China says it hopes to have 80% of its 1.4 billion citizens vaccinated by the end of the year.As of Wednesday, China had administered an estimated 704 million doses, mostly in May, according to The Associated Press.The AP also reported that China is providing about 19 million shots a day, and that the U.S. topped out at about 3.4 million shots a day during April’s peak.The number of fully vaccinated people is unavailable because China does not release the data.About 87% of Beijing residents have received at least one dose, but that is likely much higher than the national average.FILE – In this March 24, 2021, file photo, a nurse holds a vial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India and provided through the global COVAX initiative, prior to vaccination in Machakos, Kenya.COVAX financial boostIn other pandemic news, the World Health Organization’s program to secure and distribute billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses to the world’s poorest countries has received a major financial boost.The COVAX initiative received nearly $2.4 billion in pledges Wednesday during a virtual summit hosted by Japan, which made the largest pledge, $800 million. The program also received significant financial pledges from Canada, France, Spain and Sweden. COVAX has raised $9.6 billion since its creation.Several nations also pledged to donate millions of doses from their domestic stockpiles to COVAX, with Japan again leading the way with a promise to donate 30 million doses.COVAX is an alliance that includes the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates to vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries. The program has so far distributed 77 million vaccine doses to 127 countries, far below its initial pledge of up to 2 billion doses this year.Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a meeting in the Vice President’s Ceremonial Office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex, May 19, 2021.U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reminded the summit that the Biden administration has pledged a total of $4 billion to COVAX for 2021-22, but she made no new pledges of additional financial or vaccine donations. President Joe Biden has also pledged to donate 80 million doses from the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine stockpile.Reuters news agency reported that India has signed a contract with domestic biotechnology firm Biological -E to purchase 300 million doses of its experimental vaccine. The Health Ministry said Thursday that it had paid the firm a $205 million advance to secure the vaccine, which is undergoing widespread late-stage clinical trials.Reuters also reports that Taiwan’s government has approved legislation that will allocate nearly $3 million toward the island’s COVID-19 response efforts. The money will allow the Health Ministry to buy and test vaccines and treatments and help improve monitoring and testing for the coronavirus.In an interview with the AP, Eric Lander, Biden’s new science adviser, said he envisions a future where a new vaccine could be ready within 100 days of the initial recognition of “a virus with pandemic potential.” Lander said that could be done through a so-called “plug-and-play” process that adds the genetic code for the germ using messenger RNA technology — a process used in developing both the Pfizer and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.A medal tray that will be used during the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games is displayed during an unveiling event for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games at the Ariake Arena, in Tokyo, June 3, 2021.Tokyo GamesWith just weeks to go before opening ceremonies, the troubled Tokyo Olympics sustained another blow this week when 10,000 volunteers quit because of concerns about the surge of new infections sweeping Japan.Toshiro Muto, the chief executive of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee, told reporters Wednesday the resignations would not have a negative impact on the event because foreign spectators have been banned from attending the games.The Tokyo Olympics were postponed for a year in 2020, as the pandemic began spreading across the globe. Seiko Hashimoto, president of the organizing committee, ruled out another postponement in an interview in the Nikkan Sports newspaper Thursday.But Dr. Shigeru Omi, the government’s top medical adviser, told a parliamentary committee Wednesday that it would be abnormal to hold the Olympics during the current surge of infections and that it was the organizers’ responsibility to scale down the games if the situation continued.The Tokyo Olympics are facing growing public opposition amid the new wave of COVID-19 infections and the slow vaccination rate. The Japanese capital and several other regions in Japan are under a state of emergency that was set to expire Monday but has been extended until June 20, just over a month before the opening ceremonies.A public opinion survey published Monday by the Nikkei business newspaper revealed that more than 60% of respondents want the games to be delayed again or canceled outright, compared with just 34% in favor of holding the event as scheduled.The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, a major sponsor of the games, published an editorial last week calling for the event to be canceled because of the worsening COVID-19 crisis, becoming the first major Japanese newspaper to do so. The Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association, which represents about 6,000 primary care doctors and hospitals, has also called on Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to persuade the International Olympic Committee to cancel the event.
