Month: November 2020

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer said Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine is 95% effective and caused no serious side effects as it plans to seek federal approval for the vaccine’s emergency use.Pfizer disclosed the results after a final analysis of the vaccine’s Phase 3 trial, which also revealed it protects older people most at risk of dying from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.The American pharmaceutical giant’s announcement came a week after it first revealed promising preliminary findings, and days before it plans to formally ask the federal government to approve the vaccine for emergency use.5 Things to Know About Pfizer’s Coronavirus Vaccine Early results look great, but questions remain Pfizer has not yet released detailed information about the trial and the results have not been scrutinized by independent experts.Pfizer and BioNTech, a German biotechnology company that partnered with Pfizer on the vaccine’s development, said they plan to produce up to 50 million doses worldwide this year and up to 1.3 billion in 2021. Pfizer also said it would submit the results of the trial to other regulatory agencies around the world.The biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., said earlier this week that an interim analysis of its late-stage study revealed its experimental vaccine appears to be 94.5% effective.The U.S. government has said it hopes Moderna and Pfizer will produce some 20 million doses for distribution in December, with the first doses offered to vulnerable people like health care workers and those with serious health conditions.
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Twitter is launching tweets that disappear in 24 hours called “Fleets” globally, echoing social media sites like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram that already have disappearing posts.The company says the ephemeral tweets, which it calls “fleets” because of their fleeting nature, are designed to allay the concerns of new users who might be turned off by the public and permanent nature of normal tweets.Fleets can’t be retweeted and they won’t have “likes.” People can respond to them, but the replies show up as direct messages to the original tweeter, not as a public response, turning any back-and-forth into a private conversation instead of a public discussion.Twitter tested the feature in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea, before rolling it out globally.Fleets are a “lower pressure” way to communicate “fleeting thoughts” as opposed to permanent tweets, Twitter executives Joshua Harris, design director, and Sam Haveson, product manager, said in a blog post.The news comes the same day Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg  faced questions from a Senate Judiciary Committee about how they handled disinformation surrounding the presidential election. Both sites have stepped up action taken against disinformation. Zuckerberg and Dorsey promised lawmakers last month that they would aggressively guard their platforms from being manipulated by foreign governments or used to incite violence around the election results — and they followed through with high-profile steps that angered Trump and his supporters.The new “Fleets” feature is reminiscent of Instagram and Facebook “stories” and Snapchat’s snaps, which let users post short-lived photos and messages. Such features are increasingly popular with social media users looking for smaller groups and and more private chats.
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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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Iota continues to pound Nicaragua with strong winds and heavy rains even after weakening from a hurricane to a tropical storm. As of late Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Iota was carrying maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers an hour on a path towards Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  Forecasters say Tropical Storm Iota will dump between 7 to 20 kilometers of rain on a stretch of Central America from southern Nicaragua to southern Belize overnight, leading to “significant, life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding,” along with mudslides in higher areas. The storm is expected to weaken to a tropical depression through the night before dissipating sometime Wednesday.A woman sits near her house damaged the passing of Hurricane Iota, in Puerto Cabezas, Nov. 18, 2020.Iota made landfall Monday on the northeastern coast of Nicaragua Monday carrying maximum winds of 210 kilometers an hour, then grew in speed to 250 kilometers an hour, becoming a Category 5 storm — the top level on the five-level scale that measures a storm’s potential destructiveness.   The storm left scores of communities cut off from the outside world and forced thousands of residents to evacuate their homes.  At least eight people across the region have been killed, including two children who reportedly drowned while trying to cross a flooded river in Nicaragua. At least one person died in Providencia island, located in Colombia’s Caribbean archipelago, while another person was killed in Panama’s western Ngabe Bugle indigenous community.Iota is the 30th named storm of this year’s record-setting Atlantic hurricane season.  It struck just south of where Hurricane Eta made landfall on November 3 as a Category 4 storm, triggering flash flooding and landslides over parts of Central America and killing more than 130 people. 
