Astronauts aboard the International Space Station this week built the bones for much-needed power upgrades. Also, SpaceX took flight with and without success, and flaming space junk lights up Australian skies. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.
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Day: March 4, 2021
Prince Philip has had a successful heart procedure at a London hospital and is expected to remain for several days of “rest and recuperation,” Buckingham Palace said Thursday.
The palace said the 99-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II “underwent a successful procedure for a pre-existing heart condition at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.”
“His royal highness will remain in hospital for treatment, rest and recuperation for a number of days,” the palace said in a statement.
Philip, 99, has been hospitalized since being admitted to King Edward VII’s Hospital in London on Feb. 16, where he was treated for an infection. On Monday he was transferred to a specialized cardiac care hospital, St. Bartholomew’s.
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, said Wednesday that Philip’s condition was “slightly improving.”
“We’ll keep our fingers crossed,” said Camilla, who is married to Prince Charles, eldest son of Philip and the queen.
Philip’s illness is not believed to be related to the coronavirus. Both Philip and the monarch received COVID-19 vaccinations in January and chose to publicize the matter to encourage others to also take the vaccine. FILE – Prince Philip The Duke of Edinburgh has been hospitalized.Philip, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, retired in 2017 and rarely appears in public. Before his hospitalization, Philip had been isolating at Windsor Castle, west of London, with the queen.
Although he enjoyed good health well into old age, Philip has had heart issues in the past. In 2011, he was rushed to a hospital by helicopter after suffering chest pains and was treated for a blocked coronary artery.
The longest-serving royal consort in British history, Philip married the then-Princess Elizabeth in 1947. He and the queen have four children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
His illness comes as the royal family braces for the broadcast of an interview conducted by Oprah Winfrey with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are pictured in this undated handout photo supplied to Reuters, following an announcement that they are expecting their second child.Meghan and husband Prince Harry quit royal duties last year and moved to California, citing what they said were the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.
Relations between the couple and the palace appear to have become increasingly strained. On Wednesday, the palace said it was launching a human resources investigation after a newspaper reported that a former aide had accused Meghan of bullying staff in 2018.
In a clip from the pre-recorded Winfrey interview, released by CBS, Winfrey asks Meghan how she feels about the palace “hearing you speak your truth today?”
“I don’t know how they could expect that after all of this time we would still just be silent if there was an active role that the firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us,” the duchess says.
“The Firm” is a nickname for the royal family, sometimes used with affection and sometimes with a note of criticism.
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Women’s rights activists in Kenya have welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden’s order revoking the ban blocking U.S. funding to women’s health organizations that provide abortion or abortion-related services. Critics say the so-called gag rule left women uninformed about safe options to end a pregnancy.
Forty-five-year-old Najma Wangoi lost her sister in 2018 after she bought medicine from a drug store to induce an abortion and it led to her death.
The mother of two says her sister didn’t know there was a better way to end a pregnancy.
“She didn’t know because she bought those medicines for 3,500 shillings ($35). If she knew there was a place to do a safe abortion, she would still be alive. She should have explained her situation to the hospital, and she would have been treated,” Wangoi said.
Under the global gag rule, originally enacted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and revived by President Donald Trump, it became difficult for millions of women to seek abortion services at health centers receiving U.S. funds.
The gag rule blocked U.S. government funding for organizations if they provided abortion services, counseling or referrals.
The rule effectively shut down health clinics, as well as community sensitization programs about sexual and reproductive health.
Boniface Ushie, researcher with the African Population and Health Research Center, says while the ban has now been lifted by U.S. President Joe Biden, it will not be enough to undo the effects it had on women’s health in Africa.
“Lifting it is great, but it’s going to take a while for the impact of the global gag rule as instituted by Trump to begin to lift. So, it’s going to require a lot of funding. It’s going to require a lot of programs to undo what has been done over the past four years,” Ushie said.
Thirty-three-year-old Rose Akoth said she is lucky to be alive after taking tablets to abort a baby in 2019. After three days of pain, the fetus emerged but the placenta got stuck in her womb, requiring urgent medical attention.
“I have a health problem now since I did the abortion because it didn’t come out well. These days my menstruation goes for a month and there is nothing I am using like family planning. My menstrual period goes on non-stop,” she said.
Akoth, Wangoi and others hope that with the gag rule lifted, more women can be saved from abortion-related deaths and health crises.
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A lot of food is wasted around the world, and the United Nations says it needs better data to determine just how much.
