Canada’s western province of British Columbia declared a state of emergency Tuesday, with wildfires expected to grow even larger in the coming days due to high heat and winds. “We have reached a critical point,” said provincial public safety minister Mike Farnworth. “Based on the advice of emergency management and wildfire officials, and my briefing last night on the worsening weather, I am declaring a provincial state of emergency.” The decision empowers officials to organize mass-scale evacuations and to provide emergency accommodation for evacuees, he added. Some 5,700 people were under evacuation orders in the province Tuesday — more than double the previous day’s tally, as the threatened region grew in size. Around 32,000 more residents have been placed on alert. “Please have an evacuation plan ready for your family,” said Cliff Chapman, the director of operations for British Columbia’s wildfire service. “From working in this branch for 20 years, I would be taking my family out if I was on an evacuation order today.” Fires have been ravaging western Canada and the U.S. West Coast for several weeks following a scorching heat wave in late June that experts have tied to climate change. Chapman said around 1,200 square miles (3,000 square kilometers) has already gone up in smoke in British Columbia — more than three times higher than the average area typically burnt by this point in the year. The province has nearly 300 active wildfires, spurred by hot, dry weather that is expected to continue in the coming days, in addition to rising winds that may spread the flames. The interior and southwest of British Columbia, including part of its border with the United States, are particularly affected. More than 3,000 firefighters are currently battling blazes across the province. In the United States, more than 80 large fires are burning, the biggest of which is in the Pacific Northwest state of Oregon. The Bootleg Fire has scorched almost 390,000 acres — an area bigger than Los Angeles. “Fighting this fire is a marathon, not a sprint,” Rob Allen, the incident commander for firefighters in the zone, said in a statement Tuesday. “We’re in this for as long as it takes to safely confine this monster.” Smoke has reached as far afield as the eastern United States and Canada, parts of which were shrouded in a gray smoky haze Tuesday. New York state’s environmental protection services issued an air quality advisory.
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Month: July 2021
At least 12 people are dead in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou after massive floods triggered by several days of heavy rains. The rains washed out streets throughout the capital of Henan province, forcing stranded motorists to wade through waist-deep waters that submerged cars and even sent them floating away. The floods also washed out Zhengzhou’s subway system, with riders posting videos on social media awaiting rescue in waist-high muddy waters. A passenger named Xiaopei posted on Weibo that “the water in the carriage has reached (their) chest.” Dozens of reservoirs and dams have reached critical levels, with local authorities warning that the Yihetan dam in the nearby city of Luoyang had sustained a 20-meter breach and was on the verge of imminent collapse. Authorities have evacuated 100,000 residents to safe zones. Henan province, home to about 94 million people, has experienced severe rains through the past week. Forecasters say Zhengzhou received as much rainfall in three days as it normally gets in a year. A representative of the city of Xu Liyi, a member of the Standing Committee of Henan Provincial Party Committee, and secretary of the Zhengzhou Municipal Party Committee said the high levels of rainfall were unusual. Extreme weather events have surged this summer in China, with recent flooding in Sichuan province killing hundreds of citizens and forcing thousands to evacuate the area. Officials of Greenpeace International, an environmental group, warn that China’s rapid urbanization will increase the frequency of climate disasters. Speaking to the Chinese media, Liu Junyan of Greenpeace said, “because of the highly concentrated population, infrastructure and economic activity, the exposure and vulnerability of climate hazards are higher in urban areas.” This report contains information from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Space company Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rocketed to space Tuesday, with the world’s oldest and youngest people to ever fly in space in tow. Bezos’ flight follows last week’s suborbital jaunt by Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson. The two billionaires are further ushering in an era of space tourism and exploration. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.
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Fighting in Afghanistan temporarily subsided Tuesday on the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, as Taliban insurgents said they were observing an unannounced cease-fire to enable Afghans to peacefully participate in the festivities.
While there were no reports of battlefield clashes between Afghan government forces and the Taliban across the country, a rocket attack shattered the capital, Kabul, during early morning prayers, which mark the opening of the three-day Eid celebrations.
The Afghan interior ministry said at least three rockets landed near the presidential palace, where President Ashraf Ghani was offering Eid prayers, along with top government officials. But TV images showed Ghani and most of other worshippers continued praying at the outdoor gathering. No casualties were reported.
The Islamic State’s regional affiliate, known as IS Khorasan Province, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Taliban have regularly called Eid truces with Afghan security forces since mid-2018, but the insurgent group made no such official announcement for this week’s festivities.
“Every year there is a de facto Eid cease-fire from our side to enable our nation to peacefully and comfortably attend the festivities,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told VOA when asked why his group this time did not declare a truce.
“Sometimes we officially announce it and sometimes we don’t. But even when we don’t declare a cease-fire on Eid, practically it is in place,” Shaheen explained.
The Afghan private TOLOnews TV channel said there were no reports of Taliban attacks or clashes in contested districts between the government forces and the insurgents.
“The cessation of fighting allowed Afghans to celebrate the beginning of the holiday with calm,” the network reported.
Insecurity has worsened in Afghanistan as the withdrawal of the United-States-led foreign troops is progressing ahead of scheduled and it should conclude by the end of next month.
The drawdown process is more than 95% complete, but it has encouraged the Taliban to step up attacks and overrun a growing number of Afghan districts as well as key border crossings the landlocked nation has with neighboring countries.
The U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government representatives have not produced any significant outcome.
Top leaders from the two sides met in Doha, Qatar, last week and agreed to accelerate the peace process but did not report any major breakthrough.
Shaheen reiterated Tuesday that the Taliban do not intend to militarily seize power in Afghanistan and want to negotiate a peace arrangement with rival Afghans to end the war.
