Month: September 2021

Hurricane Nicholas officially made landfall early Tuesday morning along the southeastern coast of Texas. The National Hurricane Center says Nicholas made landfall shortly after midnight local time (0530 GMT) on the eastern part of Texas’ Matagorda Peninsula shortly after midnight local time (0530 GMT) about 15 kilometers west-southwest of Sargent Beach.  The storm is carrying maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers an hour, making it a Category 1 storm on the five-level scale that measures a storm’s maximum sustained wind speed and destructive potential. It is the sixth named hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. Nicholas had already begun to produce heavy rains and strong winds along parts of Texas and neighboring Louisiana before making landfall. Forecasters expect the hurricane to travel along a northeastern path outside of the city of Houston before moving into Louisiana during the day. Forecasters have issued hurricane watches and warnings and storm surge warnings for several communities along the Texas coast, with the likelihood of life-threatening situations such as flash flooding. Nicholas is expected to produce between 15 and 30 centimeters of rain along the region into Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center also says there is a chance of “a tornado or two” along the upper Texas and southwest Louisiana coast through Tuesday morning. The flood-prone city of Houston was swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which dropped 152 centimeters of rain (60 inches) on the city over four days. “Listen to local weather alerts and heed local advisories about the right and safe thing to do, and you’ll make it through this storm just like you’ve had many other storms,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said during a news conference in Houston Monday. Forecasters say Nicholas is likely to gradually weaken over the next two or three days. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press. 
…

A cyber surveillance company based in Israel developed a tool to break into Apple iPhones with a never-before-seen technique that has been in use since February, internet security watchdog group Citizen Lab said Monday. The discovery is important because of the critical nature of the vulnerability, which requires no user interaction and affects all versions of Apple’s iOS, OSX, and watchOS, except for those updated Monday. The vulnerability developed by the Israeli firm, named NSO Group, defeats security systems designed by Apple in recent years. Apple said it fixed the vulnerability in Monday’s software update, confirming Citizen Lab’s finding. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment regarding whether the hacking technique came from NSO Group. In a statement to Reuters, NSO did not confirm or deny that it was behind the technique, saying only that it would “continue to provide intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world with life-saving technologies to fight terror and crime.” Citizen Lab said it found the malware on the phone of an unnamed Saudi activist and that the phone had been infected with spyware in February. It is unknown how many other users may have been infected. The intended targets would not have to click on anything for the attack to work. Researchers said they did not believe there would be any visible indication that a hack had occurred. The vulnerability lies in how iMessage automatically renders images. IMessage has been repeatedly targeted by NSO and other cyber arms dealers, prompting Apple to update its architecture. But that upgrade has not fully protected the system. “Popular chat apps are at risk of becoming the soft underbelly of device security. Securing them should be top priority,” said Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had no immediate comment. Explosion in attacksCitizen Lab said multiple details in the malware overlapped with prior attacks by NSO, including some that were never publicly reported. One process within the hack’s code was named “setframed,” the same name given in a 2020 infection of a device used by journalists at Al Jazeera, the researchers found. “The security of devices is increasingly challenged by attackers,” said Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak. A record number of previously unknown attack methods, which can be sold for $1 million or more, have been revealed this year. The attacks are labeled “zero-day” because software companies had zero days’ notice of the problem. New cybersecurity focusAlong with a surge in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure, the explosion in such attacks has stoked a new focus on cybersecurity in the White House as well as renewed calls for regulation and international agreements to rein in malicious hacking. As previously reported, the FBI has been investigating NSO, and Israel has set up a senior inter-ministerial team to assess allegations that its spyware has been abused on a global scale. Although NSO has said it vets the governments it sells to, its Pegasus spyware has been found on the phones of activists, journalists and opposition politicians in countries with poor human rights records. 
 
…

Britain’s chief medical officer (CMO), Professor Chris Whitty, recommended Monday that children between the ages of 12 and 15 be offered the COVID-19 vaccine, saying they would benefit from reduced disruption to their education. More than a week ago, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, the panel that advises British health departments on immunization policies, issued a statement saying the “margin of benefit” to inoculating children of those ages was too small for them to recommend the government do so. Britain’s Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty attends a remote press conference to update the nation on the COVID-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on June 10, 2020.But Monday, Whitty, along with his counterparts from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, told reporters they are recommending to their respective health ministers that the age group be given a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. They have yet to decide on whether to give the students a second dose. Whitty stressed the vaccinations should be “an offer,” not a mandate, adding, “We do not think this is a panacea. This is not a silver bullet … but we think it is an important and potentially useful additional tool to help reduce the public health impacts that come through educational disruption.” Whitty said the CMOs have shared their recommendations with their ministers, and it is now up to the ministers to decide how to respond.  The United States, Israel and some European countries have rolled out vaccinations to children more broadly, putting pressure on the British government to follow suit. Britain has experienced more than 134,000 deaths from COVID-19, and a rapid start to its immunization rollout has slowed, with 81% of those over 16 receiving two vaccine doses. Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
…

