Month: January 2022

Drones sprayed holy water from the Ganges on thousands of Hindu pilgrims on Friday to reduce crowding during a massive festival being held despite soaring COVID-19 cases in India.

The Gangasagar Mela in the east of the country has drawn comparisons with another “superspreader” Hindu gathering last year that the Hindu nationalist government refused to ban. It was blamed in part for a devastating COVID surge.

Officials had said they expected around 3 million people — including ash-smeared, dreadlocked ascetics — to attend the festival’s climax on Sagar Island, where the Ganges meets the Bay of Bengal.

“At the crack of dawn, there was a sea of people,” local official Bankim Hazra told AFP by telephone.

“Holy water from the river Ganges was sprayed from drones on pilgrims … to prevent crowding,” he said.

“But the saints and a large number of people were bent on taking the dip… Pilgrims, most of them without masks, outnumbered the security personnel.”

An AFP photographer said that there were fewer people than in recent years and that rain put off some pilgrims from making the journey.

But there were still huge crowds, mostly without masks, taking a holy dip in the river.

A police official on duty at the event said that it was “impossible” to enforce COVID restrictions.

“Most pilgrims are bent on defying the rules,” he said.

“They believe that God will save them and bathing at the confluence will cleanse all their sins and even the virus if they are infected.”

No lockdown

Fatalities from India’s current wave of infections remain a fraction of what they were during the surge in April and May last year, with 315 deaths recorded Thursday compared with as many as 4,000 per day at the peak.

Infections are rising fast, however, with almost 265,000 new cases Thursday. Some models predict India could experience as many as 800,000 cases per day in a few weeks, twice the rate seen nine months ago.

Keen to avoid another painful lockdown for millions of workers reliant on a few dollars in daily wages, authorities in different parts of India have sought to restrict gatherings.

In New Delhi, all bars, restaurants and private offices are shut, and the capital is set to go into its second weekend curfew on Friday night.

In the financial capital of Mumbai, gatherings of more than four people are banned.

But in West Bengal state, the Calcutta High Court on Friday allowed the Gangasagar Mela to proceed.

As with 2021’s Kumbh Mela, it has attracted people from across northern India who, after cramming onto trains, buses and boats to reach the island, will then go home — potentially taking the highly transmissible omicron virus variant with them.

Amitava Nandy, a virologist from the School of Tropical Medicines in Kolkata, said the government “has neither the facilities nor the manpower” to test everyone attending or impose social distancing.

“A stampede-like situation could happen if the police try to enforce social distancing on the riverbank,” Nandy told AFP.

Devotee Sarbananda Mishra, a 56-year-old schoolteacher from the neighboring state of Bihar, told AFP: “Faith in God will overcome the fear of COVID. The bathing will cleanse them of all their sins and bring salvation.

“Death is the ultimate truth. What is the point of living with fear?” 

 
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Australia rejected the visa of Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic for a second time Friday, something that could keep the world’s top-ranked men’s tennis player from the Australian Open and likely prompt a second trip to court.

Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said in a statement that he canceled Djokovic’s visa “on health and good order grounds, on the basis that it was in the public interest to do so.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement, “This pandemic has been incredibly difficult for every Australian but we have stuck together and saved lives and livelihoods. … Australians have made many sacrifices during this pandemic, and they rightly expect the result of those sacrifices to be protected.”

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said Friday the policy settings of the government overall were “crystal clear.” He said on Channel 9’s Today show, “That is that people who enter Australia who are not Australian citizens should be double dose vaccinated unless they have a clear and valid medical exemption against that.”

About 90% of Australian adults are vaccinated after enduring long lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Djokovic’s vaccine skepticism has met with widespread anger.

Hawke canceled Djokovic’s visa over concerns about the Serbian’s medical exemption from Australia’s COVID-19 vaccination rules. Djokovic’s visa was first canceled upon arrival in Melbourne last week when his vaccination exemption was rejected.

After being held with other asylum-seekers at an immigration detention hotel for several days, Djokovic won a legal dispute on procedural grounds that allowed him to remain in the country.

Djokovic acknowledged earlier this week that errors were made on his entry documents about his activities in the weeks before traveling to Australia.

The Serbian star issued a statement Wednesday saying his assistants had incorrectly declared that he had not traveled anywhere in the 14 days before departing for Melbourne last week. Reports have surfaced showing he traveled to Serbia and Spain.

