Month: April 2022

A U.K. patient with a severely weakened immune system had COVID-19 for almost a year and a half, scientists reported, underscoring the importance of protecting vulnerable people from the coronavirus.

There’s no way to know for sure whether it was the longest-lasting COVID-19 infection because not everyone gets tested, especially on a regular basis like this case.

But at 505 days, “it certainly seems to be the longest reported infection,” said Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease expert at the Guy’s & St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

Snell’s team plans to present several “persistent” COVID-19 cases at an infectious diseases meeting in Portugal this weekend.

Their study investigated which mutations arise — and whether variants evolve — in people with super long infections. It involved nine patients who tested positive for the virus for at least eight weeks. All had weakened immune systems from organ transplants, HIV, cancer or treatment for other illnesses. None were identified for privacy reasons.

Repeated tests showed their infections lingered for an average of 73 days. Two had the virus for more than a year. Previously, researchers said, the longest-known case that was confirmed with a PCR test lasted 335 days.

Persistent COVID-19 is rare and different from long COVID.

“In long COVID, it’s generally assumed the virus has been cleared from your body but the symptoms persist,” Snell said. “With persistent infection, it represents ongoing, active replication of the virus.”

Each time researchers tested patients, they analyzed the genetic code of the virus to make sure it was the same strain and that people didn’t get COVID-19 more than once. Still, genetic sequencing showed that the virus changed over time, mutating as it adapted.

The mutations were similar to the ones that later showed up in widespread variants, Snell said, although none of the patients spawned new mutants that became variants of concern. There’s also no evidence they spread the virus to others.

The person with the longest known infection tested positive in early 2020, was treated with the antiviral drug remdesivir and died sometime in 2021. Researchers declined to name the cause of death and said the person had several other illnesses.

Five patients survived. Two cleared the infection without treatment, two cleared it after treatment and one still has COVID-19. At the last follow-up earlier this year, that patient’s infection had lasted 412 days.

Researchers hope more treatments will be developed to help people with persistent infections beat the virus.

“We do need to be mindful that there are some people who are more susceptible to these problems like persistent infection and severe disease,” Snell said.

Although persistent infections are rare, experts said there are many people with compromised immune systems who remain at risk of severe COVID-19 and who are trying to stay safe after governments lifted restrictions and masks started coming off. And it’s not always easy to know who they are, said Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist in Texas, who was not part of the research.

“Masking in crowds is a considerate thing to do and a way we can protect others,” he said.
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Scientists have successfully bred a threatened species of coral as part of a project that hopes to restore damaged reefs off the coast of Florida that are under threat by a relatively new disease, a coral rescue organization said on Thursday.

Reefs in Florida and the Caribbean are facing growing threat of destruction by the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease that strips coral of its color and ultimately its life altogether.

The Florida Coral Rescue Center has in recent weeks bred hundreds of new coral of a species called rough cactus coral at a 185.80-square-meter facility that houses a total of 18 Florida coral species that are threatened by the disease.

“There is potential to propagate these corals… on a level, that you could return some of these corals to the wild,” said Justin Zimmerman, Florida Coral Rescue Center supervisor, in an interview. “And there’s a potential that you could save the species by doing that.”

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease was first observed near Miami in 2014 and by 2017 had spread to Florida’s northernmost reef tract and later past Key West to the south.

Species that fall victim to it have a mortality rate of 66-100%, making it deadlier than the better-known coral bleaching phenomenon that is typically caused by higher water temperatures associated with climate change.

The Florida Coral Rescue Center is managed by SeaWorld, a marine animal theme park company, and funded in part by the Disney Conservation Fund.

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease represents another threat to the world’s coral reefs, which already face an existential threat due to climate change.

“Large numbers of offspring produced by rescued corals will be essential for restoration of Florida’s Coral Reef,” said Gil McRae of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a U.N.-supported global data network, in October said that 14% of the world’s coral on reefs was already lost between 2009 and 2018.

Damage to coral reefs is among the myriad of issues that activists are seeking to raise awareness of during this year’s observance of Earth Day on Friday. 
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Also, Russian cosmonauts put in work at the International Space Station. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi wraps up The Week in Space.
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According to papers filed with U.S. securities regulators, billionaire Elon Musk appears ready to continue his bid to take over Twitter, this time via a tender offer that would bypass the company’s board and offer to buy stock directly from shareholders. 

Twitter’s board of directors last week voted unanimously to use a tactic called a “poison pill” to fend off Musk’s attempt to acquire the company. 

The papers show Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has secured $46.5 billion in financing for the offer of $54.20 per share. 

Twitter “is committed to conducting a careful, comprehensive and deliberate review to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders,” the company said in a statement Thursday. 

The news only shows Musk could go forward with a tender offer, but apparently no decision has been made.  

