Day: December 8, 2021

With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a safe place for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. 

The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion. 

The recommendations are not just a liberal fantasy. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings.

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom started the group himself. In an interview last week with The Associated Press he said some of the report’s details would be included in his budget proposal in January. 

“We’ll be a sanctuary,” Newsom said, adding he’s aware patients will likely travel to California from other states to seek abortions. “We are looking at ways to support that inevitability and looking at ways to expand our protections.” 

California already pays for abortions for many low-income residents through the state’s Medicaid program. And California is one of six states that require private insurance companies to cover abortions, although many patients still end up paying deductibles and co-payments. 

Enough money

But money won’t be a problem for state-funded abortion services for patients from other states. California’s coffers have soared throughout the pandemic, fueling a record budget surplus this year. Next year, the state’s independent Legislative Analyst’s Office predicts California will have a surplus of about $31 billion. 

California’s affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, got a preview of how people might seek abortions outside their home states this year when a Texas law that outlawed abortion after six weeks of pregnancy was allowed to take effect. California clinics reported a slight increase in patients from Texas.

Now, California abortion providers are asking California to make it easier for those people to get to the state.

The report recommends funding — including public spending — to support patients seeking abortion for travel expenses such as gas, lodging, transportation and child care. It asks lawmakers to reimburse abortion providers for services to those who can’t afford to pay — including those who travel to California from other states whose income is low enough that they would qualify for state-funded abortions under Medicaid if they lived there.

It’s unclear how many people would come to California for abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned. California does not collect or report abortion statistics. The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, said 132,680 abortions were performed in California in 2017, or about 15% of all abortions nationally. That number includes people from out of state as well as teenagers, who are not required to have their parents’ permission for an abortion in California. 

Planned Parenthood, which accounts for about half of California’s abortion clinics, said it served 7,000 people from other states last year. 

A huge influx of people from other states “will definitely destabilize the abortion provider network,” said Fabiola Carrion, interim director for reproductive and sexual health at the national Health Law Program. She said out-of-state abortions would also likely be later-term procedures, which are more complicated and expensive.

More workers

The report asks lawmakers to help clinics increase their workforce to prepare for more patients by giving scholarships to medical students who pledge to offer abortion services in rural areas, help them pay off their student loans and assist with their monthly liability insurance premiums.

“We’re looking at how to build capacity and build workforce,” said Jodi Hicks, CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. “It will take a partnership and investment with the state.” 

Abortion opponents in California, meanwhile, are also preparing for a potential surge of patients from other states seeking the procedure — only they hope to persuade them not to do it. 

Jonathan Keller, president and CEO of the California Family Council, said California has about 160 pregnancy resource centers whose aim is to persuade women not to get abortions. He said about half of those centers are medical clinics, while the rest are faith-based counseling centers. 

Many of the centers are located near abortion clinics in an attempt to entice people to seek their counseling before opting to end pregnancies. Keller said many are already planning on increasing their staffing if California gets more patients. 

“Even if we are not facing any immediate legislative opportunities or legislative victories, it’s a reminder that the work of changing hearts and minds and also providing real support and resources to women facing unplanned pregnancies — that work will always continue,” Keller said.

He added: “In many ways, that work is going to be even more important, both in light of [the] Supreme Court’s decision and in light of whatever Sacramento decides they are going to do in response.” 
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Robotic vacuum cleaners halted in their tracks. Doorbell cameras stopped watching for package thieves, though some of those deliveries were canceled anyway. Netflix and Disney movies were interrupted, and The Associated Press had trouble publishing the news.

A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for hours, raising questions about the vulnerability of the internet and its concentration in the hands of a few firms. 

How did it happen? 

Amazon has said nothing about exactly what went wrong. The company limited its communications Tuesday to terse technical explanations on an Amazon Web Services dashboard and a brief statement delivered via spokesperson Richard Rocha that acknowledged the outage had affected Amazon’s own warehouse and delivery operations but said the company was “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.” It didn’t immediately respond to further questions Wednesday. 

The incident at Amazon Web Services mostly affected the eastern U.S., but still impacted everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services to Amazon’s own massive e-commerce operation. 

What is AWS? 

Amazon Web Services is a cloud-service operation — it stores its customers’ data, runs their online activities and more — and a huge profit center for Amazon. It holds roughly a third of the $152 billion market for cloud services, according to a report by Synergy Research Group — a larger share than its closest rivals, Microsoft and Google, combined. 

It was formerly run by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos in July. 

Too many eggs in one basket? 

Some cybersecurity experts have warned for years about the potentially ugly consequences of allowing a handful of big tech companies to dominate key internet operations. 

“The latest AWS outage is a prime example of the danger of centralized network infrastructure,” said Sean O’Brien, a visiting lecturer in cybersecurity at Yale Law School. “Though most people browsing the internet or using an app don’t know it, Amazon is baked into most of the apps and websites they use each day.” O’Brien said it’s important to build a new network model that resembles the peer-to-peer roots of the early internet. Big outages have already knocked huge swaths of the world offline, as happened during an October Facebook incident.

