Month: June 2021

Feeling like you are being watched? It could be from a lot farther away than you think.  
Astronomers took a technique used to look for life on other planets and flipped it around — so instead of looking to see what’s out there, they tried to see what places could see us.  
There’s a lot.
Astronomers calculated that 1,715 stars in our galactic neighborhood — and hundreds of probable Earth-like planets circling those stars — have had an unobstructed view of Earth during human civilization, according to a study Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“When I look up at the sky, it looks a little bit friendlier because it’s like, maybe somebody is waving,” said study lead author Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University.  
Even though some experts, including the late Stephen Hawking, warn against reaching out to aliens because they could harm us, Kaltenegger said it doesn’t matter. If those planets have advanced life, someone out there could conclude that there is life back here based on oxygen in our atmosphere, or by the radio waves from human sources that have swept over 75 of the closest stars on her list.  
“Hiding is not really an option,” she said.  
One way humans look for potentially habitable planets is by watching them as they cross in front of the star they are orbiting, which dims the stars’ light slightly. Kaltenegger and astrophysicist Jacqueline Faherty of the American Museum of Natural History used the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope  to turn that around, looking to see what star systems could watch Earth as it passes in front of the sun.
They looked at the 331,312 stars within 326 light-years of Earth. One light-year is 5.9 trillion miles. The angle to see Earth pass in front of the sun is so small that only the 1,715 could see Earth at some point in the last 5,000 years, including 313 that no longer can see us because we’ve moved out of view.  Photo of the sun seen through a neutral density filter as it glows in midday. (Photo by Diaa Bekheet)
Another 319 stars will be able to see Earth in the next 5,000 years, including a few star systems where scientists have already spotted Earth-like planets, prime candidates for contact. That brings the total to more than 2,000 star systems with an Earth view.
The closest star on Kaltenegger’s list is the red dwarf star Wolf 359, which is 7.9 light-years away. It’s been able to see us since the disco era of the mid 1970s.
Carnegie Institution for Science planetary scientist Alan Boss, who wasn’t part of the study, called it “provocative.” He said in addition to viewing Earth moving in front of the star, space telescopes nearby could spot us even if the cosmic geometry is wrong: “So intelligent civilizations who build space telescopes could be studying us right now.”
So why haven’t we heard from them?  
It takes a long time for messages and life to travel between stars and civilizations might not last long. So between those two it’s enough to limit the chances for civilizations to exchange “emails and TikTok videos,” Boss said in his own email. “So we should not expect aliens to show up anytime soon.”
Or, Kaltenneger said, life in the cosmos, could just be rare.  
What’s exciting about the study is that it tells scientists “where to point our instruments,” said outside astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute that searches for extraterrestrial intelligence. “You might know where to look for the aliens!”
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The Delta COVID-19 variant first identified in India has spread quickly around the world and is now hitting Indonesia. Southeast Asia’s largest country now looks at another peak as it hits the 2 million mark in confirmed cases. VOA’s Ghita Permatasari reports. Ahadian Utama  contributed to this reportCamera: Ahadian Utama
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Organizers of the upcoming Tokyo Olympics have imposed restrictions on the few Japanese spectators who will be allowed inside the venues to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  Under rules announced Wednesday, domestic spectators are forbidden from cheering or waving towels, approaching athletes for autographs, or talking with other spectators, and will be asked to go straight home when the event is over. Foreign spectators have been banned from attending the event. A general view of the National Stadium in preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, June 23, 2021 on the day to mark one month until the opening of the Olympic Games.Alcohol sales have also been banned in the venues during the Games.   The restrictions follow Monday’s decision to cap the number of spectators at 10,000 people, or 50% of a venue’s capacity, despite advice from health experts that banning all spectators was the “least risky” option for holding the Games in light of a surge in new COVID-19 infections in the Japanese capital and across the country. The decision to allow spectators dovetails with authorities changing Tokyo and eight other prefectures from a nearly two-month-long state of emergency to “quasi-emergency” measures that took effect Sunday. The looser restrictions would remain in place until July 11, 12 days before the start of the Olympic Games. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has warned he would not rule out banning all spectators from attending the Olympics if the COVID-19 situation worsens. The initial state of emergency was declared in April and extended in late May. The surge prompted staunch public opposition to staging the Olympics, especially among a prominent group of medical professionals that urged Suga to call off the Games. The Tokyo Olympics are set to take place after a one-year postponement as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe. New outbreak in Sydney
