The U.S. space agency, NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), is set to launch a satellite Saturday designed to monitor rising sea levels, the latest in a series of orbiting spacecraft monitoring the status of the world’s oceans.
NASA says the satellite, called the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California early Saturday. Named after former NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich, the U.S.-European satellite will be carried into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Sentinel-6 is about the size of a small pickup truck, and it will measure sea-surface height, wave-height and windspeed, allowing scientists to monitor changes in sea levels caused by climate change.
The data that it collects on sea level variations near coastlines will provide information to support coastal management and with planning for floods, while its atmospheric measurements will enhance weather and hurricane forecasts.
NASA Sentinel 6 mission scientist Craig Donlon says the data gathered by the craft will be used alongside information provided by previous Sentinel satellites to build a more complete a picture of the oceans.
“Sentinel-3 is providing the sea surface temperature and the ocean biology measurements. Sentinel-1 is providing radar imaging measurements of ocean swell waves, of sea ice. Sentinel-2 provides high resolution measurements in the coastal zone,” Donlon said.
Unlike previous Earth observation missions, the Sentinel-6 observatory will collect measurements at a much higher resolution and be able to measure smaller sea level variations near coastlines.
The satellite will be followed in 2025 by its twin, Sentinel-6B. Together, the pair is tasked with extending a nearly 30-year-long record of global sea surface height measurements.
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Month: November 2020
Delmonico’s, America’s very first restaurant, is also one of its most influential, according to Yale University history professor Paul Freedman. “It defined what elegant food was in the 19th century United States, and that has influenced, to some extent, the food that is eaten today,” Freedman says. Founded in 1830, Delmonico’s invented lobster Newberg and baked Alaska, and continues to serve those and other dishes at its New York City location. “America’s first real successful restaurant … Delmonico’s is kind of a no-brainer because it’s the first restaurant, but it’s also very enduring,” Freedman says. “It’s created in the 1830s, but in 1890, it’s still considered the best restaurant in the U.S. A lot of restaurants elsewhere called themselves, like, the Delmonico’s of Indianapolis, and it becomes a shorthand term for fancy.” Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City in an undated photo. (Courtesy Delmonico’s)In his book, “Ten Restaurants That Changed America,” Freedman names nine other restaurants that have had a far-reaching influence on what Americans eat. Yale University Professor Paul Freedman, author of “Ten Restaurants That Changed America.” (Courtesy Yale University)“I chose them both for just the delight of restaurants as places, but also as a way of talking about American history,” he says. “Because you can’t talk about restaurants without talking about ethnicity, immigration, variety and different social settings. … So, this was intended not as a kind of history of a bunch of dishes, but as a history of American society seen through its restaurants.” Howard Johnson’s, the orange-roofed restaurant that once dotted American highways, makes the list. “It was roadside food. It was chain food. It pioneered the franchise as a way of expansion, where you give the person running it a stake,” Freedman says. “He also pioneered logos and identity. Howard Deering Johnson, the founder, located his restaurants strategically on roads where the driver going 60 could see the restaurant in time safely and easily to break and pull up, and for that you need, you know, big and instantly recognizable features.” In this April 8, 2015 photo, customers walk into Howard Johnson’s Restaurant in Lake George, New York.Howard Johnson’s did not survive the competition it helped spawn, like McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants, but it left its mark as the first restaurant chain to guarantee patrons the same food and menu, no matter which franchise they visited. Also on the list is the Mandarin, a Chinese restaurant opened in San Francisco in 1961 by Cecilia Chang. “Cecilia Chang didn’t invent high-end Chinese food — but almost,” Freedman says. “She really is the first person to successfully retail that.” The staff of Sylvia’s in Harlem in 1980. (Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress)Other women-run restaurants Freedman highlights include Sylvia’s in Harlem. Born in South Carolina, Sylvia Woods brought Southern cooking and the idea of a neighborhood restaurant as a community gathering place to New York. “Sylvia’s in Harlem does not invent what is sometimes called down-home food or soul food, but it exemplifies that kind of cuisine and is also an example of the story of African American migration from the South to the North,” Freedman says. Mamma Leone’s, also in New York, helped bring Italian cuisine to the American masses. Luisa Leone opened her eatery in 1906 and was able to expand her clientele beyond Italian American diners, creating a model for other immigrant business owners to follow. “Mamma Leone’s not only served something like 3,000 people a day, and many of them tourists, and so a lot of people got their idea of what Italian food ought to be,” Freedman says. “And a lot of people opened restaurants in small towns that imitated Mamma Leone’s.” Menu from Mamma Leone’s