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Day: June 3, 2021
Space junk finally hits its mark. Plus, NASA now eyes Venus after its first major flight issue on Mars. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi
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Twitter announced a new premium service for users in Canada and Australia that allows paying users to adjust tweets, among other features.Called Twitter Blue, the service allows users to preview and modify a tweet up to 30 seconds before publishing it. Users can also bookmark and organize tweets, making them easier to find.Twitter Blue will also format threads, or series of tweets, into a more readable format.”We’ve heard from the people that use Twitter a lot, and we mean a lot, that we don’t always build power features that meet their needs,” two Twitter product managers, Sara Beykpour and Smita Mittal Gupta, wrote in a blog post about the new service.Twitter Blue will cost $4.49 a month in Australian dollars and $3.49 in Canadian dollars.Twitter says that more features are forthcoming and that users in other parts of the world will have access to Twitter Blue in the “near future.”
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The White House on Thursday urged American businesses to take new precautions to combat disruptive ransomware attacks that have increasingly hobbled companies throughout Western economies.Jen Psaki, President Joe Biden’s press secretary, urged private industry to harden access to their computer systems, saying the government “can’t do it alone.”Anne Neuberger, a White House cybersecurity official, said in a statement that the “most important takeaway” from the recent attacks, including those affecting a key gasoline pipeline and a meat production company in the U.S., is that “companies that view ransomware as a threat to their core business operations rather than a simple risk of data theft will react and recover more effectively.”“Many ransomware criminals are aggressive and sophisticated and will find the equivalent of unlocked doors,” Neuberger said. “The threats are serious, and they are increasing.”She urged businesses to “back up your data, system images, and configurations, regularly test them, and keep the backups offline.”Neuberger said companies should “ensure that backups are regularly tested and that they are not connected to the business network, as many ransomware variants try to find and encrypt or delete accessible backups.”The deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging tech also said U.S. businesses should “test your incident response plan” because “there’s nothing that shows the gaps in plans more than testing them.”Neuberger said companies should use third parties to test their own security work, segment corporate business functions from manufacturing and production operations and regularly test contingency plans “so that safety critical functions can be maintained during a cyber incident.”
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The Biden administration on Thursday announced it will share 80 million excess doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of June, with FILE – A health worker talks to colleagues as they prepare to receive a coronavirus vaccine at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, March 5, 2021.Approximately 7 million doses will head to Asia, including to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Maldives, Nepal, the Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Five million vaccine doses will be shared with Africa in coordination with the African Union. In a briefing to reporters, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the administration will continue to donate excess supply as it becomes available. “This is just the right thing to do,” Sullivan said. “And as the president has said, [the] United States will not use its vaccines to secure favors from other countries.” Of the 80 million doses — or 13 percent of the total U.S. vaccine production — that the Biden administration has committed so far to share worldwide — 75 percent will be donated through COVAX, prioritizing Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa. The rest will be shared directly with places experiencing surges, immediate neighbors, and other countries that have requested immediate U.S. assistance. Sullivan said that the U.S. will have the authority to determine where the doses distributed via COVAX will be allocated. “But that will be done in very close consultation in partnership with COVAX, and, crucially, according to COVAX’s formula, and then using the COVAX logistics capacity and delivery capacity to ensure that these doses actually translate into shots in arms that help save people’s lives.” The United Nations welcomed the move, with a spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, saying, “It is very important for wealthy countries, developed countries to share as much as possible with COVAX.” “And as the secretary-general has noted, [that] none of us will be safe until all of us are safe, which means that vaccines need to be within reach of everyone, everywhere,” Dujarric said, referring to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. AstraZeneca withheld White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients said the initial 25 million doses comprised vaccines already approved by U.S. health authorities for emergency use, including Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer.FILE – A health worker injects a doctor with a dose of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, Vietnam, March 8, 2021.Meanwhile, 60 million excess AstraZeneca doses — the vaccine awaiting authorization for use in the U.S. but widely approved around the world — will remain held per further review by U.S. officials. Humanitarian organizations welcome the announcement. Tom Hart, acting CEO of ONE Campaign, an organization working to end extreme poverty and preventable disease by 2030, called it a “welcome step that will save lives and help the world extinguish this global pandemic faster.” “However, it’s disappointing to see delays in donating the 60 million AstraZeneca doses — which have been approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization and will go unused otherwise,” said Hart in a statement. More neededOthers say the United States must commit to doing more, as it has