Month: July 2021

South African authorities in the port city of Durban said Saturday they were investigating a coastal chemical spill that may have been caused by a warehouse fire during unrest this week.Other possible sources are also being investigated as the cause of the spill, which is affecting marine and bird life, the eThekwini municipality said late Friday, urging local residents not to use beaches in the area.”Extensive environmental impacts are being reported at uMhlanga and uMdhloti lagoons and beaches in the vicinity, that have killed numerous species of marine and bird life,” the municipality said in a statement.”The pollution is considered serious and can affect one’s health if species are collected and consumed. Lagoon and seawater contact must be avoided.”Reuters reporters saw dead fish that had washed onshore on Saturday, as a clean-up company worked to mop up the spill.KwaZulu-Natal province’s head of environmental affairs, Ravi Pillay, said water samples would be tested Monday.”We will see the results from there,” Pillay told Reuters. “We have some evidence of some limited impact on marine life. Our team is satisfied that there is no impact on public health.”President Cyril Ramaphosa said Friday the unrest that ripped through several parts of the country in the past week was stabilizing and calm had been restored to most affected areas.Protests broke out after former President Jacob Zuma was jailed for failing to appear at a corruption inquiry and swiftly degenerated into looting and arson which has killed more than 200 people and destroyed hundreds of businesses.The …

The U.S. is experiencing a rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths. The highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus among unvaccinated people is largely responsible for the outbreak.Four states with low vaccination rates were responsible for 40% of last week’s new cases, but cases have risen in all 50 states, officials say.Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday that last week the U.S. had a daily average of 26,000 new cases. She said the outbreak has become “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Later Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden repeated Walensky’s assessment, saying, “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”A group of international government advisers say they are concerned about England’s plans to lift virtually all its pandemic restrictions Monday. The advisers believe that would leave Britain susceptible to new coronavirus variants, possibly transforming the country into a superspreader location.Elsewhere, there is worry that Tokyo’s Olympics could become a superspreader event after an unidentified person inside the Olympic Village tested positive for the coronavirus. The person is reportedly not an athlete, but someone from abroad helping to organize the games.“The case is one of 15 new positive results among games participants and workers reported on Saturday, the highest daily count since the committee started compiling figures on July 1,” Kyodo news service reported.“There have been a total of 45 COVID-19 infections announced by organizers since July 1,” according to Kyodo.Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Saturday that there have been more than …

Oliver Daemen, 18, received exciting news Thursday from the Blue Origin flight team: He will be flying into space on July 20.Daemen, who will attend Utrecht University in the Netherlands this fall, will be the youngest person to reach space when he departs on Blue Origin’s New Shepard flight. A press release from his family said that Daemen has “been dreaming about this all [his] life.”Blue Origin announced Thursday that an originally scheduled passenger would be unable to take the flight to the edge of space because of scheduling conflicts. The anonymous winner of the company’s public auction spent $28 million for the seat next to Bezos. Until then, Daemen was scheduled to travel on Blue Origin’s second flight after unsuccessfully bidding on the auction.Daemen’s father, Joes Daemen, is the CEO of an investment firm in the Netherlands, and Blue Origin declined to disclose what he paid for the flight. The person who purchased the $28 million ticket remains anonymous.Donations to nonprofitsThe company stated that $19 million of the auction’s proceeds would be donated to 19 space-specific nonprofit organizations, each receiving $1 million. The chosen associations include AstraFemina, a group of women in science and technology dedicated to providing young girls with role models, and the Brook Owens Fellowship, a mentorship program for undergraduate female students interested in space exploration.FILE – In this 2019 photo made available by NASA, Mercury 13 astronaut trainee Wally Funk visits the Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio.Also making history is Mary …

The Hubble Space Telescope should be back in action soon, following a tricky, remote repair job by NASA.  The orbiting observatory went dark in mid-June, with all astronomical viewing halted.  NASA initially suspected a 1980s-era computer as the source of the problem. But after the backup payload computer also failed, flight controllers at Maryland’s Goddard Space Flight Center focused on the science instruments’ bigger and more encompassing command and data unit, installed by spacewalking astronauts in 2009.  This image of the Eagle Nebula, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows towers of gas and dust, known as the Pillars of Creation because within them, hundreds of new stars are being created.Engineers successfully switched to the backup equipment Thursday, and the crucial payload computer kicked in. NASA said Friday that science observations should resume quickly, if everything goes well.  A similar switch took place in 2008 after part of the older system failed.”Congrats to the team!” NASA’s science mission chief Thomas Zurbuchen tweeted.Launched in 1990, Hubble has made more than 1.5 million observations of the universe. NASA launched five repair missions to the telescope during the space shuttle program. The final tuneup was in 2009.NASA plans to launch Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, by year’s end. …