A World Bank report released Monday suggests climate change could force 216 million people across six regions to migrate within their countries in the next 30 years, with “hotspots” emerging within the next nine years unless urgent steps are taken. 
The “Groundswell Part 2” report examines how climate change is a powerful driver of migration within a nation because of its impact on people’s livelihoods through droughts, rising sea levels, crop failures and other climate-related conditions.  
The original Groundswell climate report was published in 2018 and detailed projections and analysis for three world regions: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. “Groundswell 2” conducted similar studies on East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and eastern Europe and Central Asia. 
Both studies established different scenarios to explore potential future outcomes and identify internal climate in- and out- migration hotspots in each region — that is, the areas from which people are expected to move, and the areas to which they might go. 
The study suggests that by 2050, sub-Saharan Africa could see as many as 86 million internal climate migrants; East Asia and the Pacific, 49 million; South Asia, 40 million; North Africa, 19 million; Latin America, 17 million; and eastern Europe and Central Asia, 5 million. 
To slow the factors driving climate migration and avoid these worst-case outcomes, the report recommends a series of steps world leaders can take, including reducing global emissions in line with the goals established by the Paris 2015 climate agreement, and taking steps to better understand the drivers of internal climate migration, so appropriate policies to address them can be developed. 
 Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press. 
…

New Zealand’s prime minister has announced Monday that the country’s largest city, with a population of 1.7 million, will remain in a strict lockdown in an effort to curb small outbreaks of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus.“It’s clear there is no widespread transmission of the virus in Auckland,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, “but so long as we have new cases emerging, there are risks,” she added speaking at a news conference.Auckland’s lockdown has been extended to September 21, with 33 new cases recorded Monday, following weekend reports of 23 and 20 cases.New Zealand went into a countrywide snap lockdown on August 17. Some restrictions, allowing people to go back to offices and schools, were lifted elsewhere in New Zealand last week.Israel was warned that Israeli travelers who went to the Ukrainian city of Uman for Rosh Hashanah celebrations and re-entered Israel with fake negative COVID test results will face full criminal charges.“The Israeli government views the matter of patients fraudulently entering Israel by falsifying documents very seriously,” the office of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported that by Friday 17,000 of the travelers had returned home and 1,600 had tested positive for COVID. Israel says 25,000 Israelis made the pilgrimage to Uman. More than150 Israelis are suspected of using fake negative coronavirus test results to return home, according to The New York Times.Britain’s Health Ministry announced Sunday that it would reverse its decision to require ‘vaccine passports’ for Britons entering nightclubs and bars.Health Minister Sajid Javid said that the idea, which faced pushback from conservative lawmakers, had been shelved but would be reconsidered if rates of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, increased substantially.Britain is expected to announce this week its plans for inoculating 12- to 15-year-old youngsters in the battle against the virus. The vaccine campaign will likely start later this month.Students apply hand sanitizer in a class at the Viqarunnisa Noon School College after the government has withdrawn restrictions on educational institutions following a decrease in the number of cases of COVID-19 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sept. 12, 2021.Elsewhere, Bangladesh reopened schools after over 500 days of closure Sunday, as the government reported that 97% of teachers throughout the country have been fully vaccinated.Children were still required to wear masks in schools and the government warned against being lax on safety measures. For now, students in each class will attend school once a week.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Monday that it has recorded 224.7 million COVID cases worldwide. The center said 5.7 million vaccines have been administered.(Some information for this report came from Reuters.) 
…

