Day: January 10, 2022

A snowy owl apparently touring iconic buildings of the nation’s capital is captivating birdwatchers who manage to get a glimpse of the rare, resplendent visitor from the Arctic.

Far from its summer breeding grounds in Canada, the snowy owl was first seen on January 3, the day a winter storm dumped eight inches of snow on the city. 

Since then, it’s been spotted in the evenings flying around Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, landing on Union Station, the National Postal Museum, various Senate buildings, and Capitol Police headquarters. 

Late last week about three dozen people in thick coats trained their binoculars on the football-sized bird with bright yellow eyes as it perched on the stone head of Archimedes, a famous ancient Greek mathematician, carved above the train station entrance.

The nocturnal hunter appears to be targeting the city’s plentiful downtown rat population. 

“Snowy owls are coming from a part of the world where they see almost nothing human, from completely treeless open Arctic tundra,” said Scott Weidensaul, a researcher at the nonprofit Project SNOWStorm, which tracks snowy owl movements.

Some owls migrate south out of the Arctic every winter, but the number fluctuates, he said. About every 3 to 5 years, a spike in the population of lemmings, their chief food source, results in a larger number of surviving owl chicks. In those “irruption” years, more birds migrate and migrate farther. 

Most winters, North American snowy owls don’t go much below the Great Lakes or Cape Cod area, Weidensaul said. 

However, “in irruption years, they tend to go farther south than they usually would,” he said. “A lot of the snowy owls we’re seeing now in the East and Upper Midwest are young birds, on their first migration.” 

On eBird, a nonprofit platform used by birdwatchers, snowy owls have been reported this winter in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina and Maryland.

Since it was first seen, the Capitol Hill owl has attracted a few dozen birdwatchers each night hoping to spot the same owl species that delivers messages to Harry Potter.

The onlookers have included new birdwatchers and those who have been doing it for decades, like the Swiss ambassador to the U.S., Jacques Pitteloud. Many are hoping for a “lifer” — the first time a birdwatcher has seen a particular bird.

Last Thursday, the owl perched on a bronze eagle atop a flagpole. Then it soared, its 5-foot white wingspan silhouetted against the inky night sky, to land on a large stone orb held by carved birds, part of an ornate fountain. 

Pitteloud picked up his camera tripod and ran through the grass to get a better view. When he later posted on Facebook, the 50-year veteran birdwatcher wrote, “The Superstar of Union Station! Snowy owl, a lifer for me in a very, very unlikely setting!” 

Kerry Snyder, who lives in Washington, said she recently became an avid birdwatcher. “I got into birding during the pandemic — it’s a great way to connect with people outdoors, when that’s been the safest place to be.”

She reminded other onlookers not to use flash photography or approach the owl too closely, lest the bird feel startled or threatened — good practices for viewers observing any bird of prey. 

Scientists consider snowy owls to be “vulnerable ” to extinction and estimate the total global population to be less than 30,000 birds. 

Weidensaul said that threats to snowy owls include urban hazards — in particular, vehicle collisions and poisons used to kill prey animals like rats, which can also kill raptors — as well as climate change.

“The climate is changing more dramatically in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth,” he said, and that may make sightings like this one even rarer. In some parts of the Arctic, thinning ice is already reducing the number of boom years for lemmings.

After decades studying snowy owls, Weidensaul still feels awe: “This is a piece of the Arctic in downtown D.C. — you’re not going to see a polar bear walking in front of the White House.” 
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Starting Saturday, private health insurers will be required to cover as many as eight home COVID-19 tests per month for people on their plans. The Biden administration announced the change Monday as it looks to lower costs and make testing for the virus more convenient amid rising frustrations.

Under the new policy, first detailed to the AP, Americans will be able to either purchase home testing kits for free under their insurance or submit receipts for the tests for reimbursement, up to the monthly per-person limit. A family of four, for instance, could be reimbursed for up to 32 tests per month. PCR tests and rapid tests ordered or administered by a health provider will continue to be fully covered by insurance with no limit. 

President Joe Biden faced criticism over the holiday season for a shortage of at-home rapid tests as Americans traveled to see family amid the surge in cases from the more transmissible omicron variant. Now the administration is working to make COVID-19 home tests more accessible, both by increasing supply and bringing down costs. 

Later this month, the federal government will launch a website to begin making 500 million at-home COVID-19 tests available via mail. The administration also is scaling up emergency rapid-testing sites in areas experiencing the greatest surges in cases. 