But Ghani and foreign critics are skeptical of the insurgent pledges.
“We have the resolve for peace, and we are ready to sacrifice for it. But they (Taliban) have no intention, nor they desire peace,” Ghani said in his nationally televised speech following the morning prayers for Eid.
On Monday, foreign diplomatic missions in Kabul also collectively called for the Taliban to urgently cease military offensives, saying they run counter to claims the insurgent group wants a negotiated settlement to the war.
“We continue to call for an accelerated path to a political settlement and an end to the violence,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.
“What we have been consistent in saying is that the people of Afghanistan are united in their desire for a just and for a lasting peace, and that is what the diplomacy we are supporting and much of the international community is supporting is geared to effect.”
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Ecologists in a vast region of wetlands and forest in remote Oregon have spent the past decade thinning young trees and using planned fires to try to restore the thick stands of ponderosa to a less fire-prone state. This week, the nation’s biggest burning wildfire provided them with an unexpected, real-world experiment. As the massive inferno half the size of Rhode Island roared into the Sycan Marsh Preserve, firefighters said the flames jumped less from treetop to treetop and instead returned to the ground, where they were easier to fight, moved more slowly and did less damage to the overall forest. The initial assessment suggests that the many years of forest treatments worked, said Pete Caligiuri, Oregon forest program director for The Nature Conservancy, which runs the research at the preserve. “Generally speaking, what firefighters were reporting on the ground is that when the fire came into those areas that had been thinned … it had significantly less impact.” FILE – The Bootleg Fire burns at night near Highway 34 in southern Oregon, July 15, 2021, in this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command.The reports were bittersweet for researchers, who still saw nearly 51.7 square kilometers of the preserve burn, but the findings add to a growing body of research about how to make wildfires less explosive by thinning undergrowth and allowing forests to burn periodically — as they naturally would do — instead of snuffing out every flame. The Bootleg Fire, now 1,569 square kilometers in size, has ravaged southern Oregon and is the fourth-largest fire in the state’s modern history. It’s been expanding by up to 6 kilometers a day, pushed by gusting winds and critically dry weather that’s turned trees and undergrowth into a tinderbox. Fire crews have had to retreat from the flames for 10 consecutive days as fireballs jump from treetop to treetop, trees explode, embers fly ahead of the fire to start new blazes, and in some cases, the inferno’s heat creates its own weather of shifting winds and dry lightning. Monstrous clouds of smoke and ash have risen up to 9.6 kilometers into the sky and are visible for more than 185.2 kilometers. The fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest merged with a smaller nearby blaze Tuesday, and it has repeatedly breached a perimeter of treeless dirt and fire retardant meant to stop its advance. More evacuations were ordered Monday night, and a red flag weather warning signifying dangerous fire conditions was in effect through Tuesday. The fire is 30% contained. “We’re in this for as long as it takes to safely confine this monster,” Incident Commander Rob Allen said Tuesday. At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames. Thick smoke chokes the area where residents and wildlife alike have already been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died. FILE – The Bootleg Fire is seen smoldering in southern Oregon, July 17, 2021, in this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command.The Bootleg Fire was one of many fires burning in a dozen states, most of them in the West. Sixteen large uncontained fires burned in Oregon and Washington state alone on Monday. Historically, wildfires in Oregon and elsewhere in the U.S. West burned an area as big or bigger than the current blaze more frequently but much less explosively. Periodic, naturally occurring fire cleared out the undergrowth and smaller trees that cause today’s fires to burn so dangerously. Those fires have not been allowed to burn for the past 120 years, said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires. The area on the northeastern flank of the Bootleg Fire is in the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribes, which have used intentional, managed fire to keep the fuel load low and prevent such explosive blazes. Scientists at the Sycan Marsh research station now work with the tribe and draw on that knowledge. Climate change is the catalyst for the worsening wildfire seasons in the West, Johnston said, but poor forest management and a policy of decades of fire suppression have made a bad situation even worse. “My colleagues and I have been predicting a massive fire in that area for years. It’s an area that’s exceptionally prone to catastrophic fire,” said Johnston, who is not affiliated with Sycan Marsh. “It’s dry. It’s fire-prone and always has been. But what’s changed over the past 100 years is an extraordinary amount of fuel buildup.” Other firesElsewhere, fire crews were engaged in other daunting battles. In Northern California, authorities expanded evacuations for the Tamarack Fire in Alpine County in the Sierra Nevada to include the mountain town of Mesa Vista late Monday. That fire, which exploded over the weekend was 158 square kilometers with no containment. On the western side of the Sierra, the Dixie Fire has scorched 163 square kilometers, threatening tiny communities in the Feather River Valley region. Meteorologist Julia Ruthford told a briefing that a surge of monsoonal moisture from the Southwest increased atmospheric instability Sunday and Monday, creating plumes topping 9.6 kilometers — so big that the fire generated a thunderstorm over itself, hurling lightning bolts and whipping up gusty winds. For the past two days in Oregon, the fire has danced around Sycan Marsh, where researchers raced to protect buildings with sprinklers and fire lines. The 121.7 square kilometer habitat attracts migrating and nesting birds and offers a unique location to research forest and fire ecology. The nonprofit operates its own fire engines and maintains federal firefighting certification. It now has three of its own engines and seven firefighters on the blaze, and more people are arriving from North Carolina and Florida to try to save the preserve. “It’s an amazing place,” Caligiuri said. “It’s very hard to watch it all happening, and seeing all of that work being threatened by this fire is a lot to process.”