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An agreement announced Tuesday paves the way for the largest dam demolition in U.S. history, a project that promises to reopen hundreds of miles of waterway along the Oregon-California border to salmon that are critical to tribes but have dwindled to almost nothing in recent years. If approved, the deal would revive plans to remove four massive hydroelectric dams on the lower Klamath River, creating the foundation for the most ambitious salmon restoration effort in history. The project on California’s second-largest river would be at the vanguard of a trend toward dam demolitions in the U.S. as the structures age and become less economically viable amid growing environmental concerns about the health of native fish. Previous efforts to address problems in the Klamath Basin have fallen apart amid years of legal sparring that generated distrust among tribes, fishing groups, farmers and environmentalists. Opponents of dam removal worry about their property values and the loss of a water source for fighting wildfires. Lawsuits challenging the agreement are possible. “This dam removal is more than just a concrete project coming down. It’s a new day and a new era,” Yurok Tribe chairman Joseph James said. “To me, this is who we are, to have a free-flowing river just as those who have come before us. … Our way of life will thrive with these dams being out.” FILE – The Iron Gate Dam, powerhouse and spillway are on the lower Klamath River near Hornbrook, Calif., March 3, 2020.A half-dozen tribes across Oregon and California, fishing groups and environmentalists had hoped to see demolition work begin as soon as 2022. But those plans stalled in July, when U.S. regulators questioned whether the nonprofit entity formed to oversee the project could adequately respond to any cost overruns or accidents. The new plan makes Oregon and California equal partners in the demolition with the nonprofit entity, called the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, and adds $45 million to the project’s $450 million budget to ease those concerns. Oregon, California and the utility PacifiCorp, which operates the hydroelectric dams and is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, will each provide one-third of the additional funds. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must approve the deal. If accepted, it would allow PacifiCorp and Berkshire Hathaway to walk away from aging dams that are more of an albatross than a profit-generator, while addressing regulators’ concerns. Oregon, California and the nonprofit would jointly take over the hydroelectric license from PacifiCorp while the nonprofit will oversee the work. Buffett said the reworked deal solves a “very complex challenge.” “I recognize the importance of Klamath dam removal and river restoration for tribal people in the Klamath Basin,” Buffett said in a statement. “We appreciate and respect our tribal partners for their collaboration in forging an agreement that delivers an exceptional outcome for the river, as well as future generations.”  Removed would be the four southernmost dams in a string of six constructed in southern Oregon and far Northern California beginning in 1918.  They were built solely for power generation. They are not used for irrigation and not managed for flood control. The lowest dam on the river, the Iron Gate, has no “fish ladder,” or concrete chutes, that fish can pass through.  Importance of salmonThat’s blocked hundreds of miles of potential fish habitat and spawning grounds, and fish populations have dropped precipitously in recent years. Salmon are at the heart of the culture, beliefs and diet of a half-dozen regional tribes, including the Yurok and Karuk — both parties to the agreement — and they have suffered deeply from that loss. FILE – A man looks at a tank holding juvenile chinook salmon being raised at the Iron Gate Hatchery at the base of the Iron Gate Dam near Hornbrook, Calif., March 3, 2020.Coho salmon from the Klamath River are listed as threatened under federal and California law, and their population in the river has fallen anywhere from 52% to 95%. Spring chinook salmon, once the Klamath Basin’s largest run, has dwindled by 98%. Fall chinook, the last to persist in any significant numbers, have been so meager in the past few years that the Yurok canceled fishing for the first time in the tribe’s memory. In 2017, they bought fish at a grocery store for their annual salmon festival. “It is bleak, but I want to have hope that with dam removal and with all the prayers that we’ve been sending up all these years, salmon could come back. If we just give them a chance, they will,” said Chook-Chook Hillman, a Karuk tribal member fighting for dam removal. “If you provide a good place for salmon, they’ll always come home.” Lawsuit to stop demolitionResidents have been caught in the middle. As tribes watched salmon dwindle, some homeowners around a huge reservoir created by one of the dams slated for removal have sued to stop the demolition.  They say their waterfront property values have already fallen by half because of news coverage associated with demolition, and they worry about losing a water source for fighting wildfires in an increasingly fire-prone landscape. Many also oppose the use of ratepayer funds for the project. More than 1,720 dams have been dismantled around the U.S. since 2012, according to American Rivers, and 26 states undertook dam removal projects in 2019 alone. The Klamath River project would be the largest such project by far if it proceeds. 
