Month: September 2021

Just over two months ago, on Independence Day, President Joe Biden declared that the United States was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” Vaccines had driven down the average daily death toll from COVID-19 from more than 3,400 at the start of the year to around 400 in early July.  It didn’t last.  On Thursday, with about 1,500 Americans dying of COVID-19 each day, according to ourworldindata.org, Biden announced new measures aimed at beating back the virus again.  Public health experts applaud the stepped-up efforts, including new vaccine mandates and increased access to testing. But some say they do not go far enough. And they note that the Biden administration’s mixed messaging deserves some of the blame for the current situation.  ‘Pandemic of the unvaccinated’ Despite vaccines that are safe, effective, free and widely available, one-quarter of the adult population has not yet taken its first shot.  The highly contagious delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus has ripped through this unprotected population like California wildfire, overwhelming hospitals in parts of the country and dampening the economic recovery that was starting to take hold.  FILE – In this Aug. 26, 2021 file photo, a syringe is prepared with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccine clinic in Santa Ana, Calif.The United States has the highest death rate and the second-lowest vaccination rate among major industrialized nations, according to ourworldindata.org. “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Biden said. The United States is also unusual among industrialized nations for the level of political division over pandemic measures.  Resistance to COVID-19 restrictions that started among conservatives during the Trump administration has persisted under Biden. Republican elected officials have pushed back against mask and vaccine mandates as unconstitutional infringements of personal liberty. The Republican governors of Texas and Florida have barred local school districts from requiring masks in classrooms.  Biden’s new plan will require teachers and federal employees to be vaccinated. It mandates that private businesses with more than 100 employees must require their workers to get the shots or be tested weekly.  Biden took aim in his speech Thursday at “elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.”  Those officials shot back. “See you in court,”  Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem wrote on Twitter. South Dakota will stand up to defend freedom. FILE – In this Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, file photo, students, some wearing protective masks, arrive for the first day of school at Sessums Elementary School in Riverview, Fla.‘Not safe’ Overall, public health officials said the Biden administration is doing the right thing. The administration is mandating vaccines under its purview to make workplaces safe.  “It is not safe at this moment to return to a workspace where there are large numbers of unvaccinated people. It is just not,” said Brown University School of Public Health Dean Ashish Jha at a news briefing. “While I appreciate the rights of people who choose not to be vaccinated, people also have a right to be able to go to work and not get infected, not get sick and not die.” Jha said the administration also should have required vaccination at colleges and universities and for interstate travel, areas where the federal government has jurisdiction.  “These things largely work,” he said. “People don’t love them, but they work.” 
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The U.S. space agency on Friday will brief the media on the initial analysis of the first sample of a Martian rock collected by its Perseverance rover earlier this week. NASA confirmed the rover had collected the rock, releasing a picture of the sample inside a collection tube. The rover made a first attempt to collect a sample in early August, but the rock crumbled during the drilling and coring process. The rover moved to a different location earlier this month where the team selected a rock that held up better. Over the past week, scientists have been using Perseverance’s instruments to analyze the sample and they are expected to reveal what they have discovered at Friday’s briefing.  Former NASA research director Scott Hubbard — now a professor at Stanford University — told the Associated Press the collection “is a huge step forward in what the science community has wanted for more than 50 years, which is to bring samples back from the Red Planet.”  He said the sample appears to be one that could be dated, a main goal of collecting such rocks, along with looking for evidence of past or present biological life. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The plan is for subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, to send spacecraft to Mars to collect Perseverance’s sealed samples from the surface and bring them to Earth for in-depth analysis. Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater February 18, and the rover team kicked off the science phase of its mission June 1. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
 
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With no masks in sight, buzzing offices and concerts drawing tens of thousands, Denmark on Friday ditches vaccine passports in nightclubs, ending its last COVID-19 curb.The vaccine passports were introduced in March 2021 when Copenhagen slowly started easing restrictions.They were abolished at all venues on Sept. 1, except in nightclubs, where they will be no longer necessary from Friday.”We are definitely at the forefront in Denmark as we have no restrictions, and we are now on the other side of the pandemic thanks to the vaccination rollout,” Ulrik Orum-Petersen, a promoter at event organizer Live Nation, told AFP.On Saturday, a sold-out concert in Copenhagen will welcome 50,000 people, a first in Europe.Already on Sept. 4, Live Nation organized a first open-air festival, aptly named “Back to Live,” which gathered 15,000 people in Copenhagen.”Being in the crowd, singing like before, it almost made me forget COVID and everything we’ve been through these past months,” said Emilie Bendix, 26, a concertgoer.Denmark’s vaccination campaign has gone swiftly, with 73% of the 5.8 million population fully vaccinated, and 96% of those 65 and older.’Aiming for free movement'”We’re aiming for free movement… What will happen now is that the virus will circulate, and it will find the ones who are not vaccinated,” epidemiologist Lone Simonsen told AFP.”Now the virus is no longer a societal threat, thanks to the vaccine,” said Simonsen, who works at the University of Roskilde.According to the World Health Organization, the Scandinavian country has benefitted from public compliance with government guidelines and the COVID-19 strategy adopted.”Like many countries, Denmark has, throughout the pandemic, implemented public health and social measures to reduce transmission. But at the same time it has greatly relied on individuals and communities to comply voluntarily,” said Catherine Smallwood, WHO Europe’s emergency officer.With around 500 