Moderna said Pfizer and BioNTech had infringed on patents filed between 2010 and 2016.Credit...Bagus Indahono/EPA, via Shutterstock The vaccine manufacturer Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech on Friday, claiming that its rivals’ Covid-19 shot copied groundbreaking technology that Moderna had developed years before the pandemic. The allegation of patent infringement sets up what could become a protra

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Inside this facility in Chesterfield, Missouri, trillions of bacteria are producing tiny loops of DNA containing coronavirus genes — the raw material for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It’s the start of a complex manufacturing and testing process that takes 60 days and involves Pfizer facilities in three states. The result will be millions of doses of the vaccine, frozen and ready to ship. STEP 1 Pu

More than two dozen coronavirus cases have now been tied to the White House or people who spent time near President Trump before he announced on Oct. 2 that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had tested positive. The size of the outbreak grew in the following days as more aides and their contacts tested positive, and earlier cases at the White House were revealed. Several people who met with th

As Japan Nears 1,000 Daily Coronavirus Infections, It Shies From Restrictions Case numbers are climbing fast, with virus clusters in nursing homes, schools and elsewhere. But fingers are being pointed at Japan’s so-called hostess bars. Visitors in the Kabukicho district of Tokyo on Friday. Most of Japan’s recent coronavirus cases have been among people in their 20s and 30s, who tend to suffer only

“The majority is clearly European,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study awaiting peer review. A separate team at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine came to strikingly similar conclusions, despite studying a different group of cases. Both teams analyzed genomes from coronaviruses taken from New Yorkers starting in mid-March. The researc

Several companies have been affected by the Petya cyberattack, including, from left, Rosneft, the Russian energy giant; Merck, a pharmaceutical company; and Maersk, a shipping company.Credit...Left, Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters; center, Matt Rourke/Associated Press; right, Enrique Castro Sanchez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Computer systems from Ukraine to the United States were struck on Tuesd

CHICAGO — The sixth graders at Newton Bateman, a public elementary school here with a classic red brick facade, know the Google drill. In a social-science class last year, the students each grabbed a Google-powered laptop. They opened Google Classroom, an app where teachers make assignments. Then they clicked on Google Docs, a writing program, and began composing essays. Looking up from her laptop

Like most young people in the Bay Area, Mike Kim grew up believing that the future of technology was being forged in Silicon Valley. Raised in Piedmont, an affluent suburb of Oakland, Kim was in college during the rise of Facebook, and he watched in amazement as tech start-ups transformed the world around him. After graduating in 2006, he found work in the industry, at Zynga, Monster.com and Linke

The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this month rammed through Parliament a state secrecy law that signals a fundamental alteration of the Japanese understanding of democracy. The law is vaguely worded and very broad, and it will allow government to make secret anything that it finds politically inconvenient. Government officials who leak secrets can be jailed for up to 10 years, and journa

NARAHA, Japan — In this small farming town in the evacuation zone surrounding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, small armies of workers in surgical masks and rubber gloves are busily scraping off radioactive topsoil in a desperate attempt to fulfill the central government’s vow one day to allow most of Japan’s 83,000 evacuees to return. Yet, every time it rains, more radioactive

In Promoting His City for 2020 Games, Tokyo’s Bid Chairman Tweaks Others With less than five months to go before the International Olympic Committee chooses a city to host the 2020 Summer Games, the three remaining bidders — Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo — are increasing their efforts to win over delegates and the public. The Olympic committee’s rules prohibit bid committee members from directly crit

Apple, which has stumbled in its efforts to get into social media, has talked with Twitter in recent months about making a strategic investment in it, according to people briefed on the matter. While Apple has been hugely successful in selling phones and tablets, it has little traction in social networking, which has become a major engine of activity on the Web and on mobile devices. Social media

Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement o

TOKYO — In a development that is likely to delay efforts to bring the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station under control, the plant’s operator said Thursday that one reactor, No. 1, had sustained much more damage than originally thought and was leaking water. The company released a plan last month to bring the plant into a relatively stable state in six to nine months, but that was predicated o

TOKYO — Nearly one month after Japan’s devastating nuclear accident, atomic energy experts, regulators and politicians around the world are still puzzling over a basic question: How much danger is still posed by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant? That depends to a considerable extent on how hot the uranium fuel rods at the power plant remain, and whether fuel has escaped its containment, o

TOKYO — Japan’s effort to contain the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant suffered a setback, an official said on Friday,  citing evidence that the reactor vessel of the No. 3 unit may have been damaged. Mothers received bottles of water at a distribution office in the Adachi ward of Tokyo on Thursday.Credit...Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg News The development, described at a news confer

TOKYO — Radioactive iodine detected in Tokyo’s water supply prompted Japanese authorities on Wednesday to warn that infants in Tokyo and surrounding areas should not be given tap water to drink, adding to the anxiety about public safety posed by Japan’s unfolding nuclear crisis. Ei Yoshida, head of water purification for the Tokyo water department, said at a televised news conference that iodine 1