 
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A group of major U.S. utilities, Tesla, Uber and others said on Tuesday they are launching a new group to lobby for national policies to boost electric vehicle sales. The new Zero Emission Transportation Association wants to boost consumer electric vehicle (EV) incentives and encourage the retirement of gasoline-powered vehicles. It also advocates for tougher emissions and performance standards that will potentially enable full electrification by 2030. Under President Donald Trump, the White House rejected new tax credits for electric vehicles as it proposed to kill existing credits and made it easier to sell gas-guzzling vehicles. President-elect Joe Biden promises new tax incentives, including new rebates to buy EVs and a dramatic expansion of charging stations for electric vehicles – policy measures automakers have long advocated. “We can own the electric vehicle market – building 550,000 charging stations – and creating over a million good jobs here at home – with the federal government investing more in clean energy research,” Biden said Monday. Biden’s measures are in line with the group’s call for “strong federal charging infrastructure investments” and its goal to reach 100% electric vehicle sales by 2030. Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the group will support “Uber’s work to move 100% of rides to EVs in (the United States), Canadian and European cities by 2030 and go fully zero-emissions by 2040. It will take all of us working together to address the urgent crisis of climate change.” Automakers in the United States sold 326,000 EVs in 2019, accounting for about 2% of total U.S. auto sales. Tesla sold nearly 60% of the total.  Other members include ConEdison, Duke Energy and PG&E; EV charging companies Chargepoint and EVgo; and fledging automakers including Lordstown Motors, Rivian and Lucid Motors. Also taking part are Albemarle Corp, the world’s largest producer of lithium for electric vehicle batteries; Piedmont Lithium and Siemens. In September, California Governor Gavin Newsom said the state plans to ban the sale of new gasoline powered passenger cars and trucks starting in 2035 in a dramatic move to shift to electric vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. California is the largest U.S. auto market, accounting for about 11% of all U.S. vehicle sales. Many states have adopted its green vehicle mandates. 
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The World Health Organization’s 194 member states have agreed to push for the global elimination of cervical cancer, a disease that every year affects 570,000 women and kills more than 300,000. A new strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer was adopted at this year’s World Health Assembly.Cervical cancer is a vaccine-preventable disease and curable if detected early and adequately treated. Health officials say the tools are available to eliminate this disease, the fourth most common cancer among women globally.   WHO’s three-point strategy calls for all girls to be vaccinated for HPV or human papillomavirus before age 15. It says women should be screened twice between the ages of 35 and 45 and those found to have the cancer should receive treatment. WHO’s assistant director-general, Princess Nothemba Simelela, says new technology based on artificial intelligence can be used to screen women for cervical cancer.    “If these technologies are used, we would be able to get a diagnosis of cervical cancer within 15 to 20 minutes,” she said. “At this point in time, turnaround from the laboratories can be anything up to a month or longer and women do not get their results because most of them do not stay or live near a facility.”   Simelela says the rapid diagnosis will be a lifesaver for many women in developing countries. She says they will be able to be treated immediately on site for a pre-cancerous condition without having to return.    FILE – Women sign up for free breast and cervical cancer screenings organized by nonprofit Junior Chamber International at the Philippe Maguilen Senghor health center in Yoff, Dakar, Senegal, April 22, 2017. (S. Christensen/VOA)WHO reports sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of cases and deaths from cervical cancer, followed by countries in Southeast Asia. Simelela warns cases and deaths will continue to rise in countries that do not invest in vaccines, screening and testing. “The African continent is the only continent that will be reporting higher populations beyond 2030. So, they will be dealing with a double burden there in that they will be having a bigger number of young people to get to with the vaccine and a larger population of older women who will be having cervical cancer who have not been treated,”  she said.Cases and deaths in high-income countries are much lower than in low-income countries because of the wide use of the preventable vaccine, which can run as high as $110 a dose. Simelela says developing countries can obtain the HPV vaccine at an affordable price of less than $5 a dose through the GAVI Alliance procurement system. GAVI helps vaccinate children against infectious diseases.