SpaceX is set to launch four people into space Wednesday on a three-day mission that is the first to orbit the Earth with exclusively private citizens on board, as Elon Musk’s company enters the space tourism fray.    The “Inspiration4” mission caps a summer that saw billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cross the final frontier, on Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin spaceships respectively, a few days apart in July. The SpaceX flight has been chartered by American billionaire Jared Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payment. He is also a seasoned pilot. The exact price he paid SpaceX hasn’t been disclosed, but it runs into the tens of millions of dollars.   The mission itself is far more ambitious in scope than the few weightless minutes Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin customers can buy. The SpaceX Crew Dragon will be flying further than the orbit of the International Space Station.   “The risk is not zero,” said Isaacman in an episode of a Netflix documentary about the mission. “You’re riding a rocket at 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) per hour around the Earth. In that kind of environment there’s risks.” SpaceX has already given no fewer than ten astronauts rides to the ISS on behalf of NASA — but this will be the first time taking non-professional astronauts. Lift-off is scheduled for Wednesday from 8:00 pm Eastern Time (0000 GMT) from launch pad 39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Center in Florida, from where the Apollo missions to the Moon took off. ‘Are we going to the Moon?’In addition to Isaacman, who is the mission commander, three non-public figures were selected for the voyage via a process that was first advertised at the Super Bowl in February.    Each crew member was picked to represent a pillar of the mission.   The youngest, Hayley Arceneaux, is a childhood bone cancer survivor, who represents “hope.”  She will become the first person with a prosthetic to go to space. “Are we going to the Moon?” she asked, when she was offered her spot.   “Apparently people haven’t gone there in decades. I learned that,” she laughed, in the documentary.   The 29-year-old was picked because she works as a Physician Assistant in Memphis for St. Jude’s Hospital, the charitable beneficiary of Inspiration4.   One of the donors secured the seat of “generosity”: Chris Sembroski, 42, is a former US Air Force veteran who now works in the aviation industry.  The last seat represents “prosperity” and was offered to Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old earth science professor who, in 2009, narrowly missed out on becoming a NASA astronaut. She will be only the fourth African American woman to go to space. Months of trainingThe crew’s training has lasted months and has included experiencing high G force on a centrifuge — a giant arm that rotates rapidly.    They have also gone on parabolic flights to experience weightlessness for a few seconds and completed a high altitude, snowy trek on Mount Rainier in the northwestern United States. They spent time at the SpaceX base, though the flight itself will be fully autonomous.   Over the three days of orbit, their sleep, heart rate, blood and cognitive abilities will be analyzed.  Tests will be carried out before and after the flight to study the effect of the trip on their body.  The idea is to accumulate data for future missions with private passengers.     The stated goal of the mission is to make space accessible for more people, although space travel remains for the moment only partially open to a privileged few.   “In all of human history, fewer than 600 humans have reached space,” said Isaacman.  “We are proud that our flight will help influence all those who will travel after us.” 
…

Children in Bangladesh flooded back into classrooms on Sunday as schools reopened after 18 months, one of the world’s longest coronavirus shutdowns.The resumption came after UNICEF warned that prolonged school closures during the COVID-19 crisis were worsening inequities for millions of children across South Asia.In the capital Dhaka, students at one school were welcomed with flowers and sweets, and told to wear masks and sanitize their hands. Some hugged each other in excitement.”We are really excited to be back at school,” 15-year-old Muntasir Ahmed told AFP as he entered the campus.”I am hoping to physically see all of my friends and teachers, not through a laptop window today.”At the gate, school officials checked the body temperatures of students before allowing them to enter.The school’s vice principal, Dewan Tamziduzzaman, said he “didn’t expect such a big number to be turning up on the first day.”Only 41% of Bangladesh’s 169 million population have smartphones, according to the country’s telecom operators’ association, which means millions of children cannot access online classes.Even with smartphones, students in many of Bangladesh’s rural districts do not have the high-speed internet access usually required for e-learning.’Enormous setbacks’UNICEF warned in a report released Thursday that the pandemic has accentuated “alarming inequities” for more than 430 million children in the region.”School closures in South Asia have forced hundreds of millions of children and their teachers to transition to remote learning in a region with low connectivity and device affordability,” UNICEF’s regional director, George Laryea-Adjei, said in a statement.”As a result, children have suffered enormous setbacks in their learning journey.”In India, 80% of children aged 14-18 years said they learnt less than when they were in a physical classroom, according to UNICEF.Among children aged between six and 13 years, 42% said they had no access to remote learning.”Their future is at stake,” Deepu Singh, a farmer in India’s Jharkhand state, said last week of his children ages 9 and 10.The pair have not been to school in a year and have no internet access at home, Singh told AFP, adding: “I do not know English. I cannot help him (my son), even if I want to.”Students in the rest of the region were similarly impacted, UNICEF reported.In Pakistan, 23% of young children had no access to any device for remote learning.Some towns in Nepal have been broadcasting radio lessons due to the lack of internet access.”We are (in) a dangerous situation,” Nepalese schoolteacher Rajani K.C. told AFP last week.”If the pandemic continues and the academic sector loses more years, what kind of human resource will the country have in the future?” 
…