daily COVID-19 cases and a reproduction rate of 0.7, Danish authorities say they have the virus under control.Health Minister Magnus Heunicke has however vowed that the government would not hesitate to swiftly reimpose restrictions if necessary.Authorities insist that the return to normal life must be coupled with strict hygiene measures and the isolation of sick people.The WHO still considers the global situation critical and has urged caution.”Every country needs to remain vigilant as and when the epidemiological situation changes,” Smallwood said.Denmark has said it will keep a close eye on the number of hospitalizations — just under 130 at the moment — and conduct meticulous sequencing to follow the virus.A third dose has also been available to risk groups since Thursday.Simonsen said the vaccines have so far provided immunity from variants “but if escape variants (resistant to the vaccine) were to appear, we will have to rethink our strategy.”Christian Nedergaard, who owns several restaurants and wine bars in Copenhagen, said that while everyone is happy about the return to normal life, “the situation is still complicated.””The memory of coronavirus will fade very quickly from some people’s minds but not for everyone, and for restaurants this period has for sure been a game-changer,” he said.”The industry needs to think about how to become more resilient.”Travelers entering Denmark must still present either a vaccine passport or a negative PCR test, and masks are mandatory in airports. 
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As the United States continues to deal with the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant, President Joe Biden announced new sweeping vaccine mandates as part of a multipronged push to end the pandemic. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
Producer: Mary Cieslak 
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Africa is slated to receive 25% fewer COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year than it was expecting, the director of the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa said Thursday.The African continent, already struggling with a thin supply of vaccines while many wealthy nations initiate booster shot programs, has fully vaccinated just more than 3% of its residents.The global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX announced Wednesday that it expects to receive about 1.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, as opposed to the projection of 1.9 billion doses it received in June.”Yesterday, #COVAX shipment forecasts for the rest of the year were revised downwards by 25%, in part because of the prioritization of bilateral deals over international solidarity.” – Dr @MoetiTshidi— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) September 9, 2021Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director, said during a press conference Thursday that the United States has thrown away three times as many vaccine doses as COVAX has delivered to African countries since March.COVAX delivered more than 5 million doses to Africa in the past week, but the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention said that as of September 1, U.S. pharmacies have thrown away more than 15 million doses since March.The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday implored wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that poorer countries have more access to the vaccine. Tedros had previously asked rich countries not to provide boosters until September.Also on Thursday, Turkey’s health minister said the country is soon likely to approve a locally made vaccine, which began late-stage trials in June, for emergency use. Ankara expects it will start mass producing “Turkovac” this October.Italy sent teams to the island of Lampedusa to inoculate newly arrived immigrants. Lampedusa is one of the main arrival points for African migrants from Libya and Tunisia. Roughly 40,000 migrants from North Africa have arrived in Italy so far this year, twice as many as in 2020.In Los AngelesMeanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education approved a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years and older. Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.The measure also requires students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October. The district will allow medical or religious exemptions.Los Angeles is the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest, with just more than 600,000 students.In JapanSeparately, Japan announced Thursday that it would extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until Sept. 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated.Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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The U.S. government sued the southwestern state of Texas on Thursday to try to block its new law that bans abortions in the state after about six weeks of pregnancy, the most restrictive anti-abortion statute in the country. Attorney General Merrick Garland, at a Washington news conference, said the Texas law “is clearly unconstitutional under long-term Supreme Court precedents” granting women in the U.S. the constitutional right to have an abortion. He said the Department of Justice, in bringing the lawsuit against the country’s second-largest state, “has a duty to uphold the rule of law.” He said “all provisions” of the law concerned him.  The U.S. Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote last week, allowed the law to take effect, a decision praised by anti-abortion advocates looking to eventually overturn the court’s landmark 1973 decision declaring that women in the U.S. hold a constitutional right to have an abortion. Those supporting U.S. abortion rights, including President Joe Biden, derided the court’s late-night decision, which has stopped most abortions in the state. Biden warned that the law would cause “unconstitutional chaos” because it gives private citizens, rather than government officials, the right to enforce it by filing civil lawsuits against people who help a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks, whether it be a doctor who performs the procedure or someone who drives a woman to a clinic. The law allows people winning such lawsuits to collect at least $10,000 and makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. FILE – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks in the House Chamber in Austin, Texas, Feb. 5, 2019.Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said this week that the state would strive to “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas” by arresting and prosecuting them. He defended the law, saying women who were raped would still have six weeks to end their pregnancy. Many women do not realize they are pregnant at six weeks. Those supporting abortion rights in the U.S. fear the high court’s ruling allowing the Texas law to take effect presages an erosion or reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing abortion rights. In its new term starting next month, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that the southern state of Mississippi adopted. 
