Month: October 2021

The World Health Organization said Monday that constructive action against climate change could save “millions” of lives. 

Ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, scheduled for October 31, the WHO is urging governments to reach concrete agreements to combat climate change. 

“Countries must set ambitious national climate commitments if they are to sustain a healthy and green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” the WHO said Monday in a statement announcing a new report on climate change and health. 

Amid the pandemic, climate crises including droughts, heat waves, flooding and hurricanes have ravaged all parts of the world.

“Changes in weather and climate are threatening food security and driving up food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, while climate impacts are also negatively affecting mental health,” the WHO statement read. 

The WHO report came on the same day that an open letter signed by more than 400 health bodies representing over 45 million health care professionals was released, calling for urgent action against climate change. 

At this year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, participants will spend two weeks discussing the measures needed to avoid what some are calling an “unprecedented ecological crisis.” 

 
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A key U.N. summit tasked with protecting biodiversity officially opens in China and online Monday, as countries meet to tackle pollution and prevent mass extinction weeks before the COP26 climate conference.

Beijing, the world’s biggest polluter, has sought to position itself in recent years as a world leader on climate issues after Washington’s withdrawal from international commitments under the Trump administration.

The online session that begins Monday afternoon — setting the stage for a face-to-face meeting in April — will see parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) working out the details of a new document that will set targets for protecting ecosystems by 2030.

Up for debate are the “30 by 30” plan to give 30% of lands and oceans protected status — a measure supported by a broad coalition of nations, as well as a goal to stop creating plastic waste.

China has not yet committed to the “30 by 30” plan.

This year’s COP15 gathering, hosted in the southwest city of Kunming, was originally set for 2020 and postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Around one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction amid human encroachment on habitats, over-exploitation, pollution, the spread of invasive species, and climate change. 

The CBD has been ratified by 195 countries and the European Union — although not the United States, the world’s biggest historical polluter — with parties meeting every two years.

Division over targets

China said on Friday it has “given high priority to the protection of biodiversity by establishing a network of protected areas and national parks.”

And this week Beijing is expected to unveil a statement known as the Kunming Declaration, which would set the tone for its environmental leadership.

But sharp divisions remain over the targets for urgent action over the next decade.

France and Costa Rica are among a coalition of support for the initiative to declare 30% of oceans and lands protected areas before 2030.

But when scientists called for more ambitious protection of half of Earth’s biodiversity, Brazil and South Africa strongly opposed.

Other sources of tension surround financing, with developing nations asking rich countries to foot the bill for their ecological transitions.

These issues will be at the heart of negotiation sessions set to take place in Geneva in January 2022.

The biodiversity discussions at COP15 are separate from weightier COP26 summit set to begin next month in Glasgow, where world leaders are under pressure to act on the climate crisis.

The Glasgow summit faces a packed agenda dominated by efforts to persuade countries such as China and India to commit to binding “nationally determined contributions” towards net zero emissions.

China has pledged to peak carbon emissions in 2030 and reach zero emissions by 2060, but environmentalists have flagged the huge amount of coal-fired power being brought online in recent years by the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases.
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Some days, all Tsimamorekm Aly eats is sugary water. He’s happy if there’s a handful of rice. But with six young kids and a wife to support, he often goes without. 

This is the fourth year that drought has devastated Aly’s home in southern Madagascar. Now more than one million people, or two out of five residents, of his Grand Sud region require emergency food aid in what the United Nations is calling a “climate change famine.” 

“In previous years there was rain, a lot of rain. I grew sweet potatoes and I had a lot of money… I even got married because I was rich,” said Aly, 44.   

“Things have changed,” he said, standing on an expanse of ochre dirt where the only green to be seen is tall, spiky cacti. 

Climate change is battering the Indian Ocean island and several U.N. agencies have warned in the past few months of a “climate change famine” here. 

“The situation in the south of the country is really worrying,” said Alice Rahmoun, a spokeswoman with the United Nations’ World Food Programme in Madagascar. “I visited several districts… and heard from families how the changing climate has driven them to hunger.”   

