Climate change, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the West, U.S. officials said Tuesday.A Fish and Wildlife Service proposal scheduled to be published Wednesday would protect the whitebark pine tree as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, according to documents posted by the Office of the Federal Register.But the agency said it does not plan to designate which forest habitats are critical to the tree’s survival, stopping short of what some environmentalists argue is needed.Live in harsh conditionsThe trees can live up to 1,000 years and are found at elevations up to 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) — conditions too harsh for most tress to survive.Environmentalists had petitioned the government in 1991 and again in 2008 to protect the trees, which occur across 126,000 square miles (326,164 square kilometers) of land in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and western Canada.A nonnative fungus has been killing whitebark pines for a century. More recently, the trees have proven vulnerable to bark beetles that have killed millions of acres of forest, and climate change that scientists say is responsible for more severe wildfire seasons.The trees have been all but wiped out in some areas, including the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park, where they are a source of food for threatened grizzly bears. More than half of whitebark pines in the U.S. are dead, according to a 2018 study from the U.S. Forest Service.Bears eat pineconesThat has complicated government efforts to declare grizzlies in the Yellowstone area as a recovered species that no longer needs federal protection. Grizzlies raid caches of whitebark pinecones that are hidden by squirrels and devour the seeds within the cones to fatten up for winter.A 2009 court ruling that restored protections for Yellowstone bears cited in part the tree’s decline, although government studies later concluded the grizzlies could find other things to eat.After getting sued for not taking steps to protect the pine trees, wildlife officials in 2011 acknowledged that whitebark pines needed protections but they took no immediate action, saying other species faced more immediate threats.An attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which submitted the 2008 petition for protections, lamented that it took so long but said the proposal was still worth celebrating.”This is the federal government admitting that climate change is killing off a widely distributed tree, and we know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are many species threatened,” said Rebecca Riley, legal director for the environmental group’s nature program.Climate change impactThe government’s proposal described the threats to whitebark pines as imminent and said it was one of many plants expected to be impacted as climate change moves faster than the plants can adapt.”Whitebark pine survives at high elevations already, so there is little remaining habitat in many areas for the species to migrate to higher elevations in response to warmer temperatures,” Fish and Wildlife Service officials wrote.The officials added that overall, whitebark pine stands have seen severe reductions in regeneration because of wildfires, a disease called white pine blister rust, mountain pine beetles and climate change.Amid those growing threats, federal officials are working in conjunction with researchers and private groups to gather cones from trees that are resistant to blister rust, with plans to grow them in greenhouses and then plant them back on the landscape, said Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Amy Nicholas.”We do have options to revive this species,” she said.Rusty-patched bumblebeeThe decision not to pursue protections for the tree’s habitat is in line with another recent action by the Fish and Wildlife Service — the denial of critical habitat for the endangered rusty-patched bumblebee.The bumblebee’s population has plummeted 90% over about two decades. As with whitebark pine, loss of the bee’s habitat was considered less important than other threats.The two cases underscore a pattern of opposition to habitat protections by the administration of President Donald Trump, environmentalists said.The Fish and Wildlife Service under Trump also has proposed rules to restrict what lands can be declared worthy of protections and to give greater weight to the economic benefits of development.”It’s clear that the intent is to limit protection of habitat for threatened and endangered species. Whitebark pine is another example of that,” said Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity.Fish and Wildlife Service Wyoming Field Supervisor Tyler Abbott said it would not be prudent to designate specific areas for habitat protections since the major threats to the trees can’t be addressed through land management.Blister rust to blame”The driving factor (in the tree’s decline) is that white pine blister rust, and that’s working synergistically with mountain pine beetle, the altered fire regime, climate change,” Abbott said. “These are biological factors that we really don’t have any control over.”
