Day: May 9, 2021

The United States is “turning the corner” in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, a key White House official said Sunday. Jeffrey Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, told CNN that the U.S. has “enough supply [of vaccines] for all Americans,” even as the number of new daily vaccinations has dropped to 2.1 million, down 40% from last month’s peak pace. He said that 58% of those 18 and older in the U.S. — nearly 149 million people — have now received at least one shot, a figure President Joe Biden says he hopes will reach 70% by July 4, the country’s annual Independence Day holiday. People check-in at a Covid-19 vaccination site at a sports center in Brooklyn, New York on May 8, 2021.Zients said the country is “on the path” to becoming “safer and safer and closer and closer to normal.” But he acknowledged that “everyone is tired” of restrictions imposed because of the pandemic and said, “Wearing a mask can be a pain.” He urged Americans to get vaccinated if they have not, as well as to “keep up our guard” and wear a face mask in crowded groups. “Let’s stay vigilant,” he said. Zients said that regardless of whether the U.S. reaches the 70% vaccination figure by July 4, the nation will continue to vaccinate as many people as possible afterward and that if booster shots “are necessary [a half year or more from now], we’ll be ready.” In all, 112.6 million Americans are fully vaccinated, most often with the two-shot regimen developed by either the Moderna or Pfizer BioNTech drug makers. But polls show that about 20% of Americans — often supporters of former President Donald Trump — say they will not get vaccinated, making it more difficult for the country to increase its overall rate. FILE – U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci speaks at the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Jan. 21, 2021.Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and the country’s top infectious disease expert, told ABC’s “This Week” show that one key factor in increasing the number of inoculations is to “make it extremely easy to get vaccinated,” such as through the increasing number of no-appointment, walk-in vaccination sites at pharmacies. He said the country also needs to get “trusted messengers,” such as family doctors, clergy and sports figures, to spread the word of the need to be vaccinated. Currently, he said, about 43,000 new U.S coronavirus cases are being recorded each day. “We’ve got to get it to even lower,” Fauci said. Since the pandemic first swept into the U.S. in March 2020, the nation has recorded more than 581,000 deaths and nearly 32.7 million infections, with both figures more than in any other country, according to the Johns Hopkins University. 
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Experts say this has already been a busy year for volcanic activity, but now NASA scientists say they may be able to predict eruptions far enough in advance to save lives. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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The coronavirus crisis is not abating in India, with the country reporting Sunday that it had counted more than 403,000 new infections and 4,000 deaths in the last 24 hours. In addition, health experts say the tolls are likely undercounted. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not imposed a nationwide lockdown to help stop the spread of the coronavirus despite calls to do so from politicians and public health officials. Some local governments, however, have imposed lockdowns on their jurisdictions. New Delhi has announced that a lockdown that began April 20 will be extended to May 17. The Indian capital also announced that Metro transit service will be suspended, starting Monday. The southern state of Tamil Nadu said it would shift from a partial to a full lockdown after neighboring Karnataka state extended its full lockdown Friday. FILE – Beds are seen inside a Gurudwara (Sikh Temple) converted into a coronavirus care facility amidst the spread of COVID-19 in New Delhi, India, May 5, 2021.In an interview Saturday with the French news agency, Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, warned that “the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it’s an extremely rapidly spreading variant.” Swaminathan said the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was clearly a contributing factor to the catastrophe in India, her homeland.  “There have been many accelerators that are fed into this,” the 62-year-old pediatrician and clinical scientist said, adding, “A more rapidly spreading virus is one of them.” She added, however, that large gatherings and a lapse in mask-wearing also played a role. The B.1.617 variant was first discovered in India last October. The United States and Britain consider it a “variant of concern,” which indicates it is more dangerous than the original virus. In addition to the number of cases and deaths, Swaminathan said another danger is the increasing likelihood of variants that could outwit vaccines. “Variants which accumulate a lot of mutations may ultimately become resistant to the current vaccines that we have,” she said. The India toll came as the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center in the U.S. recorded 157.7 million global infections early Sunday, with 3.3 million deaths.  