 
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A series of spacewalks is underway outside the International Space Station. Plus, a fire scare occurs in the Russian section of the ISS, and amateur stargazers have set up camp at an ancient Mesopotamian site in modern-day Iraq. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.
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The U.S. government is moving Thursday to try to block enforcement of the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the country, a new statute in the Southwestern state of Texas that bans the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy. The U.S. Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote last week, allowed the law to stand, a decision praised by anti-abortion advocates looking to eventually overturn the court’s landmark 1973 decision declaring that women in the U.S. hold a constitutional right to have an abortion. Those supporting U.S. abortion rights, including President Joe Biden, derided the court’s late-night decision upholding the new law in the country’s second-biggest state. The Justice Department called a news conference to spell out its case against Texas. Biden warned that the law would cause “unconstitutional chaos” because it gives private citizens, rather than government officials, the right to enforce it by filing civil lawsuits against people who help a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks, whether it be a doctor who performs the procedure or someone who drives a woman to a clinic. The law allows people winning such lawsuits to collect at least $10,000 and makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. FILE – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks in the House Chamber in Austin, Texas, Feb. 5, 2019.Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said this week that the state would strive to “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas” by arresting and prosecuting them. He defended the law, saying women who were raped would still have six weeks to end their pregnancy. Many women do not realize they are pregnant at six weeks. Those supporting abortion rights in the U.S. fear the high court’s ruling presages overturning or sharply limiting the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision favoring abortion rights. In its new term starting next month, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that the Southern state of Mississippi adopted. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland suggested earlier this week that the Justice Department could intervene in the Texas case, saying that a 1994 law known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act prohibits interfering with a person obtaining or providing reproductive health services. 
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Teams working on two continents have marked similar milestones in their respective efforts to tap an energy source key to the fight against climate change: They’ve each produced very impressive magnets.  On Thursday, scientists at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France took delivery of the first part of a massive magnet so strong its American manufacturer claims it can lift an aircraft carrier.Almost 20 meters (about 60 feet) tall and more than 4 meters (14 feet) in diameter when fully assembled, the magnet is a crucial component in the attempt by 35 nations to master nuclear fusion.Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists and a private company announced separately this week that they, too, have hit a milestone with the successful test of the world’s strongest high-temperature superconducting magnet that may allow the team to leapfrog ITER in the race to build a “sun on earth.”Unlike existing fission reactors that produce radioactive waste and sometimes catastrophic meltdowns, proponents of fusion say it offers a clean and virtually limitless supply of energy. If, that is, scientists and engineers can figure out how to harness it — they have been working on the problem for nearly a century.Rather than splitting atoms, fusion mimics a process that occurs naturally in stars to meld two hydrogen atoms together and produce a helium atom — as well as a whole lot of energy.Achieving fusion requires unimaginable amounts of heat and pressure. One approach to achieving that is to turn the hydrogen into an electrically charged gas, or plasma, which is then controlled in a donut-shaped vacuum chamber.This is done with the help of powerful superconducting magnets such as the “central solenoid” that General Atomics began shipping from San Diego to France this summer.Scientists say ITER is now 75% complete and they aim to fire up the reactor by early 2026.”Each completion of a major first-of-a-kind component — such as the central solenoid’s first module — increases our confidence that we can complete the complex engineering of the full machine,” said ITER’s spokesman Laban Coblentz.The goal is to produce 10 times more energy by 2035 than is required to heat up the plasma, thereby proving that fusion technology is viable.Among those hoping to beat them to the prize is the team in Massachusetts, which said it has managed to create magnetic field twice that of ITER’s with a magnet about 40 times smaller.The scientists from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems said they may have a device ready for everyday use in the early 2030s.”This was designed to be commercial,” said MIT Vice President Maria Zuber, a prominent physicist. “This was not designed to be a science experiment.”While not designed to produce electricity itself, ITER would also serve as the blueprint for similar but more sophisticated reactors if it is successful.  