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The delta variant of the coronavirus now accounts for 83% of new cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the week of July 3, the variant accounted for 50% of new cases. “The best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 variants is to prevent the spread of disease, and vaccination is the most powerful tool we have,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday. The delta variant, which was first detected in India, reportedly spreads more easily than other iterations of the COVID-19 virus. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department is urging Americans not to travel to Britain because of the rising levels of new COVID-19 cases there. The State Department raised its travel advisory for Britain to its highest level on Monday, following a similar action taken by the CDC earlier in the day. A Yeoman Warder, Barney Chandler gestures as he leads the first ‘Beefeater’ tour of the Tower of London in 16 months, at the Tower of London, July 19, 2021.Both agencies said if people must travel to Britain to make sure they are fully vaccinated before their journey. The revised advisories were issued as the British people celebrated “Freedom Day,” the official end of nearly all coronavirus lockdown restrictions, including mandatory mask wearing and social distancing. FILE – People drink shortly after the reopening at The Piano Works in Farringdon, in London, July 19, 20.But Prime Minister Boris Johnson likely cast a pall over the celebration when he announced that proof of vaccination will be required to enter nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather beginning at the end of September. Johnson spent Freedom Day in quarantine after Britain’s health minister Sajid Javid tested positive for COVID-19. Cases in Britain topped 50,000 per day last week for the first time since January. The surge is largely driven by the delta variant of the virus, first identified in India. US-Canada borderOn the other side of the Atlantic, the Canadian government announced Monday that it would reopen its border to U.S. citizens and permanent residents living in the United States beginning August 9, as long as they show proof they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and tested negative for the virus within 72 hours of arrival. Officials also said it will allow fully vaccinated visitors from other countries beginning September 7. FILE – Two closed Canadian border checkpoints are seen at the US-Canada border crossing at the Thousand Islands Bridge in Lansdowne, Canada, March 19, 2020.Canada and the United States had agreed to ban all nonessential travel across their border in March 2020, with both nations extending the ban on a month-to-month basis. A growing number of U.S. lawmakers and business groups have been calling on Ottawa to lift the ban, which they say has hurt tourism and negatively impacted families with relatives living on either side of the border. Lockdown in AustraliaMeanwhile, more than half of Australia’s 25 million citizens are under coronavirus lockdown measures Tuesday after South Australia state Premier Steven Marshall announced an immediate seven-day lockdown after five new cases were detected there.South Australia joins the neighboring states of Victoria and New South Wales to impose extended lockdowns since late June, when an airport limousine driver in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, tested positive for the highly contagious delta variant after transporting international air crews. People wait outside a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia, July 14, 2021.The new lockdown in South Australia came as Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews extended a five-day lockdown imposed just last Thursday for at least another seven days after reporting 13 new local infections.New South Wales, which is in the fourth week of an extended lockdown, reported 78 new cases Tuesday, driving its total number of cases over 1,400 since the outbreak began. Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 through aggressive lockdown efforts, posting just 32,120 total confirmed cases and 915 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.But it has proved vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to a slow rollout of its vaccination campaign and confusing requirements involving the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is the dominant vaccine in its stockpile. Overall, Australia has administered over 10 million doses of vaccine to its population of more than 25 million people, or just over 11%, according to Johns Hopkins. And a new study released Tuesday by the U.S.-based Center for Global Development says India’s total death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic could be as much as 10 times higher than its official tally of 414,482 fatalities, likely making it the worst humanitarian disaster for the South Asian nation since gaining its independence from Britain in 1947. The study says as many as 3 million to 4.7 million people were killed by the virus between January 2020 and June of this year. The world’s second-most populous nation, with an estimated 1.3 billion people, is emerging from a devastating surge between April and May that was partly fueled by the delta variant. Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
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The yearslong effort by state and local governments in the U.S. to force the pharmaceutical industry to help pay to fix a nationwide opioid addiction and overdose crisis took a major step forward Tuesday when lawyers for local governments announced they were on the verge of a $26 billion settlement with the nation’s three biggest drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson. Under the deal, Johnson & Johnson would not produce any opioids for at least a decade. And AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson share prescribing information under a new system intended to stop the avalanches of pills that arrived in some regions about a decade ago. FILE – A Johnson & Johnson logo appears on the exterior of a first aid kit in Walpole, Mass., Feb. 24, 2021.Lawyers for local governments said full details could be shared within days. That would not be the end of the deal though; each state would have 30 days to decide whether to join. And local governments will have five months after that to decide. If governments don’t opt in, the settlement total would go down. “This is a nationwide crisis, and it could have been and should have been addressed perhaps by other branches of government,” Paul Geller, one of the lead lawyers representing local governments across the U.S., said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “But this really is an example of the use of litigation for fixing a national problem.” If approved, the settlement will likely be the biggest of many settlements to opioid litigation. While it means billions for lawyers who worked the cases, it is expected to bring more than $23 billion to abatement and mitigation efforts to help get treatment for people who are addicted along with other programs to address the crisis. The money would come in 18 annual payments, with the biggest amounts in the next several years. The deal echoes