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Hurricane Iota made landfall along the northeastern coast of Nicaragua late Monday night and flash flooding and landslides are expected across Central America. The National Hurricane Center said Iota struck Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm, with winds of 210 kilometers per hour. Many people hunkered down in shelters while the Nicaraguan government evacuated thousands of residents in low lying coastal areas ahead of the storm. One resident in the seaside town of Bilwi, business owner Business owner Adán Artola Schultz, described the sound of metal structures banging and buckling in the wind as “like bullets” to the Associated Press.  Jason Bermúdez, a university student from Bilwi, told AP a lot of houses have lost their roofs, fences and fruit trees that got knocked down. Bermúdez said “(W)e will never forget this year.” “The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Iota is making landfall in almost the exact same location that category 4 Hurricane Eta did a little less than two weeks ago,” the Hurricane Center said in a statement. Iota came ashore south of where Hurricane Eta made landfall Nov. 3, also as a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Eta killed more than 130 people as the heavy rains caused flash flooding and landslides over parts of Central America. 
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The Trump administration is moving to finalize the sale of controversial oil drilling leases in a wildlife refuge in Alaska.A notice from the Bureau of Land Management posted on the federal register is listed as “unpublished” as of Monday, but it calls for nominations on the lease tracts considered for the oil sale. Oil drilling in the sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was banned for decades before a 2017 reversal by the Trump administration.In an executive order signed in April 2017, Trump reversed the Obama administration’s decision to prohibit oil and gas drilling in the Arctic waters off Alaska.The White House said 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are buried off the U.S. coastline but that 94% of the area is off limits. President-elect Joe Biden opposes drilling in ANWR. Conservationists have fought against drilling since the 2017 executive order. In recent months, several U.S. banks said they would not help finance the project.The 19-million-acre refuge is home to numerous Indigenous tribes and wildlife, including polar bears and caribou.Thirty days after the call for nominations is published on Tuesday, the Trump administration would have to issue a notice for an impending sale of leases. The sale would take place 30 days after that, according to Reuters, which would be just before Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
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Last week the World Health Organization hosted its annual summit known as the World Health Assembly to outline new policies and priorities, but a controversy involving Taiwan ended up also drawing renewed attention on how Beijing’s politics continue to influence the WHO.During the summit, which was hosted on the WHO official Facebook page, WHO moderators appeared to censor comments that contained words related to Taiwan or that implied the coronavirus originated in China. Several Taiwanese media reported that the WHO Facebook page blocked any Taiwan-related comments that included “Taiwan” or “Taiwan can help.”After coming under criticism, the WHO said it was facing an “onslaught” of cyberattacks during the summit by activists using words including “Taiwan” and “China.” The group said it applied content filters to improve moderators’ ability to monitor conversations. The measures were later removed after the Taiwanese government complained.The censorship goes beyond Taiwan. Since the incident, internet users have found that phrases such as “Winnie the Pooh,” “Wuhan Virus” and “China Virus” were also blocked. Winnie the Pooh has become a sensitive character in China because people use it to mock Chinese leader Xi Jinping.Several members of Congress have raised concerns about the WHO’s actions.In this image from video, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, speaks on the floor of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, April 23, 2020.Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in response to a VOA email last Thursday that he was concerned about the WHO’s approach.