Rainfall patterns in Madagascar are growing more erratic — they’ve been below average for nearly six years, said researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara. 

“In some villages, the last proper rain was three years ago, in others, eight years ago or even 10 years ago,” said Rahmoun. “Fields are bare, seeds do not sprout and there is no food.”   

Temperatures in southern Africa are rising at double the global rate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says. Cyclones, already more frequent in Madagascar than any other African country, are likely getting stronger as the earth warms, the U.S. government says. 

Conflict has been a central cause of famine and hunger in countries such as Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, when fighting stopped people moving to find food. But Madagascar is at peace.   

“Climate change strongly impacts and strongly accentuates the famine in Madagascar,” President Andry Rajoelina said while visiting the worst-affected areas earlier this month. “Madagascar is a victim of climate change.”   

The country produces less than 0.01% of global carbon dioxide emissions, the World Carbon Project says. 

Half a million children are expected to be acutely malnourished in southern Madagascar, 110,000 severely so, the U.N. Children’s Fund says, causing developmental delays, disease and death. 

Nutriset, a French company that produces emergency food Plumpy’Nut, opened a plant in southern Madagascar last week. It aims to annually produce 600 tones of therapeutic fortified food made of peanuts, sugar and milk for malnourished children. 

The Malagasy government is also giving parcels of land to some families fleeing the worst-hit areas. Two hundred families received land with chickens and goats, which are more drought-resilient than cows. They were also encouraged to plant cassava, which is more drought-resilient than maize. 

“It’s a natural disaster,” said Aly. “May God help us.” 
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A tech body backed by the Australian units of Facebook, Google and Twitter said on Monday it has set up an industry panel to adjudicate complaints over misinformation, a day after the government threatened tougher laws over false and defamatory online posts. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week labeled social media “a coward’s palace,” while the government said on Sunday it was looking at measures to make social media companies more responsible, including forcing legal liability onto the platforms for the content published on them.   

The issue of damaging online posts has emerged as a second battlefront between Big Tech and Australia, which last year passed a law to make platforms pay license fees for content, sparking a temporary Facebook blackout in February.   

The Digital Industry Group Inc. (DIGI), which represents the Australian units of Facebook Inc., Alphabet’s Google and Twitter Inc., said its new misinformation oversight subcommittee showed the industry was willing to self-regulate against damaging posts. 

The tech giants had already agreed a code of conduct against misinformation, “and we wanted to further strengthen it with independent oversight from experts, and public accountability,” DIGI Managing Director Sunita Bose said in a statement. 

A three-person “independent complaints sub-committee” would seek to resolve complaints about possible breaches of the code conduct via a public website, DIGI said, but would not take complaints about individual posts.   

The industry’s code of conduct includes items such as taking action against misinformation affecting public health, which would include the novel coronavirus.   

DIGI, which also represents Apple Inc. and TikTok, said it could issue a public statement if a company was found to have violated the code of conduct or revoke its signatory status with the group. 

Reset Australia, an advocate group focused on the influence of technology on democracy, said the oversight panel was “laughable” as it involved no penalties and the code of conduct was optional. 

“DIGI’s code is not much more than a PR stunt given the negative PR surrounding Facebook in recent weeks,” said Reset Australia Director of tech policy Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran in a statement, urging regulation for the industry. 
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Facebook, in the aftermath of damning testimony that its platforms harm children, will be introducing several features including prompting teens to take a break using its photo sharing app Instagram, and “nudging” teens if they are repeatedly looking at the same content that’s not conducive to their well-being.  

The Menlo Park, California-based Facebook is also planning to introduce new controls on an optional basis so that parents or guardians can supervise what their teens are doing online. These initiatives come after Facebook announced late last month that it was pausing work on its Instagram for Kids project. But critics say the plan lacks details, and they are skeptical that the new features would be effective.  