The insurer-covered testing would dramatically reduce costs for many Americans, and the administration hopes that by easing a barrier to more regular at-home testing, it can help slow the spread of the virus, get kids back into school more quickly and help people gather safely. 

“This is all part of our overall strategy to ramp up access to easy-to-use, at-home tests at no cost,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “By requiring private health plans to cover people’s at-home tests, we are further expanding Americans’ ability to get tests for free when they need them.” 

Biden announced the federal requirement late last year, and it kicks in on January 15, but the administration had been silent until now on details of the plan. 

The administration is trying to incentivize private insurers to cover the tests up-front and without a cumbersome reimbursement process. Insurance plans that work with pharmacies and retailers to cover the up-front costs of the tests will be required to reimburse only up to $12 per test if purchased through an out-of-network retailer. Plans that don’t move proactively to set up a network of pharmacies would have to cover the full retail price that the customer paid — which could be more than $12 per test. 

There was no immediate reaction from insurers, or details yet on potential insurer and retailer partnerships ahead of Saturday’s effective date. 

Only tests purchased on or after January 15 will be required to be reimbursed, the administration said. Some insurers may choose to cover the costs of at-home tests purchased earlier, but they won’t have to. 

Mina Bressler, a mother of two and a therapist in San Mateo, California, was able to buy rapid test kits online and shared some with a parent who works in the service industry and doesn’t have time to “sit at her computer every hour refreshing the Walmart page to see when tests are in stock.” 

“Just like vaccines becoming available really shone a light on the inequity of what’s going on in this pandemic, I think testing is the new flashlight for that because who’s going online stalking Walmart? It’s not the most vulnerable people in the country,” Bressler said. 

Americans on Medicare won’t be able to get tests reimbursed through the federal insurance plan, but Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program plans are required to cover the cost of at-home tests fully. Those who are not on a covered insurance plan can receive free tests through the forthcoming federal website or from some local community centers and pharmacies.
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U.S. cybersecurity officials are still sounding an alarm about the so-called Log4j software vulnerability more than a month after it was first discovered, warning some criminals and nation state adversaries may be waiting to make use of their newfound access to critical systems.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Monday that the vulnerability, also known as Log4shell, has been subject to widespread exploitation by criminals over the past several weeks, but that more serious and damaging attacking could still be in the works.

“We do expect Log4Shell to be used in intrusions well into the future,” CISA Director Jen Easterly told reporters during a phone briefing, adding, “at this time we have not seen the use of Log4shell resulting in significant intrusions.”

“This may be the case because sophisticated adversaries have already used this vulnerability to exploit targets and are just waiting to leverage their new access until network defenders are on a lower alert,” she said.

The vulnerability in the open-source software produced by the U.S.-based Apache Software Foundation, was first discovered in late November by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba. The first warnings to the public went out in early December. 

Cybersecurity officials and experts initially described the flaw in the software as perhaps the worst vulnerability ever discovered, noting the software’s widespread use – in at least 2,800 products used by both private companies and governments around the world.

CISA on Monday said the vulnerability has impacted hundreds of millions of devices around the world, with many software vendors racing to issue security patches to their customers.

So far, U.S. agencies appear to be unscathed.

“We, at this point, are not seeing any confirmed compromises of federal agencies across the broader country, including critical infrastructure,” CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein told reporters.

But he cautioned the danger has not yet passed despite the lack of destructive attacks by sophisticated hacking groups and foreign adversaries.

“It is certainly possible that that may change, that adversaries may be utilizing this vulnerability to gain persistent access that they could use in the future, which is why we are so focused on remediating the vulnerability across the country and ensuring that we are detecting any intrusions if and when they arise,” he said.

Yet there are reports that other countries have already been targeted by cyber actors seeking to exploit the software vulnerability.

Belgium’s Ministry of Defense said last month that some of its computer systems went down last month following an attack, in which the Log4j vulnerability was believed to be exploited.

And some security experts warn other countries, including China, Iran, North Korea and Turkey, have sought to exploit Log4j.

“This activity ranges from experimentation during development, integration of the vulnerabilities to in-the-wild payload deployment, and exploitation against targets to achieve the actor’s objectives,” Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center wrote in a blog post last week.

In particular, Microsoft said the Iran cyber threat actor known as Phosphorus, known for launching ransomware attacks, has already modified the Log4j vulnerability for use in attacks, while the Chinese group known as Hafnium has also used it for some targeting activities.