one the companies have been pushing, sometimes in public, for two years. Johnson & Johnson reiterated in a statement that it’s prepared to contribute up to $5 billion to the national settlement. “There continues to be progress toward finalizing this agreement and we remain committed to providing certainty for involved parties and critical assistance for families and communities in need,” the company said. “The settlement is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing, and the Company will continue to defend against any litigation that the final agreement does not resolve.” FILE – A sign is displayed at the Cardinal Health, Inc. corporate office in Dublin, Ohio, Oct. 16, 2019.But Cardinal Health declined to comment early Tuesday, and the other distribution companies did not respond to requests for comment. An Associated Press tally finds there have been at least $40 billion in completed or proposed settlements, penalties and fines between governments and the toll of opioids since 2007, not including one between the federal government and OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma in which most of the $8.3 billion would be waived. Purdue is trying to reach a deal through bankruptcy court that could be worth $10 billion over time; a hearing on that plan is scheduled for August. Other deals are possible. While a growing number of companies in the industry have struck deals, some manufacturers have not — and no pharmacy companies have struck nationwide settlements. But the total amount in the settlements is far below estimates of the financial costs of the epidemic. The Society of Actuaries found that the cost of the crisis in the U.S. was $630 billion from 2015 through 2018, with most of the costs borne by the private sector. And the White House Council of Economic Advisers, when considering the economic impact of people who fatally overdosed, put the one-year cost at about $500 billion nationally. Unlike with the tobacco settlements reached in the 1990s, governments have agreed to spend money they bring in from opioid-related settlements to deal with the opioid crisis. In a joint statement, the attorneys general for Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee said the settlement talks with the four companies are “potentially nearing their completion,” and that, “we look forward to bringing much-needed dollars home to our states to help people recover from opioid addiction and to fundamentally change the opioid manufacturing and distributing industries so this never happens again.” But they still have choices ahead on exactly how they do it. “Is it a nice chunk of change?” asked Ryan Hampton, who is in recovery from an opioid addiction and is a Las Vegas-based advocate for policy to address the overdose crisis. “Sure it is. Will it go to where it needs to go? The jury’s still out on that.” FILE – A pedestrian passes a McKesson sign on an office building in San Francisco, July 17, 2019.Even before the settlement plan was unveiled Tuesday, a group of public health advocates and experts began calling for any settlement money to be spent to address the opioid crisis. “It’s money that can do a lot of good if it’s used well,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is spearheading the effort. “It’s really important to use it well to save lives because it’s coming at the peak of the overdose epidemic.” Private lawyers on the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee representing local governments in opioid lawsuits across the country announced some details of the settlement Tuesday even before it was completed. The decision to do so was partly because the state of New York reached a settlement Tuesday with the three big distribution companies amid a trial playing out in a state court on Long Island. New York’s deal, worth more than $1 billion, represents the share of the national deal it will receive from distributors if the national deal is finalized. New York also reached a similar deal last month with Johnson & Johnson worth $230 million. “Today, we’re holding them accountable delivering more than $1 billion more into New York communities ravaged by opioids for treatment, recovery, and prevention efforts,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Tuesday. FILE – An AmerisourceBergen Corp. office building is seen in Conshohocken, Pa., Oct. 16, 2019.The trial is expected to continue, but the settlement leaves only three drug manufacturers as defendants. Other manufacturers, regional distribution companies and pharmacies will remain in the New York and other cases for now. Closing arguments in a West Virginia trial against the distributors are expected to proceed as scheduled next week. The attorney general there, Patrick Morrisey, said the state would probably not agree to the terms. “I will keep fighting to protect West Virginia and will not allow larger states to dictate how we hold defendants accountable for their actions,” he said in a statement Tuesday. The state and local governments say distribution companies did not have proper controls to flag or halt shipments to pharmacies that received outsized shares of powerful and addictive prescription painkillers. The companies have maintained they were filling orders of legal drugs placed by doctors — so they should not shoulder blame for the nation’s addiction and overdose crisis. An Associated Press analysis of federal distribution data found that enough prescription opioids were shipped in 2012 for every person in the U.S. to have a 20-day supply. And opioids — including both prescription drugs and illegal ones like heroin and illicitly produced fentanyl — have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000. The number of cases reached a record high in 2020.
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Heavy rainfall forced the subway system in Zhengzhou, capital of China’s Henan province, to shut down Tuesday, stranding passengers.
Riders posted videos on social media as they awaited rescue in waist-high muddy waters. A passenger named Xiaopei posted on Weibo that “the water in the carriage has reached (their) chest.”
Around 300 people have been rescued so far, and an unknown number remain trapped.
Local media outlets report that train floodwaters were lowering.
Henan province, home to about 94 million people, experienced severe rains through the past week. On Tuesday, the region’s meteorological station issued the highest threat level, a red warning, as rains are expected to continue for the next 24 hours, Reuters reported.
A representative of the city of Xu Liyi, a member of the Standing Committee of Henan Provincial Party Committee, and Secretary of the Zhengzhou Municipal Party Committee said the high levels of rainfall were unusual.
Extreme weather events have surged this summer in China, with recent flooding in Sichuan province killing hundreds of citizens and forcing thousands to evacuate the area. Officials of Greenpeace International, an environmental group, warn that China’s rapid urbanization will increase the frequency of climate disasters.
Speaking to the Chinese media, Liu Junyan of Greenpeace said “because of the highly concentrated population, infrastructure and economic activity, the exposure and vulnerability of climate hazards are higher in urban areas.”
This report contains information from Reuters.