restaurant in New York City, which closed in 1994. (Courtesy New York Public Library)Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, in 1971. She pioneered a trend in American cooking with local and in-season ingredients that continues today. Although these female restaurateurs served up vastly different foods, they shared some attributes. “Flair. Inventiveness. Doing something that was not completely unfamiliar … but was familiar but better,” Freedman says. “Better than the competition. And that better was because of an emphasis on quality, an introduction of dishes that expanded people’s horizons, or reminding people of home.” Waiter Austin Murray brings plated dishes from the kitchen to the dining room at Antoine’s Restaurant in New Orleans, Sept. 11, 2015.The other restaurants on Freedman’s list include The Four Seasons in New York, (which opened in 1959 and pioneered fine American cuisine at a time when French food dominated that space), and Le Pavillon in New York, Antoine’s in New Orleans, and Schrafft’s in Boston. Most of Freedman’s picks are on the East or West Coast. “I think it has to do with New York and San Francisco being ports, and so, the first place where immigrants opened up restaurants, and also fashion leaders,” he says. “So, all these places are on the coast, including New Orleans, and they’re just places where immigrants came and polyglot places where new things were first tried out.” Six of the restaurants on Freedman’s list are still open, or in the case of the Four Seasons, planning to reopen. The others are closed, but their influence on what Americans eat has endured.
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The Pentagon has confirmed that acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Anthony Tata has COVID-19.
Tata and several other people were exposed to the virus, the Pentagon said, after meeting with a Lithuanian delegation, including Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis, who has tested positive for COVID.”Mr. Tata was tested today and has tested positive for COVID-19 on two successive tests. He will isolate at home for the next 14 days in accordance with Center for Disease Control protocols,” a Pentagon statement said.
Further contact tracing is being done of Defense Department officials who may have had contact with Tata and the Lithuanian delegation, the statement said.
FILE – Travelers wait in the boarding area for trains during the Thanksgiving holiday travel rush at Pennsylvania Station in New York, Nov. 27, 2019.CDC discourages Thanksgiving travel
Coronavirus infections is the United States are exploding toward the 12 million mark. At 11.7 million cases, the U.S. has more COVID-19 cases than anyplace else. The U.S. also has the world’s largest coronavirus death toll, with more than a quarter of a million fatalities.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an alliance of three professional medical groups released separate statements Thursday urging Americans to stay home for next week’s Thanksgiving celebrations and to rethink their observations of the holiday. They are afraid coronavirus cases and deaths could jump higher if Americans do not scale back their traditional Thanksgiving plans.“Positive cases spiked after Memorial Day, after the Fourth of July, after Labor Day, and now – two weeks after Halloween,” the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Nurses Association said in a joint open letter. “The record-shattering surge underway is resulting in uncontrolled community spread and infection that has already overburdened health systems in some areas and will ultimately consume capacity of our health care system and may reduce the availability of care in many places in our country.”The statement from the CDC urged Americans not to travel to see their loved ones but instead “celebrate at home with the people you live with.”The CDC statement came just a week before Thanksgiving and after many Americans had already made travel arrangements for the holiday. “Postponing travel and staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others this year,” the CDC statement said. New York school closures
The New York City public school system, the largest in the U.S. and the first big-city school system to reopen in the coronavirus pandemic, was shut down again Thursday because of a rising number of COVID-19 cases in the city. “We got to fight back the second wave. Our schools have been safe, extraordinarily safe. We got to keep it that way. We can’t just stand pat with a strategy that worked before when conditions are changing, we need to reset the equation,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “We need to come up with even more stringent rules to make schools work and testing is going to be absolutely crucial.”De Blasio also said it is likely that within a couple of weeks indoor dining at restaurants in New York City will end, and gyms and other businesses will have to close. New state curfews
The U.S. states of Ohio and California have imposed 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfews in an effort to control coronavirus surges. Ohio began its curfew Thursday. It will be in effect for 21 days. California’s curfew begins Saturday night for 41 of the massive state’s 58 counties, ending December 21. Pandemic causes drop in US greenhouse gases
A BloombergNEF study has revealed that greenhouse gases generated by the U.S. economy are set to drop 9.2% this year, bringing them to a level that would be their lowest in 30 years. The new levels put the U.S. on track to meet its commitments to the Paris climate agreement that the U.S. made during the Obama administration. President Donald Trump, however, withdrew the U.S. from the agreement.