Djokovic also said he did not know he tested positive for COVID-19 on Dec. 16 until the next day, after he appeared at a tennis event in Belgrade to present awards to children.

He also acknowledged that he should have canceled a planned magazine interview and photoshoot the day after learning of his status.

The defending champion was included Thursday in the Australian Open draw as the top seed for the tournament that opens Monday.

Djokovic drew unseeded fellow Serb Miomir Kecmanovic for his opening match that is expected to take place Monday or Tuesday.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

 
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A 4-billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists reported Thursday. 

In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures. Other scientists were skeptical, and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Andrew Steele. 

Tiny samples from the meteorite show the carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of water — most likely salty, or briny, water — flowing over the rock for a prolonged period, Steele said. The findings appear in the journal Science. 

During Mars’ wet and early past, at least two impacts occurred near the rock, heating the planet’s surrounding surface, before a third impact bounced it off the red planet and into space millions of years ago. The 2-kilogram (4-pound) rock was found in Antarctica in 1984. 

Groundwater moving through the cracks in the rock, while it was still on Mars, formed the tiny globs of carbon that are present, according to the researchers. The same thing can happen on Earth and could help explain the presence of methane in Mars’ atmosphere, they said. 

But two scientists who took part in the original study took issue with these latest findings, calling them disappointing. In a shared email, they said they stand by their 1996 observations. 

“While the data presented incrementally adds to our knowledge of (the meteorite), the interpretation is hardly novel, nor is it supported by the research,” wrote Kathie Thomas-Keprta and Simon Clemett, astromaterial researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. 

“Unsupported speculation does nothing to resolve the conundrum surrounding the origin of organic matter” in the meteorite, they added. 

According to Steele, advances in technology made his team’s new findings possible. 

He commended the measurements by the original researchers and noted that their life-claiming hypothesis “was a reasonable interpretation” at the time. He said he and his team, which includes NASA, German and British scientists, took care to present their results “for what they are, which is a very exciting discovery about Mars and not a study to disprove” the original premise. 

This finding “is huge for our understanding of how life started on this planet and helps refine the techniques we need to find life elsewhere on Mars, or Enceladus and Europa,” Steele said in an email, referring to Saturn and Jupiter’s moons with subsurface oceans. 

The only way to prove whether Mars ever had or still has microbial life, according to Steele, is to bring samples to Earth for analysis. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has collected six samples for return to Earth in a decade or so; three dozen samples are desired. 

Millions of years after drifting through space, the meteorite landed on an icefield in Antarctica thousands of years ago. The small gray-green fragment got its name — Allan Hills 84001 — from the hills where it was found. 

 
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The Supreme Court has stopped the Biden administration from enforcing a requirement that employees at large businesses be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing and wear a mask on the job.

At the same time, the court is allowing the administration to proceed with a vaccine mandate for most health care workers in the U.S. 

The court’s orders Thursday during a spike in coronavirus cases was a mixed bag for the administration’s efforts to boost the vaccination rate among Americans. 

The court’s conservative majority concluded the administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s vaccine-or-test rule on U.S. businesses with at least 100 employees. More than 80 million people would have been affected.

‘Never before’

“OSHA has never before imposed such a mandate. Nor has Congress. Indeed, although Congress has enacted significant legislation addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, it has declined to enact any measure similar to what OSHA has promulgated here,” the conservatives wrote in an unsigned opinion. 

In dissent, the court’s three liberals argued that it was the court that was overreaching by substituting its judgment for that of health experts. 

“Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the Court displaces the judgments of the Government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies,” Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a joint dissent. 

When crafting the OSHA rule, White House officials always anticipated legal challenges — and privately some harbored doubts that it could withstand them. The administration nonetheless still views the rule as a success at prompting millions of people to get vaccinated and private businesses to implement their own requirements that are unaffected by the legal challenge. 

Both rules had been challenged by Republican-led states. In addition, business groups attacked the OSHA emergency regulation as too expensive and likely to cause workers to leave their jobs at a time when finding new employees is difficult. 

The vaccine mandate that the court will allow to be enforced nationwide covers virtually all health care workers in the country. It applies to health care providers that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid funding, potentially affecting 76,000 health care facilities as well as home health care providers. The rule has medical and religious exemptions. 

Previously blocked in many states

Decisions by federal appeals courts in New Orleans and St. Louis had blocked the mandate in about half the states. The administration was taking steps to enforce it elsewhere. 

In the health care case, only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito noted their dissents. 