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Billionaire Jeff Bezos was back on earth safely Tuesday after a 10-minute suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft.“Best day ever,” Bezos said after the capsule touched down near Van Horn, Texas. The spacecraft is named after Alan Shepard, the first American launched into space.The world’s richest man blasted off Tuesday from a remote desert launch site in Texas, as he became the second billionaire to self-fund a trip to space this month. This photo provided by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin, exits the Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule after it parachuted safely down near Van Horn, Texas, July 20, 2021.The fully automated rocket reached an altitude of about 106 kilometers after reaching Mach 3. Once at altitude, the booster separated from the capsule and returned to earth landing upright near the launch site. The crew was able to experience weightlessness for 3 to 4 minutes before a parachute landing back on earthThe altitude surpassed the 85-kilometer mark reached by British billionaire Richard Branson on July 11 when he and five crewmates flew aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket-powered space plane. The 57-year-old founder of e-commerce giant Amazon founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of creating permanent space colonies where people will live and work. This undated family photo shows Oliver Daemen. Blue Origin announced July 15, 2021, that the Dutch teen would be traveling on its July 20 space launch in west Texas.Bezos was joined by his brother, Mark, plus 82-year-old aviation pioneer Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, making them the oldest and youngest persons to fly into space. Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13, group of women who were part of a privately funded program to train women for space travel. None of them traveled to space.The Dutch-born Daemen was a last-minute addition to the crew after the anonymous winner of a $28 million auction for a seat on New Shepard dropped out, citing a scheduling conflict. Daemen’s father was a runner-up in the auction, which makes the young astronaut Blue Origin’s first paying customer. Bezos, a fervent space enthusiast since watching the Apollo lunar missions in his youth, made his trip on the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing. During a television interview Monday, Bezos insisted that his goal was not about competition with Branson, but “about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space.” Blue Origin’s first manned mission comes after 15 test flights of the New Shepard vehicle. Bob Smith, the company’s chief executive officer, says two more manned missions aboard New Shepard are planned by the end of this year.The company is also building a larger rocket, New Glenn — named after John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth — that will send both manned and unmanned vehicles into space. Some information in this report comes from AP.
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Muslims around the world were observing Tuesday yet another major Islamic holiday in the shadow of the pandemic and amid growing concerns about the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.Eid al-Adha, or the “Feast of Sacrifice,” is typically marked by communal prayers, large social gatherings, slaughtering of livestock and giving meat to the needy. This year, the holiday comes as many countries battle the delta variant first identified in India, prompting some to impose new restrictions or appeal for people to avoid congregating and follow safety protocols.The pandemic has already taken a toll for the second year on a sacred mainstay of Islam, the hajj, whose last days coincide with Eid al-Adha. Once drawing some 2.5 million Muslims from across the globe to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the pilgrimage has been dramatically scaled back due to the virus.This year’s hajj has been limited to 60,000 vaccinated Saudi citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, pilgrims wearing masks and maintaining social distancing, performed the symbolic stoning of the devil in the valley area of Mina — using sterilized pebbles they received ahead of time.”This is (a) very, very, very big moment for us, for me especially,” said pilgrim Arya Widyawan Yanto, an Indonesian living in Saudi Arabia. He added that he was happy he had the chance to perform the pilgrimage. “Everything was conducted under very strict precautions.”Yanto said he hoped for the pandemic to end and for all Muslims to be able to perform the pilgrimage in a safe way.Indonesia marked a grim Eid al-Adha amid a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, also an influential Islamic cleric, appealed to people to perform holiday prayers at home with their families.”Don’t do crowds,” Amin said in televised remarks ahead of the start of the holiday. “Protecting oneself from the COVID-19 pandemic is obligatory.”The surge is believed to have been fueled by travel during another holiday — the Eid al-Fitr festival in May — and by the rapid spread of the delta variant.In Malaysia, measures have been tightened after a sharp spike in infections despite a national lockdown since June 1 — people are banned from traveling back to their hometowns or crossing districts to celebrate. House visits and customary trips to graveyards are also banned.Healthy worshippers are allowed to gather for prayers in mosques, with strict social distancing and no physical contact. Ritual animal sacrifice is limited to mosques and other approved areas.Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah has urged Malaysians not to “repeat irresponsible behavior,” adding that travel and celebrations during Eid al-Fitr and another festival on the island of Borneo led to new clusters of cases.”Let us not in the excitement of celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice cause us all to perish because of COVID-19,” he said in a statement.Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin urged Muslims to stay home. “I appeal to you all to be patient and abide by the rules because your sacrifice is a great jihad in Allah’s sight and in our effort to save lives,” he said in a televised speech on the eve of the festival.The World Health Organization has reported that globally, COVID-19 deaths had climbed after a period of decline. The reversal has been attributed to low vaccination rates, relaxed mask rules and other precautions, and the delta variant.Lockdowns will severely curtail Eid al-Adha festivities in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s two largest cities.Sydney resident Jihad Dib, a New South Wales state government lawmaker, said the city’s Muslims were sad but understood why they would be confined to their homes with no visitors allowed.
“It’s going to be the first Eid in my life I don’t hug and kiss my mum and dad,” Dib told Australian Broadcasting Corp.Iran on Monday imposed a week-long lockdown on the capital, Tehran, and the surrounding region as the country struggles with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported. The lockdown begins on Tuesday.Not everyone is imposing new restrictions. In Bangladesh, authorities have allowed an eight-day pause in the country’s strict lockdown for the holiday that health experts say could be dangerous.In Egypt, Essam Shaban travelled to the southern province of Sohag to spend Eid al-Adha with his family. He said ahead of the start of the holiday that he planned to pray at a mosque there on Tuesday while taking precautions such as bringing his own prayer rug and wearing a mask.”We want this Eid to pass by peacefully without any infections,” he said. “We must follow instructions.”Shaban had been looking forward to pitching in with his brothers to buy a buffalo for slaughtering, going door-to-door to give some of the meat to the poor and to the traditional festive meal later in the day with his extended family.”It’s usually boisterous with laughter and bickering with the kids,” he said. “It’s great.”