In addition to Musk, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Bank of America, Societie Generale, Mizuho Bank, BNP Paribas and MUFG could be involved in the deal. 

They have reportedly agreed to finance $25.5 billion of the deal while Musk could cover the rest. 

Twitter stock was trading flat on the development. 

Under the poison pill plan, all Twitter shareholders except Musk could buy more shares at a discount. This would dilute the world’s richest person’s stake in the company and prevent him from recruiting a majority of shareholders supporting his move. 

If Musk’s ownership in Twitter grows to 15% or more, the poison pill would go into effect. 

Last week, Musk, who was revealed as the company’s largest individual shareholder, with 9.2% of the shares, later offered more than $43 billion, or $54.20 per share, to purchase the entire company. 

Musk’s offer would provide a substantial premium over Twitter’s current stock price. 

When Musk made his offer, he lamented the company’s stance on free speech. 

“I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk said in the filing. “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.” 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 

 
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Farmers across the country and around the world might one day leave the confines of their tractor cabs and operate autonomous tractors remotely through an app. But will farmers, big and small, be willing to trust the technology? VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Palestinian militants fired a rocket into southern Israel for the first time in months on Monday, in another escalation after clashes at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, a series of deadly attacks inside Israel and military raids across the occupied West Bank.

Israel said it intercepted the rocket, and there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Israel holds Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers responsible for all such projectiles and usually launches airstrikes in their wake. It was the first such rocket fire since New Year’s Eve.

Early Tuesday, Israeli fighter jets carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Gaza Strip, targeting a “weapons manufacturing site” for Hamas, the Israeli military said. There were no reports of injuries.

Hours earlier, the leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, which boasts an arsenal of rockets, had issued a brief, cryptic warning, condemning Israeli “violations” in Jerusalem.

Ziad al-Nakhala, who is based outside the Palestinian territories, said threats to tighten an Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza imposed after Hamas seized power 15 years ago “can’t silence us from what’s happening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.”

However, no Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rocket fire.

Palestinians and Israeli police clashed over the weekend in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, which has long been an epicenter of Israeli-

Palestinian violence. It is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because the mosque stands on a hilltop where Jewish temples were located in antiquity.

Protests and clashes there this time last year helped trigger an 11-day Gaza war.

Police said they were responding to Palestinian stone-throwing and that they were committed to ensuring that Jews, Christians and Muslims — whose major holidays are converging this year — could celebrate them safely in the Holy Land. Palestinians view the presence of Israeli police at the site as a provocation and said they used excessive force.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday, ahead of the rocket fire, that Israel has been the target of a “Hamas-led incitement campaign.”

The latest tensions come during the rare confluence of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover. Christians are also celebrating their holy week leading up to Orthodox Easter. Tens of thousands of visitors have flocked to Jerusalem’s Old City — home to major holy sites for all three faiths — for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with Israel decades ago and coordinate with it on security matters, have condemned its actions at the mosque. Jordan — which serves as custodian of the site — summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires on Monday in protest.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II discussed the violence with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, agreeing on “the need to stop all illegal and provocative Israeli measures” there, according to a statement. Jordan planned to convene a meeting of other Arab states on the issue.

Israel has been working to improve relations with Jordan over the past year and has recently normalized relations with other Arab states. But the latest tensions have brought renewed attention to the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, which Israel has sought to sideline in recent years.

The U.S. State Department urged all sides to “exercise restraint, to avoid provocative actions and rhetoric, and preserve the historic status quo” at the holy site. Spokesperson Ned Price said U.S. officials were in touch with counterparts across the region to try and calm tensions.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled a closed-door meeting on the tensions for Tuesday.

In Israel, an Arab party that made history last year by joining the governing coalition suspended its participation on Sunday — a largely symbolic act that nevertheless reflected the sensitivity of the holy site, which is at the emotional heart of the century-old conflict.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — which includes the Old City — in the 1967 Mideast War. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally and is building and expanding Jewish settlements across the West Bank, which it views as the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people.

The last serious and substantive peace talks collapsed more than a decade ago.

The Palestinians have long feared that Israel plans to take over or partition the mosque compound. In recent weeks, calls by Jewish extremists to sacrifice animals there have circulated widely among Palestinians on social media, sparking calls to defend the mosque.

Israeli authorities say they have no intention of changing the status quo, and police are enforcing a prohibition on animal sacrifices. Israel allows Jews to visit the site but not to pray there. In recent years large numbers of nationalist and religious Jews have regularly visited under police escort, angering the Palestinians and Jordan.

Israel says police were forced to enter the compound early Friday after Palestinians stockpiled stones and hurled rocks at the gate through which Jewish visitors typically enter. That gate also leads to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

Recent weeks have seen a series of Palestinian attacks inside Israel that killed 14 people. Israel has launched near-daily arrest raids and other military operations in the occupied West Bank that it says are aimed at preventing more.

