Month: August 2021

According to a new report published in a leading medical journal, the symptoms that linger after a person has survived the novel coronavirus are little understood by the medical community.The medical journal The Lancet says the syndrome must be studied and understood by the medical community in order to launch an appropriate response for what the journal calls “a modern medical challenge of the first order.”The syndrome has become known as “long COVID,” and The Lancet said recovery can take more than a year.The lingering symptoms include “persistent fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog, and depression.”Finding answers to the mystery of long COVID “while providing compassionate and multidisciplinary care,” The Lancet said, “will require the full breadth of scientific and medical ingenuity.”Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who have not been able to pay their rent during the pandemic are facing evictions after the Supreme Court decided not the extend the nationwide ban on evictions that had been imposed during the pandemic.Three of the justices dissented.Jen Psaki, U.S. President Joe Biden’s press secretary, said in a statement, “As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.”Earlier this week World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, continued to warn about the consequences of inequitable vaccination.Some regions and countries continue to see steep increases in cases and deaths, while others are declining,” the WHO chief said.  “As long as this virus is circulating anywhere, it’s a threat everywhere.”On Friday, India’s health ministry reported 44,658 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period.New Zealand is extending its national lockdown until Tuesday midnight after 70 new COVID cases were discovered.Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported more than 214 million global COVID cases and 4.5 million deaths. The center said more than 5 billion vaccines have been administered.
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When Hong Gang-chul, a North Korean border guard, decided to escape his homeland in 2013, he knew his relationship with his family would never be the same.Hong, who had helped other North Koreans escape, left the country in a hurry, believing he was wanted by North Korean authorities.In doing so, he left two young daughters with their mother in North Korea. When he later began to arrange for them to defect, they refused.A stocky, soft-spoken 48-year-old, Hong now lives in a simple apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, where he looks after his elderly mother, who also fled the North.Like many defectors, Hong at times struggles to adjust to his new life in South Korea.In North Korea, he manned a guard post along the demilitarized zone; now, he hosts a YouTube channel and works as a writer and commentator on North Korea issues.When punditry doesn’t provide enough income, he takes work as a low-skilled laborer at construction sites — anything to scrape together enough to send his daughters money at least once a year.“It’s impossible now for me to do the things a typical father would do for his children,” he told VOA in a matter-of-fact tone that only partly hides his distress. “The only thing I can do to look after them at this point is to send money.”North Korean escapees have long sent funds to relatives back home using a network of brokers who smuggle cash and goods across what used to be a relatively porous border with China. The remittances can be a major source of income in North Korea, where the economy is tightly regulated.Such money transfers have become trickier and much more expensive during the coronavirus pandemic. Many North Korean officials who used to look the other way, or who even accepted bribes to assist with smuggling, now report brokers to authorities, amid a wider crackdown on cross-border activity.The increased risk has driven prices way up. Before the pandemic, remittance brokers would typically charge a commission of around 30%, but that figure is now closer to 50%, according to several Seoul-based defectors and activists.“The money I send to North Korea has basically been cut in half,” said Hong, who also cited unstable foreign currency exchange rates in the North.Some brokers charge as much as 70% commission, he added.Links severedThe remittance crackdown is one of many ways the coronavirus pandemic is severing the already fragile links between North Korean defectors and their families back home.Since the pandemic began, North Korea has imposed one of the world’s toughest lockdowns, not only sealing its external borders but also expanding domestic travel restrictions.As a result, many defectors, including Hong, haven’t heard from their families in months.That is partly because brokers often help pass messages between separated family members, according to Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea, a group that helps North Korean defectors settle in the South.Even for North Koreans who talk with the outside world via smuggled Chinese cellphones, communication has become much harder.“Most of the time people are not making calls from inside their house. They are moving around to other places close to the border,” either to get a better signal or avoid state surveillance, Park said.However, any movement is now difficult, especially near the border, he added.‘Worse than ever’The crackdown on money brokers seems to have become especially intense in the last several months.The Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that relies on a network of anonymous sources inside North Korea, reported a “massive campaign” of broker arrests beginning in May.Whereas brokers who were caught used to receive three to five years of reeducation as punishment, North Korean authorities have now tripled those sentences to 10 to 15 years, the Daily NK reported.“The punishment is worse than ever,” said Ju Chan-yang, another Seoul-based defector, who told VOA she has stopped trying to send money to North Korea altogether.Even when offered a 70% commission, a broker refused to send money from one of her friends to a family member in Pyongyang who has cancer and needed money for treatment, Ju said.No escapeNorth Korea’s lockdown is also preventing defections, which have plummeted to historic lows.In 2019, 1,047 defectors arrived in South Korea, according to data from Seoul’s Unification Ministry. In 2020, only 229 defectors arrived in South Korea.During the second quarter of 2021, only two North Koreans reached the South. That is the smallest quarterly figure since Seoul began counting in 2003.Lee Se-jun, a South Korea-based defection broker, told VOA he has not helped facilitate an escape from North Korea in over a year, due to the intense security buildup on the North Korean side of the border.Another factor is the skyrocketing cost of defections.Hong, the former North Korean border guard, said it now costs up to $21,000 for North Koreans to defect, compared to a previous rate of about $13,000.No end in sightThe North Korean pandemic restrictions may not be relaxed anytime soon.North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has repeatedly warned of “prolonged” anti-epidemic measures, even as his government continues to insist it has detected no coronavirus cases.Many of those who have escaped North Korea now acknowledge it may be a long time before they will hear from family.“It’s a real double whammy,” said Park. “Along with everything else, so much of the contact is being shut off at the time when North Korean people face their biggest challenges in 20 years.”