Johns Hopkins also said India currently had more than 22 million confirmed cases and 242,000 deaths. India is second to the U.S. in the number of infections. The U.S. currently has more than 32.6 million infections and 581,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. EU summit, US criticism On the second day of a European Union summit in Portugal on Saturday, the EU approved a contract extension with Pfizer-BioNTech to provide up to 1.8 billion additional doses of its vaccine through 2023. Pfizer-BioNTech has already provided the EU with 600 million doses, as required in the initial contract. Also at the EU summit, the U.S. faced mounting criticism from EU leaders over U.S. President Joe Biden’s surprise endorsement last week of lifting COVID-19 vaccine patents to make more doses available to poorer countries. “We don’t think, in the short term, that it’s the magic bullet,” said EU Council President Charles Michel. Michel and other EU leaders said the U.S. should, instead, start boosting U.S. vaccine exports to have maximum impact on the global pandemic. “I’m very clearly urging the U.S. to put an end to the ban on exports of vaccines and on components of vaccines that are preventing them being produced,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. The U.S., like Britain, has limited exports of domestically developed vaccines so it can inoculate its population first. The EU has become the world’s leading vaccine provider, distributing about 200 million doses to the 27-nation bloc and roughly an equal number to nearly 90 countries around the world. Pope Francis said that he supports the temporary suspension of vaccine patents, according to news reports. He added that market forces, as it relates to the vaccines, must not predominate. 
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Some have claimed she’s indulging a forbidden romance. More likely, loneliness compels her to seek company at Rio de Janeiro’s zoo. Either way, a blue-and-yellow macaw that zookeepers named Juliet is believed to be the only wild bird of its kind left in the Brazilian city where the birds once flew far and wide.Almost every morning for the last two decades, Juliet has appeared. She swoops onto the zoo enclosure where macaws are kept and, through its fence, engages in grooming behavior that looks like conjugal canoodling. Sometimes she just sits, relishing the presence of others. She is quieter — shier? more coy? — than her squawking chums. Blue-and-yellow macaws live to be about 35 years old and Juliet — no spring chicken — should have found a lifelong mate years ago, according to Neiva Guedes, president of the Hyacinth Macaw Institute, an environmental group. But Juliet hasn’t coupled, built a nest or had chicks, so at most she’s “still just dating.”A blue-and-yellow macaw that zookeepers named Juliet flies outside the enclosure where macaws are kept at BioParque, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, May 5, 2021.“They’re social birds, and that means they don’t like to live alone, whether in nature or captivity. They need company,” said Guedes, who also coordinates a project that researches macaws in urban settings. Juliet “very probably feels lonely, and for that reason goes to the enclosure to communicate and interact.”Aside from Juliet, the last sighting of a blue-and-yellow macaw flying free in Rio was in 1818 by an Austrian naturalist, according to Marcelo Rheingantz, a biologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and there are no other types of macaws in the city.  The lovebirds featured in the 2011 film “Rio″ are Spix’s macaws, which are native to a different region of Brazil and possibly extinct in the wild.Being boisterous with brilliant plumage helps macaws find each other in dense forest, but also makes them easier targets for hunters and animal traffickers. They’re often seen in other Brazilian states and across the Amazon, and it is suspected Juliet escaped from captivity.Biologists at BioParque aren’t sure if Juliet’s nuzzling is limited to one caged Romeo, or a few of them. They’re not even certain Juliet is female; macaw gender is near impossible to determine by sight, and requires either genetic testing of feathers or blood, or examination of the gonads.Either would be interference merely to satisfy human curiosity with no scientific end, biologist Angelita Capobianco said inside the enclosure. Nor would they consider confining Juliet, who often soars overhead and appears well-nourished.A blue-and-yellow macaw that zookeepers have named Juliet, left, grooms with a captive macaw at BioParque, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, May 5, 2021.“We don’t want to project human feelings. I look at the animal, and see an animal at ease,” Capobianco said, noting Juliet has never exhibited behavior to indicate disturbance, such as insistently pecking at the fence.