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Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform, a senior official at the U.S. social media giant told Reuters.Facebook complied with a government request in April to significantly increase its censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users, but Vietnam asked the company again in August to step up its restrictions of critical posts, the official said.”We made an agreement in April. Facebook has upheld our end of the agreement, and we expected the government of Vietnam to do the same,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the subject.”They have come back to us and sought to get us to increase the volume of content that we’re restricting in Vietnam. We’ve told them no. That request came with some threats about what might happen if we didn’t.”The official said the threats included shutting down Facebook altogether in Vietnam, a major market for the social media company where it earns revenue of nearly $1 billion, according to two sources familiar with the numbers.Facebook has faced mounting pressure from governments over its content policies, including threats of new regulations and fines. But it has avoided a ban in all but the few places where it has never been allowed to operate, such as China.In Vietnam, despite sweeping economic reform and increasing openness to social change, the ruling Communist Party retains tight control of media and tolerates little opposition. The country ranks fifth from bottom in a global ranking of press freedom compiled by Reporters Without Borders.Vietnam’s foreign ministry said in response to questions from Reuters that Facebook should abide by local laws and cease “spreading information that violates traditional Vietnamese customs and infringes upon state interests.”A spokeswoman for Facebook said it had faced additional pressure from Vietnam to censor more content in recent months.In its biannual transparency report released on Friday, Facebook said it had restricted access to 834 items in Vietnam in the first six months of this year, following requests from the government of Vietnam to remove anti-state content.‘Clear responsibility’Facebook, which serves about 60 million users in Vietnam as the main platform for both e-commerce and expressions of political dissent is under constant government scrutiny.Reuters exclusively reported in April that Facebook’s local servers in Vietnam were taken offline early this year until it complied with the government’s demands.Facebook has long faced criticism from rights group for being too compliant with government censorship requests.”However, we will do everything we can to ensure that our services remain available so people can continue to express themselves,” the spokesperson said.Vietnam has tried to launch home-grown social media networks to compete with Facebook, but none has reached any meaningful level of popularity. The Facebook official said the company had not seen an exodus of Vietnamese users to the local platforms.The official said Facebook had been subject to a “14-month-long negative media campaign” in state-controlled Vietnamese press before arriving at the current impasse.Asked about Vietnam’s threat to shut down Facebook, rights group Amnesty International said the fact it had not yet been banned after defying the Vietnamese government’s threats showed that the company could do more to resist Hanoi’s demands.”Facebook has a clear responsibility to respect human rights wherever they operate in the world and Vietnam is no exception,” Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for campaigns, said. “Facebook are prioritizing profits in Vietnam, and failing to respect human rights.”
