Month: August 2020

The U.S. Agency for Global Media announced Tuesday that it is moving forward with funding two internet firewall circumvention projects despite an ongoing legal battle over the agency’s broader internet freedom strategy. The awardees — Psiphon and ACI — write software that help people gain access to websites and information blocked by their governments.  “Our agency is determined to expand freedom of expression by continuing to explore, develop, and fund the most secure and effective internet freedom tools,” FILE – Michael Pack, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is seen at his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019. Pack’s nomination was confirmed June 4, 2020.The announcement comes as USAGM, which is also the parent agency of Voice of America, remains locked in a legal battle with the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a Washington-based organization that receives a grant from USAGM to fund internet freedom technologies worldwide. Founded in 2012 as a pilot program under Radio Free Asia, another media organization under USAGM, OTF was spun out into a nonprofit organization in the fall of 2019. After Pack assumed office in June, he moved to fire OTF’s board and executives and install new leadership. A federal appeals court blocked that move in July. USAGM has withheld funding to OTF, leading the organization to halt 49 of its 60 internet freedom projects.US Global Internet Freedom Group Says Work Limited by Funding Dispute Open Technology Fund says global media chief is blocking access to $20 million for programs aimed at evading censorship in China, Iran, other authoritarian countriesEarlier this month, a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers asked the Trump administration to release $20 million in congressionally approved funds for OTF. Psiphon, based in Toronto, creates software that “helps over 3 million people every week connect to content on the Internet,” according to its website. ACI, also known as Advanced Circuiting Inc., is the creator of NthLink, an “anti-censorship mobile application capable of circumventing Internet censorship and self-recovering from blocking events,” according to material on its website.  Both Psiphon and ACI have received funding through OTF over the past few years. A May OTF monthly report called the companies “veteran circumvention tool providers.” Details of the new awards were unavailable. 
 
USAGM did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. Lawyers representing Open Technology Fund board members also did not respond to questions about the awards.  In its announcement Tuesday, USAGM also said it was reviving the Office of Internet Freedom (OIF), which was created in 2016 but had ceased operations. It is through the OIF that the grants to Psiphon and ACI were made. OIF will soon launch “another round of competitive bidding to fund additional internet freedom technology,” according to the USAGM press release. Pack said that reviving the Office of Internet Freedom will help allow people worldwide to gain access to information. “Blocking access to information is a horrible thing. But fostering access to information, especially in this advanced capacity, will prove a blow for liberty,” Pack said in a statement. “That’s why we’re funding a range of internet firewall circumvention tools. Bringing back OIF will further allow our agency to make significant strides in this area.” 
 
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Firefighters in Brazil say strong winds and hot dry weather are making it difficult to battle thousands of blazes burning in the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said it spotted more than 3,100 fires in the first two weeks of August — five times as many as the same period last year. “We saw hundreds of fires along the journey throughout the day,” Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said Tuesday. “Places where the planes and firemen have fought the fires directly without stopping, but still the fires are causing great damage to fauna, flora and to the Pantanal region.”  The Pantanal is 10 times the size of Florida’s Everglades. The World Wildlife Fund says it is home to more than 4,700 plant and animal species, including some threatened animals. Experts blame the fires, in part, to higher than average temperatures and below average rainfall since mid-July.  
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Police on Mauritius have arrested the captain of the Japanese carrier that ran aground off the coast last month, spilling 1,000 metric tonnes of oil and causing possible irreparable damage to coral reefs.Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar, the Indian captain of the MV Wakashio, was charged Tuesday with “endangering safe navigation.” He faces a bail hearing next week.The ship’s first officer was also arrested, and investigators say they are interviewing all crew members.The investigation will center on why the Wakashio went off course. It was supposed to stay at least 16 kilometers from the shore but was about two kilometers away when it ran aground on a coral reef.“The route set five days before the crash was wrong and the boat navigation system should have signaled that to the crew, and it seems the crew ignored it. The boat did also fail to send out an SOS (when it ran aground) and did not respond to attempts by the coast guard to get in touch,” a maritime official told Reuters.The Wakashio became disabled July 25 and started leaking oil almost two weeks later. Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth says bad weather is the reason crews didn’t start pumping oil from the ship almost immediately.About 1,000 metric tonnes leaked into the Indian Ocean surrounding Mauritius and another 3,000 was pumped out before the ship broke in two.The oil spilled into the precious waters of the Mahebourg Lagoon, and environmentalists fear the endangered reefs along the coast may be damaged forever.Half of the ship will be towed out to sea and allowed to sink while the other half will be towed away for scrap – a process officials say is likely to take months.Mauritius has declared an environmental emergency. Experts from Japan, the United Nations and France are working to clean up the oil. Mauritius is a former French colony.The spill is also likely to damage the island’s tourism industry, which is already under strain because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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The World Meteorological Organization says temperatures of 54.4 degrees (Celsius) reported Sunday at Furnace Creek, Death Valley in the U.S. state of California, may be the third hottest on Earth.The U.N. weather agency is assembling an international team of atmospheric scientists to verify the temperatures reported in Death Valley are legitimate. The WMO says that is a very complicated procedure and is likely to take several months to complete.
 