The World Meteorological Organization is calling for action to halt climate change as extreme weather becomes the norm rather than the exception. Heavy rainfall this week has triggered devastating floods across western Europe, killing and injuring scores of people, destroying homes and livelihoods.  At the same time, parts of Scandinavia — northern Europe’s coldest region — are enduring scorching temperatures.The Finnish Meteorological Institute says Finland had its warmest June on record, which has extended into July.   Southern Finland it notes has had 27 consecutive days with temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius.  By Finland’s normally frigid temperatures, that qualifies as a heatwave.US Facing Triple Weather ThreatsUS experiencing varying, but intense weather conditionsThe western U.S. and Canada also have been gripped by heat, with many records broken in states of Nevada and Utah. Last August, Death Valley, California reached a temperature of 54.4 degrees Celsius, the world’s highest temperature record.  But meteorologists believe Death Valley may have equaled that record a week ago on July 9.The spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization, Clare Nullis, says the heatwave in the western U.S. has led to megadrought conditions and numerous wildfires.”The heatwave that we saw in parts of the U.S. and Canada at the end of June…This heatwave would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused climate change,” said Nullis. “Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, made the heatwave at least 150 times more likely.”   Nullis says climate change already is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events.  She adds many single …

Vietnam’s government is on a global vaccine shopping spree in hopes it can stem a surge of COVID-19 infections without resorting to more lockdowns like those that have already set back the economy and angered an increasingly frustrated public. Like many of its East Asia neighbors, Vietnam is experiencing some of its highest infection rates since the pandemic began early last year, registering more than 2,000 new cases in a day for the first time earlier this week. It recorded 2,383 new cases on July 12, the fifth consecutive day of record highs. However, public patience is wearing thin with the sort of restrictions that helped to keep three earlier waves of infections in check. After almost 50 days of lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City, even those who once supported the government unconditionally began to question the way Vietnam has been fighting the pandemic. FILE – A woman sells food next to a banner reading “prevent the spread of COVID-19, take away only, please keep your distance 2 meters” amid the coronavirus outbreak in Hanoi, Vietnam, May 31, 2021.Some are also questioning whether an all-out battle against the virus is necessary, given that Vietnam is reporting far lower mortality rates from COVID-19 than many countries with more advanced health care systems. The nation’s official figures show only 130 deaths from more than 30,000 cases — a mortality rate of 0.4% compared to 1.8% in the United States. Previous lockdowns have taken a toll on the economy. Vietnam’s General Statistics Office this month reported …

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has warned in a statement that the global COVID vaccination rate “must increase rapidly and protection measures upheld, if we are to win the race against more transmissible, and potentially more deadly, variants.”  “At least three quarters of people in most countries want to be vaccinated worldwide, in the face of emerging new variants, according to new survey data,” IFRC said. “However, despite lofty rhetoric about global solidarity, there is a deadly gap in the global plan to equitably distribute COVID-19 vaccines. Only around a quarter of the world’s population have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This number drops dramatically in low-income countries, where only 1% of people have received one dose.  And some countries are yet to start mass vaccination campaigns.”   A group of human rights advocates is calling for humanitarian aid for Myanmar’s “crippling COVID-19 crisis.” Myanmar The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar said in a statement that the country is experiencing “a massive third wave of COVID-19″ and is “in urgent need of help.”  It called on the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and “other actors” to deliver assistance “directly to the people now.” Yanghee Lee, of the advisory council, in a statement, accused the country’s junta of “weaponising COVID-19 for its own political gain by suffocating the democracy movement and seeking to gain the legitimacy and control it craves – and has so far been denied – by deliberately fueling …

U.S. President Joe Biden, his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Russian President Vladimir Putin are among Pacific Rim leaders gathering virtually to discuss strategies to help economies rebound from a resurgent COVID-19 pandemic. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will chair the special leaders’ meeting Friday of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. But the pandemic and vaccine diplomacy have proved to be divisive issues among members of a forum that says its primary goal is to support sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Biden spoke by phone with Ardern on Friday ahead of the leaders’ retreat and discussed U.S. interest in maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region, a White House statement said. “They also discussed our cooperation on and engagement with Pacific Island nations,” the statement said. The Biden administration has put a premium on tending to relations with allies in the Pacific early in his administration. One of his first high-profile acts of diplomacy as president was hosting a virtual summit with fellow leaders of the Quad – Australia, India and Japan – a group central to his efforts to counter China’s growing military and economic power. And he hosted Suga and South Korea President Moon Jae-in for the first in-person foreign leader meetings of his presidency. South Korea is an APEC member and India is the only country in the Quad that is not. Biden plans to use the virtual APEC retreat to talk to leaders about his …

In a medical first, researchers harnessed the brain waves of a paralyzed man unable to speak — and turned what he intended to say into sentences on a computer screen. It will take years of additional research but the study, reported Wednesday, marks an important step toward one day restoring more natural communication for people who can’t talk because of injury or illness. “Most of us take for granted how easily we communicate through speech,” said Dr. Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the work. “It’s exciting to think we’re at the very beginning of a new chapter, a new field” to ease the devastation of patients who lost that ability. Today, people who can’t speak or write because of paralysis have very limited ways of communicating. For example, the man in the experiment, who was not identified to protect his privacy, uses a pointer attached to a baseball cap that lets him move his head to touch words or letters on a screen. Other devices can pick up patients’ eye movements. But it’s a frustratingly slow and limited substitution for speech. Tapping brain signals to work around a disability is a hot field. In recent years, experiments with mind-controlled prosthetics have allowed paralyzed people to shake hands or take a drink using a robotic arm — they imagine moving and those brain signals are relayed through a computer to the artificial limb. Chang’s team built on that work to develop a “speech …