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The U.S. is projected to see nearly 100,000 more COVID-19 deaths between now and Dec. 1, according to the nation’s most closely watched forecasting model. But health experts say that toll could be cut in half if nearly everyone wore a mask in public spaces.In other words, what the coronavirus has in store this fall depends on human behavior.”Behavior is really going to determine if, when and how sustainably the current wave subsides,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “We cannot stop delta in its tracks, but we can change our behavior overnight.”That means doubling down again on masks, limiting social gatherings, staying home when sick and getting vaccinated.”Those things are within our control,” Meyers said.The U.S. is in the grip of a fourth wave of infection this summer, powered by the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent cases, hospitalizations and deaths soaring again, swamped medical centers, burned out nurses and erased months of progress against the virus.Deaths are running at more than 1,100 a day on average, turning the clock back to mid-March. One influential model, from the University of Washington, projects an additional 98,000 Americans will die by the start of December, for an overall death toll of nearly 730,000.The projection says deaths will rise to nearly 1,400 a day by mid-September, then decline slowly.But the model also says many of those deaths can be averted if Americans change their ways.”We can save 50,000 lives simply by wearing masks. That’s how important behaviors are,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle who is involved in the making of the projections.Already there are signs that Americans are taking the threat more seriously.Amid the alarm over the delta variant in the past several weeks, the slump in demand for COVID-19 shots reversed course. The number of vaccinations dispensed per day has climbed around 80% over the past month to an average of about 900,000.White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday that in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, “more people got their first shots in the past month than in the prior two months combined.”Shahir Sanchez, 5, grimaces as Dr. Neal Schwartz collects a nasal swab sample for COVID-19 testing at Families Together of Orange County Aug. 26, 2021, in Tustin, Calif.Also, millions of students are required to wear masks. A growing number of employers are demanding their workers get the vaccine after the federal government gave Pfizer’s shot full approval earlier this week. And cities like New York and New Orleans are insisting people get vaccinated if they want to eat at a restaurant.Half of American workers are in favor of vaccine requirements at their workplaces, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Early signs suggest behavior changes may be flattening the curve in a few places where the virus raged this summer.An Associated Press analysis shows the rate of new cases is slowing in Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas, some of the same states where first shots are on the rise. In Florida, pleas from hospitals and a furor over masks in schools may have nudged some to take more precautions.However, the troubling trends persist in Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming, where new infections continue to rise steadily.Mokdad said he is frustrated that Americans “aren’t doing what it takes to control this virus.””I don’t get it,” he said. “We have a fire, and nobody wants to deploy a firetruck.”A woman is injected with her second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a Dallas County Health and Human Services vaccination site in Dallas, Aug. 26, 2021.One explanation: The good news in the spring — vaccinations rising, cases declining — gave people a glimpse of the way things used to be, said Elizabeth Stuart of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and that made it tough for them to resume the precautions they thought they left behind.”We don’t need to fully hunker down,” she said, “but we can make some choices that reduce risk.”Even vaccinated people should stay vigilant, said Dr. Gaby Sauza, 30, of Seattle, who was inoculated over the winter but tested positive for COVID-19 along with other guests days after an Aug. 14 Vermont wedding, even though the festivities were mostly outdoors and those attending had to submit photos of their vaccination cards.”In retrospect, absolutely, I do wish I had worn a mask,” she said.Sauza credits the vaccine with keeping her infection manageable, though she suffered several days of body aches, fevers, night sweats, fatigue, coughing and chest pain.”If we behave, we can contain this virus. If we don’t behave, this virus is waiting for us,” Mokdad said. “It’s going to find the weak among us.”
