore Corp. on Monday confirmed that oil is flowing again thanks to a war-related order from President Donald Trump, the Center for Biological Diversity renewed warnings about reviving a pipeline that "caused one of California's largest oil spills on the Santa Barbara coast" over a decade ago.
"I'm distressed and saddened that California's coast now faces the threat of another oil disaster from this unsafe pipeline," said Brady Bradshaw, senior oceans campaigner at the center, a US nonprofit focused on conservation, in a statement.
"For the sake of the incredible Pacific Ocean and all of its wildlife, the community has worked so hard to make sure we'd never see oil flowing through this defective pipeline again," noted Bradshaw, whose group is involved in some related lawsuits.
Despite the various legal battles, with oil prices surging due to Trump's unlawful war on Iran, the president on Friday signed an executive order delegating certain authorities under the Defense Production Act to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who subsequently told Sable to restore operations of the Santa Ynez unit and pipeline system.
The unit has been shut down since May 2015, when the pipeline ruptured and spilled about 450,000 gallons of oil around Refugio State Beach, killing local animals and impacting beaches and fisheries. A federal investigation found that the pipeline failed due to corrosion. Still, Sable bought the unit from ExxonMobil in 2024, and has been trying to resume operations.
Last April, the Center for Biological Diversity and Wishtoyo Foundation sued the California Office of the State Fire Marshal for waiving safety rules for the pipeline. Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney at the center, said at the time that "it is inexcusable to waive safety standards for an old, fatally flawed pipeline system that already failed catastrophically once."
"Exempting this pipeline from basic corrosion prevention requirements is a mindbogglingly shortsighted move that puts our incredible coastline at risk of yet another massive spill," the lawyer continued. "The State Fire Marshal pushed out these waivers without even taking a hard look at all the environmental and public safety risks, and our marine wildlife and coastal communities could wind up once again covered in toxic crude."
Just months later, in December, "the Trump administration moved to seize control of the pipeline system from the State Fire Marshal and issued Sable an emergency special permit that enables a restart despite the pipelines' design defects," the center noted Monday.
Then, under the cover of war, the president—who returned to office with help from Big Oil's campaign cash and promised to "drill, baby, drill"—and Wright took their latest steps to revive the flawed pipeline.
Sable said in a Monday statement that it "immediately complied" with the Trump administration's new orders and on Saturday began transporting oil produced at the unit through the pipeline system from Las Flores Canyon to Pentland Station. The company is planning for sales by April 1 at an expected gross oil rate of 50,000 barrels per day.
"This is a dark day for California, and I urge state officials to keep standing up to Trump's bullying," Bradshaw said Monday. "We'll keep fighting as hard as we can to protect Santa Barbara's coast and end offshore drilling in the state once and for all."
"The cynical misuse of a national security law for the benefit [of] an oil company that has repeatedly broken the law is a shocking development, even from this administration," added Bradshaw. "The courts shouldn't put up with this brazen abuse of power."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom—one of several Democrats expected to run for president in 2028—joined the center in criticizing the resumption and has also vowed to fight back.
"California will not stand by while the Trump administration attempts to sacrifice our coastal communities, our environment, and our $51 billion coastal economy," he said. "The Trump administration and Sable are defying multiple court orders, and we will see them back in court."
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Poll Shows Double-Digit Drop in US Voter Support for Israel Since 2023
A new survey shows just 32% of US voters view Israel positively—down from 47% in 2023.
Mar 16, 2026
Support for Israel has dropped across the board among US voters over the last three years, with particularly steep declines among Democrats and independents, according to a poll commissioned by NBC News.
Overall, the poll conducted by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies found that 32% of registered US voters view Israel positively, while 39% see the country in a negative light. This is a drastic shift from 2023, when the same poll found that 47% of US voters viewed Israel positively, versus just 24% who viewed it negatively.
Democratic voters have been leading the shift away from Israel, as the percentage of Democrats who view Israel positively has fallen from 34% in 2024 to 13% in 2026, while negative views of the country have spiked from 35% to 57% over the last three years.
The shift among independent voters has been almost as dramatic, as just 21% of independents said they now have a positive view of Israel, compared to 40% of independents who viewed Israel positively in 2023. This has similarly correlated with a dramatic spike in negative views of Israel, with 48% of independents rating the country negatively, versus 22% who rated it negatively in 2023.
Republicans overall remained much more supportive of Israel than Democrats and independents, but the poll still showed that GOP support for Israel fell by nine percentage points over the last three years.
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told NBC News that the shift in opinion against Israel was a direct result of its assault on Gaza that has killed at least 70,000 Palestinian civilians.
"Israel may have had major military success in its war against Hamas," Horwitt said, "but its actions have badly damaged its standing among the American people."
A poll released by Gallup in February found that, for the first time ever, US voters said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis, just one year after finding that Americans expressed more sympathy toward Israelis than Palestinians by a margin of 13 percentage points.
Israel's unpopularity among Democratic primary voters has led to candidates trying to distance themselves from groups such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is spending big in primaries to defeat Democrats who have been critical of the Israeli government.
As reported by CNN on Sunday, even Democrats running as supporters of Israel have taken pains to not be associated with AIPAC, which has become especially toxic among Democratic primary voters.
"From Minnesota to Mississippi, operatives involved in races told CNN candidates are constantly facing questions about the group on the trail," the network noted. "Incumbents tell CNN they expect it to come up regularly at town halls. And online, detractors constantly pounce on politicians’ comments they perceive as sympathetic to Israel as evidence of being coopted by AIPAC."
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