“The challenges posed by a global pandemic do not allow a federal agency to exercise power that Congress has not conferred upon it. At the same time, such unprecedented circumstances provide no grounds for limiting the exercise of authorities the agency has long been recognized to have,” the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion, saying the “latter principle governs” in the health care cases. 

More than 208 million Americans, 62.7% of the population, are fully vaccinated, and more than a third of those have received booster shots, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All nine justices have gotten booster shots. 

The justices heard arguments on the challenges last week. Their questions then hinted at the split verdict that they issued Thursday. 
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Two U.S. government agencies – space agency NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said Thursday 2021 was the sixth hottest year on record.

In separate reports, the agencies also said their data indicates the last eight years were the eight hottest since modern recordkeeping began. They also said global temperatures in 2021 were .85 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. NOAA says last year was also the 45th year – since 1977 – average global temperatures rose above the 20th century average.

The agencies’ data shows global temperatures, averaged over a 10-year period to take out natural variability, are nearly 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than 140 years ago.

In an interview with reporters, NOAA analysis chief Russell Vose said it is “warmer now than any time in at least the past 2,000 years, and probably much longer.” He predicted 2022 would also be among the warmest years ever.

Both agencies attributed weather anomalies from the past year, like melting sea ice, severe wildfires, and record flooding, as attributable to the warming climate.

NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt told the Associated Press the long-term trend is “very, very clear. And it’s because of us. And it’s not going to go away until we stop increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, and Reuters.

 
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A SpaceX rocket launch Thursday carried three small South African-made satellites that will help with policing South African waters against illegal fishing operations.

Produced at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the satellites could also be used to help other African countries to protect their coastal waters.

SpaceX’s billionaire boss Elon Musk has given three nano satellites produced in his birth country, South Africa, a ride into space.

The company’s Falcon rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in the U.S. state of Florida with 105 spacecraft on board. All three South African satellites deployed successfully.

This mission, known as Transporter 3, is part of SpaceX’s rideshare program which in two previous outings has put over 220 small satellites into orbit.

The three South African nano satellites on this trip were designed at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s Africa Space Innovation Centre.

The institution’s deputy vice chancellor for research, technology and innovation Professor David Phaho says “it marks a quantum leap in terms of South Africa’s capability to participate in the space sector. As you can imagine the issue of oceans economy has become topical globally. And the fact that we’ve developed this capacity in South Africa, and we are launching this (sic) satellites will go a long way in enhancing our capabilities to monitor our coastline and grow our economy.”

Phaho notes the university has been building up to the launch of these satellites, known collectively as MDASat-1, with a previous satellite launch in 2018.

“These three satellites, there was a precursor to these current three satellite constellation. Zcube2 is the most advanced nano satellite developed on the African continent and it was launched in December 2018 so these ones are basically part and parcel of that development. And they are probably the most advanced nano satellites developed on the African continent,” Phaho expressed.

Stephen Cupido studied at the space center and graduated in 2014. Today, he works here as a software engineer and points out that “it’s been a ride, it’s been amazing, ups and downs but this is definitely an up today. Just to get everything ready for today has been a lot of pressure.”

And the interaction with SpaceX has been complicated he says laughing “but it’s necessary. We are putting objects in space and space is for everyone, we have to keep it safe for everybody so we understand the paperwork involved but we’ve got all the information through to them. They’re launching our satellite so everything is in order.”

The university paid almost $260,000 to secure its spot on the SpaceX craft. It says it hopes to continue the relationship with Elon Musk’s company. 
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NASA scientists rejoice at the continued progress of their next-generation space telescope. Plus, the International Space Station gets presidential backing, and a prank from space resurfaces on social media. More in The Week in Space from VOA’s Arash Arabasadi
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A new Hong Kong mandate that restaurants and other establishments require use of an app aimed at recording people’s locations and telling them if they have been near a COVID-19 patient has spurred opposition from the city’s pro-democracy voices.

The LeaveHomeSafe app scans a two-dimensional QR barcode at taxis and other locations. If a COVID-19 patient has been there, the app will alert users and provide health advice. The government required the use of the app Dec. 9 in all indoor premises including government buildings, restaurants, public facilities, and karaoke venues. Those over the age of 65, 15 years or younger, the homeless and those with disabilities are exempt.

Previously Hong Kongers could record these movements using a paper form, but the cursive characters written by opposition Hong Kongers or pro-democracy activists expressing their distrust in government were often illegible for authorities.