“I am disturbed the WHO appears to have engaged in online censorship related to Taiwan’s exemplary COVID-19 response, undoubtedly to appease the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “Taiwan’s participation in the WHO is critical for global health.”This year, Taiwan was barred from attending the annual World Health Assembly. McCaul said the WHO should invite Taiwan to join and participate in future meetings.Facebook said it was not directly involved in the management of the WHO Facebook livestream, which includes functions to block specific keywords or turn off messages, according to Deutsche Welle. The blocking function on Facebook is controlled by the page managers who can use it according to their needs.Meanwhile, many saw the WHO’s shutting out one of the countries that has been most successful in fighting the pandemic as self-defeating.“Why would China try to silence Taiwan at the WHO meeting?” Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted Friday. “Maybe because Taiwan has been successful at containing COVID-19.”Why would China try to silence Taiwan at the @WHO meeting?  Maybe because Taiwan has been successful at containing COVID-19.https://t.co/lc5v9fOEgh— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) November 13, 2020As of last Friday, Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, had reported 597 confirmed cases of coronavirus, most of them from abroad.Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s Representative to the United States, said that if the WHO did block Taiwan-related messages on its Facebook page, “it would be an outrage to see the WHO and Facebook teaming up to do China’s dirty work of censoring the success story in the fight against COVID-19.”If that is true, it would be an outrage to see the WHO and Facebook teaming up to do China’s dirty work of censoring the success story in the fight against COVID-19.— Bi-khim Hsiao 蕭美琴 (@bikhim) November 12, 2020The U.S. Mission in Geneva tweeted a photo on Monday of Andrew Bremberg, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, and an art installation in front of United Nations Headquarters with the caption “Taiwan Can Help.” The tweet also noted that Ambassador Blumberg said he “couldn’t agree more” with the caption and called for Taiwan to be invited to join the World Health Assembly.Ambassador Bremberg: Saw this display on how Taiwan can help in front of @UNGeneva. Couldn’t agree more! Invite Taiwan to the WHA! #TaiwanCanHelppic.twitter.com/ruwcfoxjAN— U.S. Mission Geneva (@usmissiongeneva) November 9, 2020This year’s World Health Assembly held a six-day video conference starting November 9. Taiwan has been unable to participate in the World Health Assembly since 2017.
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Experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) say the news Monday of another COVID-19 vaccine candidate is encouraging but more information is needed and, as new virus cases surge around the world, it is no time to be complacent.At their regular COVID-19 news briefing in Geneva, WHO officials reacted to the news from U.S. pharmaceutical company Moderna that its vaccine candidate tested at better than 90% efficacy.WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that level of efficacy in this vaccine, as well as the Phizer/BinNTech vaccine candidate announced last week, is very encouraging.WHO Chief Says Vaccine Alone Will Not End the PandemicTedros tells executive board that testing, vaccine will complement other tools, not replace themBut, she said, there are many questions remaining about the duration of protection they provide, the impact on severe cases of the virus, the impact on different subpopulations, especially the elderly, as well as the adverse events beyond a certain period. Swaminathan said she hoped the clinical trials would continue to collect data to answer these questions.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while the vaccine news is cause for “cautious optimism,” this is no time for complacency. He said the agency is currently “extremely concerned” by the surge in cases they are seeing in some countries, “particularly in Europe and the Americas.”Echoing comments he made earlier in the day to the WHO executive board, Tedros said a vaccine alone will not end the pandemic. Rather, it will be a valuable tool along with active testing and contact tracing and continued vigilance in communities and among individuals.