secured enough doses to protect its entire population of 330 million and still have more than half a billion surplus vaccines left over. “The 80 million doses it has promised to share barely scratches the surface of what’s needed,” said Carrie Teicher, director of programs at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA. Margaret Besheer and Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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A few years ago, a star athlete dropping out of a major tennis tournament over mental health issues might have been seen as a sign of weakness.Today, at least for Naomi Osaka’s corporate sponsors, it is being hailed as refreshingly honest.That would explain why so many of them have stuck by Osaka after the four-time Grand Slam champion announced Monday that she was withdrawing from the French Open because she didn’t want to appear for the prerequisite news conferences that caused her “huge waves of anxiety.”Osaka, who also acknowledged suffering “long bouts of depression,” received criticism by some who say the media events are just ” part of the job. ” But Nike, Sweetgreen and other sponsors put out statements in support of the 23-year-old star after she revealed her struggles. “Our thoughts are with Naomi,” Nike said in a statement. “We support her and recognize her courage in sharing her own mental health experience.” Sweetgreen tweeted that its partnership with Osaka “is rooted in wellness in all its forms.” And Mastercard tweeted: “Naomi Osaka’s decision reminds us all how important it is to prioritize personal health and well-being.”Naomi Osaka, of Japan, holds up the championship trophy after defeating Victoria Azarenka, of Belarus, in the women’s singles final of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Sept. 12, 2020, in New York.Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce, said that Osaka’s disclosure has made her a more authentic spokesperson — and more valuable to corporate sponsors.”Every athlete gets a sports sponsorship because they win games or perform well,” he said. “But the best ones become true brand ambassadors when they have a broader persona. The best brand ambassadors are real people. (Osaka) is talking about an issue that is relevant to many people. Mental health is a bigger issue than winning or losing tennis.”Reilly Opelka, a 23-year-old American tennis player seeded 32nd at the French Open who plays his third-round match Friday, told The Associated Press he’s glad Osaka “is taking time to get better.””She’s one of the best players in the world — she’s very influential,” Opelka said. “The sport needs her. She’s an icon. It’s bad for the sport to have one of the main attractions not around.” Osaka, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Haitian father, moved to the United States with her family when she was 3, and now lives in Los Angeles. She has taken a leading role in protesting the deaths last year of George Floyd and other Black people who died at the hands of the police, wearing a mask with a different victim’s name on each match day at the 2020 U.S. Open. She was named the 2020 AP Female Athlete of the Year. According to Forbes, Osaka is the world’s highest-paid woman athlete, earning $37 million in 2020 from blue-chip sponsors such as Tag Heuer, AirBnB, and Louis Vuitton in addition to Mastercard and Nike. Nike has stood by sports stars after other controversies, including Tiger Woods after his 2009 sex scandal and former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick after he knelt during games to protest police brutality against Black people. But it recently dropped Brazilian soccer star Neymar after he refused to cooperate with an internal investigation into sexual assault allegations from a Nike staffer.Osaka’s disclosure comes as celebrities and other public figures openly address their own issues with depression and anxiety. Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle shared their experiences in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey and have since teamed with her to create a mental health focused series called “The Me You Can’t See,” in which Prince Harry talks about working through anxiety and grief.Osaka also joins a growing list of top-tier athletes speaking out about mental health. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, NBA players Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan, and the WNBA’s A’ja Wilson have all spoken very publicly about their bouts with depression, sharing both the successes and setbacks. The four Grand Slam tournaments reacted to Osaka’s withdrawal by pledging to do more to address players’ mental health issues. The episode also could serve as a tipping point for the professional tennis tours — and leagues in other sports — to safeguard athletes’ mental, and not just physical, health, said Windy Dees, professor of sport administration at the University of Miami. “It’s absolutely a growth opportunity for the (Women’s Tennis Association) and all leagues, there’s a lot of work to be done,” Dees said.Marketing consultant Adamson believes Osaka’s decision to come forward will encourage many more athletes to divulge their own mental health battles. He noted that if Osaka had revealed her bouts with depression 10 years ago, her corporate sponsors likely would have stayed on the sidelines because the issue had been taboo. But, he noted, the pandemic has raised awareness around mental illness. From August 2020 to February, the percentage of adults with recent symptoms of an anxiety or a depressive disorder increased from 36.4% to 41.5%, according to a survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Census Bureau.The survey also found the percentage of those reporting they didn’t get the help they needed increased from 9.2% to 11.7%. Increases were largest among adults aged 18–29 years and those with less than a high school education.Ken Duckworth, chief medical officer for the National Alliance On Mental Illness, said Osaka’s decision to go public is a positive development for all people who feel isolated. “We are moving from mental health and mental illness as a ‘they” thing to a ‘we’ thing,” he said. “These are ordinary common human problems. And I firmly believe that isolation and shame directly contributes to people not getting help. I look at a great athlete, an exceptional athlete, as one potential role model.”