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Activists in Cameroon held events and marches for Thursday’s World Toilet Day, calling on authorities to provide more public bathrooms. Cameroonian authorities say 60% of its 25 million people lack toilets, fueling the spread of diseases such as cholera and dysentery.School authorities at Yaoundé’s Government Primary School Efoulan say they have close to 2,000 children and teachers but only five toilets, which are often unusable as they run short of water and toilet paper.The Cameroon Association to Improve Hygiene organized this and similar events in 30 schools in the capital to mark this year’s World Toilet Day.The group’s head, Edmond Kimbi, said hundreds of their members also marched in Yaoundé and coastal cities to demand more and better public toilets.”It is actually too regrettable that schools and universities have very few toilets, which lack water and are always dirty,” he said. “It is worse when you visit markets, where thousands of people visit the markets each day. The consequences of this is that nearby bushes and dark corners are being transformed into toilets, thereby making our towns always dirty.”Public toilets in Douala, Cameroon, Nov. 19, 2020. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)Authorities say a September outbreak of cholera, a bacterial disease spread through dirty water, in the port cities of Douala and Kribi killed at least 90 people.Dr. Sintieh Ngek, a medical officer with the Cameroon Baptist Convention, said the lack of toilets is spreading disease.”Waterborne and water-based diseases like cholera, like diarrheal diseases, will be more present, and it is worth noting that these diarrheal diseases are among the leading causes of mortality for children under 5 years of age,” the doctor said. “Secondly, if persons do not have toilets, they turn to use bushes, they turn to use streams. When this happens, bacteria from these feces are easily collected into water.”Yaoundé hygiene official Gabriel Minou said the city council is partnering with private companies to construct more public bathrooms. Meanwhile, he said, anyone caught defecating or urinating in the street or in rivers will pay fines of up to $20.Minou said the inability of the Yaoundé City Council to efficiently manage toilets is due to the fact that many users do not want to pay before using the public bathrooms. He said the Yaoundé City Council has ordered its hygiene services to repair public toilets and make sure people pay before using them. Minou said the council has also ordered intercity bus agencies to make sure toilets are provided free of charge to all passengers.The United Nations’ World Toilet Day seeks to raise awareness of more than half the world’s population living without access to safe sanitation and the deadly costs.The U.N. says globally more than 800 children under 5 die every day from diarrheal diseases due to poor sanitation.
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Ellen Wong is a Cambodian-Canadian actress well known in Hollywood. But as VOA’s Chetra Chap reports, her latest role hits very close to home.
Camera: Chetra Chap
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The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it would close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life. The independent, federally funded agency said it was too dangerous to keep operating the single-dish radio telescope — one of the world’s largest — given the significant damage it recently sustained. An auxiliary cable broke in August, tearing a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish and damaging the dome above it. Then on November 6, one of the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse. NSF officials noted that even if crews were to repair all the damage, engineers found the structure would still be unstable in the long term. The main entrance of the Arecibo Observatory is seen in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Nov. 19, 2020.”This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make, but the safety of people is our No. 1 priority,” said Sean Jones, the agency’s assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. “We understand how much Arecibo means to this community and to Puerto Rico.” He said the goal was to preserve the telescope without placing people at risk, but “we have found no path forward to allow us to do so safely.” The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. In its 57 years of operation, it endured hurricanes, endless humidity and a recent string of strong earthquakes. The telescope boasts a 305-meter-wide (1,000-foot-wide) dish featured in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” and the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.” Scientists worldwide have used the dish, along with the 900-ton platform hanging 450 feet above it, to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable. In recent years, the NSF-owned facility has been managed by the University of Central Florida. Reaction to newsAlex Wolszczan, a Polish-born astronomer and professor at Pennsylvania State University who helped discover the first extrasolar and pulsar planets, told The Associated Press that while the news wasn’t surprising, it was disappointing. He worked at the telescope in the 1980s and early 1990s. “I was hoping against hope that they would come up with some kind of solution to keep it open,” he said. “For a person who has had a lot of his scientific life associated with that telescope, this is a rather interesting and sadly emotional moment.” One of three concrete support towers for the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope is seen in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Nov. 19, 2020.The announcement saddened many beyond the scientific world as well, with the hashtag #WhatAreciboMeansToMe popping up on Twitter along with pictures of people working, visiting and even getting married or celebrating a birthday at the telescope. Slow farewellRalph Gaume, director of NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, stressed that the decision has nothing to do with the observatory’s capabilities, which have allowed scientists to study pulsars, to detect gravitational waves, as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed. “The telescope is currently at serious risk of unexpected, uncontrolled collapse,” he said. “Even attempts at stabilization or testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure.” The NSF said it intends to restore operations at the observatory’s remaining assets, including its two LIDAR facilities, one of which is on the nearby island of Culebra. Those are used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data. Officials also aim to resume operations at the visitor center. Wolszczan said the value of the telescope won’t instantly disappear because he and many other scientists are still working on projects based on observations and data taken from the observatory. “The process of saying goodbye to Arecibo will certainly take some years,” he said. “It won’t be instantaneous.”
