Day: April 10, 2021

Blackmore 1st Woman to Win Grand National Horse Race

A Hollywood fantasy turned into reality Saturday when Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to win Britain’s grueling Grand National horse race, breaking one of the biggest gender barriers in sports. Blackmore, a 31-year-old Irishwoman, rode Minella Times to victory at odds of 11-1 in the 173rd edition of the famous steeplechase at Aintree in Liverpool, northwest England “I don’t feel male or female right now. I don’t even feel human,” Blackmore said. “This is just unbelievable.” Blackmore is the 20th female jockey to compete in a race that has been a mud-splattered British sporting institution since 1839. Women have been allowed to enter the National as jockeys since 1975. “I never even imagined I’d get a ride in this race, never mind get my hands on the trophy,” Blackmore said. In the 1944 Hollywood movie “National Velvet,” a 12-year-old girl, Velvet Brown — played by a young Elizabeth Taylor — won the Grand National on The Pie, a gelding she won in a raffle and decided to train for the world’s biggest horse race. In the story, Brown was later disqualified on a technicality, having dismounted before reaching the enclosure. Even though Aintree was without racegoers because of the coronavirus pandemic, cheers rang out as Blackmore made her way off the course — still aboard Minella Times — and into the winner’s enclosure. She looked as if she couldn’t believe what she had done. “For all the girls who watched ‘National Velvet’!” tweeted Hayley Turner, a former female jockey. “Thank you Rachael Blackmore, we’re so lucky to have you.” Blackmore, the daughter of a dairy farmer and a schoolteacher, grew up on a farm and rode ponies. She didn’t have a classic racing upbringing, which makes her ascent in the sport all the more inspirational. A professional jockey since 2015, she rode the second most winners in Irish jump racing in 2018-19, the same season she won her first races at the prestigious Cheltenham Festival. She was already the face of British and Irish horse racing before arriving at Aintree, having become the first woman to finish as the leading jockey at Cheltenham three weeks ago. Now she’s won the biggest race of them all, one that even non-horse racing enthusiasts turn on to watch and one that first captured Blackmore’s imagination. Indeed, her first memory of horse racing is going over to a friend’s house and taking part in a sweepstake for the National. A beaming Blackmore had special words for her parents, who “took me around the country riding ponies when I was younger.” “I can’t believe I am Rachael Blackmore. I still feel like that little kid — I just can’t believe I am me,” she said. “I hope it does help anyone who wants to be a jockey. I never thought this would be possible for me. I didn’t dream of making a career as a jockey because I never thought it could happen.” The previous best performance by a female jockey in the National was Katie Walsh’s third-place finish on Seabass in 2012. Minella Times went out as the fourth favorite of the 40 horses in a race run over 4 1/4 miles (6.4 kilometers) and features 30 big and often brutal fences. Minella Times was always near the front of the field, and Blackmore timed the horse’s run for glory to perfection, easing past long-time leader Jett with around three fences to jump. The famous, draining run to the line — about 500 meters from the last fence — was a procession as Minella Times won by 6 1/2 lengths. “He was just incredible and jumped beautifully,” Blackmore said. “I tried to wait as long as I could. When I jumped the last and asked him for a bit, he was there.” One of the other two female jockeys in the race, Bryony Frost, was taken to the hospital after being unseated from her horse, Yala Enki. The Long Mile was destroyed after suffering an injury while running between two of the fences. It was the second equine fatality since safety changes to the race were introduced in 2013.

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WHO Warns of Rising COVID Cases, Cites Vaccine Complacency

The World Health Organization is warning that COVID-19 cases and deaths are rising globally, partly because of complacency setting in that vaccines will stop the spread of the disease. The latest WHO report confirms more than 133.5 million cases of coronavirus infections, including nearly 3 million global deaths.
 
Data show a worrisome uptick in coronavirus cases and deaths in all regions of the world, with Africa slightly less affected than other regions. The World Health Organization attributes this rise to several factors, including an increase in coronavirus variants, failure to practice public health measures and the resumption of so-called normal life when people emerge from lockdown.  
 
Another problem says WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris is a growing complacency that the availability of vaccines will soon end the crisis.
   
“People are misunderstanding that, seeming to think that vaccination will stop transmission. That is not the case. We need to bring down the transmission while giving the vaccination the chance to stop the severe disease and the severe deaths,” Harris said.
    
The WHO reports nearly 670 million doses of vaccines have been administered globally. However, most of those doses have been given in wealthy countries. Furthermore, the WHO warns there is a critical shortage of vaccines.
 
Harris said some countries cannot start COVID-19 inoculation campaigns because of the serious shortfall of doses, especially in developing countries.
   
“So, again, what can be done about it? Doubling down on the public health social measures. Truly understanding we have to keep on social distancing, we have to avoid indoor crowded settings. We have to keep wearing the masks, even if vaccinated,” she said.
   