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As Israel expands its third COVID booster shot campaign, analysts are pointing to wide disparities between Jews and Arabs when it comes to getting vaccinations. While 80% of eligible Jewish Israelis have been vaccinated, about one-third of Arab citizens of Israel have yet to get their shots. As Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem, some root causes are poverty and distrust.Camera:  Ricki Rosen 
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African countries have committed to ending all forms of polio after cases of vaccine-derived polio increased last year, partly because of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Africa had been declared free of the wild poliovirus, after four years without a single case. But a variant has since returned in communities where not enough children have received the vaccine against it.Addressing a session of the World Health Organization’s regional committee for Africa, the director of Uganda’s Health Ministry, Henry Mwebesa, said his country would carry out a national campaign to vaccinate children against polio before the end of the year.“The challenges we anticipate is vaccine hesitancy, which has been common even with the COVID vaccines, and we expect to continue during this period. But we will try our best to mobilize the whole country, cultural leaders, the political leadership and professional associations to assist us to mobilize the communities to address the challenge, the hesitance, to make sure that all our children below five years have received this novel OPV,” Mwebesa said.The novel Oral Polio Vaccine is key to stopping polio outbreaks. Last year, Africa was declared free of wild poliovirus.In the last three years, however, 23 African states have experienced outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus 2. That’s a strain of weakened poliovirus that was included in the oral virus but mutated over time and now behaves like the wild or naturally occurring virus. WHO regional director Matshidiso Moeti said the continent needs to do more to eradicate that form of the poliovirus.“Our shared objective is to stop all polioviruses by 2023 and to integrate a polio infrastructure to strengthen border disease surveillance and outbreak response systems, as well as immunization policies,” Moeti said.Ethiopia has recorded seven cases of poliovirus type 2 in 2021. The country’s health minister, Lia Tadesse, says her government is trying to address the current outbreaks.  “We all agree that the quality of any campaign is as good as our preparedness. We follow our preparedness to the national foundation mechanisms using electronic data tools and self-assessment at the different levels up to the district and then validate those assessments,” Tadesse said.More than 100 million African children have been vaccinated against the poliovirus since July 2020. But many others missed the vaccinations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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A Taiwanese company, TiSPACE, plans to launch Australia’s first commercial rocket later this year.The rocket is called Hapith, which means “flying squirrel” in a Taiwanese Indigenous language.So far, no specific date for the rocket’s launch has been given. However, officials say an experimental flight is planned this year from a private facility on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. Official approval was granted by the Australian government this week.Developers hope the vehicle will reach outer space, at least 100 kilometers above sea level, before falling back to Earth, over the sea. The rocket’s data, navigation and propulsion systems will be scrutinized.James Brown, the chief executive of the Space Industry Association of Australia, said it will be a significant mission.“This is the first, sort of, major rocket launch in about 40 years for Australia,” he said. “So, this is a rocket that is about 10 meters high, it’s got two stages, it’ll be launched from South Australia out over the ocean and it will get to about 100 kilometers high. It is basically testing this Taiwanese technology, which is a rocket built around a hybrid engine, and if that works well, if it is all safe, if it’s all reliable, then the plan is for this company to come back and launch a bigger rocket that is about 20 meters high that can carry up to 400 kilograms worth of satellite payload into space, so it is a really exciting development for the industry.”TiSPACE is Taiwan’s first private space company, which reportedly chose a launch site in Australia because of regulatory problems back home. The Taipei Times reported concerns over the legality of proposed launch sites in Taiwan.Researchers have said the project is potentially significant for both Australia’s and Taiwan’s space industries, which have lagged behind other space programs. Australia only established a domestic space agency in 2018.Alice Gorman, an associate professor at Flinders University and space exploration expert, says Australia is well-positioned to benefit from the global space sector.“At the top of the country, in the north, we are relatively close to the equator and that is a huge advantage for launching satellites into geostationary orbit because you get the assistance of the Earth’s rotation,” she said. “In the south, where Southern Launch is developing its launch sites, we are perfectly located to launch things into polar orbit, and this is where a lot of our earth observation satellites are, a lot of scientific satellites, and we are not looking at, you know, monumentally massive, big rockets here. We are looking at small rockets, small satellites and with both ends of the country able to specialize in different kinds of launch, we really do have a geographic advantage.”Australia’s rocket-launching heritage goes back decades. For years, launches were taking place regularly at the Woomera range in South Australia, including missile experiments for the military. The site remains a major Australian defense and research facility.TiSPACE has said it plans further “suborbital launches and several orbital launches” after this year’s test flight. 