But others will be without loved ones.In India, where Eid al-Adha starts Wednesday, Tahir Qureshi would always go with his father for prayers and then to visit family and friends. His father died in June after contracting the virus during a surge that devastated the country, and the thought of having to spend the holiday without him is heartbreaking.”It will be difficult without him,” he said.India’s Muslim scholars have been urging people to exercise restraint and adhere to health protocols. Some states have restricted large gatherings and are asking people to observe the holiday at home.Meanwhile the pandemic’s economic fallout, which threw millions of Indians into financial hardship, has many saying they cannot afford to buy sacrificial livestock.In Indian-controlled Kashmir, a disputed, Muslim-majority region, businessman Ghulam Hassan Wani is among those cutting back.”I used to sacrifice three or four sheep, but this year we can hardly afford one,” Wani said.
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The U.S. State Department is urging Americans not to travel to Britain because of the rising levels of new COVID-19 cases in the country. The State Department raised its travel advisory for Britain to its highest level on Monday, following a similar action taken by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier in the day. A Yeoman Warder, Barney Chandler gestures as he leads the first ‘Beefeater’ tour of the Tower of London in 16 months, at the Tower of London, July 19, 2021.Both agencies said if people must travel to Britain to make sure they are fully vaccinated before their journey. The revised advisories were issued as the British people celebrated “Freedom Day,” the official end of nearly all coronavirus lockdown restrictions, including mandatory mask wearing and social distancing. FILE – People drink shortly after the reopening at The Piano Works in Farringdon, in London, July 19, 20.But Prime Minister Boris Johnson likely cast a pall over the celebration when he announced that proof of vaccination will be required to enter nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather beginning at the end of September. Johnson spent Freedom Day in quarantine after Britain’s health minister Sajid Javid tested positive for COVID-19. Cases in Britain topped 50,000 per day last week for the first time since January. The surge is largely driven by the delta variant of the virus, first identified in India. US-Canada borderOn the other side of the Atlantic, the Canadian government announced Monday that it would reopen its border to U.S. citizens and permanent residents living in the United States beginning August 9, as long as they show proof they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and tested negative for the virus within 72 hours of arrival. Officials also said it will allow fully vaccinated visitors from other countries beginning September 7. FILE – Two closed Canadian border checkpoints are seen at the US-Canada border crossing at the Thousand Islands Bridge in Lansdowne, Canada, March 19, 2020.Canada and the United States had agreed to ban all nonessential travel across their border in March 2020, with both nations extending the ban on a month-to-month basis. A growing number of U.S. lawmakers and business groups have been calling on Ottawa to lift the ban, which they say has hurt tourism and negatively impacted families with relatives living on either side of the border. Lockdown in AustraliaMeanwhile, more than half of Australia’s 25 million citizens are under coronavirus lockdown measures Tuesday after South Australia state Premier Steven Marshall announced an immediate seven-day lockdown after five new cases were detected there. South Australia joins the neighboring states of Victoria and New South Wales to impose extended lockdowns since late June, when an airport limousine driver in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, tested positive for the highly contagious delta variant after transporting international air crews. People wait outside a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia, July 14, 2021.The new lockdown in South Australia came as Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews extended a five-day lockdown imposed just last Thursday for at least another seven days after reporting 13 new local infections.New South Wales, which is in the fourth week of an extended lockdown, reported 78 new cases Tuesday, driving its total number of cases over 1,400 since the outbreak began. Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 through aggressive lockdown efforts, posting just 32,120 total confirmed cases and 915 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. But it has proved vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to a slow rollout of its vaccination campaign and confusing requirements involving the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is the dominant vaccine in its stockpile. Overall, Australia has administered over 10 million doses of vaccine to its population of more than 25 million people, or just over 11%, according to Johns Hopkins. And a new study released Tuesday by the U.S.-based Center for Global Development says India’s total death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic could be as much as 10 times higher than its official tally of 414,482 fatalities, likely making it the worst humanitarian disaster for the South Asian nation since gaining its independence from Britain in 1947. The study says as many as 3 million to 4.7 million people were killed by the virus between January 2020 and June of this year. The world’s second-most populous nation, with an estimated 1.3 billion people, is emerging from a devastating surge between April and May that was partly fueled by the delta variant.
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Bushra Shah, a 35-year-old Pakistani, says she is realizing a childhood dream by making the great pilgrimage to Mecca, and under new rules she’s doing it without a male guardian.The hajj ministry has officially allowed women of all ages to make the pilgrimage without a male relative, known as a “mehrem,” on the condition that they go in a group.
The decision is part of social reforms rolled out by de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is trying to shake off the kingdom’s austere image and open its oi reliant economy.Since his rise to power, women have been allowed to drive and to travel abroad without a male guardian, even against a backdrop of a relentless crackdown against critics of his rule, including women’s rights activists.”It’s like a dream come true. My childhood dream was to make the hajj,” Shah told AFP, before setting off from her home in Jeddah, the major port city in western Saudi Arabia.The hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is a must for able-bodied Muslims with the means to do so at least once in their lifetime.For the young mother, making the pilgrimage with her husband and child would have been a distraction that would have prevented her from “concentrating completely on the rites.”Shah is one of 60,000 pilgrims chosen to take part in this year’s hajj, which has been dramatically scaled down for the second year because of the coronavirus pandemic.Only citizens and residents of Saudi Arabia, chosen in a lottery, are taking part. Officials have said that 40% of this year’s pilgrims are women.”Many women will also come with me. I am very proud that we are now independent and do not need a guardian,” Shah said.Her husband, Ali Murtada, said he “strongly encouraged” his wife to make the trip alone, after the government’s decision to ban children from participating in the hajj this year.