A new COVID-19 outbreak in Sydney has prompted suspension of a “travel bubble” between Australia and New Zealand and new restrictions in both countries. People wait in line outside a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination center at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia, June 23, 2021.New Zealand has suspended direct quarantine-free visits with Australia’s southern New South Wales state until Sunday after a visitor from its capital, Sydney, tested positive for COVID-19 after returning home earlier this week. The traveler visited New Zealand’s national Te Papa museum in the capital, Wellington, as well as a number of restaurants, pubs and other tourist spots.  Authorities in New Zealand on Wednesday also limited gatherings to fewer than 100 people until Sunday, and imposed physical distancing requirements in the Wellington region.   The infected traveler was linked to the outbreak of the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus that has now grown to 31 people in Sydney, including 16 new confirmed infections announced Wednesday.  The new outbreak has been traced to a Sydney airport limousine driver who had been transporting international air crews. Authorities in Sydney have barred residents in seven neighborhoods from traveling outside the city except for essential tasks, while limiting homes to just five visitors and imposing mandatory masks for all indoor venues, including gyms and offices.  Several neighboring states such as Victoria and Queensland have placed restrictions on travelers from Sydney and surrounding areas, while South Australia closed its borders altogether. Australia and New Zealand have been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 due to aggressive lockdown efforts, but both nations are vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to slow vaccination campaigns. Crisis at Houston hospital In the United States, more than 150 health care workers at a Texas hospital resigned or were fired Tuesday after refusing to comply with the hospital’s mandate to get a COVID-19 vaccine.  Houston Methodist became the first major hospital system in the U.S. to impose a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy for its employees on April 1. But 178 employees were suspended on June 7 after rejecting the mandate, citing the fact that the vaccines have only gotten emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A lawsuit filed against Houston Methodist by several of the suspended employees was dismissed by a U.S. federal judge earlier this month. The suspended employees were given an additional two weeks to get vaccinated, with at least 25 of them finally complying. 
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A landmark cyberbullying trial in Paris, involving thousands of threats against a teenager who savaged Islam in online posts, is blazing a trail in efforts to punish and prevent online abuse.It has also raised uncomfortable questions about freedom of expression, freedom to criticize a religion, and respect for France’s millions of Muslims. But most of all, it’s been a trial about the power of the online word, and prosecutors hope it serves as a wake-up call to those who treat it lightly.Thirteen young people of various backgrounds and religions from across France face potential prison time for charges including online harassment, online death threats and online rape threats in the two-day trial wrapping up Tuesday. It’s the first of its kind since France created a new court in January to prosecute online crimes, including harassment and discrimination.Tweet or post without thinkingOne of the defendants wants to become a police officer. Another says he just wanted to rack up more followers by making people laugh. Some denied wrongdoing, others apologized. Most said they tweeted or posted without thinking.The teen at the center of the trial, who has been identified publicly only by her first name, Mila, told the court she feels as if she’s been “condemned to death.””I do not see my future,” she said.Mila, who describes herself as atheist, was 16 when she started posting videos on Instagram and later TikTok harshly criticizing Islam and the Quran. Now 18, she testified that “I don’t like any religion, not just Islam.”Her lawyer Richard Malka said Mila has received some 100,000 threatening messages, including death threats, rape threats, misogynist messages and hateful messages about her homosexuality.Quit high school twiceMila had to quit her high school, then another. She is now monitored daily by the police for her safety.”It’s been a cataclysm, it feels like the sky is falling on our heads … a confrontation with pure hatred,” her mother told the court.Mila’s online enemies don’t