If validated, however, World Meteorological scientists say it would qualify as the third highest temperature ever recorded on the planet. The hottest temperature ever recorded was 56.7 degrees (Celsius) in Death Valley on July 10, 1913. The second hottest was set in July 1931 in Kebili, Tunisia, at 55 degrees (Celsius).
 
The scorching conditions come as sweltering heat grips the west coast of the United States, with temperatures reaching the high 30s and 40s. WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis says the U.S. National Weather Service expects the intense heat to continue for a while.“The National Weather Service in Las Vegas, which covers the Death Valley area, tweeted overnight, ‘We are in the midst of a long-duration extreme heat event. Another run at 130 degrees Fahrenheit plus temperatures in Death Valley remains possible,’” ,” said Nullis.
 A person walks on a boardwalk at the salt flats at Badwater Basin, Aug. 17, 2020, in Death Valley National Park, California.The WMO says extreme high temperatures are part of a global trend.  It says July was the hottest July on record for the northern hemisphere, and Arctic sea ice was the lowest on record for the month.
 
It says Western and Central Europe experienced another heatwave last week, Japan recorded temperatures of more than 40 degrees (Celsius) Monday at Hamamatsu, and Siberia has experienced a prolonged heatwave.
 
The WMO currently is in the process of verifying the record high temperature of 38 degrees (Celsius) reported June 20 in Siberia. If proven, that would be the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic Circle.
 
Nullis tells VOA the relationship between climate change and the extreme weather events is inescapable.
 
“We are seeing more intense, extreme heat waves. More frequent. They are starting earlier and finishing later than in the past,” said Nullis. “This is consistent with everything that we expect from climate change. Of all the extreme weather events that we see, the relationship between heat and climate change is the one that we see that is clearest.”
 
Man-made climate change is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane into the atmosphere. Scientists agree that drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions is the key to tackling global warming.
 