Hong Kongers believe the app can be a tool used by authorities to monitor citizens, according to a human rights advocate.

“Given Beijing’s use of mass surveillance in China, many Hong Kong people suspect that the app is one way for the Hong Kong and Beijing governments to normalize the use of government surveillance in Hong Kong,” Human Rights Watch senior China researcher Maya Wang told VOA by email.

An office worker in her 20s entering a Taiwanese restaurant recently was one of the Hong Kongers harboring doubts about the app. Before entering the restaurant, she said she stopped texting on her phone to use a second phone to scan the restaurant’s QR code using LeaveHomeSafe.

“It’s an act of human right and privacy violation as we can no longer choose the way we live and the app is part of the digital surveillance system,” she told VOA, referring to the government app.

Government officials sought to allay such privacy concerns last February, as health secretary Sophia Chan said the COVID-19 tracking app would not send personal data to the authorities.

“The fact is there is no issue of data privacy, because the data would be just stored in the phone of the person. There is no platform that collects those data,” Chan told reporters.

Hong Kong also has a new Health Code app for people to show they have not been exposed to COVID-19 to travel to mainland China, using LeaveHomeSafe records. The LeaveHomeSafe privacy statement says users are required to upload their visit records from the app to the health code system “only with their express consent” and “at their sole discretion.”

“The visit record, which by itself in isolation is not personal data, will be kept in users’ mobile phones for 31 days and will then be erased automatically,” the privacy statement adds.

The government announced the requirement for broader use of the LeaveHomeSafe app in November, before the omicron variant and when Hong Kong’s confirmed infection number was in single digits.

The government said in a statement then it had made the decision “amid the severe COVID-19 pandemic situation across the world” and that “it strives to foster favourable conditions for resuming cross-boundary travel with the Mainland and cross-border travel in the future.”

Wang said Hong Kongers are right to be suspicious of the government’s intentions with the tracing app.

Even though Hong Kong differs from China in significant ways, such as a privacy ordinance that protected people’s privacy for many years, she said, “these legal protections are increasingly being undermined as Beijing and Hong Kong governments do away with other protections of civil liberties, such as a free press and freedom of expression.”

The announcement of the mandate followed a clampdown on the use of the fake version of the app in the same month. The police arrested five people for using fake apps.

Two were confirmed to be arrested on suspicion of using false instruments — the same charge for using a falsified passport or fabricated visa to enter the city — that can send offenders to prison for up to 14 years and incur up to about $19,000 in penalty.

Officials have long been wary of certain residents’ opposition to the use of the app. In September, the police arrested three core members, aged 18-20, of the pro-democracy student activism group Student Politicism under the national security law.

They have been charged with conspiracy to incite subversion for “stirring hatred towards the government … including urging people not to use the LeaveHomeSafe app and to fill in fake [personal] information on the paper forms,” Steve Li Kwai-wah, superintendent of the police national security department told media in a September press conference.

Eric Lai, researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law and the former spokesperson of the now-disbanded protest organizer Civil Human Rights Front, said the measure seeks to “repress” Hong Kongers’ rights.

“The government of Hong Kong has a track record of using COVID-preventive measures to repress the exercise of citizen’s rights, such as the use of social distancing rules to criminalize citizens protesting in public sites” he told VOA by email.

The police were accused of targeting restaurants and shops that support democracy by conducting checks only in such shops, according to local media StandNews, which is now closed.

Many of such shops complained about losing the freedom not to use the app and said they would offer carry-out orders that do not require its use instead.

 
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The risk of dying from cancer in the United States has fallen by nearly a third in three decades, thanks to earlier diagnoses, better treatments and less smoking, an analysis said Wednesday. 

The cancer death rate for men and women fell 32% from its peak in 1991 to 2019, the American Cancer Society said in its annual report. 

The drop represents about 3.5 million total deaths averted.

“This success is largely because of fewer people smoking, which resulted in declines in lung and other smoking-related cancers,” the report said, adding that lung cancer causes more deaths than any other kind. 

And the rate of decline is accelerating, data show. In the 1990s, the risk dropped 1% yearly. Between 2015 and 2019, the rate shrank twice as fast, about 2% a year. 

“Accelerating declines in the cancer death rate show the power of prevention, screening, early diagnosis, treatment and our overall potential to move closer to a world without cancer,” the cancer society report said. 

“In recent years, more people with lung cancer are being diagnosed when the cancer is at an early stage and living longer as a result,” it added. 