The new controls were outlined on Sunday by Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, who made the rounds on various Sunday news shows including CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” where he was grilled about Facebook’s use of algorithms as well as its role in spreading harmful misinformation ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. 

“We are constantly iterating in order to improve our products,” Clegg told Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday. “We cannot, with a wave of the wand, make everyone’s life perfect. What we can do is improve our products, so that our products are as safe and as enjoyable to use.” 

Clegg said that Facebook has invested $13 billion over the past few years in making sure to keep the platform safe and that the company has 40,000 people working on these issues. And while Clegg said that Facebook has done its best to keep harmful content out of its platforms, he says he was open for more regulation and oversight.  

“We need greater transparency,” he told CNN’s Bash. He noted that the systems that Facebook has in place should be held to account, if necessary, by regulation so that “people can match what our systems say they’re supposed to do from what actually happens.” 

The flurry of interviews came after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former data scientist with Facebook, went before Congress last week to accuse the social media platform of failing to make changes to Instagram after internal research showed apparent harm to some teens and of being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation. Haugen’s accusations were supported by tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit. 

Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a children’s digital advocacy group, said that he doesn’t think introducing controls to help parents supervise teens would be effective since many teens set up secret accounts. 

He was also dubious about how effective nudging teens to take a break or move away from harmful content would be. He noted Facebook needs to show exactly how they would implement it and offer research that shows these tools are effective.  

“There is tremendous reason to be skeptical,” he said. He added that regulators need to restrict what Facebook does with its algorithms.  

He said he also believes that Facebook should cancel its Instagram project for kids. 

When Clegg was grilled by both Bash and Stephanopoulos in separate interviews about the use of algorithms in amplifying misinformation ahead of Jan. 6 riots, he responded that if Facebook removed the algorithms people would see more, not less hate speech, and more, not less, misinformation.  

Clegg told both hosts that the algorithms serve as “giant spam filters.” 

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who chairs the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, told Bash in a separate interview Sunday that it’s time to update children’s privacy laws and offer more transparency in the use of algorithms. 

“I appreciate that he is willing to talk about things, but I believe the time for conversation is done,” said Klobuchar, referring to Clegg’s plan. “The time for action is now.” 
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The World Health Organization is calling on governments to allocate the money needed to increase access to mental health treatment.  WHO has published a new Mental Health Atlas marking World Mental Health Day Sunday.   

Data collected from 171 countries show none of the World Health Assembly targets for the provision of mental health care by 2020 has been achieved.  Therefore, WHO says it is extending its Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan to 2030.  

Fahmy Hanna is a technical officer in WHO’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Use. He says lack of money is a major reason these goals have been missed.  He says governments allocate just 2.1% of their overall health budgets to mental health services. 

“And in the majority of the countries, most of this budget goes to psychiatric hospitals—long-stay, in-patient facilities instead of being spent on community-based mental health services, which are more human-rights-oriented and less decentralized and more accessible to the population,” Hanna said.

The WHO reports more than a billion people globally suffer from mental health illness.  The most common such illnesses include anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar and eating disorders, as well as psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia.

The data in the atlas was collected in 2019 and reflects the status of pre-pandemic mental health services.  However, health officials agree COVID-19 is having a major impact on people’s mental health and more investments must be made in treating them.

Hanna says WHO has carried out two surveys during the pandemic.  He says the findings show major disruptions in services offered to people suffering from neurological illnesses and substance abuse.

“At the time, where there was cause for scaling up mental health services around the world, we found from data of the surveys that were conducted in 2021 that actually 23% of countries have reported scaling back their community-based mental health services,” he added.

Besides the human costs, WHO says skimping on investing in mental health makes no economic sense.  It says lost productivity from depression and anxiety alone, two of the most common mental health disorders, costs the global economy $1 trillion each year.  However, it notes there is a return of $5 for every dollar invested in treating these conditions.
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From the door of the expedition base, a few small steps to the left an autonomous rover passes by. A few giant leaps to the right is an array of solar panels. The landscape is rocky, hilly, tinged with red. Purposefully it resembles Mars.