The military said Monday it arrested 11 Palestinians in operations across the territory overnight. In a raid near the city of Jenin, the army said dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks and explosives toward troops.

Soldiers “responded with live ammunition toward the suspects who hurled explosive devices,” the military said. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men were hospitalized after being critically wounded.

Two of the recent attackers came from in and around Jenin, which has long been a bastion of armed struggle against Israeli rule.

At least 26 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press count. Many had carried out attacks or were involved in clashes, but an unarmed woman and a lawyer who appears to have been a bystander were also among those killed.
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The flight debut of NASA’s mega moon rocket faces additional delays following a string of failed fueling tests. 

Officials said Monday it will be challenging to meet a launch window in early to mid-June. The next opportunity to send an empty capsule to the moon on a test flight would be at the end of June or July. 

The 30-story Space Launch System rocket has been on the pad at Kennedy Space Center for the past month. It will return to the hangar next week for valve and fuel leak repairs. The problems cropped up earlier this month, preventing NASA from filling the rocket’s fuel tanks for a critical dress rehearsal. 

The rocket will likely spend weeks in the hangar before heading back to the pad for a testing redo, said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. 

Managers are considering various options for getting back on track. 

“It’s just a matter of what’s the right time, what’s the right way to do that,” said Tom Whitmeyer, a NASA deputy associate administrator. 

NASA wants this test flight under its belt before putting astronauts on board for the second launch, a lunar flyaround targeted for 2024. The third mission would attempt to land astronauts on the moon around 2025, more than a half-century after NASA’s Apollo moonshots. 
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A group of Tesla shareholders suing CEO Elon Musk over some 2018 tweets about taking the company private is asking a federal judge to order Musk to stop commenting on the case. 

Lawyers for stockholders of the Austin, Texas-based company also say in court documents that the judge in the case has ruled that Musk’s tweets about having “funding secured” to take Tesla private were false, and that his comments also violate a 2018 court settlement with U.S. securities regulators in which Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million fines. 

Musk, during an interview April 14 at the TED 2022 conference, said he had the funding to take Tesla private in 2018. He called the Securities and Exchange Commission a profane name and said he only settled because bankers told him they would stop providing capital if he didn’t, and Tesla would go bankrupt. 

The interview and court action came just days after Musk, the world’s richest person, made a controversial offer to take over Twitter and turn it into a private company with a $43 billion offer that equals $54.20 per share. Twitter’s board on April 15 adopted a “poison pill” strategy that would make it prohibitively expensive for Musk to buy the shares. 

In court documents filed April 15, lawyers for the Tesla shareholders alleged that Musk is trying to influence potential jurors in the lawsuit. They contend that Musk’s 2018 tweets about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share were written to manipulate the stock price, costing shareholders money. 

Now, lawyers say Musk is campaigning to influence possible jurors as the case gets closer to trial. 

“Musk’s comments risk confusing potential jurors with the false narrative that he did not knowingly make misrepresentations with his Aug. 7, 2018, tweets,” the lawyers wrote. “His present statements on that issue, an unsubtle attempt to absolve himself in the court of public opinion, will only have a prejudicial influence on a jury.” 

The lawyers asked Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco to restrain Musk from making further public comments on the issue until after the trial. Chen gave Musk’s lawyers until April 20 to respond. 

Alex Spiro, a lawyer representing Musk, wrote in an email April 17 that the plaintiffs’ lawyers are seeking a big payout. “Nothing will ever change the truth, which is that Elon Musk was considering taking Tesla private and could have,” he wrote. “All that’s left some half-decade later is random plaintiffs lawyers trying to make a buck and others trying to block that truth from coming to light, all to the detriment of free speech.” 

But the shareholders’ lawyers wrote that Chen already ruled that Musk’s tweets were false and misleading, and “that no reasonable juror could conclude otherwise.” 

Judge Chen’s order, issued April 1, was not in the public court file as of April 17.  Adam Apton, a lawyer for the shareholders, said it was sealed because it has evidence that Musk and Tesla say is confidential. It will stay sealed until the parties agree if anything should remain sealed, he wrote in an email. “Our motion for TRO (temporary restraining order) accurately describes the issues decided by the court,” Apton wrote. 

After Musk’s 2018 tweets, the SEC filed a complaint against him alleging securities law violations. Musk then agreed to the fine and signed the court agreement. Part of the agreement says that Musk “will not take any action or make or permit to be made any public statement denying, directly or indirectly, any allegation in the complaint or creating the impression that the complaint is without factual basis.” 

If Musk violates the agreement, the SEC may ask the court to scrap it and restore the securities fraud complaint, the agreement says. A message was left April 17 seeking comment from the SEC. 