Even under the current model, companies do have some options to split their services between different cloud providers, although it can be complicated, or to at least make sure they can move their services to a different region run by the same provider. Tuesday’s outage mostly affected Amazon’s “US East 1” region. 

“Which means if you had critical systems only available in that region, you were in trouble,” said Servaas Verbiest, lead cloud evangelist at Sungard Availability Services. “If you heavily embraced the AWS ecosystem and are locked into using solely their services and functions, you must ensure you balance your workloads between regions.” 

Hasn’t this happened before? 

Yes. The last major AWS outage was in November 2020. There have been numerous other disruptive and lengthy internet outages involving other providers. In June, the behind-the-scenes content distributor Fastly suffered a failure that briefly took down dozens of major internet sites including those of CNN and The New York Times, plus the British government home page. Another that month affected provider Akamai during peak business hours in Asia in June.

In the October outage, Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — blamed a “faulty configuration change” for an hourslong worldwide outage that took down Instagram and WhatsApp in addition to its titular platform. 

What about the government? 

It was unclear how, or whether, Tuesday’s outage affected governments, but many of them also rely on Amazon and its rivals. 

Among the most influential organizations to rethink its approach of depending on a single cloud provider was the Pentagon, which in July canceled a disputed cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventually have been worth $10 billion. It will instead pursue a deal with both Microsoft and Amazon and possibly other cloud service providers such as Google, Oracle and IBM. 

The National Security Agency earlier this year awarded Amazon a contract with a potential estimated value of $10 billion to be the sole manager of the NSA’s own migration to cloud computing. The contract is known by its agency code name “Wild and Stormy.” The General Accountability Office in October sustained a bid protest by Microsoft, finding that certain parts of the NSA’s decision were “unreasonable,” although the full decision is classified. 
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The World Health Organization says new data is emerging every day about the potential impact of the new omicron variant on the coronavirus pandemic, but that it is premature to draw conclusions about the severity of the infection.

Since omicron was detected two weeks ago in South Africa, it has spread rapidly to 57 countries. The World Health Organization says certain features of the new coronavirus variant, including its global speed and large number of mutations, suggest it could have a major impact on the evolution of the pandemic. 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says omicron appears to be extremely contagious, with cases in South Africa rising more quickly than the delta variant. That indicates an increased risk of re-infection with omicron, he says, but adds that more data is needed to draw firmer conclusions. 

“There is also some evidence that omicron causes milder diseases than delta,” he said. “But again, it is still too early to be definitive. Any complacency now will cost lives. Many of those who do not die could be left battling long COVID or post-COVID condition.” 

Tedros says governments and individuals must act now and use all the tools available. He says all governments should re-assess and revise their national plans based on their current situation and capacity. 

“Accelerate vaccine coverage in the most at-risk populations in all countries, intensify efforts to drive transmission down and keep it down with a tailored mix of public health measures,” he said. “Scale up surveillance, testing, and sequencing and share samples with the international community.” 

The WHO chief is urging nations to avoid what he calls the kind of ineffective and discriminatory travel bans that were slapped on southern African countries days after they reported the presence of the omicron variant. 

New evidence, however, reveals that omicron was present in western Europe before the first cases in southern Africa were officially identified. 

The WHO is warning that governments are likely to withhold important scientific information if they believe they will be punished for being transparent.

The message may be getting through. Tedros notes that France and Switzerland have lifted their travel bans on southern Africa. He is urging other countries to follow their lead. 

 
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The World Health Organization said Wednesday that there is a lot to learn about the omicron variant of the coronavirus, but the world is not defenseless against it and nations need to act now to keep it from spreading. 

At a briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the omicron variant has been reported in 57 countries, and that number is expected to grow.

He said certain features of omicron, including its global spread and large number of mutations, suggest it could have a major impact on the course of the pandemic. It will be important to monitor carefully what happens around the world in order to understand if omicron can become the dominant variant. 

Tedros said even though answers are still needed to crucial questions, people are not defenseless against the omicron or delta variants, but countries must act now. 

“We are running out of ways to say this, but we will keep saying it: all of us — every government and every individual — must use all the tools we have, right now,” he said. He called on all countries to accelerate vaccine coverage in the most at-risk populations, intensify efforts to drive down transmission, and work to keep it down with a tailored mix of public health measures. 

At the same briefing, WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan cautioned against reading too much into a South African study suggesting the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was less effective in fighting off COVID-19 because it indicated a significant decrease in the levels of neutralizing antibodies against omicron. 

Swaminathan told reporters that it is premature to conclude the reduction in neutralizing antibodies makes the vaccine less effective. 

“We do not know that, because, as you know, the immune system is much more complex,” she said. “There are the T-cells, there are the memory B-cells and so what we really need now is a coordinated research effort and not jumping to conclusions … study by study.” 