Here, in the Ramon Crater in the desert of southern Israel, a team of six – five men and one woman – has begun simulating what it will be like to live for about a month on the red planet.

Their AMADEE-20 habitat is tucked beneath a rocky outcrop. Inside they sleep, eat and conduct experiments. Outside they wear mock space suits fitted with cameras, microphones and self-contained breathing systems.

“We have the motto of fail fast, fail cheap, and have a steep learning curve. Because for every mistake we make here on Earth, we hope we don’t repeat it on Mars,” said Gernot Gromer, director of the Austrian Space Forum.

The Austrian association is running the project together with the Israel Space Agency and local group D-MARS.

A number of recent Mars probes have captivated astronomy fans across the world with robotic rovers like NASA’s Perseverance and, for the first time, the helicopter Ingenuity, offering a glance of the planet’s surface. But a manned mission is likely more than a decade off.

With AMADEE-20, which was supposed to happen in 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19, the team hopes to bring new insight that will help prepare for that mission, when it comes.

“The habitat, right now, is the most complex, the most modern analog research station on this planet,” said Gromer, standing beside the 120-square meter structure shaped like two large, connected yurts.

The six team members are constantly on camera. Their vital signs monitored, their movements inside are tracked to analyze favorite spots for congregating. All this to better understand the human factor, Gromer said.

Outside, other engineers and specialists work with a drone and rover to improve autonomous navigation and mapping on a world where GPS is not available.

Altogether they will carry out more than 20 experiments in fields including geology, biology and medicine and hope to publish some of the results when finished.

“We are six people working in a tight space under a lot of pressure to do a lot of tests. There are bound to be challenges,” said Alon Tenzer, 36, wearing the space suit that carries some 50 kilograms of equipment. “But I trust my crew that we are able to overcome those challenges.”
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A report in The New York Times says that the manufacturers of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine which “appears to be the world’s best defense against COVID-19, has been supplying its shots almost exclusively to wealthy nations, keeping poorer countries waiting and earning billions in profit.”

The newspaper said their report is based on information from Airfinity, a data firm that tracks vaccine shipments. 

According to the Times account, Moderna has shipped approximately a million shots of its vaccines to poor countries. In comparison, Pfizer has shipped 8.4 million shots and Johnson and Johnson has delivered about 25 million doses to low-income countries.

In addition, the Times said government officials in some middle-income countries have reported that their countries have had to pay more for Moderna’s shots than the U.S. and the European Union.

Protests in Rome

Meanwhile, thousands of protesters took the streets of Rome Saturday to protest Italy’s new “Green Pass” vaccine certification that becomes mandatory for public and private workplaces, beginning October 15.

Workers and employees will be fined if they do not comply with the certification requirements. Government workers face suspension, if they come to work five times without the pass that documents that the holder has been inoculated with at least one COVID vaccine or recovered from the coronavirus in the last six months or has tested negative in the last 48 hours.

The pass is already a requirement for many indoor venues, including restaurants, museums and theaters. It is also needed for long-distance train and bus rides and domestic flights.

The chief of Britain’s Health Security Agency says the U.K. is facing an “uncertain” winter with the circulation of the flu and the coronavirus which causes the COVID infection.

“We are likely to see flu, for the first time in any real numbers, co-circulating with COVID,” Dr. Jenny Harries said. “Early evidence suggests that you are twice as likely to die from having two together, than just having COVID alone.” 

Texas politician has COVID

In the U.S., a politician who has not been vaccinated has announced that he has COVID and is being treated with monoclonal antibody injections. Allen West, a candidate for the Republican nomination for the governor of Texas, said on his Twitter account that while he was not inoculated with a COVID vaccine, his wife was, but she has also contracted COVID.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that there are more than 237 million global coronavirus infections and nearly 5 million global deaths. The center said 6.4 billion vaccines have been administered.
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Congress appears poised to pass a bipartisan, $1 trillion plan that would be the largest federal investment in infrastructure in more than a decade. History shows that investing in infrastructure can transform the United States, changing how Americans move, bolstering economic prosperity, and significantly improving the health and quality of life for many. 