“Who am I to decide it should only stay here? I won’t. It comes and goes, and its feathers are beautiful.”After more than a year of COVID-19 quarantine and travel bans, the appeal of roaming without restriction is evident to humankind. Macaws are used to flying great distances of more than 30 kilometers a day, Guedes said.Last year, BioParque gave its macaws more space: a 1,000-square-meter aviary where they fly beside green parrots and golden parakeets to compose an aerial, technicolor swirl. It’s a massive upgrade from prior enclosures that were roughly 9 square meters.BioParque reopened to the public in March, after privatization of Rio’s dilapidated zoo and almost 17 months of renovations.BioParque aims to feature species associated with research programs at universities and institutes. One such initiative is Refauna, which reintroduces species into protected areas with an eye on rebuilding ecosystems, and is participating with BioParque to start breeding blue-and-yellow macaws.The plan is for parents to raise some 20 chicks that will receive training on forest food sources, the peril of predators and avoidance of power lines. Then the youngsters will be released into Rio’s immense Tijuca Forest National Park, where Juliet has been sighted and is thought to sleep each night.“Their role could be important in terms of ecosystem and reforestation. It’s a big animal with big beak that can crack the biggest seeds, and not all birds can,” said Rheingantz, the university biologist, who is also Refauna’s technical coordinator. “The idea is for it to start dispersing those seeds, complementing forest animals that can’t.”After some pandemic-induced delays, the project has slowly restarted and Rheingantz expects to release blue-and-yellow macaws into Tijuca park toward the end of 2022.After two decades of relative solitude, Juliet will then have the chance to fly with friends. Neves said Juliet could teach them how to navigate the forest, or even find a love of her own.
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An out-of-control Chinese rocket is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere between 1:00 and 5:00 UTC Sunday, but experts do not know where debris from the craft will land or exactly when it will happen.Aerospace Corp. and Space-Track.org are following the rocket as it descends.Space-Track.org estimated Saturday evening that the rocket would reenter the atmosphere over the North Atlantic at 02:04 UTC (10:04 p.m. EDT), give or take one hour. Aerospace Corp. put it at 03:02 UTC 11:02 p.m. EDT), give or take two hours.Aerospace Corp. is a nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research-and-development center committed to space enterprise, according to its website. And Space-Track.org says it provides critical space situational awareness data for a worldwide space community.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Friday that the rocket was unlikely to cause damage.Wang told reporters in Beijing that the rocket would mostly burn up on reentry and “the probability of this process causing harm on the ground is extremely low.”He said China was closely following the rocket’s path toward Earth and would release any information about it in a “timely manner.”Carried space station moduleThe Long March 5B rocket was launched April 29 from Hainan Island. It was carrying a module for a planned Chinese space station. After the unmanned Tianhe module separated from the rocket, the nearly 21,000-kilogram rocket should have followed a planned reentry trajectory into the ocean. Because that did not happen as planned, the rocket will now make an uncontrolled reentry, and no one knows yet precisely where the debris will land.“U.S. Space Command is aware of and tracking the location of the Chinese Long March 5B in space, but its exact entry point into the Earth’s atmosphere cannot be pinpointed until within hours of its reentry,” Lieutenant Colonel Angela Webb, of U.S. Space Command Public Affairs, told CBS News.Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that “this rocket debris” is “almost the body of the rocket, as I understand it, almost intact, coming down, and we think Space Command believes somewhere around the 8th of May.”While the odds are good that any debris will fall into the ocean, debris from another Long March 5B rocket fell on parts of Ivory Coast in May 2020, causing damage to some buildings.Harvard-based astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told Reuters that the debris could fall as far north as New York or as far south as Wellington, New Zealand.Speaking with reporters Thursday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the United States had no plans to try to shoot down the rocket.“We have the capability to do a lot of things, but we don’t have a plan to shoot it down as we speak,” Austin said.“We’re hopeful that it will land in a place where it won’t harm anyone. Hopefully in the ocean, or someplace like that,” he added.The launch of the Tianhe module was the first of 11 planned missions to build a Chinese space station.
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