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The European Union (EU) Thursday unveiled its plans for a digital ID wallet that would hold all official documents residents would need to allow them access to the information at home or anywhere across the 27-nation bloc.
At a news briefing on the proposal in Brussels, European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager said the European Digital Identity Wallet would be a smartphone app that would let users store electronic forms of identification and other official documents, such as driver’s licenses, prescriptions and school diplomas.
Vestager said the plan would enable the bloc’s 450 million residents to do anything they would at home — rent an apartment, open a bank account — in any EU member state. She was quick to add that the plan would not be mandatory and that citizens could put as much or as little data in the app as they felt comfortable with.
She said technical work was already underway to ensure the app had the latest encryption technology available and could not be hacked.
As many as 14 EU countries already have their own national digital ID systems, and EU officials say the app is being developed for compatibility with those systems. The commission plans to discuss the digital wallet with the EU’s 27 member countries and aims to get them to agree on technical details by fall so pilot projects can begin.
The proposal is part of a wider plan by the EU to go more digital and is a key part of its post-COVID-19 recovery package. The bloc has set a target of having all public services in the EU available online by 2030 and ensuring that every EU citizen has a digital medical record.
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YouTube videos that cause an autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR, are likely something school-age kids know all about. Their parents? Not so much. Karina Bafradzhian looks at a new trend that some people say helps them deal with pandemic-induced stress. Camera: David Gogokhia
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Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is putting on the biggest show of his career, and he is doing it in a place he’s fallen in love with: Portugal. The world-renowned visual artist’s new exhibition, “Rapture,” opens in the Portuguese capital Lisbon on Friday. Ai arrived in Portugal almost two years ago and says he has no plans to return to Germany or England, where he has also lived since leaving China in 2015. “I have a great feeling” about Portugal, the artist said Thursday. “This is a place I’m staying.” Ai’s show in São Paulo in 2018 covered twice the area of the Lisbon exhibit but had fewer works on display. Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s work on display during a press preview of his new exhibition ‘Rapture’ in Lisbon, June 3, 2021.”Rapture” is being presented in a long, low, riverside building that housed Portugal’s national rope factory starting in the 18th century and now hosts temporary art exhibitions. Ai’s show runs until Nov. 28. The 85 pieces include some of Ai’s iconic works, as well as new ones produced exclusively in Portugal. “Forever Bicycles,” from 2015, a giant sculpture using 960 stainless steel bicycles as building blocks, stands at the entrance to the building. Ai’s 16-meter-long (52-foot-long) black inflatable boat with human figures, which alludes to the migration crisis, is also in Lisbon, as are some other of his well-known installations, sculptures, videos and photographs. Ai notes, however, that most of the works “have never met each other” and are appearing in the same place for the first time. Ai was arrested at Beijing’s airport in April 2011 and held for 81 days without explanation during a wider crackdown on dissent. He moved to Europe after Chinese authorities returned his passport. He has traveled across Portugal visiting craftspeople and manufacturers who use traditional Portuguese methods and materials such as marble, textiles, hand-painted tiles and cork. Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei poses by one of his latest works, a giant toilet paper roll in marble, during a press preview of his new exhibition ‘Rapture’ in Lisbon, June 3, 2021.His experimentation has yielded a self-portrait sculpture in cork, a cut-out world map in fabric that stands about 1.5 meters (5 feet) high, a 40-meter-long (130-feet-long) rug, and a marble cylinder almost 2 meters (6.5 feet) high. Marcello Dantas, the show’s Brazilian curator, says that Ai arrived in Portugal for the first time in 2019 on a flight that landed at 8 a.m. By lunchtime, he had bought a house near the farming town of Montemor-o-Novo, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Lisbon “I always make decisions by my personal instinct,” Ai said. “I feel comfortable here.” The artist ticks off what appeals to him about the country: the relatively slow pace of life, the “very open” people, the “very acceptable” food and the abundant sunshine. Ai says the limits on movement during the COVID-19 pandemic furnished him with “a most productive time.” Over the past year or so, he made three feature-length films in addition to art pieces. He has a book coming out later this year and another exhibition planned for this summer in the northern Portuguese city of Porto. Remaining in Portugal was “probably the best decision I ever made,” he says.