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Vietnam is facing challenges in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts from global shortages and anti-Chinese vaccine sentiment as it tries to reach herd immunity by the end of next year’s first quarter.“Shot or no shot?” Chau Nguyen asked her sister after spending nights thinking about whether to get vaccinated and whether to accept the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine. While not a vaccine skeptic, the restaurant owner in the city’s Go Vap District worried about her health after she ultimately got the vaccination.Her reluctance is understandable given the anti-Chinese vaccine sentiment circulating on social media; many Vietnamese worry about Chinese vaccines’ safety and efficiency.Chau’s dilemma came as Ho Chi Minh City entered the vaccination campaign, targeting at least one shot for 70% of its population in August. The month kicked off with controversy as authorities announced a plan to purchase and use 5 million doses of Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.On Aug. 25, Vietnam reported 12,096 new COVID-19 cases and 335 deaths, marking the seventh day in a row the country recorded more than 10,000 cases a day.The latest number brings the total number of cases in the fourth COVID-19 wave to 377,245. The COVID-19 death tally was at 9,349.Ho Chi Minh City continued to see spikes in COVID-19 cases. As of Aug. 25, the city reported 5,294 new cases and 266 deaths.From March to mid-August, Ho Chi Minh City, with a population of about 10 million, vaccinated more than 4.3 million people, more than 100,000 of whom received the full two shots, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Duong Anh Duc told reporters Aug. 13.That group included 456,000 people over 65, a priority group getting vaccines that are still scarce in Vietnam, such as the Moderna and Pfizer shots. During that period daily vaccinations ranged up to more than 318,000.High demandVietnamese people tend to accept vaccinations — a June UNICEF survey said 67% of Vietnamese are eager to be vaccinated.There are many reasons why people in Ho Chi Minh City are encouraged to get shots, even though they acknowledge that vaccines provide only partial protection from COVID-19.The government seems to have convinced people of the severity of COVID-19. Most of those speaking with VOA judged the current pandemic situation in Ho Chi Minh City as “dangerous.” Van Anh, 26, disagreed with the notion that the economic costs of dealing with the pandemic are worse than those of the pandemic.Chau, the Go Vap District restaurant owner, who ended up having an AstraZeneca dose Aug. 2, told VOA local authorities called her to get a shot. She had asked whether she could refuse vaccination and was told she could, but if she became infected and spread the virus to others, she risked being fined millions of dong.Unlike Chau, some others say being vaccinated is better than continuing under the country’s strict social distancing measures under Directive 16, which was extended for a month, starting Aug. 15.Asked about the argument that lost jobs, closed businesses and other consequences of pandemic measures are more of a risk than dying from the pandemic, Bich Nguyen, a 30-year-old who works in the media industry, told VOA, “I 70% agree with this opinion.”He said he has been desperate to start a probationary period for work since June 1 because the city has been locked down since May 31.“It cost me nearly 100 million dong [about $4,400] from a purely financial aspect, but when it comes to the mental aspect, the stress, fatigue, loss of will … are immeasurable,” he said.Thao Vu, 31, whose husband’s company has been closed since the start of the lockdown period, said that she is willing to get a shot because it is the only way to open the economy and restore social activities.“It is necessary to realize that the pandemic will not stop just because we are in lockdown. Once we open the society and economy, there is a complete risk of an outbreak again, so we need to learn how to live with it. Long-term lockdowns only push manual workers into poverty and businesses to close, leading to social evils that will increase when people are unemployed. The consequences on the economy and social security may be more serious than the pandemic itself,” she said.Vaccine shortages, anti-Chinese vaccine sentimentWhile citizens are willing to get vaccinated, Ho Chi Minh City faces challenges that could result in interruption.As of Aug. 12, the city had administered most of the roughly 4.3 million doses allocated by the national Health Ministry. Municipal leaders said that Ho Chi Minh City’s current vaccine strategy is to reach high coverage as soon as possible.Regarding plans for the future, the city said it would continue to search for vaccines. It is in talks to buy 5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and aims to get 2 million doses in October. In addition, it has said it has international commitments for another 750,000 doses.The Vietnamese government established a working group on COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy Aug. 13. The working group is expected to mobilize donated vaccines, drugs for treatment and medical supplies, as well as technology transfer for vaccine and drug production from other countries.In its first meeting on Aug. 16, group members said countries, especially developing countries, will face difficulties obtaining vaccines through the end of the year, given complexities of the global pandemic situation.The assessment is worrisome for Ho Chi Minh City. While the city faces vaccine shortages, the local government finds it hard to take advantage of available Sinopharm vaccines because of anti-Chinese sentiment.Van Anh, who works in the media industry, said she approves of government social distancing measures and stressed the importance of vaccines for public health purposes but said she will not accept Chinese vaccines.Similarly, Binh Tran, a 20-year-old student who is in his second year of medical school in Ho Chi Minh City, argued that vaccines will protect people from COVID-19 but said that he would not accept Chinese vaccines because of “low immune efficiency and unreliable data.”Anti-Chinese vaccine sentiment has prompted Vietnamese government and Ho Chi Minh City officials to repeatedly affirm that “the best vaccine is the first one,” emphasizing that vaccination is good for everyone and contributes to the pandemic fight. They have also called on people to be aware of the importance of vaccinations and ready to receive the vaccine.Since Aug. 13, having used up the doses allocated by the Health Ministry, Ho Chi Minh City has officially administered Sinopharm vaccines while promoting access to other vaccine supplies and making use of available sources.Earlier, on Aug. 12, the city allocated Sinopharm vaccines to its localities. Specifically, the Center for Disease Control of Ho Chi Minh City issued an order to provide 1,000-7,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine, also known as Vero Cell, per city region, a total of 44,000 doses.Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh City Party chief Nguyen Van Nen said local authorities should tell people what type of vaccine they were getting before vaccinations. After inspecting a local COVID-19 vaccination location Aug. 13, Nen noted an instance of people expressing disappointment after receiving Chinese vaccinations.“We should use our experience and tell people the type of vaccine in advance, so only those who accept the vaccine will go to get the shots,” he said.Meanwhile, though, he stressed that the city has no choice regarding what vaccine to provide, saying that while the city has tried various sources, “supplies are extremely limited.”