Proponents of the project argue that even if it fails, the countries involved will have mastered technical skills that can be used in other fields, from particle physics to designing advanced materials capable of withstanding the heat of the sun.All nations contributing to the project — including the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India, South Korea and much of Europe — share in the $20 billion cost and benefit jointly from the scientific results and intellectual property generated.The central solenoid is just one of 12 large U.S. contributions to ITER, each of which is built by American companies, with funds allocated by Congress going toward U.S. jobs.”Having the first module safely delivered to the ITER facility is such a triumph because every part of the manufacturing process had to be designed from the ground up,” said John Smith, director of engineering and projects at General Atomics.The company spent years developing new technologies and methods to make and move the magnet parts, including coils weighing 250,000 pounds, across their facility and then around the globe.”The engineering know-how that was established during this period is going to be invaluable for future projects of this scale,” Smith said.”The goal of ITER is to prove that fusion can be a viable and economically practical source of energy, but we are already looking ahead at what comes next,” he added. “That’s going to be key to making fusion work commercially, and we now have a good idea of what needs to happen to get there.”Betting on nuclear energy — first fission and then fusion — is still the world’s best chance to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, said Frederick Bordry, who oversaw the design and construction of another fiendishly complex scientific machine, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.”When we speak about the cost of ITER, it’s peanuts in comparison with the impact of climate change,” he said. “We will have to have the money for it.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to call for a summit on boosting the global supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, according to U.S. news outlets. The summit will be held during the United Nations General Assembly later this month.  The Washington Post reports the topics will include coordination among world leaders to collectively tackle the health crisis and address inequities, including the slow rate of vaccinations in the developing world.The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday implored wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that poorer countries have more access to the vaccine.  Tedros had previously asked rich countries not to provide boosters until September.The global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX also announced Wednesday that it expects to receive about 1.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, as opposed to the projection of 1.9 billion doses it made in June.FILE – Workers unload 1.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine donated by the U.S. through the COVAX program, at the Armando Escalon aerial base, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, June 27, 2021, in this handout picture released by the Honduran presidency.Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education is expected to approve a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years old and older.  Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.  The measure would also require students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October.  If the measure passes, Los Angeles would be the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest with just over 600,000 students. Separately, Japan announced Thursday that it will extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until September 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.  Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden will unveil a new strategy to combat the dramatic surge of COVID-19 cases across the nation during a major White House speech Thursday afternoon.White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday that Biden will spell out six methods designed to encourage more Americans to get inoculated against the virus, including involvement of the private sector.Biden’s speech comes as the U.S. is experiencing a growing number of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths sparked by the highly contagious delta variant, which has completely upended the administration’s aggressive vaccination efforts during its first months in office.The majority of new infections have been among Americans who have not been vaccinated, including a spike in the number of young children who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine.The American Academy of Pediatrics said cases among children soared to 750,000 between Aug. 5 and Sept. 2.The latest surge has pushed hospitals and health care workers across the U.S. to a breaking point, with intensive care units filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients, and stalled the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic, a key goal of Biden’s first year in office.
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It’s been 20 years since terrorists rammed passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. The wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq were wars in which medical advances saved more lives than in any other war. VOA’s Carol Pearson tells us about one of those advances.