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Decades before YouTube, there was Nam June Paik, a Korean American artist who believed all people should have their own TV channel. Matt Dibble explores a retrospective of this visionary video artist.
Producer: Matt Dibble
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The World Health Organization’s program to secure and distribute billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses to the world’s poorest countries has received a major financial boost.
The COVAX initiative received nearly $2.4 billion in pledges Wednesday during a virtual summit hosted by Japan, which made the largest pledge with $800 million. The program also received significant financial pledges from Canada, France, Spain and Sweden. COVAX has raised $9.6 billion since its creation.
Several nations also pledged to donate millions of doses from its domestic stockpiles to COVAX, with Japan also leading the way with a promise to donate 30 million doses.
COVAX, the acronym for COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility, is an alliance that includes the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, an organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates to vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries. The program has so far distributed 77 million vaccine doses to 127 countries, far below its initial pledge of up to 2 billion doses this year.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reminded the summit that the Biden administration has pledged $4 billion to COVAX this year and for 2022, but made no fresh pledges of additional financial or vaccine donations. President Joe Biden has also pledged to donate 80 million doses from the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine stockpile. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The Reuters news agency is reporting that India has signed a contract with domestic biotechnology firm Biological-E to purchase 300 million doses of its experimental vaccine. The Health Ministry said Thursday it has paid the firm a $205 million advance to secure the vaccine, which is currently undergoing widespread late-stage clinical trials.
Also from Reuters, Taiwan’s government has approved legislation that will allocate nearly $3 million toward the island’s COVID-19 response efforts. The money will allow the Health Ministry to buy and test vaccines and treatments and to help improve monitoring and testing for the coronavirus.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Eric Lander, President Biden’s new science adviser, said he envisions a future where a new vaccine could be ready within 100 days of the initial recognition of “a virus with pandemic potential.” Lander said that could be done through a so-called “plug-and-play” process that adds the genetic code for the germ using messenger RNA technology, which was used to develop both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.FILE – A red traffic light is seen on a street near the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building displaying a banner of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games, in Tokyo, Japan, May 31, 2021.’Olympic challenges’With just weeks to go before the opening ceremonies, the troubled Tokyo Olympics sustained another blow this week when 10,000 volunteers quit due to concerns about the surge of new infections sweeping Japan.
Toshiro Muto, the chief executive of the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee, told reporters Wednesday the resignations would not have a negative impact on the event since foreign spectators have been banned from attending the Games.
The Tokyo Olympics were postponed for a year in 2020 as the pandemic began spreading across the globe. Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the organizing committee, ruled out another postponement in an interview in the Nikkan Sports newspaper Thursday.
But Dr. Shigeru Omi, the government’s top medical advisor, told a parliamentary committee Wednesday that it would be abnormal to hold the Olympics during the current surge of infections, and said it was the organizers’ responsibility to scale down the Games if the situation continued.
The Tokyo Olympics are facing growing public opposition amid the new wave of COVID-19 infections and a slow rate of vaccinations. The Japanese capital and several other regions in Japan are under a state of emergency that was set to expire Monday, but has been extended until June 20, just over a month before the opening ceremonies.A public opinion survey published Monday by the Nikkei business newspaper revealed that more than 60% of those asked want the Games to either be delayed again or canceled outright, compared to just 34% in favor of holding the event as scheduled.The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, a major sponsor of the Games, published an editorial last week calling for the event’s cancellation due to the worsening COVID-19 crisis, becoming the first major Japanese newspaper to do so. The Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association, which represents about 6,000 primary care doctors and hospitals, has also called on Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to convince the International Olympic Committee to cancel the event.