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Some of the country’s leading technology companies have committed to investing billions of dollars to strengthen cybersecurity defenses and to train skilled workers, the White House announced Wednesday following President Joe Biden’s private meeting with top executives. The Washington gathering was held during a relentless stretch of ransomware attacks that have targeted critical infrastructure and major corporations, as well as other illicit cyber operations that U.S. authorities have linked to foreign hackers. The Biden administration has been urging the private sector to do its part to protect against those increasingly sophisticated attacks. In public remarks before the meeting, Biden referred to cybersecurity as a “core national security challenge” for the U.S. “The reality is most of our critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, and the federal government can’t meet this challenge alone,” Biden said. “I’ve invited you all here today because you have the power, the capacity and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity.” After the meeting, the White House announced that Google had committed to invest $10 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years, money aimed at helping secure the software supply chain and expand zero-trust programs. The Biden administration has looked for ways to safeguard the government’s supply chain following a massive Russian government cyberespionage campaign that exploited vulnerabilities and gave hackers access to the networks of U.S. government agencies and private companies. Microsoft, meanwhile, said it would invest $20 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years and make available $150 million in technical services to help local governments upgrade their defenses. IBM plans to train 150,000 people in cybersecurity over three years, Apple said it would develop a new program to help strengthen the technology supply chain, and Amazon said it would offer to the public the same security awareness training it gives to employees. Top executives of each of those companies were invited to Wednesday’s meeting, as were financial industry executives and representatives from the energy, education and insurance sectors. A government initiative that at first supported the cybersecurity defenses of electric utilities has now been expanded to focus on natural gas pipelines, the White House said Wednesday. Though ransomware was intended as one aspect of Wednesday’s gathering, a senior administration official who briefed reporters in advance said the purpose was much broader, centered on identifying the “root causes of any kind of malicious cyber activity” and also ways in which the private sector can help bolster cybersecurity. The official briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. The meeting took place as Biden’s national security team has been consumed by the troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and the chaotic evacuation of Americans and Afghan citizens. That it remained on the calendar indicates the administration regards cybersecurity as a major agenda item, with the administration official describing Wednesday’s meeting as a “call to action.” The broad cross-section of participants underscores how cyberattacks have cut across virtually all sectors of commerce. In May, for instance, hackers associated with a Russia-based cyber gang launched a ransomware attack on a major fuel pipeline in the U.S., causing the pipeline to temporarily halt operations. Weeks later, the world’s largest meat processor, JBS, was hit with an attack by a different hacking group.  In both instances, the companies made multimillion-dollar ransom payments in an effort to get back online. Biden on Wednesday pointed to a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June when he said he made clear his expectation that Russia take steps to rein in ransomware gangs because “they know where (the hackers) are and who they are.” 