The private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike separately assessed that a Chinese-based group called Aquatic Panda sought to use the Log4j vulnerability to target an unnamed academic institution.

CISA on Monday said it could not independently confirm such reports, and further said it had yet to discover any ransomware attacks in which the attackers used the Log4j vulnerability to penetrate the victim’s systems.

CISA’s director said one reason could be that “there may be a lag between when this vulnerability is being used and when it is being actively deployed.”

Easterly also warned about information that U.S. officials are unable to see due to the failure of Congress to pass legislation that would require private companies to report cyberattacks – something the White House and many lawmakers have been advocating for some time.

“We are concerned that threat actors are going to start taking advantage of this vulnerability and having impacts in particular on critical infrastructure, and because there is no legislation in place, we will likely not know about it,” she said. 
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Satellite measurements show that 2021 was one of the warmest years on record, with the past seven years being the hottest period recorded globally.

The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said Monday that last year was the fifth-warmest year according to records dating back to 1850. It said average global temperatures in 2021 were 1.1 to 1.2 Celsius warmer than in the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900. 

The hottest years on record were 2020 and 2016, according to the group. 

C3S, which tracks global temperatures and other climate indicators, also reported that levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere continued to rise last year, hitting new highs. 

The group found that 2021 was Europe’s hottest summer on record. It followed an unusually cold April that wiped out fruit crops in some countries, including France and Hungary. 

Scientists say higher temperatures can cause the air to absorb more moisture and lead to extreme rainfall. Last year saw flooding in several European countries, including Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. 

Countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement have pledged to try to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. Scientists say that would help the world avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

To reach that goal, the world would need to limit emissions by about half of current levels by 2030, according to scientists. However, the C3S said that emissions tracked higher in 2021, with the level of CO2 in the atmosphere reaching 414.3 parts per million, up 2.4ppm from 2020. 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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India began administering booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines to vulnerable groups on Monday, as infections surge to their highest levels in seven months fueled by the omicron variant and crowded cities like New Delhi and Mumbai reimpose restrictions to battle the third wave of the pandemic.

Health care and frontline workers and senior citizens with comorbidities lined up Monday to get what India is calling a “precautionary shot.”

“We raised the demand for boosters for health care workers and doctors four months ago,” said J.A. Jayalal, who was president of the Indian Medical Association until December.“The government has taken the decision a little late, but at least now they will get some protection. That is necessary to ensure that we have sufficient doctors to take care of patients.”

In recent days, as India’s COVID-19 infection rate climbed steeply, hundreds of doctors and health care workers have contracted the virus according to reports in local media. That has led to warnings of staff shortages in hospitals.

Early studies suggesting that booster shots may provide more protection against the highly transmissible omicron variant have prompted several countries to expand booster programs.

In India, with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, roughly two-thirds of adults have been fully vaccinated while over 90 percent have received one shot. Last week, the inoculation program was also extended to those between 15 and 18 years old.

India’s vaccination program picked up pace after the country was devastated by a deadly second wave last summer. At that time authorities had been strongly criticized for mismanaging the crisis – most people were unprotected when the delta variant tore through the country while acute shortages of oxygen and hospital beds had overwhelmed the health care system.

As numbers surge again, authorities say they are better equipped to fight the third wave of infections — oxygen facilities have been ramped up and hospital beds set aside to cope with a new wave.

Most of the infections are also reported to be milder this time, giving rise to some optimism.

“Rising COVID cases are a matter of concern but there is no need to panic. Very few people are getting hospitalized,” Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said Sunday.

In the past week, as numbers have grown exponentially, worst hit cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, are bringing back restrictions – cinema halls, gyms, schools and colleges that opened just months ago have been shut and large events cancelled. Delhi has also imposed a weekend curfew.

However, authorities have announced that they will hold elections to choose local governments starting next month in five states, including the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

But the Election Commission has temporarily banned political rallies – it faced strong criticism last year for allowing massive rallies during a regional election even as cases of COVID-19 were spiraling in the country. The rallies had been flagged by public health experts as super spreader events.

On Monday, India reported 179,723 new cases of COVID-19. India is the world’s second worst affected country by the pandemic – it has so far recorded more than 35 million COVID-19 cases and about 484,000 deaths from the virus, although many believe that the toll could be much higher.
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Despite having the highest number of COVID infections in Africa, nearly two years into the pandemic, fewer than half of South African adults have been vaccinated. The government has been reluctant to order vaccine mandates, but private companies are to encouraging people to get the jab. Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg.
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