Citing the environmental impact of food production, the U.N. says understanding the scope of food waste is crucial.
Despite the lack of data, the U.N. estimates in its report that 17%, or 931 million tons, of the food produced around the world went to waste in 2019.
“Improved measurement can lead to improved management,” Brian Roe, a food waste researcher at The Ohio State University who was not involved in the report, told the Associated Press.
The U.N. says once the scale of food waste is known, it will be easier to come up with potential solutions, such as turning waste into animal feed or fertilizer.
According to the U.N., food waste is not limited to developed countries, but is a growing problem in poorer countries where refrigeration might not always be available.
“For a long time, it was assumed that food waste in the home was a significant problem only in developed countries,” Marcus Gover, CEO of WRAP, a charity that works with governments to reduce food waste, told Reuters.
Clementine O’Connor, of the U.N. Environment Program and co-author of the report, said many countries “haven’t yet quantified their food waste, so they don’t understand the scale of the problem.”
In the United States, one way to mitigate food waste could be to clarify the meaning of food labeling, such as “sell by,” “best by” and “enjoy by” dates, according to Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University.
He said some people might throw away food based on those dates even though the food may still be safe to eat.
“Food waste is a consequence of sensible decisions by people acting on the best information available,” he told AP.
The U.S. Agriculture Department estimates an American family of four wastes about $1,500 worth of food each year.
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An unmanned SpaceX Starship SN10 test rocket – designed to take humans to the moon and beyond – perfectly launched and touched down on Earth Wednesday, but then exploded on the launch pad shortly after landing.It was third consecutive test flight of the rocket to end in an explosion, though it did so after flying more than 10 kilometers into the air, descending horizontally, then flipping upright for a perfect landing at the Boca Chica, Texas test facility.Video of the launch pad showed the craft leaning slightly and emitting streams of smoke before it exploded eight minutes after landing. In the previous test, the craft exploded after landing hard.On his Twitter account, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said, “Starship 10 landed in one piece! RIP SN10, honorable discharge.” There was no immediate explanation for why the rocket exploded, but a fuel leak is suspected.Starship SN10 landed in one piece! https://t.co/lO4AF47MaN— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 4, 2021The shiny bullet-shaped rocket ship, which will stand 120 meters tall when placed atop its super-heavy first-stage booster, is the company’s next-generation fully reusable launch vehicle – the center of Musk’s ambitions to make human space travel more affordable and routine.
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An international advocacy group’s claim that the Vietnamese government has tapped hackers to target activists shows that the communist Southeast Asian state is widening the use of technology to quash its biggest opponents, experts believe. Ocean Lotus, a shadowy group suspected of working with the Vietnamese government, is “behind a sustained campaign of spyware attacks,” London-based Amnesty International said in a statement on February 24 following two years of research. It says the attacks surfaced in 2014 and targeted rights activists and the private sector, inside Vietnam as well as abroad. The hack attacks would signal a growing use of technology to muzzle strong vocal opponents of Vietnam’s officials, country observers say. Police already use internet trolls and authorities have been known to damage people’s Facebook accounts, said James Gomez, regional director of the Asia Centre, a Bangkok-based think tank. The FILE – Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy spokesperson Ngo Toan Thang speaks to media in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 7, 2019.”This is groundless information,” deputy ministry spokesperson Ngo Toan Thang told a news conference in May, as quoted on the ministry’s website. “Vietnam strictly bans all cyber-attacks against organizations and individuals in any form.” The ministry’s English-language website does not address Amnesty International’s claims. Amnesty International’s Security Lab said in the February 24 statement it had found Ocean Lotus’s influence in phishing emails sent to two Vietnamese “human rights” advocates. One lives in Germany, the statement says, and the other was a Vietnamese nongovernmental organization in the Philippines. “The hacking group has been repeatedly identified by cybersecurity firms as targeting Vietnamese political dissidents, foreign governments and companies,” the statement adds. Vietnam ‘cyber-troops’French journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said in 2018 Vietnam had appointed 10,000 “cyber-troops” to fight online dissent. The journalism group called the deployment an “army of internet trolls” aimed at attacking independent media outlets. Authorities showed last year they can quickly shutter social media accounts registered in foreign countries. After Vietnamese blogger Bui Thi Minh Hang livestreamed an interview with a woman whose 3-year-old child was exposed to tear gas, her posts quickly disappeared from Facebook and YouTube and she was arrested hours later. She lost access to her accounts.Vietnam Pressures Social Media Platforms to Censor Vietnam’s laws and requests for content removal are stifling free speech, bloggers and rights organizations say Jack Nguyen, a partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City, suggests that internet commentators stick to issues rather than targeting the state or the Communist Party. Pollution and drought are acceptable topics, he said, and it’s even OK to suggest policy changes. “Don’t criticize the party,” Nguyen said. “You can criticize some of the policies but don’t do anything that they can say that it’s counterrevolutionary.”