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Britain is hosting a two-day summit of health ministers from the Group of Seven nations, with a focus on sharing vaccines and better identifying threats to global health security. The talks in Oxford on Thursday and Friday come ahead of a summit of G-7 leaders next week in Cornwall. Countries that have carried out large-scale vaccination efforts against COVID-19 are facing pressure to do more to help other parts of the world where vaccine supply has been short. World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said “we need doses to be shared right now.” Vaccine equity is “critical to end the pandemic,” he added. British health minister Matt Hancock said more than 75% of adults in the U.K. have received their first dose. In the United States, another G-7 member, about 63% of adults have received a COVID-19 vaccination. FILE – Workers load boxes of Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, part of the Covax program, into a truck after they arrived by plane at the Ivato International Airport in Antananarivo, Madagascar, May 8, 2021.The United States has pledged $4 billion to the COVAX global vaccine-sharing program. The goal of the global program is to deliver vaccine doses to people in lower-income countries by the end of 2021. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the Biden administration would announce in the next week or two its plans for distributing 80 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to other countries. Ahead of Thursday’s start of the G-7 summit, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said his country’s government would add another $800 million to help the COVAX program. The health ministers will also examine ways to prevent diseases from spreading from animals to humans, including joint efforts to identify early warning signs in animals and the environment.
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Decades before YouTube, there was Nam June Paik, a Korean American artist who believed all people should have their own TV channel. Matt Dibble explores a retrospective of this visionary video artist.
Producer: Matt Dibble
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In the span of just five days last month, China gave out 100 million shots of its COVID-19 vaccines.After a slow start, China is now doing what virtually no other country in the world can: harnessing the power and all-encompassing reach of its one-party system and a maturing domestic vaccine industry to administer shots at a staggering pace. The rollout is far from perfect, including uneven distribution, but Chinese public health leaders now say they’re hoping to inoculate 80% of the population of 1.4 billion by the end of the year.As of Tuesday, China had given out more than 680 million doses — with nearly half of those in May alone. China’s total is roughly a third of the 1.9 billion shots distributed globally, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.The call to get vaccinated comes from every corner of society. Companies offer shots to their employees, schools urge their students and staffers, and local government workers check on their residents. That pressure underscores both the system’s strength, which makes it possible to even consider vaccinating more than a billion people this year, but also the risks to civil liberties — a concern the world over but one that is particularly acute in China, where there are few protections.“The Communist Party has people all the way down to every village, every neighborhood,” said Ray Yip, former country director for the Gates Foundation in China and a public health expert. “That’s the draconian part of the system, but it also gives very powerful mobilization.”China is now averaging about 19 million shots per day, according to Our World in Data’s rolling seven-day average. That would mean a dose for everyone in Italy about every three days. The United States, with about one-quarter of China’s population, reached around 3.4 million shots per day in April when its drive was at full tilt.It’s still unclear how many people in China are fully vaccinated — which can mean anywhere from one to three doses of the vaccines in use — as the government does not publicly release that data.Zhong Nanshan, the head of a group of experts attached to the National Health Commission and a prominent government doctor, said on Sunday that 40% of the population has received at least one dose, and the aim was to get that percentage fully vaccinated by the end of the month.In Beijing, the capital, 87% of the population has received at least one dose. Getting a shot is as easy as walking into one of hundreds of vaccination points found all across the city. Vaccination buses are parked in high foot-traffic areas, including in the city center and at malls.Residents line up outside a vaccination center in Beijing on June 2, 2021.But Beijing’s abundance is not shared with the rest of the country, and local media reports and complaints on social media show the difficulty of getting an appointment elsewhere.“I started lining up that day at 9 in the morning, until 6 p.m., only then did I get the shot. It was exhausting,” Zhou Hongxia, a resident of Lanzhou, in northwestern Gansu province, explained recently. “When I left, there were still people waiting.”Zhou’s husband hasn’t been so lucky and has yet to get a shot. When they call the local hotlines, they are told simply to wait.Central government officials on Monday said they’re working to ensure supply is more evenly distributed.Before the campaign ramped up in recent weeks, many people were not in a rush to get vaccinated as China has kept the virus, which first flared in the country, at bay in the past year with strict border controls and mandatory quarantines. It has faced small clusters of infections from time to time, and is currently managing one in the southern city of Guangzhou.Although there are distribution issues, it is unlikely that Chinese manufacturers will have problems with scale, according to analysts and those who have worked in the industry.Sinovac and Sinopharm, which make the majority of the vaccines being distributed in China, have both aggressively ramped up production, building brand new factories and repurposing existing ones for COVID-19. Sinovac’s vaccine and one of the two Sinpharm makes have received an emergency authorization for use from the World Health Organization, but the companies, particularly Sinopharm, have faced criticism for their lack of transparency in sharing their data.