fit a single profile. Among the thousands of threats, authorities tracked down 13 suspects who are on trial this week. All are being identified publicly only by their first names, according to French practice.TikTok videoThe trial focused on comments in response to a TikTok video by Mila in November criticizing Islam. A defendant named Manfred threatened to turn her into another Samuel Paty, a teacher who was beheaded outside Paris in October after showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class.Manfred told the court he was “pretending to be a stalker to make people laugh.””I knew she was controversial because she criticized Islam. I wanted to have fun and get new subscribers,” he testified.Defendant Enzo, 22, apologized in court for tweeting “you deserve to have your throat slit,” followed by a sexist epithet.Others argued their posts didn’t constitute a crime.”At the time, I was not aware that it was harassment. When I posted the tweet, I wasn’t thinking,” testified Lauren, a 21-year-old university student who tweeted about Mila: “Have her skull crushed, please.”Stands by criticismAlyssa, 20, one of the few Muslim defendants, says she reacted “like everyone else on Twitter” and stood by her criticism of Mila’s posts.While the defense lawyer argued that it’s not the same thing to insult a god or a religion and a human being, Alyssa disagreed.”For me, it is of the same nature. Mila used freedom of expression; I thought that (tweeting an angry response) was also freedom of expression,” she said.Freedom of expression is considered a fundamental right and blasphemy is not a crime in France. After Mila’s initial video in January 2020, a legal complaint was filed against her for incitement to racial hatred. That investigation was dropped for lack of evidence.Some French Muslims feel that their country, and President Emmanuel Macron’s government, unfairly stigmatize their religious practices.French society dividedMila’s online videos rekindled those concerns and divided French society. While the threats against her were broadly condemned, former Socialist President Francois Hollande was among those who argued that while she has the right to criticize religion, “she should not engage in hate speech about those who practice their religion.”Nawfel, 19, didn’t see the harm when he tweeted that Mila deserved the death penalty and insulted her sexuality. He has passed tests to become a gendarme and hopes not to be sentenced, to keep a clean record. The trial has given him new perspective on online activity.”Without social media, everyone would have a normal life,” he said. “Now there are many people who will think before they write.”Prison time, finesThe defendants face up to two years in prison and 30,000 euros in fines (about $37,000) if convicted of online harassment. Some are also accused of online death threats, an offense that carries a maximum prison sentence of three years and a fine of up to 45,000 euros ($55,000).The prosecutor, however, requested suspended sentences. A verdict is expected July 9.”You have the power to stop this digital lynching,” defense lawyer Malka told the judges. “Fear of the law is the only thing that remains.”Mila remains active on social networks.”I have this need to show that I will not change who I am and what I think,” she said. “I see it as like a woman who has been raped in the street and who is asked not to go out, so that it doesn’t happen again.”
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Colombia is home to the world’s largest variety of butterflies, approximately 20% of all known species, according to a study published Tuesday by the Natural History Museum in London.An international team of scientists cataloged 3,642 species and 2,085 subspecies, registering them in a document titled “Checklist of Colombian Butterflies.”More than 200 butterfly species are found only in Colombia, said Blanca Huertas, the senior butterfly collection curator at the museum and a member of the research team.An Alissa de Pteronymia “Crystal wings” butterfly lands on a flower at the Botanic Garden Jose Celestino Mutis during an exhibition in Bogota on Sept. 14, 2011.Project researchers traveled widely in Colombia, analyzed more than 350,000 photographs and studied information collected since the late 18th century, the museum said.”Colombia is a country with a great diversity of natural habitats, a complex and heterogeneous geography and a privileged location in the extreme northeast of South America,” the report reads in part.”These factors, added to the delicate public order in the last century in certain regions, has limited until now, the advancement of field exploration.”Colombia has endured more than a half century of armed conflict, with some areas controlled by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups or drug lords, and with little government presence.Protecting butterflies in Colombia will also help protect its forests as well as other less likeable species, Huertas said.Between 2000 and 2019 Colombia lost nearly 2.8 million hectares of forest, equivalent to the area of Belgium, according to the National Department of Planning.A Siproeta Ephaphus butterfly lands on the finger of a man at the Botanic Garden Jose Celestino Mutis during an exhibition in Bogota on Sept. 14, 2011. 