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Nearly 50 countries have either received or ordered at least one of the three Chinese-developed COVID-19 vaccines, according to an Associated Press survey. More with VOA’s Mariama Diallo on the vaccine rollouts.
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U.S. President Joe Biden, while expressing frustration, has limited power to overrule decisions by state governors who are ending mask mandates and lifting other restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.”I think it’s a big mistake,” Biden told a small group of reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office when asked about Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi casting off restrictions and allowing businesses to reopen at full capacity.As the nation makes progress with vaccinations, “the last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, ‘Everything’s fine. Take off your mask. Forget it,’ ” added the president, a Democrat. “It still matters.”During the previous administration of Republican President Donald Trump, who downplayed the severity of COVID-19 despite eventually becoming infected himself, not wearing a mask became a political statement.Since taking office in January, Biden and top federal health officials repeatedly have emphasized mask wearing and social distancing while the country escalates the number of Americans being vaccinated against the virus.He noted during Wednesday’s brief interaction with reporters that he carries a card with the updated number of people in the country who have died because of the coronavirus.“As of yesterday, we had lost 511,874 Americans. We’re going to lose thousands more,” said Biden. “We’ll not have everybody vaccinated until sometime in the summer.”The president, urging people to frequently wash their hands, wear masks and maintain social distancing, added, “And I know you all know that I wish the heck some of our elected officials knew it.”FILE – In this image from video, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky speaks during a briefing on the Biden administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jan. 27, 2021, in Washington.Earlier Wednesday, Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that “now is not the time” to lift COVID-19 restrictions.” Her comment came a day after Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared his state “100% open.”Texas, the second most populous state in the country, ranks 47th out of 50 for COVID-19 vaccinations per capita.At a virtual news briefing for the White House COVID-19 response, Walensky said the next month or two would be pivotal in deciding the trajectory of the pandemic.While infection rates across the country have been leveling off, COVID-19 variants such as the highly transmissible so-called British strain are poised to surge, threatening to destroy what progress has been made, Walensky said.FILE – Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signs legislation at the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, June 30, 2020.In Mississippi on Tuesday, Governor Tate Reeves followed Texas’ move and lifted his state’s mask mandate and business restrictions.Under the U.S. Constitution and because of Supreme Court decisions, states — not the federal government — have primary authority to control the spread of dangerous diseases within their jurisdictions.“A federalist system means that the central government, the United States government, is a government of limited powers, and the states retain police powers, which historically has included public health,” explained Meryl Chertoff, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington.The Commerce Clause, which gives Congress exclusive authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, does allow the federal government to order quarantines and impose other health measures to prevent the spread of diseases from foreign countries, as well as between states. But that authority has never been affirmed by the courts, according to the American Bar Association.A year ago, at the start of the pandemic, Trump said he had discussed “a national lockdown” with advisers to minimize the spread of the coronavirus. Several days later, he dismissed the idea.“I think it was a political decision to leave these decisions to the governors in order to be able to allocate praise and blame,” Chertoff, the executive director of the Georgetown Project on State and Local Government Policy and Law, told VOA.Some authorities desired a powerful federal response, but an unprecedented executive order would likely have been challenged in the courts on constitutional grounds.FILE – Tenants’ rights advocates march from the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse, Jan. 13, 2021, in Boston. The protest called on the then-incoming Biden administration to extend the eviction moratorium initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.Courts are currently considering the constitutionality of evictions amid the pandemic, which had been ordered halted by the CDC, a federal agency.“This is relevant to the mask mandates because it suggests that the courts are now starting to consider whether under provisions of the Public Health Services Act of 1944 … the authority of the federal government to act with respect to emergency public health situations is broader than has been previously acknowledged,” said Chertoff.She cautioned that those who want the president and the executive branch to have “a more muscular set of tools” to deal with an unprecedented public health crisis need to consider that once the federal government has such tools, “they will be around not just for the next four years, but for the next 40 years.”
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