In 2004, only 21% of people diagnosed with lung cancer were still alive after three years. In 2018, the number grew to 31%. 

Disparities persist

Improving treatments and early screening are also helping to decrease death rates, but disparities in cancer outcomes persist. 

The cancer society reports that cancer survival rates are lower for Black people than for white people across almost every type of cancer. Black women are 41% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women, even though they are 4% less likely to get it. 

And American Indians and Alaska Natives have the highest liver cancer incidence of any major racial/ethnic group in the United States — a risk more than double that in white people. 

The cancer society attributes the gap to “inequities in wealth, education and overall standard of living,” stemming from “historical and persistent structural racism and discriminatory practices.” 

Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic “greatly reduced” people’s ability to access cancer services, including prevention, detection and treatments, the organization said.

“These delays in care will probably worsen cancer disparities given the unequal burden the pandemic is having on communities of color,” the report warned, adding that the numbers do not account for the toll of the pandemic because the most recent data available are from 2019. 

Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the United States behind heart disease. 

In 2022, the cancer society expects 1.9 million new cancer cases and nearly 610,000 deaths, or about 1,670 deaths a day. 

According to the organization, 42% of the predicted cancer cases are “potentially avoidable,” since they can be caused by smoking, excess body weight, drinking alcohol, poor nutrition and physical inactivity. 

President Joe Biden, who lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015, wanted to make the fight against the disease a priority in his presidency, but it has so far been largely eclipsed by efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. 
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The White House COVID-19 response team on Wednesday reminded Americans of the continued need to slow the omicron variant’s spread despite its decreased severity and announced new efforts to help keep schools open.

As the omicron variant sweeps across the U.S., Dr. Rochelle Walensky emphasized that wearing masks, getting vaccinated and undergoing COVID-19 testing when necessary are the best strategies to help lower cases of the virus.

Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the omicron variant accounted for 98% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. Earlier this week, the U.S. set a record for the number of daily infections at nearly 1.5 million, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

“All of us must do our part to protect our hospitals and our neighbors and reduce the further spread of this virus,” Walensky said.

The White House team also announced that the Biden administration would distribute 10 million tests to schools across the country each month to ensure they remain open, more than doubling the testing volume from last year.

Although the omicron variant is highly transmissible, it remains less severe than the delta variant, with a decreased risk of hospitalization and death.

Walensky, citing a recent study comparing the two variants, said omicron infections were associated with a 91% reduction in the risk of death and a 74% reduction in the risk of ICU admission.

She also said that infections with the variant had a 53% reduced risk of symptomatic hospitalization.

More hospitalizations

While the risk of hospitalization remains low, the “staggering rise in cases” has increased the country’s number of hospitalizations, according to Walensky.

Nonetheless, she said, patients infected with omicron are experiencing 71% shorter hospital stays than those infected with the delta variant.

On average, omicron patients are hospitalized for about 1.5 days and 90% are expected to be discharged in three days or less.

As the surge continues, Walensky reiterated that cases of the variant are expected to peak in the coming weeks. She also said deaths have increased, with more than 2,600 reported by John Hopkins on Wednesday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease expert, said the country would not be able to eliminate or eradicate COVID-19, but would “ultimately control it.” As the virus becomes endemic, it is likely that “virtually everybody is going to wind up getting exposed and likely get infected,” he said.

However, he added, this does not mean that vaccinations or preventative measures are ineffective or pointless. Fauci clarified that getting vaccinated and staying up to date with booster shots will prevent serious illness from the disease.

“If you’re vaccinated and if you’re boosted, the chances of your getting sick are very, very low,” Fauci said.

To help battle the current surge, the White House team stressed that mitigation efforts remain critical, including wearing a mask. While N95 masks have been shown to be the most effective in resisting airborne transmission of the virus, the CDC still recommends that, for the time being, people choose the mask that is right for them, and that wearing any well-fitting mask is better than no mask.

“We want to highlight that the best mask for you is the one that you can wear comfortably,” Walensky said.

Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, was asked about finding masks and said the administration is “strongly considering options to make more high-quality masks available to all Americans.”

As for schools, the team said that, along with increased testing, vaccination and other mitigation efforts are the keys to keeping students in the classroom.

Walensky stated that with pediatric vaccines now available, schools should be able to continue operating as planned. She also reminded reporters that 99% of schools remained open in the fall during a surge in the delta variant.

“One of the best things we can do is get our children and our teenagers vaccinated,” she said.
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