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The World Bank announced a partnership with the African Union Tuesday to finance the acquisition and distribution of COVID-19 vaccine for 400 million people in Africa.In a remote news conference via Zoom, World Bank Managing Operations Director Axel van Trotsenburg said the World Bank is providing $12 billion to not only acquire but deploy 400 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — a single dose shot — in support of the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) initiative.The announcement comes a day after African finance ministers and the World Bank Group met to fast-track vaccine acquisition on the continent and avoid a third wave of COVID-19.Van Trotsenburg said the bank is making the financing available in an effort to address the imbalance in vaccine access between the world’s wealthy and not-so-wealthy nations.  He said, “Less than one percent of the African population has been vaccinated. Africa has been marginalized in this global effort to get a vaccine. We have to correct this unfairness; and given that this is a global pandemic, we need global solutions and global solidarity.”  The project will be a big step toward helping the African Union meet its goal to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by 2022.   Van Trotsenburg said the regional effort complements the work of the World Health Organization-managed COVAX vaccine cooperative and comes at a time of rising COVID-19 cases in the region.The World Bank has already approved operations to support vaccine roll outs in 36 countries. By the end of June, the World Bank expects to be supporting vaccination efforts in 50 countries, two thirds of which are in Africa.
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The United States will miss President Joe Biden’s goal of having 70% of U.S. adults partially or fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by the July 4 Independence Day holiday, but the White House says it expects to hit that mark “in a few extra weeks.”In a new assessment Tuesday of the country’s vaccination effort, COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said the federal government expects that 70% of those 27 and older will have gotten at least one vaccination shot by the July 4 holiday, which he described as “a remarkable achievement.”“The virus is in retreat,” Zients said, with the country regaining a sense of normalcy. “We are entering a summer of joy, a summer of freedom.”Now, he said, a renewed effort is being made to inoculate more younger adults in the 18-to-26 age group. Many of the younger adults, for various reasons, have shown little interest in getting vaccinated, especially since the number of new coronavirus cases and deaths has fallen sharply in the country in recent weeks and many businesses have reopened without facemask and social distancing restrictions that had been in place for more than a year.“Our effort does not end on July 4,” Zients said. “It’s more important than ever that they get the shot,” along with others who have yet to be inoculated. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease.Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “We are seeing a dramatic decline in deaths and hospitalizations.”She said that with the proven success of available vaccines, including against variants of the original coronavirus, “At this point, every death is entirely preventable.”But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert and Biden’s chief medical adviser, warned there is a “real danger” for the U.S. if there is “a persistent reluctance” to get vaccinated.Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, May 11, 2021.Overall, since the pandemic first spread widely in the U.S. in March 2020, the nation has recorded more than 602,000 deaths and 33.5 million infections, more than in any other country, according to the Johns Hopkins University. Biden, who set the 70% vaccination goal for the July 4 holiday, has not publicly acknowledged it is unlikely to be met.Like on many divisive political issues in the U.S., a sharp split has developed on getting vaccinated, with numerous Democratic states that voted for Biden in last November’s election showing higher vaccination rates than Republican states that voted for his predecessor, President Donald Trump.  Some of the lowest vaccination rates have been recorded in southern states that Trump won handily and where skepticism is widespread about the need to be vaccinated. Four states – Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama in the South, and Wyoming in the West – all have yet to reach a 50% vaccination level. A total of 16 states and the national capital city of Washington have topped 70% with at least one shot administered.Trump and former first lady Melania Trump, who both contracted the virus, were privately vaccinated before he left office in January, but Trump often downplayed the spread of the infection in the U.S. Both Biden and first lady Jill Biden were vaccinated on live television before he took office. They have made numerous appeals to Americans to get the shot.Zients said 70% of Americans 30 and older already have received at least one shot. But the pace of inoculations has fallen markedly in recent weeks, even though plenty of shots are available at 81,000 vaccination sites across the country.The White House is planning a large July 4 celebration on the South Lawn with about 1,000 guests expected to attend a picnic and watch a fireworks display celebrating the country’s 1776 independence from Britain.Even as Biden likely misses the 70% vaccination rate for adults, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week, “We’ve made tremendous progress in our vaccination efforts to date, and the ultimate goal has been to get America back to normal … and we’re looking forward to doing that even here at the White House.” 