Camera: Mike Burke
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The Texas anti-abortion law, which was allowed to go into effect last week despite being in clear conflict with decades-old precedents set by the United States Supreme Court in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, is a complex piece of legal engineering. It was intentionally built to avoid initial judicial review and structured to compel people to comply with it, even if they believe it violates their constitutional rights, through fear of being bombarded with excessive legal fees that could bankrupt them. Attorney General Merrick Garland this week ordered the Justice Department to explore “all options” to challenge Texas’s highly restrictive abortion law and to protect abortion clinics that are under attack. Many Democrats and abortion rights proponents caution, however, that while they believe the law is unconstitutional, it was crafted in a way that makes legal challenges difficult.  FILE – U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, June 25, 2021.Senate Bill 8, as the legislation is called, makes it illegal in Texas for a doctor to perform an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy — before most women are even aware that they are pregnant. Crucially, however, the law explicitly bans state officials from acting to enforce the law, delegating that responsibility instead to private citizens, who are eligible to recover a $10,000 judgment, plus attorney’s fees, from anyone who they can prove aided or abetted a woman seeking an abortion. The law casts a broad net, meaning that not only doctors, but clinicians and clinic workers, and even relatives who help pay for an abortion are liable. However, the plain language of the law states that only people who “knowingly” assist someone seeking an abortion are liable, meaning that the commonly cited example of an Uber driver being exposed to a lawsuit under the bill is incorrect, experts say. The Supreme Court last week, in a 5-4 decision, declined to block the law from coming into effect on procedural grounds, arguing that because there is no specific individual charged with enforcing the law, there is nobody who can be sued over it, and therefore, nobody the court can enjoin from enforcing it.  President Joe Biden sharply criticized the Supreme Court ruling and instructed Garland to explore ways to challenge the Texas law.Thus far, abortion clinics in Texas have been careful to observe the new law — which makes no exceptions for rape or incest — and avoid drawing fire from self-appointed citizens or groups claiming violations of the new abortion restrictions. However, it is likely that eventually someone will defy the six-week limit on pregnancies before a procedure, leading to a constitutional test case. Opponents furious FILE – Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks in Lubbock, Texas, March 2, 2021.Opponents of the legislation have been scathing in their criticism of the Texas legislature and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott who signed the legislation. “Texas politicians have succeeded for the moment in making a mockery of the rule of law, upending abortion care in Texas, and forcing patients to leave the state — if they have the means — to get constitutionally protected health care,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “This should send chills down the spine of everyone in this country who cares about the Constitution. We will keep fighting this ban until abortion access is restored in Texas.” Others aimed their anger at the Supreme Court for choosing not to block enforcement of the statute. “The Supreme Court has ignored 50 years of precedent and set back the hands of time, essentially allowing Texas to be a pre-Roe [v. Wade] state,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “This is a travesty for the nearly seven million women of reproductive age, and everyone who supports access to safe, legal abortion.” FILE – Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, center, speaks against a bill that would ban abortions as early as six weeks and allow private citizens to enforce it through civil lawsuits, in the House Chamber in Austin, Texas, May 5, 2021.Supporters claim victory Supporters of the law, however, see it as a victory over a court system that they believe is rigged against them. The anti-abortion movement had two main goals in advancing the legislation, said John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, a group closely involved in drafting the legislation.  “The first one was, how do we have a pro-life policy actually be enforced, when we have lawless district attorneys who are not enforcing pro-life laws,” Seago said. “The second one is these activist federal judges — how do you get around them? [They are] looking for excuses to hold up laws, even though we can win ultimately.” Genesis of the law The roots of S.B. 8 can be traced back to an article by a former solicitor general of the state of Texas, Jonathan F. Mitchell, which was published in the Virginia Law Review in 2018. Called The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, the article argued that when federal courts block enforcement of state laws, those laws are not, as popularly believed, “struck down.” Rather, they remain on the books and are simply not enforced.  That leaves room for future, and even retroactive, enforcement, if a later Supreme Court overrules a previous opinion enjoining enforcement. And, critically for this case, Mitchell theorized that a bill that provided a private cause of action in state court could continue to be enforced by private citizens, even if a federal court has enjoined state officials from enforcing it. That would remain the case unless a person sued under the law pursued an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. “Unless and until the Supreme Court of the United States declares a statute unconstitutional, the States remain free to authorize and entertain private enforcement actions in their own courts — even after a federal district or circuit court has disapproved the statute and enjoined the State’s executive from enforcing it,” Mitchell wrote. Mitchell was closely involved in the drafting of S.B. 8. Private cause of action It may not be clear to a layperson how a private individual with no connection to a person who gets an abortion — and no way to show that they have suffered personal harm because of it — can have the standing to sue in the first place.  