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The high-pitched whine of a mosquito is annoying, but scientists have developed an app that uses that sound to detect dangerous mosquitoes.Mosquitoes kill hundreds of thousands of people each year by spreading microbes that cause diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. But researcher Haripriya Vaidehi Narayanan says anyone with a cellphone can help tackle these diseases by using the Abuzz app to identify mosquitoes. “If they see a mosquito around us, they just open the phone, open up the app, point their phone towards the mosquito and hit the record button,” said Narayanan, who started working on the project as a graduate student at Stanford University. She’s now in the Department of Immunology at the University of California Los Angeles. “So then, when the mosquito flaps its wings and starts flying around, it makes that noise, that annoying buzzing noise … that noise is what gets recorded by the Abuzz app,” she added. Many mosquito-borne diseases don’t have cures or vaccines, so targeting mosquitoes is the best approach to controlling these diseases. “If we’re going to tackle diseases caused by mosquitoes like malaria or dengue, the most important step is to know where the mosquitoes are,” Narayanan said.Listening for answersTraditional mosquito monitoring can be time-consuming and expensive because it requires labor-intensive trapping and trained scientists to identify the tiny insects. There are around 3,500 different mosquito species, but only about 40 are dangerous to humans, according to Manu Prakash, professor of bioengineering at Stanford University and principal investigator of the project. “In your backyard, do you have a nuisance mosquito or do you have a potentially dangerous mosquito?” Prakash said.To answer that question, Prakash’s team decided to listen. When mosquitoes beat their wings up and down, they produce that distinctive buzzing sound. Every mosquito species makes a slightly different buzz. Users record as little as one or two seconds of a mosquito sound with the Abuzz app on their cellphone. The app compares this recording against a database and decides which species of mosquito it is most likely to be. Because the tool — any cellphone or smartphone — is already in billions of people’s pockets, the team says they’ll be able to monitor mosquitoes on a much larger scale than previously possible. “This is something that doesn’t require fancy smartphones, just the very bare minimum, basic cellphones are actually good enough,” Prakash said. Combining informationBy crowd-sourcing mosquito information from across the world, the app will build maps of where dangerous mosquitoes are found. This will help scientists and health authorities predict where disease outbreaks might occur and where to target mosquito control. Prakash believes this type of community engagement is key to tackling big problems like mosquito-borne disease. “The more number of people engage the better the tool gets. So, we’re very excited that if literally, you know, hundreds of thousands of people are recording mosquitoes every day especially, you know, around the world, it will create the kind of community that is needed,” Prakash said. The Abuzz app will be available to download for free in the next month or two. Another group of researchers at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom is developing a similar cellphone app — called Mozzwear — that identifies malaria mosquitoes by their sound. 
 
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Meteorologists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted late Friday Iota will “become a dangerous major hurricane soon.”   The forecasters said Iota is “expected to bring potentially catastrophic winds, life-threatening storm surge and extreme rainfall impacts to Central America.”  Iota is moving with maximum sustained winds of 165 kilometers per hour.  Hurricane warnings are in effect for portions of Colombia, Nicaragua and Honduras, covering much of the same area devastated by Hurricane Eta earlier this month. The NHC said a hurricane warning means that “preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion.” 
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Giant, aging cables that support one of the world’s largest single-dish radio telescopes are slowly unraveling in this U.S. territory, pushing an observatory renowned for its key role in astronomical discoveries to the brink of collapse.The Arecibo Observatory, which is tethered above a sinkhole in Puerto Rico’s lush mountain region, boasts a 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish featured in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” and the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.” The dish and a dome suspended above it have been used to track asteroids headed to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and helped scientists trying to determine if a planet is habitable.”As someone who depends on Arecibo for my science, I’m frightened. It’s a very worrisome situation right now. There’s a possibility of cascading, catastrophic failure,” said astronomer Scott Ransom with the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, a collaboration of scientists in the United States and Canada.Last week, one of the telescope’s main steel cables that was capable of sustaining 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms) snapped under only 624 pounds (283 kilograms). That failure further mangled the reflector dish after an auxiliary cable broke in August, tearing a 100-foot (30-meter) hole and damaging the dome above it.  Officials said they were surprised because they had evaluated the structure in August and believed it could handle the shift in weight based on previous inspections.  It’s a blow for the telescope that more than 250 scientists around the world were using. The facility is also one of Puerto Rico’s main tourist attractions, drawing some 90,000 visitors a year. Research has been suspended since August, including a project aiding scientists in their search for nearby galaxies.The telescope was built in the 1960s and financed by the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. It has endured more than a half-century of disasters, including hurricanes and earthquakes. Repairs from Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, were still under way when the first cable snapped.  