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A Spanish judge in a decision cheered by environmentalists has put a halt to backup plans for the construction of a giant telescope in the Canary Islands — eliminating at least for now the primary alternative location to the preferred spot in Hawaii, where there have been protests against the telescope.  Construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, on Hawaii’s tallest mountain, Mauna Kea, has been stalled by opponents who say the project will desecrate land held sacred to some Native Hawaiians.Telescope officials had selected the alternate location near an existing scientific research facility on the highest mountain of La Palma, one of the Spanish islands off the western African coast, in the Atlantic Ocean. But an administrative court in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the Spanish archipelago, ruled last month that the 2017 concession by local authorities of public land for the tentative project was invalid. The ruling was dated on July 29, but only became public this week after local media reported about the decision.  In the ruling obtained by The Associated Press, Judge Roi López Encinas wrote that the telescope land allocation was subject to an agreement between the Canary Astrophysics Institute, or IAC, and the telescope’s promoter, the TMT International Observatory (TIO) consortium.  But the judge ruled that the agreement was not valid because TIO had not expressed an intention to build on the La Palma site instead of at the Hawaii site. The judge also sided with the plaintiff, the environmental group Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Acción, in rejecting arguments by TIO’s legal team and the island’s government that the land concession was covered by an international treaty on scientific research. An official for the Canary Islands High Court said questions about the ruling could not be answered because other court officials in a position to answer the questions were on vacation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to be named in media reports. The island’s local elected government chief, Mariano Zapata, said it was “sad” that advocacy groups “are so occupied by administrative matters instead of environmental issues.” “I wish we were all in the same boat with the intent of creating jobs in the La Palma island so it can keep being an international reference on scientific research,” Zapata said. His government estimated last year that the telescope would generate 500 permanent jobs and at least 400 million euros ($470 million) in investment. Scott Ishikawa, a spokesperson for the consortium hoping to build the telescope, said that the consortium plans to appeal the ruling. “While we respect the court’s ruling in La Palma, we will pursue the legal process to retain La Palma as our alternative site. Hawaii remains our preferred location for TMT, and we have renewed our efforts to better connect with the Hawaii community in a meaningful and appropriate way,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. Pablo Batista, a spokesman of the Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Acción group, hailed the decision as a big setback for what he called a “fraudulent” project that he said made “fake promises” of new jobs for the island. “The whole idea of offering the island as a back-up was nothing else but as a strategy to put pressure on the Hawaii plans,” Batista said. In a statement, the group also said that “the five years that the TIO consortium has lost on La Palma should make it reflect on the arrogant and disrespectful strategy that they have carried out both in Hawaii and in the Canary Islands, emboldened by institutional support and despising the arguments of the opposition to the TMT.” The group’s concerns echo some of the concerns expressed by those fighting the telescope in Hawaii, said Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the leaders seeking to keep the project off Mauna Kea.  “I’m glad that they challenged it, because like here, the challenge helps bring awareness to TMT’s not only lack of following the process, but caring for the environment and Hawaiians’ sacred site,” she said. 
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Five members of an Afghan girls robotics team have arrived in Mexico after evacuating from their home country. The girls landed in Mexico City on Tuesday night and were welcomed at the airport by Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. “We might be very far away of what is happening in Afghanistan, but the human cause, the protection of the values and the causes that identify us Mexicans have made us commit so they can be in Mexico,” Ebrard said. An Afghan woman, member of the Afghanistan Robotic team, is seen during a press conference after her arrival to Mexico after asking for refuge, at the Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City, on August 24, 2021.The robotics team made up of girls and women as young as 14 years old gained attention in 2017 when they traveled to the United States to take part in an international competition. Last year, they worked to develop an open-source, low-cost ventilator as hospitals in many countries faced shortages of equipment to help coronavirus patients. The Associated Press quoted one team member Tuesday saying the team was grateful to Mexico “for saving our lives.” She said that thanks to Mexico’s actions, “our story will not end in a sad way” because of the Taliban. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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YouTube said Wednesday that it had removed more than 1 million videos with “dangerous coronavirus misinformation” since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.The statement by the Google-owned video platform came as social media platforms are under fire from political leaders for failing to stem the spread of false and harmful misinformation and disinformation about the virus and other topics.YouTube said in a blog post that it relies on “expert consensus from health organizations,” including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, but noted that in some cases, “misinformation is less clear-cut” as new facts emerge.”Our policies center on the removal of any videos that can directly lead to egregious real world harm,” chief product officer Neal Mohan wrote.”Since February of 2020, we’ve removed over 1 million videos related to dangerous coronavirus information, like false cures or claims of a hoax,” he said. “In the midst of a global pandemic, everyone should be armed with absolutely the best information available to keep themselves and their families safe.”YouTube said it was working to accelerate the process for removing videos with misinformation while simultaneously delivering those from authoritative sources.Mohan said the platform removes close to 10 million videos per quarter and that the majority of them have been watched fewer than 10 times.”Speedy removals will always be important but we know they’re not nearly enough. … The most important thing we can do is increase the good and decrease the bad,” he said.”When people now search for news or information, they get results optimized for quality, not for how sensational the content might be.”YouTube also said it had removed “thousands” of videos for violating election misinformation policies since the U.S. vote in November, with three-fourths removed before hitting 100 views.