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The World Health Organization’s (WHO) director-general Tuesday issued another warning against “vaccine nationalism,” — countries putting their own interests ahead of others in trying to secure supplies of a possible vaccine.  At the agency’s regular briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Nationalism exacerbated the pandemic and contributed to the total failure of the global supply chain,” noting shortages of protective gear when the pandemic first hit caused by some nations hoarding resources.The WHO chief said that countries needed to work together to “prevent vaccine nationalism,” so in the event a vaccine or vaccines are developed, those at the highest risk will have equal access.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a session of the WHO Executive Board held virtually by video-conference, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, May 22, 2020, in this image provided by the World Health Organization in Geneva.Tedros said the world is so interconnected we will need each other more than ever once a vaccine or vaccines are approved for use. As an example, he said “a vaccine developed in one country may need to be filled in vials with stoppers that are produced in another, using materials for the high-grade glass that is only available from yet another country.”Meanwhile, WHO officials warned the world’s young people they are not immune to COVID-19 and their behavior is putting everyone else at risk.WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove noted the proportion of younger people among those infected had risen globally in the past month, putting at risk vulnerable sectors of the population worldwide, including the elderly and sick people in densely populated areas with weak health services.Officials in countries from Asia to Europe over the past month have noted “hotspots” in their nations where COVID-19 cases were surging were in night clubs or other areas where young people like to congregate.Kerkhove said that people should not be blamed for wanting to live normal lives but people, especially the young, are not invincible amid the coronavirus pandemic. She urged everyone to consider the risks and the consequences of their actions.More than 21.9 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 772,647 have died, according to a Reuters tally. 
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One of the hottest air temperatures recorded anywhere on the planet in at least a century, and possibly ever, was reached on Sunday afternoon at Death Valley in California’s Mojave Desert where it soared to 130 Fahrenheit (54.4 Celsius).
An automated observation system run by the U.S. National Weather Service in the valley’s sparsely populated Furnace Creek reported the record at 3:41 p.m. at the crest of an extreme heat wave, a more frequent occurrence because of climate change.
It was a dry heat: Humidity fell to 7%. But it felt “insanely hot” all the same, according to meteorologist Daniel Berc at the weather service’s Las Vegas bureau. A heat wave roasting much of the Western United States would continue all week, he said on Monday.
“It’s literally like being in an oven,” he said in a telephone interview. “Today is another day we could take another run at 130F.”
Tourists on Monday took selfies by an outdoor thermometer at the Death Valley visitor center while avoiding touching metal surfaces with bare skin.
Those who live and work in Furnace Creek, which had a population of 24 in the 2010 census, saw cause for pause in the record.
“We are seeing more records being broken at a daily and monthly level,” said Brandi Stewart, a public information officer for Death Valley National Park who can see the Furnace Creek weather station from her window. “It is significant that we’re seeing more records breaking.”
A temperature of 134F (56.7C) was recorded in Death Valley in July 1913, and Kebili, Tunisia, is said to have hit 131F in July 1931, according to the World Meteorological Organization. But recent research by Christopher Burt, an extreme weather expert, has led some meteorologists to view these older records as the results of observer error.
Climate change has pushed global temperatures to new highs. In Europe, northern Spain broke local heat records in July, while wheat fields in France caught fire.
Forests across Siberian Russia are seeing unprecedented wildfires, while the Arctic sea ice shrank to a record low for July due to melting.
In Furnace Creek, staff and guests at The Oasis hotel were being urged to wear hats and sip water relentlessly while outside, according to general manager John Kukreja.
He tells guests that extreme heat does strange, deceptive things to the body.
“You’re going to sweat and the sweat’s going to dry instantly and you’re never going to know you actually felt hot,” he said. “Your hair stands on end. It’s almost like you feel like you’re cold, like goose bumps.” 
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A U.S. based vaccine development company is set to begin the second phase of human testing for its COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa, which is in the midst of a surge in coronavirus cases.  Novavax said in a statement that the clinical trials will include 2,665 healthy adults in South Africa. The trials will also compare the vaccine’s effect on 240 medically stable adults with HIV whose immune responses may differ from individuals without HIV. Preliminary findings from the first trial showed people receiving the two doses generated neutralizing antibodies, which can prevent the virus from entering cells, after receiving a second dose of the vaccine.  Along with evaluating the immune response in the phase 2b trial in South Africa, Novavax will also organize a phase 2 trial in the United States and Australia in the near future. In Novavax’s statement, Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development at Novavax said, South Africa’s surge in COVID-19 cases lends importance to the Phase 2b clinical trial, with the potential to provide an early indication of efficacy, along with additional safety and immunogenicity data for the vaccine. South Africa is the fifth most affected country worldwide, with more than 583,000 coronavirus cases and more than 11,600 deaths. Novavax said the trial in South Africa is made possible in part from a $15 million grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is providing money to manufacture doses of the vaccine needed for the trial.  Last month, the U.S. government awarded Novavax a $1.6 billion contract to cover testing and development of a vaccine for the coronavirus in the United States with the goal of providing 100 million doses by January. 