“When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, we changed the way we moved forever, opening up the entire country and from the way humans had moved previously for thousands of years by animal to machine,” Greg DiLoreto, past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), told VOA via email. “[And] I think we all would agree that construction of the interstate highway system changed America in ways that greatly contributed to our economic prosperity.” 

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which authorized the building of 65,000 kilometers (41,000 miles) of interstate highways — the largest American public works program in history at the time. Another earlier transformation occurred in 1936, when Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act, extending electricity into rural areas for the first time.

And the wave of projects that created modern sewage and water systems in urban areas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries left a lasting mark, providing reliable, clean water in cities and extracting pollution from sewage.

“American cities in the late 19th, early 20th century were incredibly unhealthy places,” says Richard White, professor emeritus of American history at Stanford University in California. “High child death rates, repeated epidemics, and much of that was waterborne disease that came from both ineffective sewage and impure water. And infrastructure projects changed that dramatically. Probably it’s been the most effective public health effort ever in the history of the United States.”

Dark consequences 

DiLoreto also names the construction of dams across the western United States, which increased America’s ability to farm and feed the world, as infrastructure successes. But he points out that the projects created problems for migrating fish. In fact, many of the so-called successful infrastructure projects, like interstate highways, had dark consequences. 

“They increased racial stratification in the cities. They were built in such a way that they went through poorer neighborhoods, very often minority neighborhoods, walling them off from the city as a whole,” White says. “They set them apart and set in motion a set of social changes which we suffer from still. So, they hurt poorer areas, minority areas, even if they helped middle-class areas.” 

White, who wrote the book “Railroaded,” about the building of the transcontinental railroads, contends the federal government funded too many railroads into areas without the traffic to sustain them. 

“The railroads took government money and then went bankrupt,” White says. “They were very often utterly corrupt. The money was taken off into the private pockets behind some of the great fortunes in American history, and they never really delivered the economic and social benefits that they promised.” 

And Native Americans ended up paying the price, White adds. 

“Many of these railroads ended up costing Indian peoples huge amounts of land for no particular benefit,” he says. “It’s not like white settlement was particularly successful in the land the Indians lost. So, even though it was intended to raise the standard of living for everybody in the West, it didn’t necessarily do so, and the great cost was paid very often by Indian people.” 

Bold enough?

The stripped-down bipartisan version of President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan (AJP) pours money into transportation, utilities — including high-speed internet for rural communities — and pollution cleanup. What the bill does not appear to contain is a single transformative project. 

“From the information I have, funds will be used to help us repair, replace and make our infrastructure more robust to withstand climate change and seismic risks,” DiLoreto says. “One might consider that transformative in the sense that our quality of life and economic prosperity depend on a functioning infrastructure.” 

White views the bill as backward-looking rather than forward-thinking at a time when the United States needs to transform itself to adjust to a changing world, doing things differently in the future than it has in the past. 

“We have our first great infrastructure bill, which is mostly intended to protect things we built in the past, which, I think, in the long run, that’s going to be seen as a failing,” White says. “And again, I’m not saying that you should allow bridges to fall into rivers, or that the roads don’t need repair. But it’s not transformative.” 

There is one potentially sweeping project that could help revolutionize life in the United States. 

“Broadband has had a tremendous impact on our lives,” DiLoreto says. “Without a broadband system, our ability to economically survive COVID would have been difficult.” 

The current bipartisan plan provides $65 billion for broadband infrastructure. 

“If broadband in this bill works as they intend it … and they bring it into poor areas which now lack broadband, that would be a good thing, that could be transformative,” White says. “That could have the same kind of consequences that rural electrification had in terms of education and lightening people’s workload and allowing them to do the kinds of work they otherwise couldn’t do. … But if they simply make it more effective for those who have it already, it’s not going to be transformative.”
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When Russian regulators approved the country’s own coronavirus vaccine, it was a moment of national pride, and the Pavlov family was among those who rushed to take the injection. But international health authorities have not yet given their blessing to the Sputnik V shot.