 
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A Belgian-African company operating in Burkina Faso is planting trees to help curb desertification and open up lands for grazing cattle and farming. The project by the company, Hommes et Terre (Men and Earth), is taking place in Burkina Faso’s dangerous conflict zones where expanding desertification is a cause for strife. Henry Wilkins reports from Ouagadougou.Camera: Henry Wilkins      
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The U.S. intelligence community has reportedly told President Joe Biden that it has not reached a definitive conclusion after reviewing available information on the origins of the COVID-19. The pandemic has sickened more than 213.2 million people around the globe since late 2019 and killed more than 4.4 million, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. President Biden ordered the nation’s intelligence agencies in May to deliver a report within 90 days on whether the virus, which was first detected in Wuhan, China, was the result of an animal-to-human transmission or an accidental leak from a Wuhan laboratory.   FILE – Security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan, China, Feb. 3, 2021.The president ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to examine the origins of the outbreak after the World Health Organization issued a report based on its own investigation. The WHO report, which found that the outbreak more likely began as an animal-to-human transmission, was criticized as incomplete, mainly due to the Chinese government’s failure to cooperate with the global health agency’s investigation.The director of national intelligence presented a classified report to Biden on Tuesday, U.S. news outlets reported. Unidentified officials said parts of the report will be declassified and released to the public in the coming days. Vaccine diminishing efficacy Meanwhile, a new study out of Britain reveals that the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines diminishes after six months.The study found that protection from the two-dose Pfizer vaccine declines from 88% a month after the second dose to 74% after about five to six months, while the effectiveness of the two-dose AstraZeneca regimen declined from 77% a month after the final shot to 67% after a similar period.  A separate study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines against the highly contagious delta variant dropped from 91% to 66%.  Both vaccines were developed using innovative messenger RNA technology. The CDC also published a study Tuesday that shows unvaccinated people are about 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated.  The findings were based on a survey of patients in the Los Angeles, California, area between May 1 and July 25.   Emergency extension  Japan is prepared to expand its current state of emergency to Wednesday amid a continuing surge of new infections. Officials say the government will place eight more prefectures, including Aichi, Hiroshima and Hokkaido, under a full state of emergency, boosting the total number of affected prefectures from 13 to 21. Hospitals are filled beyond capacity in Tokyo and across the nation, forcing thousands of infected patients to recover at home.   FILE – A man wearing a protective mask stands in front of the second Paralympic flame cauldron at Ariake Yume-no-Ohashi Bridge, a day after the official opening of Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, in Tokyo, Japan, Aug. 25, 2021.The state of emergency was imposed for Tokyo and a handful of other prefectures weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics and remains in effect for the Tokyo Paralympic Games, which began in earnest Wednesday. Two more Paralympians have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of people in the Paralympic Village who have tested positive to at least nine, including three athletes.   In Australia, in the meantime, New South Wales state reported 919 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, its biggest single-day number of infections since the delta variant was first detected in Sydney in mid-June.      Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters, the Agence France-Presse.  
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The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced a new kind of climate observatory near the headwaters of the Colorado River that will help scientists better predict rain and snowfall in the U.S. West and determine how much of it will flow through the region. The multimillion-dollar effort led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory launches next week. The team has set up radar systems, balloons, cameras and other equipment in an area of Colorado where much of the water in the river originates as snow. More than 40 million people depend on the Colorado River. Alejandro Flores, an associate professor of hydrology at Boise State University, said the weather in mountainous areas is notoriously difficult to model and the observatory will be a “game changer.” “We have to think about the land and the atmosphere as a linked system that interact with each other,” he said in a call with reporters. “Up until now, there have been a lack of observations that help us understand this critical interface.” The West is in the midst of a more than 20-year megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change. That, along with increased demand on the Colorado River led to the first-ever shortage declaration in August, and there is an increasing threat of deeper, more widespread water cuts. Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will not get their full allocations of river water next year. Scientists will use the observatory to gather data on precipitation, wind, clouds, tiny particles, humidity, soil moisture and other things. Along with a better understanding of the hydrology, they hope to learn more about how wildfires, forest management, drought and tree-killing bugs, for example, play a part in water availability. A big issue in predicting water supply in the West centers on soil moisture and content, said Ken Williams, the lead on-site researcher and Berkeley Lab scientist. The monsoon season largely was a dud across the Southwest for the past two years, which means more melting snow soaks into the ground before reaching streams and rivers when it does rain, he said.  Climate experts said during a separate briefing Tuesday that southern Arizona and parts of New Mexico have seen impressive rainfall totals so far this monsoon season, with Tucson marking its wettest July on record. Mike Crimmins, a professor at the University of Arizona, called it an “amazing reversal” for the desert city. Some parts of the Southwest have seen as much as four times their normal precipitation levels. But Crimmins noted other spots like Albuquerque, New Mexico, are either at average levels or still lagging.  “We have both really wet conditions for the short term, but we also have longer-term drought still hanging out there because we have these longer-term deficits that we cannot solve with just one or two or even three months of precipitation,” he said. To reverse the longer-term trends, the region would need to see back-to-back wet winters and summers that are hard to come by, Crimmins said. The new climate observatory, called the Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory, brings together federal scientists, university researchers and others to build on a previous effort to study part of the upper Gunnison River basin in Colorado that shares characteristics with the Rocky Mountains. For the Rio Grande basin, the data could help water managers as they juggle longstanding water sharing agreements among Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico, Williams said. It also could help improve weather forecasting and experiments to modify the weather, such as cloud seeding to produce more precipitation. The data will be available to other researchers and provide a benchmark for any collection beyond the two-year project, scientists said. 