He will stay in Jeddah to look after their child.”We decided that one of us should go. Maybe she will be pregnant next year or maybe the children will still not be allowed to participate,” the 38-year-old said.It was unclear when the hajj ministry lifted the restriction, and some women have reported that travel agencies are still reluctant to accept women travelling without a male companion for the hajj.Some even posted advertisements ruling out groups of unaccompanied women, in a sign of how the dizzying social changes are meeting some resistance in the deeply conservative kingdom.Authorities previously required the presence of a male guardian for any woman pilgrim younger than 45, preventing many Muslim women around the world from making the hajj.That was the case for Marwa Shaker, an Egyptian woman living in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.”Hajj without a guardian is a miracle,” the 42-year-old, who works for a civil society organization, told AFP.Now travelling to Mecca with three of her friends, the mother of three had tried several times to make the pilgrimage before the pandemic. But she was unable to because her husband had already been and was not permitted to go again so soon.”I feel enormously joyful. God has called me despite all the obstacles,” she said.For Sadaf Ghafoor, a British-Pakistani doctor, travelling without a male guardian was the “only option.””We couldn’t leave the children alone,” the 40-year-old said of her three youngsters. Her husband decided to stay behind, and Ghafoor headed to Mecca with a neighbor.”It was not easy to take the decision to go alone … but we took this opportunity as a blessing,” she said.
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American businessman Jeff Bezos is set to become the second billionaire to self-fund a trip to space this month when he blasts off Tuesday morning from a remote desert launch site in Texas. The 57-year-old founder of e-commerce giant Amazon and three companions will fly into space aboard the New Shepard rocket built by his company Blue Origin, which he founded in 2000 with the goal of creating permanent space colonies where people will live and work. New Shepard, named after Alan Shepard, America’s first astronaut, is scheduled to blast off shortly after sunrise (300 GMT, 7 a.m. Washington time) and travel at three times the speed of sound before the capsule separates from the rocket and floats above the Earth for three to four minutes, allowing Bezos and his three crewmates to experience weightlessness. The capsule will then re-enter the atmosphere and make a parachute landing near the launch site, while the rocket will make an automated vertical landing several miles away. Bezos will be joined by his brother, Mark, plus 82-year-old aviation pioneer Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, making them the oldest and youngest persons to fly into space. Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13, the first group of women to train for the U.S. space program in the 1960s but were denied a chance to become astronauts because of the gender. The Dutch-born Daemen was a last-minute addition to the crew after the anonymous winner of a $28 million auction for a seat on New Shepard dropped out, citing a scheduling conflict. Daemen’s father was a runner-up in the auction, which makes the young astronaut Blue Origin’s first paying customer. Bezos hopes New Shepard will reach an altitude of 106 kilometers above the Earth, past the so-called Karman line (100 kilometers above Earth), which is recognized by international aviation and aerospace federations as the threshold of space. It will also surpass the 85 kilometer mark reached by British billionaire Richard Branson on July 11 when he and five crewmates flew aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket-powered space plane. Bezos, a fervent space enthusiast since watching the Apollo lunar missions in his youth, is heading into space on the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing. During a television interview Monday, Bezos insisted that his goal was not about competition with Branson, but “about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space.” Blue Origin’s first manned mission comes after 15 test flights of the New Shepard vehicle. Bob Smith, the company’s chief executive officer, says two more manned missions aboard New Shepard are planned by the end of this year if Tuesday’s flight is successful. The company is also building a larger rocket, New Glenn — named after John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth — that will send both manned and unmanned vehicles into space.
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Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose image of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban was at the center of widespread anti-Danish anger in the Muslim world in the mid-2000s, has died. He was 86. Westergaard’s family announced his death to Danish media late Sunday and told the newspaper Berlingske that Westergaard died in his sleep after a long period of illness. Danish media reported that he died July 14, a day after his birthday. From the early 1980s, Westergaard worked as a cartoonist for Jyllands-Posten, one of Denmark’s leading newspapers, and was associated with the daily until he turned 75. Westergaard became known worldwide in 2005 for his controversial depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten, which published 12 editorial cartoons of the principal figure of Islam. Muslims consider images of the prophet to be sacrilegious and encouraging idolatry. The images, particularly Westergaard’s, sparked a huge wave of anger in the Muslim world and escalated into violent anti-Denmark protests by Muslims worldwide in 2006. Several newspapers in neighboring Norway also published the controversial cartoons. Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were burned down by angry crowds during the demonstrations. Political observers in the Nordic countries have described the cartoon incident as one of the most severe foreign policy crises for both Denmark and Norway in their recent histories. In the aftermath of the uproar, Westergaard received several death threats and was forced to have police protection. In 2008, three people were arrested for planning to kill him, and in 2010, a 28-year-old Somali man broke into his home with an ax and knife. The man was later sentenced to 10 years in prison. “I would like to be remembered as the one who struck a blow for the freedom of expression. But there’s no doubt that there are some who will instead remember me as a Satan who insulted the religion of over 1 billion people,” Westergaard said, according to Berlingske. Jyllands-Posten said in an editorial published Monday that with the death of Westergaard “it is more important than ever to emphasize that the struggle for freedom of expression, which became his destiny, is the struggle of all of us for freedom.” Westergaard is survived by his wife and five children, 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.
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Resurgent pandemic worries knocked stocks lower from Wall Street to Tokyo on Monday, fueled by fears that a faster-spreading variant of the virus may upend the economy’s strong recovery.
The S&P 500 fell 68.67, or 1.6%, to 4,258.49, after setting a record just a week earlier. In another sign of worry, the yield on the 10-year Treasury touched its lowest level in five months as investors scrambled for safer places to put their money.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 725.81, or 2.1%, to 33,962.04, while the Nasdaq composite lost 152.25, or 1.1%, to 14,274.98.