Some new cables are scheduled to arrive next month, but officials said funding for repairs has not been worked out with federal agencies. Scientists warn that time is running out. Only a handful of cables now support the 900-ton platform.”Each of the structure’s remaining cables is now supporting more weight than before, increasing the likelihood of another cable failure, which would likely result in the collapse of the entire structure,” the University of Central Florida, which manages the facility, said in a statement Friday.University officials say crews have noticed wire breaks on two of the remaining main cables. They warn that employees and contractors are at risk despite relying heavily on drones and remote cameras to assess the damage.  The observatory estimates the damage at more than $12 million and is seeking money from the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that owns the observatory.  Foundation spokesman Rob Margetta said engineering and cost estimates have not been completed and that funding the repairs would likely involve Congress and discussions with stakeholders. He said the agency is reviewing “all recommendations for action at Arecibo.””NSF is ultimately responsible for decisions regarding the structure’s safety,” he said in an email. “Our top priority is the safety of anyone at the site.”Representatives of the university and the observatory said the telescope’s director, Francisco Córdova, was not available for comment. In a Facebook post, the observatory said maintenance was up to date and the most recent external structural evaluation occurred after Hurricane Maria.The most recent damage was likely the result of the cable degrading over time and carrying extra weight after the auxiliary cable snapped, the university said. In August, the socket holding that cable failed, possibly the result of manufacturing error, the observatory said.The problems have interrupted the work of researchers like Edgard Rivera-Valentín, a Universities Space Research Association scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas. He had planned to study Mars in September during its close approach to Earth.”This is the closest Mars was going to be while also being observable from Arecibo until 2067,” he said. “I won’t be around the next time we can get this level of radar data.”The observatory in Puerto Rico is considered crucial for the study of pulsars, which are the remains of stars that can be used to detect gravitational waves, a phenomenon Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of general relativity. The telescope also is used to search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed.”It’s more than 50 years old, but it remains a very important instrument,” said Alex Wolszczan, a Polish-born astronomer and professor at Pennsylvania State University.He helped discover the first extrasolar and pulsar planets and credited the observatory for having a culture that allowed him to test what he described as wild ideas that sometimes worked.  “Losing it would be a really huge blow to what I think is a very important science,” Wolszczan said.An astronomer at the observatory in the 1980s and early 1990s, Wolszczan still uses the telescope for certain work because it offers an unmatched combination of high frequency range and sensitivity that he said allows for a “huge array” of science projects. Among them: observing molecules of life, detecting radio emission of stars and conducting pulsar work.The telescope also was a training ground for graduate students and widely loved for its educational opportunities, said Carmen Pantoja, an astronomer and professor at the University of Puerto Rico, the island’s largest public university.She relied on it for her doctoral thesis and recalled staring at it in wonder when she was a young girl.”I was struck by how big and mysterious it was,” she said. “The future of the telescope depends greatly on what position the National Science Foundation takes…I hope they can find a way and that there’s goodwill to save it.”
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Space X is preparing to send a rocket carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station Sunday evening.“All systems are go for tonight’s launch at 7:27 p.m. EST of Crew Dragon’s first operational mission with four astronauts on board,” SpaceX, the rocket company of high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, wrote on Twitter Sunday. SpaceX also said, “Teams are keeping an eye on weather conditions for liftoff, which are currently 50% favorable.”All systems are go for tonight’s launch at 7:27 p.m. EST of Crew Dragon’s first operational mission with four astronauts on board. Teams are keeping an eye on weather conditions for liftoff, which are currently 50% favorable → https://t.co/bJFjLCzWdKpic.twitter.com/GTpvVAiLkK— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 15, 2020Separately, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that he was looking forward to attending the viewing of the launch with the second lady, Karen Pence. A White House statement said the Pences would travel to Florida Sunday and return to Washington in the evening.Looking forward to attending the viewing of @NASA’s @SpaceX Crew-1 Mission Launch tomorrow with @SecondLady! https://t.co/vDjOAHrOoJ— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) November 15, 2020The mission will be the first time NASA is launching a privately-owned rocket into space.The journey to the orbiting outpost is expected to take 27 hours. It was initially scheduled to begin on Saturday, but was delayed due to wind gusts, according to NASA officials.In August, two U.S. astronauts returned to Earth, splashing safely into the Gulf of Mexico after a mission to the International Space Station aboard the commercially developed SpaceX spacecraft Crew Dragon.  The two men had lifted off from Florida in May, the first NASA astronaut launch from U.S. soil since 2011 and the first time a commercially developed spacecraft had carried humans into orbit.
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