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Day: December 1, 2020
Facebook’s oversight board has announced the first cases it’s going to examine to determine if it will overturn the social media giant’s decisions to delete content. Created in October, the board’s apparent role will be to assess cases of Facebook and Instagram users who say their content was wrongly removed. “As the Board cannot hear every appeal, we are prioritizing cases that have the potential to affect lots of users around the world, are of critical importance to public discourse or raise important questions about Facebook’s policies,” the board said in a statement accompanying the announcement Tuesday. Of the first six cases the board will review, three involve so-called hate speech, a nudity case, a “dangerous individuals” case and a case about potential misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. Reuters reports that since October, the board has received 20,000 cases for possible review. The COVID-19 case involved a post that was removed for “violence and incitement” because it was critical of France’s coronavirus strategy of “purportedly refusing authorization for use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin against COVID-19 but authorizing promotional mail for remdesivir.” “Facebook removed it for violating its policy on Violence and Incitement, and in its referral indicated to the Oversight Board that this case presents an example of the challenges faced when addressing the risk of offline harm that can be caused by misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic,” the case synopsis says. Hate speech casesHate speech cases include a post by former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, which said, “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.” Facebook says it was hate speech, but the poster said it was posted to draw attention to Mahathir’s “horrible words.” Another alleged hate speech post is of “two well-known photos of a deceased child lying fully clothed on a beach at the water’s edge” accompanied by Burmese text asking why there has been “no retaliation against China for its treatment of Uighur Muslims, in contrast to the recent killings in France relating to cartoons,” according to the synopsis. The poster argued the content should not have been removed because it “meant to disagree with people who think the killer is right and to emphasize that human lives matter more than religious ideologies.” The third hate speech case involves the removal of content showing the destruction of churches in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. The poster said, “their intention was to demonstrate the destruction of cultural and religious monuments.” In a case Facebook says violated its nudity policy, a post about breast cancer prevention was removed for showing breasts. Another case is about the removal of an alleged quote attributed to Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, which the poster said made a point about current politics. The 20-member board will be divided into five-member panels to which the cases will be assigned, according to USA Today. The board said it is seeking public comment on the cases through December 8. Then, the board has 90 days to decide about each case.
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Affordable treatment will soon be available for children living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries thanks to an agreement between the global health agency UNITAID and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, or CHAI.The pediatric treatment has been available in wealthy countries but out of reach for children in poor countries. A new agreement with two generic drug makers, Viatris and Macleods, will significantly lower the price. UNITAID and CHAI plan to roll out the first anti-retroviral treatments specifically designed for children next year in six African countries — Benin, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe. FILE – A mother watches her HIV-positive child in the intensive care unit of the Bangui pediatric complex, while in the foreground, an HIV-positive child sleeps, in Central African Republic, Dec. 4, 2018.An estimated 1.7 million children globally live with HIV, but only half receive any treatment and 100,000 die every year. UNITAID spokesman Herve Verhoosel said HIV is not suppressed for many of those children. That is due, in part, to the lack of availability of effective drugs that are properly adapted for them. “Many children who are living with HIV have a poor response to treatment because they take anti-retroviral medication that are not correctly dosed or bitter to taste. … Now with this new drug … it will be much, much easier and much, much less expensive,” he said, adding that even the youngest children will like the strawberry-flavored pills. Under the new pricing agreement, the cost for the yearly pediatric HIV treatment will go from more than $480 per child to under $120 per child.
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Members of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee meet Tuesday to determine who should get inoculated first against the coronavirus once a vaccine receives final approval.The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices wants to inform the public about its recommendation before a decision is announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, committee chairman Dr. Jose Romero told CNN on Tuesday.The FDA is considering an emergency request from Pfizer to authorize the use of its vaccine. Moderna said Monday it also would apply for emergency use authorization of its vaccine.The CDC has already recommended that front-line health care workers and support personnel receive the first doses. The CDC also said residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities should be among the first to receive vaccinations.Hours after Moderna’s announcement, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the agency would announce its decision up to a week after it decides on Pfizer’s application.Dr. Larry Corey of the University of Washington, who leads vaccine clinical trials in the U.S., has said once Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are approved, they could make 50 million doses in January.The advisory committee meets one day after nearly 139,000 new coronavirus cases and 826 deaths were reported in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University.As it has for months, the U.S. continues to lead the world in coronavirus infections, with more than 13.5 million of the world’s 63.3 million cases. Over 268,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., more than any other country, according to Johns Hopkins, which reports 1.47 million deaths worldwide.In Europe, which is also experiencing surges in coronavirus infections and related deaths, BioNTech and Moderna have applied to the European Union for approval of their vaccines, the EU said on Tuesday. EU officials are expected to decide on at least one of the vaccines by the end of December.BioNTech has already filed a similar application with the FDA. Its vaccine is under review in Australia, Canada, Japan and in other countries.Since it began nearly a year ago, the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically increased the number of people who are experiencing extreme poverty, according to the United Nations.The U.N. said in its annual humanitarian report that 235 million people, or one in 33 people, will require basic needs like food, water and sanitation in 2021, a 40% increase from this year.The report said the greatest need for humanitarian assistance next year is in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.The U.N. contributed a record $17 billion in 2020 for humanitarian response worldwide, the report said.