So when the family from Rostov-on-Don wanted to visit the West, they looked for a vaccine that would allow them to travel freely, a quest that brought them to Serbia, where hundreds of Russian citizens have flocked in recent weeks to receive Western-approved COVID-19 shots.

Serbia, which is not a member of the European Union, is a convenient choice for vaccine-seeking Russians because they can enter the allied Balkan nation without visas and because it offers a wide choice of Western-made shots. Organized tours for Russians have soared, and they can be spotted in the capital, Belgrade, at hotels, restaurants, bars and vaccination clinics.

“We took the Pfizer vaccine because we want to travel around the world,” Nadezhda Pavlova, 54, said after receiving the vaccine last weekend at a sprawling Belgrade vaccination center.

Her husband, Vitaly Pavlov, 55, said he wanted “the whole world to be open to us rather than just a few countries.”

Vaccination tours

Vaccination tour packages for Russians seeking shots endorsed by the World Health Organization appeared on the market in mid-September, according to Russia’s Association of Tour Operators.

Maya Lomidze, the group’s executive director, said prices start at $300-$700, depending on what’s included.

Lauded by Russian President Vladimir Putin as world’s first registered COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V emerged in August 2020 and has been approved in some 70 countries, including Serbia. But the WHO has said global approval is still under review after citing issues at a production plant a few months ago.

On Friday, a top World Health Organization official said legal issues holding up the review of Sputnik V were “about to be sorted out,” a step that could relaunch the process toward emergency use authorization.

Other hurdles remain for the Russian application, including a lack of full scientific information and inspections of manufacturing sites, said Dr. Mariangela Simao, a WHO assistant director-general.

Apart from the WHO, Sputnik V is also awaiting approval from the European Medicines Agency before all travel limitations can be lifted for people vaccinated with the Russian formula.

Getting into Europe

The long wait has frustrated many Russians, so when the WHO announced yet another delay in September, they started looking for solutions elsewhere.

“People don’t want to wait; people need to be able to get into Europe for various personal reasons,” explained Anna Filatovskaya, Russky Express tour agency spokeswoman in Moscow. “Some have relatives. Some have business, some study, some work. Some simply want to go to Europe because they miss it.”

Serbia, a fellow-Orthodox Christian and Slavic nation, offers the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Chinese Sinopharm shots. By popular demand, Russian tourist agencies are now also offering tours to Croatia, where tourists can receive the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, without the need to return for a second dose.

“For Serbia, the demand has been growing like an avalanche,” Filatovskaya said. “It’s as if all our company is doing these days is selling tours for Serbia.”

The Balkan nation introduced vaccination for foreigners in August, when the vaccination drive inside the country slowed after reaching around 50% of the adult population. Official Serbian government data shows that nearly 160,000 foreign citizens so far have been vaccinated in the country, but it is unclear how many are Russians.

In Russia, the country’s vaccination rate has been low. By this week, almost 33% of Russia’s 146 million people have received at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine, and 29% were fully vaccinated. Apart from Sputnik V and a one-dose version known as Sputnik Light, Russia has also used two other domestically designed vaccines that have not been internationally approved.

Amid low vaccination rates and reluctance by the authorities to reimpose restrictive measures, both Russia and Serbia have seen COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations reach record levels in the past weeks.

The daily coronavirus death toll in Russia topped 900 for a second straight day on Thursday, a day after reaching a record 929. In Serbia, the daily death toll of 50 people is the highest in months in the country of 7 million that so far has confirmed nearly 1 million cases of infection.

Pavlova said the “double protection” offered by the Pfizer booster shots would allow the family “to not only travel around the world, but also to see our loved ones without fear.”

Since the vaccine tours exploded in popularity about a month ago, they have provided welcome business for Serbian tour operators devastated by the pandemic in an already weak economy. The owner of BTS Kompas travel agency in Belgrade, Predrag Tesic, said they are booked well in advance.