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Just as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, in February, four people set sail for one of the most remote places on Earth – a small camp on Kure Atoll, at the edge of the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.There, more than 1,400 miles from Honolulu, they lived in isolation for eight months while working to restore the island’s environment. Cut off from the rest of the planet, their world was limited to a tiny patch of sand halfway between the U.S. mainland and Asia. With no television or internet access, their only information came from satellite text messages and occasional emails.Now they are back, emerging into a changed society that might feel as foreign today as island isolation did in March. They must adjust to wearing face masks, staying indoors and seeing friends without giving hugs or hearty handshakes.”I’ve never seen anything like this, but I started reading the book The Stand by Stephen King, which is about a disease outbreak, and I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, is this what it’s going to be like to go home?'” said Charlie Thomas, one of the four island workers.The group was part of an effort by the state of Hawaii to maintain the fragile island ecosystem on Kure, which is part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the nation’s largest contiguous protected environment. The public is not allowed to land anywhere in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.Charlie Thomas, of Auckland, New Zealand, describes what her camp was like on Kure Atoll in Honolulu, Nov. 5, 2020.Kure is the only island in the northern part of the archipelago that is managed by the state, with the rest under the jurisdiction of the federal government. A former Coast Guard station, the atoll is home to seabirds, endangered Hawaiian monk seals and coral reefs that are teeming with sea turtles, tiger sharks and other marine life.Two field teams go there each year, one for summer and another for winter. Their primary job is removing invasive plants and replacing them with native species and cleaning up debris such as fishing nets and plastic that washes ashore.Before they leave, team members are often asked if they want to receive bad news while away, said Cynthia Vanderlip, the supervisor for the Kure program.”A few times a day, we upload and download email so people stay in touch with their family and friends. That’s a huge morale booster, and I don’t take it lightly,” Vanderlip said. “People who are in remote places … rely on your communication.”Thomas, the youngest member of the team at 18, grew up in a beach town in New Zealand and spent much of her free time with seabirds and other wildlife. She finished school a year early to start her first job as a deckhand for an organization dedicated to cleaning up coastlines before volunteering for the summer season on Kure Atoll.The expedition was her first time being away from home for so long, but she was ready to disconnect.”I was sick of social media, I was sick of everything that was sort of going on,” she said. “And I thought, you know, I am so excited to get rid of my phone, to lose contact with everything … I don’t need to see all the horrible things that are going on right now.”Once on Kure, getting a full picture of what was happening in the world was difficult.”I guess I didn’t really know what to think because we were getting so many different answers to questions that we were asking,” she said.Thomas is now in a hotel in quarantine in Auckland, where she lives with her parents, sister and a dog named Benny. She will miss hugs and “squishing five people on a bench to have dinner,” she said.Joining her on the island was Matthew Butschek II, who said he felt most alone when he received news about two deaths.His mother emailed to tell him that her brother had died. Butschek said his uncle was ill before the pandemic, and he was not sure if COVID-19 played a role in his death. He could not grieve with his family.Then Butschek, 26, who lives near Dallas, received word that one of his best friends had been killed in a car accident.”I remember reading that, thinking it was a joke and then realizing it wasn’t, so my heart started pounding and I was breathing heavily,” he said.While in quarantine last week, Butschek looked out the window of his cabin in Honolulu and saw school-aged children playing on rocks and climbing trees – all wearing face masks. It reminded him of apocalyptic movies.”It’s not normal for me. But everyone is like, yeah, this is what we do now. This is how we live,” he said.Leading the camp on Kure was wildlife biologist Naomi Worcester, 43, and her partner, Matthew Saunter, who live together in Honolulu.Worcester first visited the island in 2010 and has returned every year since. She’s a veteran of remote fieldwork in Alaska, Washington, Wyoming and the Sierra Nevada mountains.Working on the atoll