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All Europeans want is a merry and bright Christmas season, just like the ones they used to know. And under public pressure some governments are easing their pandemic restrictions in a bid to salvage something of the holiday spirit.But as some governments plan to soften restrictions by increasing the number of separate households permitted to socialize and allowing people to travel, others are still grappling with how far they should go in easing lockdowns or lifting curfews, fearing that having a merry Christmas will likely mean suffering a miserable new year.Scientists across the continent, which already accounts for a quarter of the world’s coronavirus cases and deaths from COVID-19, the disease triggered by the virus, are warning of a doubling in infection rates, if the regime for the holiday is too liberal.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said it was important for European states to coordinate any easing of pandemic restrictions. “We will make a proposal for a gradual and coordinated approach to lifting containment measures. This will be very important to avoid the risk of yet another wave,” von der Leyen said.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, top, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, European Council President Charles Michel and Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe attend a virtual meeting in Brussels, Nov. 26, 2020.Despite her call for coordinated action, national governments are making up their own minds without synchronizing approaches — as they have ever since the pandemic first struck the continent earlier this year. Many European governments say they have little choice but to ease pandemic restrictions, fearing that if they maintain stringent rules, their citizens will only ignore them. People who have elderly relatives with not many Christmases left to enjoy are unlikely to heed warnings to observe tight restraints, officials worry.As a result, some countries that have tight pandemic restrictions in place are planning to abandon them for a few days at least, including “whack-a-mole” strategies aimed at suppressing local outbreaks of contagion. They include England. Others, like Italy, though, are still struggling to decide.A patchwork of strategies is emerging. Take ski resorts for example. Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has said Italian resorts should remain closed over Christmas and the New Year holiday. Italian officials say he’s mindful that earlier this year, when the pandemic first appeared, the ski resorts in the Tyrol region in northern Italy and western Austria acted as super-spreaders. More than an estimated 6,000 people, from 45 countries, who contracted the coronavirus in March, either went on vacation in the Tyrol or came into contact with someone who did.A chairlift is pictured in front of the Geisler group massif at the Dolomites mountains near Bressanone, autonomous region of South Tyrol, northern Italy’s German-Italian speaking region, Nov. 26, 2020.Ski resorts and overseas vacationsGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel wants all resorts across Europe closed during Christmas. That, though, is something Austria and Switzerland are not prepared to do. Both countries are desperate for the resorts to generate some income and have said cable cars, restaurants and bars will operate, but with social distancing rules in place and mask-wearing required.“When someone uses a lift, it is similar to when they use public transport,” Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor, said last week. France, too, is planning to allow ski resorts to operate but without the use of lifts or cable cars. Some countries, including Germany, will require any of their citizens or residents returning from vacations abroad to quarantine for at least 10 days.Aside from ski resorts and overseas vacations, European countries are also trying to balance contradictory demands. They want to stem the spread of the virus but limit the economic fallout. The nations are also fearful of widespread non-compliance if they are too strict.Christmas and New Year’s restrictionsFrance is easing coronavirus lockdown rules incrementally ahead of the holiday. On Saturday, small businesses were allowed to reopen and places of worship permitted to hold services for up to 30 people. The French, who were required to stay within a kilometer of their homes, are now allowed to travel up to 20 kilometers away from their residences. After December 15, the current broad lockdown will be lifted, but a curfew will remain in place between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. local time except on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Unhindered travel will be permitted, allowing people to spend Christmas with family, but restaurants, bars and gyms won’t be allowed to reopen until January 20, and then only if the epidemic remains contained.“I call upon your sense of responsibility,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a nationwide broadcast last week. “This will certainly not be a Christmas like the others,” he warned, urging the French to wear masks and wash their hands.People line up outside a shop in Bayonne, southwestern France, Nov. 28, 2020. Non-essential shops around France are opening their doors as part of a staggered relaxing of lockdown restrictions.The Spanish government is yet to finalize Christmas plans. But Madrid is likely to impose a limit of six people at parties. It is encouraging all social gatherings in the run-up to the holiday to be held outside. Traditionally Spain celebrates the Feast of the Three Kings, marked by local parades on January 5, but the government has said the celebrations should not go ahead this time.In Italy, Conte, his ministers and regional heads of government have been debating what to allow and what to restrict, including whether midnight church services can go ahead. The country’s contagion rate has slowed in some regions but in others, transmission rates are alarming and Italy’s death toll is as high as the country experienced in the first wave of the pandemic in March and April.Many restrictions are likely to remain in place in Italy and what rule easing that will be seen will be less than during Italy’s summer. “It will be a different kind of Christmas; sacrifices are still necessary in order not to expose ourselves to a third wave in January with a high number of deaths,” Conte cautioned Italians. Final decisions on Christmas rules will be issued later this week.Germany is to continue with its current strategy dubbed “lockdown light.” Bars, restaurants and entertainment venues are likely to remain shuttered and travel discouraged. “Daily cases are still far too high, and our intensive care units are still very full,” according to Chancellor Merkel. But she has approved a temporary reprieve over Christmas with up to 10 people allowed to meet at a time between December 23 and New Year’s Day.People wearing protective face masks are seen at Schloss Strasse shopping street, amid the COVID-19 outbreak in Berlin, Germany, Dec. 1, 2020.