If this were a federal law, that objection would have force. But under state law in Texas, the legislature is allowed to specifically confer standing on private individuals in certain kinds of cases if it chooses to do so. In S.B. 8, that is precisely what state legislators did.  Most states have similar rules allowing the legislature to confer standing on private citizens, which is one reason why governors and legislators in at least seven states across the country have said that they are preparing legislation similar to S.B. 8 in their states. FILE – A security guard opens the door to the Whole Women’s Health Clinic in Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 1, 2021.Fear of legal fees The law is structured to compel compliance — even if a defendant in a potential case believes that their rights are being violated and that they would be vindicated in court — through fear of legal bills.The law itself does not allow someone sued under it to recover legal fees from their accuser, even if they are able to demonstrate their innocence. However, it does allow the accuser to recover legal fees from the defendant in the case of a guilty verdict.  But the burden of legal fees is potentially even heavier than it seems. If Mitchell’s theory is correct, and enforcement of the law could only ever be truly blocked by a Supreme Court ruling that it is unconstitutional, that means someone who wants to challenge it is going to face years of lawsuits involving huge legal fees. But in the United States, a defendant in a federal lawsuit who is asserting his or her constitutional rights are being violated is generally not eligible to recover legal fees.  In the law review article, Mitchell lays out the implications plainly.”Of course, the defendants in these private enforcement actions can reassert the constitutional objections to the statute — and perhaps they will persuade the court to follow the reasoning of the courts that have disapproved the statute,” he wrote. “But a defendant has no entitlement to attorneys’ fees when he asserts his constitutional rights defensively in a private enforcement action, and the need to foot one’s own legal bills may induce statutory compliance even for those who expect to prevail on their constitutional objections.” Boomerang effect There has been much speculation that the unique legal structure of the Texas law might just as easily be applied to other areas in which lawmakers want to curtail specific rights that have been guaranteed by court rulings.  For example, some have suggested that states where a majority of residents disagree with the Supreme Court’s rulings on handgun bans might create a private right of action against gun dealers who sell them. The point would not be to win an argument over the constitutionality of the statute, but to compel compliance with it anyway. Seago, of Texas Right to Life, said that the “narrow focus” of his organization is such that the broader implications of the use of this novel legal structure are not a great concern, but that the group welcomes the opportunity to resolve any issues in court.  “The question kind of assumes you are headed towards a collision in our federalist principles. But that’s an important legal question that should be answered, not avoided just because it’s a new question,” he said. 
 
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Malawi health authorities fear vaccine hesitancy could lead to tens of thousands of COVID-19 jabs expiring early next month.  With just 2% of Malawi’s population vaccinated, authorities hope to increase uptake by deploying mobile vaccination clinics to bring the vaccine closer to people.Malawi has so far received just over 1.2 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines under the COVAX facility.But vaccine hesitancy in Malawi is widespread largely because of misperceptions of the jabs’ efficacy and safety.   Dr. Gift Kawalazira, who heads Health and Social Services at the Blantyre Health Office, says there’s yet another reason for the low vaccination rate.   “We have noticed that with the coming of summer, the number of cases has drastically reduced, and also the number of people coming for vaccination have reduced from having over 2,000 people per day to having just about 400 people per day now,” he said.Kawalazira said deploying mobile vaccination centers will help increase vaccine uptake, noting that when the initiative was launched Saturday over 600 people were vaccinated – and six companies booked the mobile clinic to come and vaccinate their workers.He predicted the initiative will help Malawi meet its vaccination target of 60% by 2022 and allay fears that more vaccines will expire.“Johnson & Johnson is actually expiring after December and AstraZeneca has got two different batches, one of which is expiring next month, and the other one is going up until December,” he said.In May, Malawi incinerated about 20,000 AstraZeneca doses that had expired after many people refused the jab due to concerns about its safety and efficacy.Malawi health ministry statistics show that currently only about 700,000 people have had one jab, while about 400,000 are fully vaccinated, representing 2.1% of the country’s 18 million population.Simeon Phiri gets vaccinated at a mobile vaccination clinic at Limbe Market in Blantyre. Health authorities say the initiative will increase vaccine uptake among Malawians. (Lameck Masina/VOA)Simeon Phiri got his jab Wednesday at a mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Limbe market in Blantyre. He said the convenience with which he could get the jab played an important role for him.  “This has helped me a lot because it has provided me easy access to the vaccine instead of walking a long distance. For example, I came here to Limbe to do some errands, but I also have found an opportunity to get vaccinated,” Phiri said.  To increase uptake in rural areas, the government is currently working with traditional leaders to mobilize and tell their communities about the need to be vaccinated when the mobile clinics visit their villages. 
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