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Geologists on Tuesday said they had detected a swarm of earthquakes at Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, though it is not erupting.  The quakes began overnight and continued into the morning, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said.  More than 140 earthquakes were recorded as of 4:30 a.m. The largest was magnitude 3.3. Most were less than magnitude 1.  At the same time as the swarm, scientists recorded changes to the ground surface of the volcano. That may indicate magma was moving beneath the south part of Kilauea’s caldera, the observatory said. There’s been no evidence of lava at the surface.  The observatory changed its volcano alert level to watch from advisory, meaning Kilauea is showing heightened or escalating unrest with more potential for an eruption.  Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, having erupted 34 times since 1952.  In 2018, about 700 homes were destroyed when lava surged through volcanic vents in a residential neighborhood during the final year of an eruption that lasted more than three decades.  Kilauea is about 200 miles south of Honolulu, on the Big Island of Hawaii. 
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The British government is considering plans to release beavers back into the wild across England some four centuries after the dam-building mammals became extinct in Britain. The proposals, described as a cautious step toward establishing a native beaver population, would see the animals allowed to be introduced if strict criteria were met along with an assessment of their impact on the surrounding land and other species. It comes after a successful five-year trial on the River Otter in Devon, a rural county in southwest England, concluded a family of beavers had a beneficial effect on the local ecology in what was the first legally sanctioned reintroduction to England of an extinct native mammal. “Today marks a significant milestone for the reintroduction of beavers in the wild,” environment minister George Eustice said on Wednesday at the start of a 12-week consultation on the plans. “But we also understand that there are implications for landowners, so we are taking a cautious approach to ensure that all potential impacts are carefully considered.” The government said beavers could play a hugely significant role in helping to restore nature, creating dams from trees, mud and rocks, which raise water levels and create wetland habitats that support the recovery of a wide range of native species. The semi-aquatic vegetarian mammals were hunted to extinction in Britain about 400 years ago because people wanted their meat, fur and castoreum, a secretion that was used in medicine and perfumes. The government said it also planned to make it an offense to capture, kill, disturb or injure beavers or damage their breeding sites. 
 
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A new study finds the number of people with hypertension has doubled over the last 30 years to 1.28 billion, mostly in developing countries.  The study led by Imperial College London and the World Health Organization is the first comprehensive global analysis of trends in hypertension prevalence, detection, treatment and control.Data from more than 100 million people aged 30 to 79 in 184 countries showed that more than 700 million people with hypertension, a life-threatening illness, go untreated. Most do so because they are undiagnosed and do not know they have this condition.Bente Mikkelsen, director of WHO’s department of noncommunicable diseases, said lack of knowledge can have deadly consequences.”First of all,” Mikkelsen said, “we know that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of deaths. In the last global health estimates, we know that 17.1 million people are dying from cardiovascular diseases every year. And we know that hypertension is the main reason among those.”Hypertension significantly increases the risk of heart, brain and kidney diseases and is a leading cause of death worldwide. Major risk factors include unhealthy diets, lack of physical activity, consumption of tobacco and alcohol, and obesity, regarded by some as the tsunami of risk factors.Besides advocating healthy lifestyles, authors of the report say hypertension can be easily detected by measuring blood pressure and often can be effectively treated with low-cost medications.Over the past three decades, the study found, the burden of hypertension has shifted from wealthy nations to low-and-middle-income countries.  Majid Ezzati, professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London, said that while hypertension has decreased in wealthy nations, it has increased in many of the poorer countries.”So many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South Asia, some of the Pacific Island nations, they are still not actually getting the treatment that is needed,” Ezzati said. “So, in an era that we are focusing a lot on equity in treatment — and again, this is something that we have been hearing every day for the past year and a half, inequity in diagnosis, inequity in treatment — this is again something that as a global health community we need to be aware of.”The study found treatment rates in these regions were below 25 percent for women and 20 percent for men.  In comparison, it reported that more than 70 percent of men and women with hypertension in Canada, Iceland and South Korea were likely to receive medication to effectively treat and control this serious medical condition.
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