“What place in the world can compare with China on construction? How long did it take our temporary hospitals to be built?” asked Li Mengyuan, who leads pharmaceutical research at Western Securities, a financial firm. China built field hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic in just days.Security guards help masked residents to scan their health code as they line up to receive the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine at the Central Business District in Beijing, June 2, 2021.Sinovac has said it has doubled its production capacity to 2 billion doses a year, while Sinopharm has said it can make up to 3 billion doses a year. But Sinopharm has not disclosed recent numbers of how many doses it actually has made, and a spokesman for the company did not respond to a request for comment. Sinovac has produced 540 million doses this year as of late May, the company said on Friday.Government support has been crucial for vaccine developers every step of the way — as it has in other countries — but, as with everything, the scope and scale in China is different.Yang Xiaoming, chairman of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group, recounted to state media recently how the company initially needed to borrow lab space from a government research center while it was working on a vaccine.“We sent our samples over, there was no need to discuss money, we just did it,” he said.Chinese vaccine companies also largely do not rely on imported products in the manufacturing process. That’s an enormous benefit at a time when many countries are scrambling for the same materials and means China can likely avoid what happened to the Serum Institute of India, whose production was hobbled because of dependence on imports from the U.S. for certain ingredients.But as the availability of the vaccine increases so, too, can the pressure to take it.In Beijing, one researcher at a university said the school’s Communist Party cell calls him once a month to ask him if he has gotten vaccinated yet and offers to help him make an appointment.He has so far declined to get a shot because he would prefer the Pfizer vaccine, saying he trusts its data. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns he could face repercussions at his job at a government university for publicly questioning the Chinese vaccines.China has not yet approved Pfizer for use, and the researcher is not sure how long he can hold out — although the government has, for now, cautioned against making vaccines mandatory outright.“They don’t have to say it is mandatory,” Yip, the public health expert, said. “They’re not going to announce that it’s required to have the vaccine, but they can put pressure on you.”
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The new White House science adviser hopes that for the next pandemic, a vaccine will be ready in 100 days. Eric Lander tells The Associated Press in his first interview since he was sworn in that he’s pushing for better preparedness for the next pandemic. He says that includes the type of vaccine where researchers can plug in genetic material from the new viral threat and be ready to fight that disease. He also hopes that approach can make a dent in cancer. Lander paints a rosy future where science better fights disease, curbs climate change and further explores space. The new White House science adviser wants to have a vaccine ready to fight the next pandemic in just about 100 days after recognizing a potential viral outbreak. In his first interview after being sworn in Wednesday, Eric Lander painted a rosy near future where a renewed American emphasis on science not only better prepares the world for the next pandemic with plug-and-play vaccines, but also changes how medicine fights disease and treats patients, curbs climate change and further explores space. He even threw in a “Star Trek” reference. “This is a moment in so many ways, not just health, that we can rethink fundamental assumptions about what’s possible and that’s true of climate and energy and many areas,” Lander told The Associated Press. Lander took his oath of office on a 500-year-old fragment of the Mishnah, an ancient Jewish text documenting oral traditions and laws. He is the first director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to be promoted to Cabinet level. Lander said President Joe Biden’s elevation of the science post is a symbolic show “that science should have a seat at the table” but also allows him to have higher-level talks with different agency chiefs about making policy. Lander is a mathematician and geneticist by training who was part of the human genome mapping project and directed the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. He said he is particularly focused not so much on this pandemic, but the lessons learned from this one to prepare for the next one. “It was amazing at one level that we were able to produce highly effective vaccines in less than a year, but from another point of view you’d say, ‘Boy, a year’s a long time,’” even though in the past it would take three years or four years, Lander said. “To really make a difference we want to get this done in 100 days. And so a lot of us have been talking about a 100-day target from the recognition from a virus with pandemic potential.” “It would mean that we would have had