means getting information about the world slowly, and often not at all, Worcester said.A few weeks ago, she departed Kure and arrived on Midway Atoll, where she and the rest of the crew stayed for several days before flying back to Honolulu. Midway has limited internet access and basic cable television. During a moment alone, she turned on a TV.”I think I turned it on during the middle of the World Series,” she recalled. “And it’s like some people are wearing face masks and some people aren’t. And there is the thing about the guy that tested positive in the middle of the game or something. I was just like … I don’t know, this is too much!”She also worries about the pandemic’s cost in a larger sense.”With so much uncertainty and so many emotions running high and, you know, our country is divided on so many things … there is kind of an underlying fear as far as what the future could hold and how people could respond.”Saunter, 35, has worked on Kure since 2010, the same year he met and began dating Worcester. They have been partners in life and on the island for a decade.In 2012, they began leading teams at the field camp.After so many years at the camp, Saunter said, isolation isn’t much of a factor for him. He believes the leadership skills he’s learned in the wilderness will translate well to life in the pandemic.To be successful on Kure, you have to tackle problems head-on and control your emotions, he said.”You know people’s emotions are getting the better of them, and it’s kind of at the cost of everybody, so it seems very irresponsible,” he said. “If we had taken it more seriously and practiced more precautions, we could have squashed this thing.”He remembers being on Kure when his sister called the outbreak a “pandemic.””I got an email from my sister and she used the word ‘pandemic,'” he said. “I thought to myself, huh, maybe we need to look that up, because what’s the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?”Now “it’s a word that’s in everybody’s vocabulary.”
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As the deadly coronavirus continues to rage across the U.S. and around the world, people are turning to COVID-19-related apps to figure out their day-to-day risks. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
Producers: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum
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India’s capital, New Delhi, is battling twin health emergencies, as it copes with deadly air pollution that spikes in winter months and a record surge in coronavirus cases. Doctors say the city’s fight against the pandemic has become harder as the toxic air makes the city more vulnerable to the virus. Anjana Pasricha reports.Videographer: P Pallavi, Producer: Henry Hernandez
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The head of Germany’s disease control agency said Thursday that while the coronavirus infection rate in the country remains serious, there are signs a partial lockdown is working.Germany implemented restrictive measures in early November to curb a nationwide surge in cases, closing bars, restaurants and other leisure venues but keeping schools and shops open.Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Robert Koch Institute chief Lothar Wieler said the number of new infections has since plateaued, with 22,609 reported on Thursday – roughly the same number as a week ago. He said the fact they are not rising is good news but cautioned that it was too early to say if this is a trend.Wieler said the overall number of cases is still too high, and there is a risk that hospitals may become overwhelmed. Wieler, however, also expressed optimism the numbers will start to go down now that they have stabilized.Wieler also said the news this week that at least two potential vaccines are showing better than 90 percent effectiveness was “extremely encouraging.” He said, “I know if the vaccines have an efficacy of more than 90% then they would be great weapons. That’s great.”Wieler said it was unclear how long the restrictions would remain in place. When they were implemented, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the plan was for them to run through November, in hopes the nation would be able to lift some of them in time for the Christmas holiday in December.The Robert Koch Institute reports Germany now has seen a total of 855,916 cases and 13,370 deaths from the infection. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease.
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Thursday brought further good news from the global effort to produce a safe and effective vaccine against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. A report published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet says that a potential vaccine developed by British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford was safe and produced a strong immune response in both younger and older participants.