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has decided to ease some pandemic rules in England, although privately ministers acknowledge that will prompt another surge of new cases, just as the country’s lockdown has been slowing the rate of infections. The government’s scientific advisory panel has warned the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions over Christmas will increase infections “potentially by a large amount.”In a document published last week, the panel said, “Substantial mixing of people over a short period of time, especially those who do not make contact regularly…represents a significant risk for widespread transmission.” “The prevalence could easily double during a few days of festive season,” it added.A man wearing a face mask walks past the Debenhams flagship department store on Oxford Street, during the second coronavirus lockdown in London, Dec. 1, 2020.All four nations of the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, are planning to try to coordinate Christmas coronavirus rules and are intending to relax some over the holiday season. In England, people will be allowed to celebrate in three-household “Christmas bubbles” for a five-day period over the season; but, those households cannot meet up inside pubs, hotels, stores, theaters or restaurants.Restrictions on church services are due to be lifted, allowing Christmas services. Last week, Prime Minister Johnson told lawmakers, “I can’t say that Christmas will be normal this year — but in a period of adversity, time spent with loved ones is even more precious for people of all faiths and none.”Some British Cabinet ministers are pressing for more easing — so, too, are backbench lawmakers from Johnson’s ruling Conservative party. Local government minister Robert Jenrick acknowledges the softening of restrictions will likely “drive some higher rate of infection.” Nonetheless he’s pushing for stores to remain open 24 hours a day in the run-up to Christmas, if they so wish.
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The European Union said Tuesday it could be vaccinating citizens against COVID-19 by the end of the month if medical officials grant emergency approval of two vaccines candidates. European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels EU member states are working on logistics for the distribution of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine and if all goes well, she said, “the first European citizens would be vaccinated by the end of December.”Her comments came as U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced they have applied for conditional approval of their coronavirus vaccine with the European Medicines Agency. The companies said in a statement that the submission on Monday completes the rolling review process they initiated with the agency on October 6.The move comes a day after another U.S company, Moderna said it was asking U.S. and European regulators to allow emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine. Both companies applied with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency approval in November.In a statement, the European Medicines Agency said it would convene a meeting on December 29 to decide if there is enough data about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for it to be approved.The agency also said Tuesday it could decide as early as January 12 whether to approve a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna.Last week, the EU said it had signed deals to acquire more than a billion doses of a total of six potential vaccines, including the two currently being considered for approval in Europe.
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Facebook and Google are becoming “zones without human rights” in Vietnam, Amnesty International warned Tuesday, accusing the tech giants of helping to censor peaceful opposition and political freedom in the country. Amnesty warned that although they were “once the great hope for the rise of freedom of expression in the country, social media platforms are rapidly becoming areas without human rights.” Information Minister Nguyen Manh Hung said last month that tech companies were complying with demands to remove “bad news, propaganda against the party and the state” at a faster rate than ever before, according to state media. FILE – Vietnam’s then-acting Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Manh Hung attends the World Economic Forum on ASEAN at the Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, Sept. 12, 2018.The same article states that this year Facebook complied with 95% of government requests and YouTube, 90%. A Facebook spokesperson told AFP that the platform is working hard to defend freedom of expression around the world. “Over the past few months, we have experienced additional pressure from the Vietnamese government to limit more content, however we will do our best to ensure that our services remain accessible, so that people can continue to express themselves,” he clarified. Google and the Vietnamese authorities did not respond to AFP’s requests. Communist Vietnam has long imprisoned its dissidents but has been criticized in recent years for targeting users of Facebook, a social network popular with activists in the country where independent media is banned. The social network admitted earlier this year that it was blocking content deemed illegal by the authorities, while its latest transparency report reveals an increase in six months of nearly 1,000% of content censored by order of the government. Amnesty International said in a report published Tuesday that it had collected the testimonies of 11 activists whose publications were banned by Facebook in Vietnam this year. The human rights organization also said that three other people have suffered similar censorship of their content on YouTube, owned by Google. One of them, Nguyen Van Trang, who fled an arrest warrant in Vietnam for his involvement in a pro-democracy group, said that Facebook had since May restricted the visibility of all its publications about Communist Party boss Nguyen Phu Trong and senior member Tran Quoc Vuong. Trang also said that some of his posts on controversial issues such as the land dispute have been made inaccessible by YouTube in Vietnam. Obstruction of ‘the progress of a nation’ “I am angry,” he told AFP. “For activists, these platforms play an important role in influencing people on progressive values like democracy, human rights, civil society.” “The compromise of Facebook and Google is not only to block information, but also to hamper the progress of a nation, where the inhabitants do not have many opportunities to participate in political activities,” he added. Vietnam is now the country that generates the most revenue for Facebook and Google in Southeast Asia, according to industry experts. More than 53 million people use Facebook in Vietnam, more than half of the population. The platform is also an important marketing tool for the local economy.