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The European Union announced Tuesday it is once again investigating Google for what could be anti-competitive activities in digital advertising.The investigation will try to determine if Google is harming competitors by restricting third party access to user data that could better target advertising.”We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.Google said it would cooperate in the investigation.”Thousands of European businesses use our advertising products to reach new customers and fund their websites every single day. They choose them because they’re competitive and effective,” a Google spokesperson said.The EU has fined Google more than $9.5 billion over the past decade for restricting third parties from online shopping, Android phones and online advertising.In the past year, online ads generated $147 billion in revenue for the U.S.-based company.Google’s ad business also is facing scrutiny in the U.S., where several states and the U.S. Justice Department are suing the company for alleged anti-competitive behavior.  
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Home security companies often rely on cameras and motion sensors to catch trespassers, but as VOA’s Tina Trinh discovers, Wi-Fi signals can be a less intrusive way to monitor activity.
Produced by: Tina Trinh     
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The number of STEM jobs — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — have sped past the number of non-STEM jobs by three times since 2000. And experts say there might not be enough graduates in those fields to fill the jobs.  “Look around at how many times a day you touch a computer, tablet, phone … these industries are accelerating so much that these high school kids will have jobs that don’t even exist yet,” said Kenneth Hecht, the leader of the National STEM Honor Society, an membership program that engages students from kindergarten into their career in STEM project-based learning (NSTEM). STEM covers both high-tech and long-established professions. For example, STEM jobs in demand include those in cloud computing, informatics and other software developers that write code for computation. They also include occupations for actuaries, cartographers, critical care nurses and epidemiologists.  Jobs in the medical and healthcare fields have boomed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as populations age, but traditionally, computer technology, or tech, is the number one major that international students pursue within STEM, according to a study by the Institute of International Education. Jobs in computer and information technology are projected to grow 11% from 2019 to 2029, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website, “much faster than the average for all occupations.”These occupations are projected to add about 531,200 new jobs to the U.S. workforce by 2029. Jobs in cloud computing, big data, and information security will be in high demand, according to BLS.COVID plus and minuses Recent enrollment declines because of the COVID-19 pandemic have slowed the pipeline between graduates and jobs, as most international students rode out the pandemic in their home countries. But recent graduates who land STEM jobs show greater availability and higher salaries.  “A STEM education and a STEM career can change the trajectory of one family’s path and even others,” said Kenneth Hecht, leader of the National STEM Honor Society that engages students from kindergarten into their career in STEM project-based learning (NSTEM).  Nidhi Thaker, a Ph.D. student in the biochemistry and molecular biology department at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, also is optimistic about the promise of STEM opportunities.    “Applying and combining a biology background with technology that can be helpful in making a product, and by product, I mean, it could be a machine, it could be a drug, it could be any other thing, to help medicine itself and to help the field grow,” is what biotechnology means to Thaker.   Her experience working in the Boston area, one of America’s biotech hubs and close to several top U.S. universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, has been largely positive.  “It’s not just work, work, work. They also incorporate, like, team-building exercises, going out and having parties and things like that,” Thaker noted. “It’s a very well rounded, cultural approach that they’re taking, in regard to giving all the benefits.”   Lack of people skills One problem, though, is many graduates have a proficiency in tech skills but lack people skills, said Sahil Jain, senior enterprise architect at Adobe.    “This means they are good at coding. You can give them a digest code, they will do it very well. But they cannot speak to the senior leadership at the customer site.” Jain explains that both soft and hard skills are necessary to do well in emerging technology jobs, yet students often excel at one or the other, not both.    “That means they are good at speaking, but when it comes to technicalities, the customer brings his architects on the call, ‘Oh, tell me how this will work? Can you give me some architectural aspects as well?’ … That is where the big gap is,” he explained. In addition, Jain said the STEM job market is crowded with numerous evolving technologies.    “The industry is evolving a lot. It’s no longer only cloud computing based. There are many, many areas of blockchain,” a way to code to enhance the security of the information.   “We have machine learning, we have [artificial intelligence] …” said Jain, who has recently enrolled in Georgia Institute of Techology, a public university in Atlanta, to keep his skills up to date.  Filling needed roles Even with initiatives to alert students to STEM opportunities, like NSTEM, there were an estimated 2.4 million positions unfilled in STEM fields in 2018, according to a study by Impact Science, a California teacher-founded initiative to engage young students with science.“Being on the educational side, these numbers are well published and well recognized in the world, and the question is and has been, ‘What do you do about it?’” Hecht asked.  “If you look at the differences in ethnicities and gender it would be even worse,” which inspires one of NSTEM’s missions to help close equity divisions in STEM, he added.  Immigration issues An April 2021 study by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) found that “enrolling more international undergraduate students does not crowd out U.S. students at the average American university and leads to an increase in the number of bachelor’s degrees in STEM majors awarded to U.S. students.”  “Each additional 10 bachelor’s degrees—across all majors—awarded to international students by a college or university leads to an additional 15 bachelor’s degrees in STEM majors awarded to U.S. students,” the study found. The data suggests that U.S. students are more likely to major in STEM fields if they go to school with international students.    “In much of the U.S., STEM graduates are in short supply. Students who graduate with a STEM major typically earn more than other graduates, especially early in their careers,” according to the NFAP study.  “The finding here that the presence of international students actually increases the number of U.S. students graduating with a STEM major is another reason to encourage international students to come to the United States,” stated Madeline Zavodny, the study’s author.  “America’s future competitiveness depends on attracting and retaining talented international students,” according to companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter with other parties in a group letter to Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) in July 2020. ICE had announced it would revoke international student visas during the COVID-19 pandemic if those students were not in person to study on campus.  ICE Won’t Compel Foreign Students to Be on Campus Immigration agency retreats from ruling that risked student visa status
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The Philippine president has threatened to order the arrest of Filipinos who refuse COVID-19 vaccination and told them to leave the country if they would not cooperate with efforts to end a public health emergency.President Rodrigo Duterte, who is known for his public outbursts and brash rhetoric, said in televised remarks Monday night that he has become exasperated with people who refuse to get immunized amid a health crisis then help spread the coronavirus.”Don’t get me wrong. There is a crisis being faced in this country. There is a national emergency. If you don’t want to get vaccinated, I’ll have you arrested and I’ll inject the vaccine in your butt,” Duterte said.”If you will not agree to be vaccinated, leave the Philippines. Go to India if you want or somewhere, to America,” he said, adding he would order village leaders to compile a list of defiant residents.Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra acknowledged on Tuesday that there was no Philippine law criminalizing refusal to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.  “I believe that the president merely used strong words to drive home the need for us to get vaccinated and reach herd immunity as soon as possible,” Guevarra said.A human rights lawyer, Edre Olalia, raised concerns over Duterte’s threat, saying the president could not order the arrest of anybody who has not clearly committed any crime.Duterte and his administration have faced criticism over a vaccination campaign that has been saddled with supply problems and public hesitancy. After repeated delays, vaccinations started in March, but many still opted to wait for Western vaccines, prompting some cities to offer snacks and store discounts to encourage people to get immunized with any vaccine.  Duterte blamed the problem on wealthy Western countries cornering vaccines for their own citizens, leaving poorer countries like the Philippines behind. Some officials said the bigger problem was inadequate vaccine supply more than public hesitancy.Duterte also walked back on an earlier remark that required people to wear plastic face shields over face masks only in hospitals as an added safeguard. After experts briefed him on the threat of more contagious coronavirus variants, Duterte declared it mandatory for people to continue wearing face shields indoors and outdoors.The Philippines is a COVID-19 hotspot in Asia, with more than 1.3 million cases and at least 23,749 deaths. 