The two-dose vaccine was given to 560 healthy adult volunteers in a second-stage clinical trial, including 240 volunteers 70 years of age and older. Dr. Maheshi Ramasamy, a University of Oxford researcher and co-author of the study, described the antibody and T-cell responses in the older volunteers as “robust.” Pfizer Says Its Coronavirus Vaccine is 95% EffectivePfizer to seek approval within days for emergency use of vaccine COVID-19 poses the greatest risk for older adults and people with preexisting health conditions. “We hope that this means our vaccine will help protect some of the most vulnerable people in society,” Ramasamy said, but he noted that further research still needs to be conducted. The vaccine is currently undergoing final late-stage global clinical trials to prove its ultimate safety and efficacy. The data from the Oxford-AstraZeneca Phase 2 trial comes as two U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies report their COVID-19 vaccines are more than 90% effective against the virus. Pfizer announced Wednesday that it will seek emergency approval for the vaccine it has developed in collaboration with Germany’s BioNTech. Moderna announced earlier this week that its vaccine is nearly 95% effective after an interim analysis of its late-stage study. Moderna Announces Second COVID Vaccine More Than 90% Effective Vaccine may be more accessible in rural areas and developing countries than Pfizer’sThe apparent progress toward a COVID-19 vaccine comes as many nations reimpose strict restrictions or lockdowns to fight a new wave of the virus. Authorities in Tokyo announced Thursday it has raised its coronavirus alert level to its highest mark on a four-level scale after reporting a record-high 534 new COVID-19 cases. The number of nationwide cases also surpassed 2,000 cases on Wednesday, another single-day record. The Japanese government imposed a nationwide state of emergency in April, in the early days of the pandemic, but was not empowered to impose a mandatory quarantine under its constitution, which weighs heavily in favor of civil liberties.Russia has also reached a grim milestone, surpassing 2 million total coronavirus cases on Thursday after reporting 23,610 new cases over a 24-hour period, including 463 deaths. Of the more than 56.3 million total worldwide cases, Russia is in fourth place behind the United States, India, Brazil and France.
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As the deadly coronavirus continues to rage across the U.S. and around the world, people are turning to COVID-19-related apps to figure out their day-to-day risks. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
Producers: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum
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The United States has surpassed 250,000 coronavirus deaths as new cases surge in many parts of the country.New York City on Wednesday announced the closure of its school system, the nation’s largest, with the city recording a seventh consecutive day with a COVID-19 positivity rate above 3%.“Public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out [of] an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter.New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold. Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 18, 2020In-person school resumed for New York children between late September and early October, when the seven-day positivity rate was under 2%.Other major cities, including Boston and Detroit, have made recent moves to halt in-person classes for their schools.Across the United States there have been more than 11.5 million confirmed cases since the pandemic began.The current wave of infections is adding to that number at an increased rate with an average of nearly 160,000 new cases each day during the past week. That is about triple the number of new daily cases in the United States one month ago. More than 1,100 people are dying per day.Health care workers are dealing with the strain of a record number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.The surge has pushed leaders in many states to reimpose certain restrictions in order to try to slow the spread of the virus.Among the latest, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced Wednesday that all restaurants, bars and gyms would close for four weeks. Minnesota is adding four times as many new infections each day as it was in mid-October.Officials are expressing concerns about the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, a time when millions of Americans typically gather with family members and often travel to other parts of the country.Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam urged people in his state to stay home, saying doing so would be “an act of love.” He added that if people do decide to celebrate with others, they should do so in small groups and be outdoors.U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar urged similar caution in a Wednesday briefing.“Gathering indoors with people who aren’t members of your household is a high-risk activity for spreading the virus,” he said.There has been some optimistic news this week with two pharmaceutical companies announcing preliminary results showing their COVID-19 vaccines have been effective in trials.Azar said those developments mean that within weeks the Food and Drug Administration could authorize the vaccines and they could be ready for distribution.“Because of this work, by the end of December, we expect to have about 40 million doses of these two vaccines available for distribution, pending FDA authorization—enough to vaccinate about 20 million of our most vulnerable Americans—and production would continue to ramp up after that,” Azar said.The U.S. government has pursued a vaccination development program with the intention of making it so that no one in the country has to pay out of their own pocket to get a vaccine.