a vaccine in early April if that had happened this time, early April of 2020,” Lander said. “It makes you gulp for a second, but it’s totally feasible to do that.” Scientists were working on so-called all-purpose ready-to-go platform technologies for vaccines long before the pandemic. They’re considered “plug-and-play.” Instead of using the germ itself to make a vaccine, they use messenger RNA and add the genetic code for the germ. That’s what happened with the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 shots. Beyond being optimistic about confronting future pandemics, Lander wonders about the implications for preventing cancer. “Maybe the same sort of experience about moving so much faster than we thought is applicable to cancer,” said Lander, who during the Obama administration was co-chair of the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. A company already has been working on that. For that matter, the pandemic and telehealth brought the doctor to patients in some ways. Lander said he is reimagining “a world where we rearrange a lot of things” to get more patient-centered health care, including community health workers checking up every few weeks on people about their blood pressure, blood sugar and other chronic problems. Two of Lander’s predecessor praised him. Neal Lane, President Bill Clinton’s science adviser, said Lander is “perfect” for the pandemic because of the need for a strategy and international agreements. Obama’s science chief, John Holden, called him “a Renaissance man.” Lander’s nomination had been delayed for months as senators sought more information about meetings he had with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a financier who was charged with sex trafficking before his apparent suicide. Lander said he only met with Epstein twice, in 2012, and never requested or received funds from Epstein or his foundation. At his confirmation hearing, Lander also apologized for a 2016 article he wrote that downplayed the work of two Nobel Prize-winning female scientists. Lander, who has visited Greenland on a balmy 72-degree day, told the AP he sees climate change as “an incredibly serious threat to this planet in many, many ways.” Still, Lander said he was more optimistic now than he and others were a decade ago because “I see a path to doing something about it.” Lander pointed to a drop of about in 90% in solar and energy wind costs, making them now as cheap as fossil fuels that cause climate change. But he said what’s also needed is “an explosion of ideas” to improve battery life and provide carbon-free energy that is not weather-dependent. Those innovations need federal incentives that are part of Biden’s jobs package, he said. Reducing methane is key to fighting climate change, Lander added, but first improvements are needed in technology to determine where methane is leaking from. As for space, Lander said he was too new to comment on whether heading to the moon or Mars should be the goal. The Obama administration redirected NASA away from the Bush-era plan to send astronauts back to the moon and was more aimed for Mars or an asteroid. The Trump administration not only focused back on the moon but set a 2024 goal for a new moon landing. “Are we going to go to the moon and are we going to go to Mars and are we going to moons of Jupiter? Sure. The exact order I think is great to think about or great to talk about,” Lander said. He quoted “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” when Captain James T. Kirk’s love interest asked if he was from outer space. He responded: “I’m from Iowa, I only work in outer space.” Adds Lander: “That was a fun line in ‘Star Trek IV,’ but folks in Iowa are really going to say that.”
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President Joe Biden is launching a monthlong nationwide push to get 70% of American adults vaccinated by Independence Day on July 4. But the administration has not yet outlined its vaccine-sharing strategy with the rest of the world. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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NASA is returning to sizzling Venus, our closest yet perhaps most overlooked neighbor, after decades of exploring other worlds.The space agency’s new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced two new robotic missions to the solar system’s hottest planet, during his first major address to employees Wednesday.”These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface,” Nelson said.One mission named DaVinci Plus will analyze the thick, cloudy Venusian atmosphere to determine whether the inferno planet ever had an ocean and was possibly habitable. A small craft will plunge through the atmosphere to measure the gases.It will be the first U.S.-led mission to the Venusian atmosphere since 1978.The other mission, called Veritas, will seek a geologic history by mapping the rocky planet’s surface.”It is astounding how little we know about Venus,” but the new missions will give fresh views of the planet’s atmosphere, made up mostly of carbon dioxide, down to the core, NASA scientist Tom Wagner said in a statement. “It will be as if we have rediscovered the planet.”NASA’s top science official, Thomas Zurbuchen, calls it “a new decade of Venus.” Each mission — launching sometime around 2028 to 2030 — will receive $500 million for development under NASA’s Discovery program.The missions beat out two other proposed projects, to Jupiter’s moon, Io, and Neptune’s icy moon, Triton.The U.S. and the former Soviet Union sent multiple spacecraft to Venus in the early days of space exploration. NASA’s Mariner 2 performed the first successful flyby in 1962, and the Soviets’ Venera 7 made the first successful landing in 1970. In 1989, NASA used a space shuttle to send its Magellan spacecraft into orbit around Venus. The European Space Agency put a spacecraft around Venus in 2006.
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