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Joseph Varon, a doctor treating coronavirus patients at a Texas hospital, was working his 252nd day in a row when he spotted a distraught elderly man in the COVID-19 intensive care unit. Varon’s comforting embrace of the white-haired man on Thanksgiving Day was captured by a photographer for Getty Images and has gone viral around the world. Varon, chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, told CNN he was entering the COVID-19 ICU when he saw the elderly patient “out of his bed and trying to get out of the room.” “And he’s crying,” Varon said. “So I get close to him and I (ask) him, ‘Why are you crying?'” “And the man says, ‘I want to be with my wife.’ So I just grab him and I hold him,” Varon said. “I was feeling very sorry for him. I was feeling very sad, just like him.” “Eventually he felt better, and he stopped crying,” Varon told CNN on Monday. “I don’t know why I haven’t broken down,” the doctor said. “My nurses cry in the middle of the day.” Varon said the isolation of the COVID-19 unit was difficult for many patients, particularly the elderly. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus. “You can imagine,” he said. “You are inside a room where people are coming in spacesuits. “When you are an elderly individual, it’s more difficult because you are alone,” he said. “Some of them cry. Some of them try to escape,” he said. “We actually had somebody who tried to escape through a window the other day.” Varon said the elderly man in the picture is “doing much better.” “We are hoping that before the end of the week he’ll be able to get out of the hospital,” he said. Take precautions, doctor saysVaron also had a message for people who are not taking precautions amid the pandemic. “People are out there in bars, restaurants, malls,” the doctor said. “It is crazy. People don’t listen and then they end up in my ICU. “What people need to know is I don’t want to have to be hugging them,” he said. “They need to do the basic things — keep your social distance, wear your masks, wash their hands, and avoid going to places where there are a lot of people,” he said. “If people would do that, health care workers like me could hopefully rest.”
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China has provided North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his family with an experimental coronavirus vaccine, a U.S. analyst said Tuesday, citing two unidentified Japanese intelligence sources. Harry Kazianis, a North Korea expert at the Center for the National Interest think tank in Washington, said the Kims and several senior North Korean officials had been vaccinated. It was unclear which company had supplied its drug candidate to the Kims and whether it had proven to be safe, he added. FILE – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this undated photo released Nov. 16, 2020, by KCNA.”Kim Jong Un and multiple other high-ranking officials within the Kim family and leadership network have been vaccinated for coronavirus within the last two to three weeks thanks to a vaccine candidate supplied by the Chinese government,” Kazianis wrote in an article for online outlet 19FortyFive. Citing U.S. medical scientist Peter J. Hotez, he said at least three Chinese companies were developing a coronavirus vaccine, including Sinovac Biotech Ltd, CanSinoBio and Sinophram Group. Sinophram says its candidate has been used by nearly 1 million people in China, although none of the firms was known to have publicly launched Phase 3 clinical trials of their experimental COVID-19 drugs. North Korea has not confirmed any coronavirus infections, but South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has said an outbreak there cannot be ruled out as the country had trade and people-to-people exchanges with China, the source of the pandemic, before shutting the border in late January. Microsoft said last month that two North Korean hacking groups had tried to break into the network of vaccine developers in multiple countries, without specifying the companies targeted. Sources told Reuters they included British drugmaker AstraZeneca. The NIS said last week it had foiled North Korea’s attempts to hack into South Korean COVID-19 vaccine makers.
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