Spiro, on behalf of Musk, already has asked a Manhattan federal court to throw out the agreement. He contends the SEC is using the pact and “near limitless resources” to chill Musk’s speech. Court documents filed by Spiro say Musk signed the agreement when Tesla was a less mature company and SEC action jeopardized its financing. 
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A classified satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office was launched into space from California on Sunday. 

The NROL-85 satellite lifted off at 6:13 a.m. local time from Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. 

It was the first mission by the NRO to reuse a SpaceX rocket booster, Vandenberg said in a statement. 

The Falcon’s first stage flew back and landed at the seaside base northwest of Los Angeles. 

The NRO only described the NROL-85 satellite as a “critical national security payload.” 

Its launch was one of three awarded by the Air Force to SpaceX in 2019 for a combined fixed price of $297 million. 

The NRO is the government agency in charge of developing, building, launching and maintaining U.S. satellites that provide intelligence data to senior policymakers, the intelligence community and the Defense Department. 
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Russia is clamping down on news and the internet. Overseas media organizations and activists are finding new ways in.
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Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after six months aboard their country’s newest orbital station in the longest crewed mission to date for China’s ambitious space program.

The Shenzhou 13 space capsule landed in the Gobi desert in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, shown live on state TV.

During the mission, astronaut Wang Yaping carried out the first spacewalk by a Chinese woman. Wang and crewmates Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu beamed back physics lessons for high school students.

China launched its first astronaut into space in 2003 and landed robot rovers on the moon in 2013 and on Mars last year. Officials have discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.

On Saturday, state TV showed images from inside the capsule as it traveled at 200 meters per second over Africa before entering the atmosphere.

The trio were the second crew aboard Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace. Its core module, Tianhe, was launched in April 2021. Plans call for completing construction this year by adding two more modules.

Authorities have yet to announce a date for launching the next Tiangong crew.

China is excluded from the International Space Station due to U.S. unease that its space program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.

China was the third nation to launch an astronaut into space on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

Tiangong is China’s third space station following predecessors launched in 2011 and 2016.

The government announced in 2020 that China’s first reusable spacecraft had landed following a test flight but no photos or details of the vehicle have been released.

On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping visited the launch site in Wenchang on the southern island of Hainan from which the Tianhe module was fired into orbit.

“Persist in pursuing the frontiers of world aerospace development and the major strategic needs of national aerospace,” Xi told staff at the site, all of them in military uniform.
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Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials warned about cyberattacks originating in Russia against critical American infrastructure. Now, U.S. security agencies are increasingly cracking down on the networks used by cybercriminals, including for ransomware attacks. Dino Jahic has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. 
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Twitter’s board of directors on Friday voted unanimously to use a tactic called a “poison pill” to fend off Elon Musk’s attempt to take over the company.

In such a defensive tactic, all Twitter shareholders except Musk could buy more shares at a discount. This would dilute the world’s richest person’s stake in the company and prevent him from recruiting a majority of shareholders supporting his move.

If Musk’s ownership in Twitter grows to 15% or more, the poison pill would go into effect.

Musk, who earlier this week was revealed as the company’s largest individual shareholder, with 9.2% of the shares, later offered more than $43 billion, or $54.20 a share, to purchase the entire company.

Musk’s offer would provide a substantial premium over Twitter’s current stock price of just more than $45 a share.

Free-speech concern expressed

When Musk made his offer, he lamented the company’s stance on free speech.

“I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk said in the filing. “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.”

But instead of putting Musk’s offer up for a vote with Twitter shareholders, the company’s board said Friday that it would instead offer its shareholders a chance to buy even more shares at a steep discount, effectively diluting the price of the stock.

The plan “will reduce the likelihood that any entity … gains control of Twitter through open market accumulation without paying all shareholders an appropriate control premium,” the company said.

The Twitter board’s plan will be effective for one year.

As rumors of a poison pill action circulated Thursday, Musk speculated via Twitter on what might happen.

“If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty,” he wrote. “The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale.”

One analyst, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, told the New York Post that the board’s move was a “defensive measure,” adding that shareholders would not likely view it positively.

“We believe Musk and his team expected this poker move, which will be perceived as a sign of weakness, not strength, by the Street,” Ives told the Post.

Josh White, a former financial economist for the Securities and Exchange Commission, told BBC that Musk’s negotiation tactics might not be the “right approach” if Musk wants to acquire the company.

“I actually think if he was truly serious about the takeover attempt, he would have started at a price and left the window open for negotiation,” White said.

Twitter ‘storm’?

Edward Rock, who teaches corporate law and governance at New York University’s law school, also had doubts about whether Musk was serious about buying Twitter.

As Rock told NPR, Musk can show he is serious by revealing how he plans to finance the takeover, which he did not show in his SEC filing, or launch a proxy contest to replace Twitter board members in response to its poison pill.

If Musk fails to do so, Rock said, “he’s not going to acquire the company, and people can just write it off like some of his other Twitter storms.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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