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 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that younger Americans are less likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 than older Americans. The federal health agency issued a report Monday revealing that just 38% of adults between 18 and 29 years of age had received at least one dose of a vaccine by May 22, compared to 80% of adults older than 65.   The report also found that the percentage of 18- to 29-year-old Americans who were vaccinated between April 19, when all adults in the United States became eligible to receive the vaccine, and May 22 declined from 3.6% per week to 1.7% per week.   In another CDC study, nearly half of the 2,726 people between 18 and 39 years of age said they were either unsure about getting the vaccine or did not plan on getting the vaccine.    About 40% of younger adults said they believed others needed to be inoculated more than they did, while those considering getting the shot cited a desire to resume their regular social activities or keeping others from being infected. Cuba vaccinesCuba announced Monday that its three-shot COVID-19 vaccine dubbed Abdala has proved to be 92% effective in late-stage human clinical trials.  FILE – A man is vaccinated at a vaccination center amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Havana, Cuba, June 17, 2021.The Caribbean island had just announced that another of its domestically produced vaccines, Soberana 2, was 62% effective with just two of its three doses.   Cuba is facing its worst outbreak of COVID-19 infections since the start of the pandemic due to the arrival of new, more contagious variants of the virus. As of Monday, the island has posted a total of 169,365 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 1,170 deaths.   PhilippinesIn the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to arrest anyone who refuses to get vaccinated against COVID-19.   “There is a crisis being faced in this country,” President Duterte said Monday during a nationally televised address. “I’m just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government.” FILE – Health workers conduct a COVID-19 swab test on residents at a village in Quezon City, Philippines, May 31, 2021.The Pacific archipelago has more than 1.3 million confirmed coronavirus infections and 23,749 deaths. The country’s vaccination campaign has been sluggish, with a lack of vaccines and reports of low turnout at vaccination sites in the capital Manila.   New surge in ColombiaThe death toll in Colombia from COVID-19 surpassed 100,000 Monday as it deals with a new surge of coronavirus infections that has sparked several weeks of antigovernment protests.  FILE – Police officers spray a water cannon at demonstrators during a protest of Colombian President Ivan Duque’s government, in Bogota, June 9, 2021.The South American nation has more than 3.9 million total COVID-19 infections, while averaging more than 500 deaths per day since the spring, according to government health officials quoted by The Washington Post. The country reported a single-day record 648 deaths on Monday. The number of total coronavirus infections around the world now stands at more than 178.7 million cases, including more than 3.8 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  The United States leads the world with more than 33.5 million total cases, including 602, 092 deaths.   
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A special committee with the United Nations’s cultural agency says Australia’s Great Barrier Reef should be placed on a list of World Heritage sites that should be designated as “in danger.” The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Committee, or UNESCO, recommended the 2,300-kilometer-long coral reef system should be placed on the list because it has deteriorated due to climate change.  Australian officials denounced the recommendation. Environment Minister Sussan Ley said Tuesday that Canberra opposes the designation and accused the World Heritage Committee of “a backflip on previous assurances” and that it would not take such an action before its formal meeting next month.  Ley said she and Foreign Minister Marise Payne had spoken by phone to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay about the decision, which she called “flawed” and a decision influenced by politics.   “This sends a poor signal to those nations who are not making the investments in reef protection that we are making,” she said. But Richard Leck, the head of oceans for World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia, said in a statement the recommendation “is clear and unequivocal that the Australian government is not doing enough to protect our greatest natural asset, especially on climate change.” The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s biggest coral reef system that brings an estimated $4.8 billion annually in tourism revenue.  Climate change has driven temperatures in the Coral Sea higher in recent decades, leading to three mass “bleaching” events since 2015, destroying at least half of the Reef’s vibrant corals and prompting the Australian government to downgrade its long term outlook to “very poor.”   
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