Chilean scientists have announced the discovery of the first-ever southern hemisphere remains of a type of Jurassic-era “winged lizard” known as a pterosaur.Fossils of the dinosaur which lived some 160 million years ago in what is today the Atacama desert, were unearthed in 2009.They have now been confirmed to be of a rhamphorhynchine pterosaur — the first such creature to be found in Gondwana, the prehistoric supercontinent that later formed the southern hemisphere landmasses.Researcher Jhonatan Alarcon of the University of Chile said the creatures had a wingspan of up to 2 meters, a long tail, and pointed snout.”We show that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than known to date,” he added.The discovery was also “the oldest known pterosaur found in Chile,” the scientists reported in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.      
 
…

Several hundred people line up every morning, starting before dawn, on a grassy area outside Nairobi’s largest hospital hoping to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Sometimes the line moves smoothly, while on other days, the staff tells them there’s nothing available and they should come back tomorrow.Halfway around the world, at a church in Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia, two workers with plenty of vaccine doses waited hours Wednesday for anyone to show up, whiling away the time by listening to music from a laptop. In six hours, one person came through the door.The dramatic contrast highlights the vast disparity around the world. In richer countries, people can often pick and choose from multiple available vaccines, walk into a site near their homes and get a shot in minutes. Pop-up clinics, such as the one in Atlanta, bring vaccines into rural areas and urban neighborhoods, but it is common for them to get very few takers.In the developing world, supply is limited and uncertain. Just more than 3% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated, and health officials and citizens often have little idea what will be available from one day to the next. More vaccines have been flowing in recent weeks, but the World Health Organization’s director in Africa said Thursday that the continent will get 25% fewer doses than anticipated by the end of the year, in part because of the rollout of booster shots in wealthier counties such as the United States.Bidian Okoth said he spent more than three hours in line at a Nairobi hospital, only to be told to go home because there weren’t enough doses. But a friend who traveled to the U.S. got a shot almost immediately after his arrival there with a vaccine of his choice, “like candy,” he said.”We’re struggling with what time in the morning we need to wake up to get the first shot. Then you hear people choosing their vaccines. That’s super, super excessive,” he said.Okoth said his uncle died from COVID-19 in June and had given up twice on getting vaccinated because of the length of the lines, even though he was eligible because of his age. The death jolted Okoth, a health advocate, into seeking a dose for himself.He stopped at one hospital so often on his way to work that a doctor “got tired of seeing me” and told Okoth he would call him when doses were available. Late last month, after a new donation of vaccines arrived from Britain, he got his shot.The disparity comes as the U.S. is moving closer to offering booster shots to large segments of the population even as it struggles to persuade Americans to get vaccinated in the first place. President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans, including private-sector employees, as the country faces the surging COVID-19 delta variant.Riley Erickson poses for a photo at Springfield Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sept. 8, 2021, where the disaster relief group CORE was offering COVID-19 vaccinations. The one person who showed up was a college student.About 53% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging about 145,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, along with about 1,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Africa has had more than 7.9 million confirmed cases, including more than 200,000 deaths, and the highly infectious delta variant recently drove a surge in new cases as well.John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Thursday that “we have not seen enough science” to drive decisions on when to administer booster shots.”Without that, we are gambling,” he said, and urged countries to send doses to countries facing “vaccine famine” instead.In the U.S., vaccines are easy to find, but some people are hesitant to get them.At the church in northwest Atlanta, a nonprofit group offered the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines for free without an appointment from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But site manager Riley Erickson spent much of the day waiting in an air-conditioned room full of empty chairs, though the group had reached out to neighbors and the church had advertised the location to its large congregation.Erickson, with the disaster relief organization CORE, said the vaccination rate in the area was low and he wasn’t surprised by the small turnout. The one person who showed up was a college student.FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2021, photo, medical workers prepare to remove the body of a coronavirus victim in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Machakos, Kenya.”When you put the effort into going into areas where there’s less interest, that’s kind of the result,” he said. His takeaway, however, was that CORE needed to spend more time in the community.Margaret Herro, CORE’s Georgia director, said the group has seen an uptick in vaccinations at its pop-up sites in recent weeks amid a COVID-19 surge fueled by the delta variant and the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine. It also has gone to meatpacking plants and other work locations, where turnout is better, and it plans to focus more on those places, Herro said.In Nairobi, Okoth believes there should be a global commitment to equity in the administration of vaccines so everyone has a basic level of immunity as quickly as possible.”If everyone at least gets a first shot, I don’t think anyone will care if others get even six booster shots,” he said.
…