“It started modestly at first, but day by day numbers have grown nicely,” Tesic said.

He explained that his agency organizes everything, from airport transport to accommodations and translation and other help at vaccination points. When they return for another dose in three weeks, the Russian guests also are offered brief tours to some of popular sites in Serbia. 
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Ten years ago, Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer at 56. He played a huge role in making Apple one of the most successful companies in the world. But what does Apple’s future look like? Karina Bafradzhian has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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The COVID-19 outbreak has apparently sparked a global rise in depression and anxiety.

According to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet, there were millions more of such cases last year than had been projected. Women and young people were the groups most affected by pandemic-related depression and anxiety.

The report also said there has been “no reduction in the global prevalence or burden … for either disorder since 1990, despite compelling evidence of interventions that reduce their impact.”

“This pandemic has created an increased urgency to strengthen mental health systems in most countries,” the survey said. “Taking no action to address the burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders should not be an option,” the researchers said.

On Friday, Brazil’s health ministry said the country’s COVID-19 death toll has passed 600,000. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resources Center has recorded 21.5 million COVID-19 cases in the South American country.

Russia’s state statistics service reported nearly 50,000 coronavirus deaths in the country in August, taking the toll since the beginning of the pandemic to over 400,000, nearly double the official government figure.

Rosstat released its figures late Friday, reporting that 49,389 people died from COVID-19 in August, a figure much higher than 24,661, the government tally for the same month.

Overall, Rosstat says around 418,000 people have died in Russia since the pandemic began. This nearly doubles the official total death toll of 214,000 published by the Russian coronavirus task force earlier Friday.

Russian officials explained the discrepancy, saying COVID-19 deaths are counted differently by the two agencies. The government coronavirus task force counts only fatalities for which an autopsy confirms COVID-19 as the primary cause of death, while Rosstat uses a broader definition for deaths linked to the virus.

In other developments Friday, the World Health Organization announced it has established and released the first standardized clinical definition of what is commonly known as “long COVID” to help boost treatment for sufferers.

Speaking virtually to reporters from the agency’s Geneva headquarters, WHO Head of Clinical Management Janet Diaz said the definition was agreed on after global consultations with health officials.

She said the condition, in which symptoms of the illness persist well beyond what is commonly experienced, is usually referred to as “post COVID.” Moreover, it occurs in people who have had confirmed or probable new coronavirus infections, “usually three months on from the onset of the COVID-19, with symptoms that last for at least two months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.”

Those symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive dysfunction, she said, but there also are others that generally have an adverse effect on everyday functioning. Diaz said that until now, a lack of clarity among health care professionals about the condition has complicated efforts in advancing research and treatment.

In the United States, officials said they would accept the use by international travelers of any COVID-19 vaccine authorized by U.S. regulators or the WHO. Last month, the White House announced that it would lift travel restrictions on people from 33 countries who show proof of vaccination. Officials did not say at that time which vaccines would be accepted, however.

The Associated Press reports that the number of Americans getting COVID-19 vaccines has reached a three-month high, averaging 1 million per day, as more employers mandate the shots and some Americans seek boosters. That figure is almost double the level for mid-July but still well below last spring, according to the AP.

Meanwhile, a senior White House official announced Friday that the U.S. government is shipping more than 1.8 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines — a donation that will be executed through the WHO-managed COVAX vaccine cooperative. The doses will arrive in two shipments, probably Sunday and Monday, according to the official.

U.S. drugmaker Moderna announced earlier Friday it was planning to deliver another 1 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to low-income countries next year. In a message posted to the company’s website, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the company was investing to expand its capacity to deliver the additional doses.

The disclosure is part of what Bancel describes as his company’s five-pillar strategy to ensure low-income countries get access to the company’s vaccine. The plan includes not enforcing its vaccine patents, expanding its production capacity worldwide, and working with the United States and others to distribute their surplus doses of vaccine.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 

 
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