The good news, Harris added, is preliminary results from countries such as Britain show that vaccination programs have averted very large numbers of deaths.  
 
However, until most of the world is vaccinated, she said people must not let down their guard. They must remain vigilant and practice the few simple public health measures that have been shown to work.
 

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Australian Humpback Whale Numbers Surge But Scientists Warn of Climate Change Threat

Marine experts estimate about 40,000 humpback whales are now migrating through Australian waters annually, up from about 1,500 half a century ago.  
   
The humpbacks’ annual journey from Antarctica to subtropical waters along Australia’s east and west coasts is one of nature’s great migrations.  
 
It is a journey of up to 10,000 kilometers and is undertaken between April and November. Scientists have estimated 40,000 humpback whales have been in Australian waters to mate and breed.  It is a remarkable recovery from the height of commercial whaling in the early 1960s when it was estimated there were fewer than 1,500 humpbacks.  They were slaughtered mainly for their oil and baleen, or “whalebone.”
 
Australia’s environment department says no other whale species has recovered as strongly as the humpback since the end of commercial hunting, which ceased in Australia in 1978.
 
Australia is now considering removing humpback whales from the endangered species list because of their growing numbers.
 
The acrobatic humpbacks that can grow to 16 meters would still be protected in Australia. Conservationists, though, argue that they need more, not fewer, environmental safeguards to monitor the impact of climate change on krill – their main source of food. Krill are affected by the absorption of more carbon dioxide into the ocean.
 
Olaf Meynecke, a research fellow in Marine Science at Queensland’s Griffith University, says vigilance is needed to ensure the whales continue to thrive.  
 
“Generally speaking, yes, it is a great success story that humpback whales have come back.  But obviously we also need to ask questions as [to] how will this continue in the future, how are present threats already impacting the population and how we [are] going to detect changes in the future,” Meynecke said.  
 
Scientists say humpbacks face a combination of other threats including the overharvesting of krill, pollution, habitat degradation, and entanglement in fishing nets. Calves also face attack by killer whales or sharks.
 
The recovery of the humpback has helped the rapid growth of Australia’s whale-watching industry.
 
As their numbers have grown, much about the humpback, a species famous for its song, remains a mystery.  Scientists do not know exactly, for example, where on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef they mate and calve.  
 
Humpback whales live in all the world’s oceans. They take their common name from a distinctive hump on the whale’s back.   
 

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Johns Hopkins: Nearly 134.7 Million Global COVID Cases

There are nearly 134.7 million worldwide COVID-19 cases, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Saturday. The U.S. has more cases than anywhere else, with 31 million infections, followed by Brazil, with 13.3 million, and India, with 13.2 million cases.India has recorded its highest daily spike in COVID cases for a fifth straight day. On Saturday, the health ministry reported 145,384 new cases in the previous 24-hour period.Britain’s emergency doctors are reporting that their departments are seeing an influx of patients who say they have headaches and are worried about the Astra Zeneca vaccines they have received, following reports that the vaccine could be responsible for very rare, possibly fatal, brain blood clots.“We are seeing people with mild headaches and persistent headaches, but who are otherwise all right,” Dr. Katherine Henderson, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told The Guardian.Several nations have issued new guidelines over the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine after the European Union’s medical regulator announced a link between the vaccine and the blood clots.Britain, where the vaccine was developed jointly by the British-Swedish drugmaker and scientists at the University of Oxford, said it will offer alternatives for adults under 30. Oxford researchers have also suspended a clinical trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine involving young children and teenagers as British drug regulators conduct a safety review of the two-shot regimen.Spain and the Philippines will limit the vaccine to people over 60 years old, Reuters reported, while The Washington Post reported Italy has issued similar guidelines.The European Medicines Agency recently said blood clots should be listed as a very rare side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but it continued to emphasize that its overall benefits outweigh any risks.AstraZeneca has been the key vaccine in Britain’s exceptionally speedy inoculation campaign, which has outpaced the vaccination rates in the rest of Europe.However, the vaccine has had a troubled rollout elsewhere, initially because of a lack of information from its late-stage clinical trials on its effect on older people, which has slowed vaccination efforts throughout Europe. Many nations stopped administering the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports first surfaced of the blood clot incidents.After 34 million inoculations of the Astra Zeneca vaccine, the European Medicines Agency said it has received fewer than 200 reports about the rare brain blood clots.Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday that Tokyo will be placed under a monthlong state of “quasi-emergency” to combat surging COVID-19 infections.Speaking to reporters during a COVID-19 task force meeting, Suga said the new measures are focused on shortening the business hours of bars and restaurants and imposing fines for violations. Many of Tokyo’s COVID-19 cases have been traced to the city’s nightlife.Suga said the steps are necessary because of surging infection rates, particularly of more contagious variants of the virus.Japan has never imposed strict lockdowns such as those seen in other countries.

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