At a taxi stand by a bustling market in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, traders simply cross a road or two, get a shot in the arm and rush back to their work.Until this week, vaccination centers were based mostly in hospitals in this East African country that faced a brutal COVID-19 surge earlier this year.Now, more than a dozen tented sites have been set up in busy areas to make it easier to get inoculated in Kampala as health authorities team up with the Red Cross to administer more than 120,000 doses that will expire at the end of September.“All of this we could have done earlier, but we were not assured of availability of vaccines,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, who leads a team of scientists advising authorities on the pandemic response, speaking of vaccination spots in downtown areas. “Right now, we are receiving more vaccines and we have to deploy them as much as possible.”In addition to the 128,000 AstraZeneca doses donated by Norway at the end of August, the United Kingdom last month donated nearly 300,000 doses. China recently donated 300,000 doses of its Sinovac vaccine, and on Monday a batch of 647,000 Moderna doses donated by the United States arrived in Uganda.Suddenly Uganda must accelerate its vaccination drive. The country has sometimes struggled with hesitancy as some question the safety of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is no longer in use in Norway because of concerns over unusual blood clots in a small number of people who received it.Africa has fully vaccinated just 3.1% of its 1.3 billion people, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health officials across Africa have complained loudly of vaccine inequality and what they see as hoarding in some rich countries. Soon hundreds of millions of vaccine doses will be delivered to Africa through donations of excess doses by wealthy nations or purchases by the African Union.Africa is aiming to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by the end of 2022, a steep target given the global demand for doses. The African Union, representing the continent’s 54 countries, has ordered 400 million Johnson & Johnson doses, but the distribution of those doses will be spread out over 12 months because there simply isn’t enough supply.A nurse administers a coronavirus vaccination at Kisenyi Health Center in downtown Kampala, Uganda, Sept. 8, 2021.COVAX, the U.N.-backed program which aims to get vaccines to the neediest people in the world, said this week that its efforts continue “to be hampered by export bans, the prioritization of bilateral deals by manufacturers and countries, ongoing challenges in scaling up production by some key producers, and delays in filing for regulatory approval.”Uganda, a country of more than 44 million people, has recorded more than 120,000 cases of COVID-19, including just over 3,000 deaths, according to official figures. The country has given 1.65 million shots, but only about 400,000 people have received two doses, according to Wayengera. Uganda’s target is to fully vaccinate up to 5 million of the most vulnerable, including nurses and teachers, as soon as possible.At the Red Cross tent in downtown Kampala, demand for the jabs was high. By late afternoon only 30 of 150 doses remained, and some who arrived later were told to come back the next day.“I came here on a sure deal, but it hasn’t happened,” said trader Sulaiman Mivule after a nurse told him he was too late for a shot that day. “I will come back tomorrow. It’s easy for me here because I work in this area.”Asked why he was so eager to get his first shot, he said, “They are telling us that there could be a third wave. If it comes when we are very vaccinated, maybe it will not hurt us so much. Prevention is better than cure.”Mivule and others who spoke to the AP said they didn’t want to go to vaccination sites at hospitals because of they expected to find crowds there.Bernard Ssembatya said he had been driving by when he spotted the Red Cross’s white tent and went in for a jab on the spur of the moment. Afterward, he texted his friends about the opportunity.“I was getting demoralized by going to health centers,” he said. “You see a lot of people there and you don’t even want to try to enter.”Yet, despite enthusiasm among many, some still walked away without getting a shot when they were told their preferred vaccine was not yet available.The one-shot J&J vaccine, still unavailable in Uganda, is frequently asked for, said Jacinta Twinomujuni, a nurse with the Kampala Capital City Authority who monitored the scene.“I tell them, of course, that we don’t have it,” she said. “And they say, ‘OK, let’s wait for it.’” 
 