Airlines and other companies that would get hurt the most by potential COVID-19 restrictions took some of the heaviest losses, similar to the early days of the pandemic in February and March 2020. United Airlines lost 5.5%, mall owner Simon Property Group gave up 5.9%, and cruise operator Carnival fell 5.7%.
The selling also circled the world, with several European markets sinking roughly 2.5% and Asian indexes down a bit less. The price of benchmark U.S. crude, meanwhile, fell more than 7% after OPEC and allied nations agreed on Sunday to eventually allow for higher oil production this year.
COVID numbers
Increased worries about the virus may seem strange to people in parts of the world where masks are coming off, or already have, thanks to COVID-19 vaccinations. But the World Health Organization says cases and deaths are climbing globally after a period of decline, spurred by the highly contagious delta variant. And given how tightly connected the global economy is, a hit anywhere can quickly affect the other side of the world.
Even in the U.S., where the vaccination rate is higher than in many other countries, people in Los Angeles County must once again wear masks indoors regardless of whether they’re vaccinated following spikes in cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Across the country, the daily number of COVID-19 cases has soared by nearly 20,000 over the past two weeks to about 32,000. The vaccine campaign has hit a wall, with the average number of daily inoculations sinking to the lowest levels since January, and cases are on the rise in all 50 states.
Economic growth expected
That’s why markets are concerned, even though reports show the economy is still recovering at a fantastically high rate and the general expectation is for it to deliver continued growth. Any worsening of virus trends threatens the high prices that stocks have achieved on expectations the economy will fulfill those lofty forecasts.
Financial markets have been showing signs of increased concerns for a while, but the U.S. stock market had remained largely resilient. The S&P 500 has had just two down weeks in the past eight, and the last time it had even a 5% pullback from a record high was in October.
Several analysts pointed to that backdrop of high prices and very calm movements for weeks while dissecting Monday’s drop.
“It’s a bit of an overreaction, but when you have a market that’s at record highs, that’s had the kind of run we’ve had, with virtually no pullback, it becomes extremely vulnerable to any sort of bad news,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab. “It was just a matter of what that tipping point was, and it seems we finally reached that this morning” with worries about the delta variant.
He and other analysts are optimistic stocks can rebound quickly. Investors have been trained recently to see every dip in stocks as merely an opportunity to buy low.
Barry Bannister, chief equity strategist at Stifel, was more pessimistic. He said the stock market may be in the early stages of a drop of as much as 10% following its big run higher. The S&P 500 nearly doubled after hitting its bottom in March 2020.
“The valuations, they just got too frothy,” he said. “There was just so much optimism out there.”
The bond market has been louder and more persistent in its warnings. The yield on the 10-year Treasury tends to move with expectations for economic growth and for inflation, and it has been sinking since late March, when it was at roughly 1.75%. It fell to 1.20% Monday from 1.29% late Friday.
Analysts and professional investors say a long list of potential reasons is behind the sharp moves in the bond market, which is seen as more rational and sober than the stock market. But at the heart is the risk the economy may be set to slow sharply from its current, extremely high growth.
Risks to economy
Besides the new variants of the coronavirus, other risks to the economy include fading pandemic relief efforts from the U.S. government and a Federal Reserve that looks set to begin paring back its assistance for markets later this year.
Monday’s selling pressure was widespread, with nearly 90% of the stocks in the S&P 500 lower. Even Big Tech stocks fell, with Apple down 2.7% and Microsoft 1.3% lower. Such stocks seemed nearly immune to virus fears during earlier downturns, rising with expectations for continued growth almost regardless of the economy’s strength.
Across the S&P 500, analysts are forecasting profit growth of nearly 70% for the second quarter from a year earlier. That would be the strongest growth since 2009, when the economy was climbing out of the Great Recession.
But just like worries are rising that the economy’s growth has already peaked, analysts are trying to handicap by how much growth rates will slow in upcoming quarters and years for corporate profits.
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Pastry chef Shimi Aaron fell in love with babkas — a dessert that originated in Eastern Europe in the 19th century. Aaron started making his own, and today he is teaching others how to make this unusual pastry. Genia Dulot met with the chef to hear his story.Camera: Genia Dulot
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More than half of the Kenyan capital’s nearly five million people live in slums, where many young people are lured by drugs and crime. In one neighborhood, a group is using the game of chess to help transform the lives of young people.
We are in Mukuru Kwa Njenga an informal settlement that is about thirteen kilometers from Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Among the youth here practicing chess, who number about twenty, is Sarah Momanyi. At 15, she’s a teen sensation in the sport, but her start wasn’t easy. “When I first started playing chess, it was hard because I was like the only girl, and my grandmother, she never supported me, because of playing with boys. It was really hard,” she said. It’s been five years since a sports outreach ministry introduced chess to this informal settlement to help keep young people away from drugs and crime. Every Saturday, the students here practice the game for five hours. The sport has provided a safe avenue for Momanyi and other young residents to hone and perfect their skills.
The chess initiative has drawn about 800 students from various schools within Mukuru Kwa Njenga, which has a population of about half a million people. Josephat Owila is a national chess instructor and head coach with the Sports Outreach Ministry.
“Socially they are good because they can be able to coexist with others in the society also in their schools, their respective schools. They are performing well, which means that they are critical thinkers and are creative also,” he said. John Mukabi, the head of Chess Kenya, the national body that manages the sport, told VOA the sport faces challenges in the country. “For these informal settlement areas, like here in Mukuru Kwa Njenga, they don’t have internet connection, they need laptops and things like that and also chessboards,” he said. Still, the young residents play the game despite obstacles. As for Momanyi, she continues to practice every day and hopes to one day become a grand master.
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