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Would you give up nearly a decade of your life looking at your cellphone?Calculated by today’s usage, the average person spends a little over 76,500 hours – or 8.74 years – on a smartphone over a lifetime, according to a FILE – Marilu Rodriguez checks a news website on her smartphone before boarding a train home at the end of her workweek in Chicago, March 13, 2015.This widespread usage of smartphones has sparked worries among teens themselves, with 54% of U.S. teens saying they spend too much time on their phones. And 52% have also reported trying to take steps to reduce mobile phone use. A JAMA Network study found that only 5% of 59,397 U.S. high school students surveyed spent a balanced time sleeping and staying physically active while limiting screen time.Too much time on a phone has been linked to a number of physical and mental health risks.In a study of 3,826 adolescents, researchers found an association between social media and television use with symptoms of depression, according to JAMA Pediatrics.Increased screen time has also been linked with a higher risk of obesity and diabetes.
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The World Health Organization has officially declared an end to the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province, nearly six months after the first cases were reported. Health officials are hailing the end of this outbreak as a milestone and cause for celebration. Combating Ebola in the remote, heavily forested region posed numerous logistical challenges, not least of which was reaching communities scattered across this geographically vast area and then gaining their trust.Bob Ghosn is head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Ebola Response Operation in the DRC Speaking on a telephone line from Goma, he tells VOA tackling Ebola in itself is difficult enough. But tackling two epidemics, Ebola and COVID-19, at the same time has proven to be a nightmare.“It also made the supply chain for Ebola response much more difficult because everything slowed down, borders have closed,” Ghosn said. “There obviously were requests from all countries in the world for PPE equipment that was needed here. So, that made things more difficult and last, but not least, the economic impact of COVID-19 is mind boggling in a country like DRC.” Equateur province, DRCThis was the third Ebola outbreak in DRC in the last three years. It came just as another more serious epidemic in North Kivu province was winding down. That epidemic, which lasted nearly two years, infected more than 3,400 people, killing nearly 2,300. By comparison, the final toll in Equateur Province was 119 cases, including 55 deaths. Ghosn says everyone in the affected areas is happy to be free of Ebola. At the same time, he says this is no time for complacency.“Ebola could start again. So, it is very important to keep it at zero,” Ghosn said. “So, we got it at zero. Now keeping it at zero requires a lot of work. And, also to make sure that communities in DRC who really suffered through the whole Ebola outbreak and COVID-19 obviously, continue to get the support and the help they need because these are the most vulnerable communities in the world for that matter.” Ghosn says outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola and COVID-19 cannot be prevented. However, much can be done to be prepared to tackle these threats when they arise. He says medical tools such as vaccines and treatments are important. He says informing people ahead of time on how to protect themselves from epidemic-prone diseases is a necessity.
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The World Health Organization’s emergencies program director said Wednesday that vaccines alone would not end the COVID-19 pandemic and would do nothing to stop the current global surge in coronavirus infections.Mike Ryan made the comments during a virtual question-and-answer session from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.His comments came the same day that pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced that final results from the late-stage trial of their COVID-19 vaccine showed it was 95% effective.The companies said they had the required two months of safety data and would apply for emergency U.S. authorization within days.On Monday, Moderna released preliminary data for its vaccine, showing similar effectiveness.Ryan said the world would have to get through this current wave of COVID-19 infections without vaccines, which he said were not the total answer.”Some people think that vaccines will be, in a sense, the solution, the unicorn we’ve all been chasing. It’s not,” he said.He said the most important thing people could do now to keep hospitals and intensive care units from overflowing was to stop the spread of the disease through physical distancing measures. Once a viable vaccine is widely available, he said, it will be another tool that can be used.”Adding vaccines is going to give us a huge chance. But if we add vaccines and forget the other things, COVID does not go to zero,” Ryan said. “We need to add vaccination to the existing physical measures” to taking care and practicing good hygiene. “And if we add that physical distancing and hygiene and care to vaccines, I think we will go a long way to getting rid of this virus.”
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Facing charges of censorship, the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook appeared before a hearing of U.S. lawmakers Tuesday to defend actions taken during the recent U.S. elections. Tina Trinh reports.Produced by: Matt Dibble
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