…

The World Health Organization says low-income countries still do not have enough COVID-19 vaccines and is urging wealthier nations to deliver more doses. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has this report.
Producer: Kim Weeks
…

New U.S. studies released Friday show that COVID-19 vaccines provide strong protection against hospitalizations and death, even in cases involving the highly contagious delta variant.One study, which followed 600,000 people from April through mid-July, found that people who were not vaccinated were more than 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die than those who were fully vaccinated.The unvaccinated were 4.5 times more likely to get infected, according to the study released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The CDC also released two other studies that show vaccine protection appearing to wane in older populations, particularly those 75 and older.The studies also show an increase in milder COVID-19 infections among fully vaccinated people.Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said during a White House COVID-19 briefing Friday that the data showed “vaccination works and will protect us from the severe complications of COVID-19.”The release of the studies comes a day after U.S. President Joe Biden announced a new vaccine mandate requiring big companies to ensure their workers are vaccinated. The order could affect as many as 100 million Americans.Republican officials in several states joined Republican calls to fight the new mandate in court.Mississippi’s Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican, said Friday that Biden’s federal vaccine requirements were “clearly unconstitutional” and that Mississippi would join other states in filing a lawsuit.Montana’s attorney general, Austin Knudsen, also promised Friday to fight the new federal vaccine mandate in court as soon as the full guidelines are released.In other developments Friday, Denmark lifted the last of its COVID-19 restrictions. Vaccine passports are no longer required to enter nightclubs; the rule was removed for other venues Sept. 1.On Saturday, Denmark will celebrate its new status with a sold-out concert for 50,000 people.The Scandanavian country’s vaccine rollout has gone well, with 73% of its 5.8 million population fully vaccinated, including 96% of those 65 and older.In France, former French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn was charged Friday over her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Agence France-Presse.Buzyn was charged with “endangering the lives of others.”French officials Friday also unveiled new restrictions for U.S. travelers not vaccinated against the coronavirus. Those travelers now must show “pressing grounds for travel” in addition to the previous requirement of a negative COVID-19 test.In South Africa, health officials began vaccinating children, taking part in clinical trials of China’s Sinovac Biotech inoculation for children 6 months to 17 years.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said late Friday that it had recorded 223.6 million global COVID-19 cases and 4.6 million deaths. The center said 5.6 billion vaccine doses have been administered.Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.  
…

Apple will be forced to loosen the grip it holds on its App Store payment system, a U.S. federal judge ruled Friday in a closely watched battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games.Though app makers will be able to take steps to skirt the up to 30% commission Apple takes on sales, the tech giant avoided being branded an illegal monopoly in the case.Here are some key questions on the App Store and the impact of the ruling:How does the App Store work?The App Store acts as the lone gateway for mobile applications of any kind onto iPhones or other Apple devices. Apple requires developers to adhere to its rules for what apps can or can’t do, and Apple makes them use the App Store payment system for all transactions there.Apple takes a commission of up to 30% of app purchases or transactions, contending it is a fair fee for providing a safe, global platform for developers to hawk their creations.Apple maintains that 85% of the estimated 1.8 million apps at the digital shop pay nothing to the Silicon Valley based tech giant.What was the ruling?The ruling by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers said that Apple’s control of the App Store did not amount to a monopoly, but that it must let developers include links to other online venues for buying content or services.App makers will be able to provide links that users can click on to take them to another website to buy content or otherwise interact. Apple can still require its payment system to be used for in-app purchases, meaning it should still get its share of transactions such as buying virtual gear in a game or a subscription.Gonzalez Rogers wrote that Apple violated California’s laws against unfair competition but that it was not “an anti-trust monopolist … for mobile gaming transactions.”Big change?The biggest change lovers of Apple mobile gadgets might notice is that apps should start showcasing links enticing them to leave the App Store to spend money.Apple representatives called the ruling a validation of the App Store business model.The judge did not order Apple to let Fortnite back into the App Store, and the studio’s CEO Tim Sweeney said on Twitter that the game would return only  “when and where Epic can offer in-app payment in fair competition with Apple.”Bite out of Apple’s revenue?It will be difficult to estimate what sort of bite the ruling will take from the company’s income.Most of the offerings at the App Store are created by small developers who haven’t built their own payment systems the way Epic Games runs its own online shop, analyst Carolina Milanesi said.Small developers likely see benefits to using Apple’s payment system and provided perks, such as promoting apps or handling refunds, the analyst added.App users might also feel more comfortable trusting transactions on Apple’s platform rather than entering credit card or other information in on third-party websites.”How many developers can do something else when it comes to payment systems and how many customers are interested in using something else?” Milanesi asked. “I don’t think this ruling is a problem for Apple from a revenue perspective.”And Apple may be planning to more than offset any lost revenue with its own advertising business, according to the analyst. 
…