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NASA scientists say a small but significant “dent” in Earth’s magnetic field is expanding and splitting and continuing to weaken intensity, which could impact low-orbit satellites circling the globe.According to scientists, Earth’s magnetic field acts like a protective shield, blocking and trapping charged particles — or radiation — from the sun that could otherwise cause harm but are more likely to affect electronic equipment, like satellites.But the “dent,” or weak spot, in the magnetic field over South America, known to scientists as the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), allows radiation to penetrate Earth’s surface. The scientists have observed no ill effects to daily life on the planet. But they have observed the anomaly is moving westward and appears to be splitting.Scientists say Earth is a bit like a bar magnet with north and south poles that represent opposing magnetic polarities and invisible magnetic field lines encircling the planet between them.Earth’s magnetic field is generated from its outer core, 1,800 miles below the surface, comprised of molten iron and other metals that are constantly churning and acting like a giant generator – known as geodynamo — that generates electric currents that produce the magnetic field. Because of the constant motion, the magnetic field is not perfectly aligned throughout the globe, nor is it perfectly stable.Scientists say these fluctuations, along with the tilt of Earth’s magnetic axis, are what causes the SAA. Because of the radiation it allows, the region can be hazardous to satellites that pass through it. They can short-circuit a satellite’s onboard computer or cause other glitches.Scientists will monitor the changes in the SAA because it tells them about changes in the Earth’s core and how its dynamics influence other aspects of Earth’s systems.
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South Africa, with the continent’s highest burden of COVID-19, has reached the peak of the pandemic, according to the president and top health officials.  President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a loosening of restrictions but said that he is not yet breathing a sigh of relief. A ray of hope for the Rainbow Nation, as the president announced that South Africa, with the continent’s heaviest known burden of the coronavirus, has passed its viral peak since reporting its first cases in early March.President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking late Saturday, said that over the past three weeks, the number of new confirmed cases has dropped from an daily average of about 12,000 to around 5,000 per day.FILE – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visits the COVID-19 treatment facilities at the NASREC Expo Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, April 24, 2020.“A ray of light is visible now on the horizon,” said Ramaphosa. “Let us continue to exercise the greatest caution and care and remain ever vigilant.  Let us continue to stand united in our determination to defeat this virus.”  On the streets of Johannesburg Monday, residents had mixed feelings about the news.  Robert Etzinger said while he was happy that the restrictions have eased, he wants more.  “I feel as though it’s now lagging on too long. You know the rest of the economy needs to get back into the swing of things,” said Etzinger. “The sooner we get over level two down to one, the sooner we can get the economy going and restart again. That’s my feeling.”The chair of South Africa’s advisory committee on COVID-19, Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, credits the government’s swift lockdown measures.  He says the government gained about 6 to 8 weeks of precious time to prepare by declaring a state of disaster, closing schools, banning international travel and banning the sales of alcohol and tobacco.  “The period where we are now, just past the peak of the epidemic, we have been seeing a slowing down in the number of cases, so that we are now between 4,000 and 5,000 cases a day,” said Karim.  Ramaphosa also announced a loosening of restrictions, including allowing sales of tobacco and alcohol. “Guided by the advice of our health experts and medical advisory committee, and after consultation with provincial and local government, Cabinet has decided to place the entire country on alert level 2, with effect from midnight on Monday, the 17th of August 2020,”  said Ramaphosa.South Africa has at least 600,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the nation of nearly 60 million.   WHO Deploys Dozens of Experts to South Africa to Help Slow Coronavirus SpreadSouth Africa has nearly 530,000 casesIt is also at the forefront of coronavirus prevention, with scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand this week launching the nation’s second vaccine trial. Karim says the nation’s long history with other pandemics has prepared it for this challenge. “South Africa was able to build its capacity to undertake testing because of its TB and HIV epidemics,” said Karim. “It’s the same technology. The problem has been in South Africa that we can’t buy enough test kits, because we are trying to buy the same test kits everyone else is trying to buy, and so we were constrained for a substantial period, in just not being able to get enough kits.  As that problem has been solved, now we do have enough kits, we’ve been able to escalate our testing to around 40,000 to 50,000 tests per day.” The COVID-19 peak may have passed, says Karim, but the danger of a second surge remains.   To that end, he urges South Africans to remain cautious. Henry Ridgwell and Zaheer Cassim contributed to this report.
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