Earlier Wednesday, Pfizer announced the results of its own preliminary laboratory studies showing a third booster shot of its vaccine restored effectiveness against the omicron variant. The company and its partner, BioNTech, also announced they are developing a new version of their COVID-19 vaccine specifically to combat the new omicron variant. 

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 

 
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While the COVID-19 pandemic lingers on, one might not know it by looking at 2021’s most searched items on Google. 

According to the list released by Google Wednesday, “NBA” was the most searched term in the U.S., but it’s unclear why. 

Other most searched topics were rapper DMX, who died; Gabby Petito, an apparent murder victim who died during a cross-country trip with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who was also on the most searched list. Laundrie was declared a person of interest in Petito’s death, but he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Also on the list is Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted last month of killing two protesters and wounding a third during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. 

The most searched news item was “mega millions” as people were curious about record-sized lottery jackpots. 

The most searched person was Kyle Rittenhouse, the most searched actor was Alec Baldwin, who was involved in a shooting death on a movie set, and the most searched athlete was Tiger Woods, who was severely injured in a car accident earlier in the year, Google said. 

The most searched movie was Black Widow, and the most searched musician/band was rapper Travis Scott. Scott was recently the subject of interest as 10 people were killed and hundreds more wounded at one of his concerts in November. 

While 2020 searches were dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it barely registered on this year’s list. “COVID vaccine near me” was the most popular “near me” search, with “COVID testing near me” coming in at number two.
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A Japanese billionaire and his producer rocketed to space Wednesday as the first self-paying space tourists in more than a decade. 

Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and producer Yozo Hirano, who plans to film his mission, blasted off for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. 

The trio lifted off as scheduled at 12:38 p.m. (0738 GMT) aboard Soyuz MS-20 from the Russia-leaded Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan. 

Maezawa and Hirano are scheduled to spend 12 days in space. The two will be the first self-paying tourists to visit the space station since 2009. The price of the trip hasn’t been disclosed. 

“I would like to look at the Earth from space. I would like to experience the opportunity to feel weightlessness,” Maezawa said during a pre-flight news conference on Tuesday. “And I also have a personal expectation: I’m curious how the space will change me, how I will change after this space flight.” 

A company that organized the flight said Maezawa compiled a list of 100 things to do in space after asking the public for ideas. The list includes “simple things about daily life to maybe some other fun activities, to more serious questions as well,” Space Adventures President Tom Shelley said. 

“His intention is to try to share the experience of what it means to be in space with the general public,” Shelley told The Associated Press earlier this year. 

Maezawa made his fortune in retail fashion, launching Japan’s largest online fashion mall, Zozotown. Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $2 billion. 

The tycoon has also booked a flyby around the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship that is tentatively scheduled for 2023. He’ll be joined on that trip by eight contest winners. 
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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was exposed to the coronavirus Tuesday by a U.N. official who already had COVID-19 and is isolating for the next few days, diplomatic sources said. 

Guterres, 72, has canceled his upcoming in-person engagements, sources told AFP. 

The U.N. chief was to be the guest of honor of the U.N. Correspondents Association at its annual gala in New York City on Wednesday. On Thursday, he was to participate in a U.N. Security Council meeting on the challenges of terrorism and climate change, led by Niger President Mohamed Bazoum. 

Bazoum, whose country holds the council presidency, arrived in New York on Tuesday and is expected to stay until the end of the week, when he heads to Washington. 

The spokesperson for the secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, declined to comment immediately on Guterres’ condition. 

Dujarric indicated a few days ago that Guterres had recently received his third dose of the anti-coronavirus vaccine, after having hesitated for a long time about the advisability of receiving booster shots while millions of people throughout the world have yet to receive their first jab.

 
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A major outage disrupted Amazon’s cloud services on Tuesday, temporarily knocking out streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, Robinhood, a wide range of apps, and Amazon.com Inc.’s e-commerce website as consumers shopped ahead of Christmas. 

“Many services have already recovered; however, we are working towards full recovery across services,” Amazon said on its status dashboard. 

Amazon’s Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime and robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, which use Amazon Web Services (AWS), reported issues, according to their social media pages. 

Trading app Robinhood and Walt Disney’s streaming service Disney+ and Netflix were also down, according to Downdetector.com. 

“Netflix, which runs nearly all of its infrastructure on AWS, appears to have lost 26% of its traffic,” said Doug Madory, head of internet analysis at analytics firm Kentik. 

Amazon said the outage was related to network devices and linked to application programming interface, or API, which is a set of protocols for building and integrating application software. 

Downdetector.com showed more than 24,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Amazon, including Prime Video and other services. The outage tracking website collates status reports from a number of sources, including user-submitted errors, on its platform. 

Users began reporting issues around 10:40 a.m. ET on Tuesday, and the outage might have affected a larger number of users. 

Amazon has experienced 27 outages over the past 12 months related to its services, according to web tool-reviewing website ToolTester. 

In June, websites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, PayPal, Spotify, Al Jazeera Media Network and The New York Times were hit by a widespread hourlong outage linked to U.S.-based content delivery network provider Fastly Inc., a smaller rival of AWS.

 
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