Month: October 2021

Actor William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of space explorer Captain James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” television series, announced he will travel to space later this month. Shatner, 90, will blast off October 12 aboard a Blue Origin rocket. Blue Origin is the space travel company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. If successful, Shatner would be the oldest person ever to travel to space. He will be joined by three other passengers on Blue Origin’s second space venture. Bezos was among the first Blue Origin passengers in July. The flight is expected to last about 10 minutes and reach an altitude of 106 kilometers. “I’ve heard about space for a long time now. I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle,” Shatner said in a statement. In a tweet, the actor wrote, “So now I can say something. Yes, it’s true; I’m going to be a ‘rocket man!’ a referral to his spoken-word cover version of singer-songwriter Elton John’s famous song.   Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. …

Pope Francis and other religious leaders made a joint appeal on Monday for next month’s U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) to offer concrete solutions to save the planet from “an unprecedented ecological crisis”. The “Faith and Science: Towards COP26” meeting brought together Christian leaders including Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, as well as representatives of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism and Jainism. “COP26 in Glasgow represents an urgent summons to provide effective responses to the unprecedented ecological crisis and the crisis of values that we are presently experiencing, and in this way to offer concrete hope to future generations,” the pope said. “We want to accompany it with our commitment and our spiritual closeness,” he said in an address which he gave to participants instead of reading out in the Vatican’s frescoed Hall of Benedictions so that others had more time to speak. The appeal, which described climate change as a “grave threat”, was handed to Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and Britain’s Alok Sharma, president of COP26 in Glasgow. “The faith leaders who have come here today represent around 3/4 of the world’s population. That is by any measure a significant percentage of people across the globe and that’s why their voice matters so much,” Sharma said after the meeting, which was organised by the Vatican, Britain and Italy. ‘War on Creation’ Welby, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, called for a “global financial architecture which repents of its past …

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch, the jury said. “The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world,” the Nobel jury said. “In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.” Julius, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros). Last year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus. While the 2020 award was handed out as the pandemic raged, this is the first time the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19. Nominations close each year at the end of January, and at that time last year the novel coronavirus was still largely confined to China.  The Nobel season continues on Tuesday with the award for physics and Wednesday with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday, October 11. …

 A British company says it has developed an easy-to-administer, saliva-based test that can detect whether a person is infectious enough to pass along the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The company, Vatic, said in a statement that its test is “extremely accurate” and has not returned a single false positive result in its test group. “This is so important for getting life back to normal,” the company said. Vatic said its “mission was to design a test that people won’t mind using multiple times a week.”  Tests results are available in 15 minutes, the company said. The test is not available to the public yet as it undergoes more trials but Vatic is seeking approval for its sale directly to the public. A report in The Economist says COVID in 2020 has brought an abrupt halt to the steady rise of the rate of lIfe expectancy. Impact on life expectancy Researchers in Britain, Denmark and Germany said that between 2019 and 2020 life expectancy dropped in all but two of the 28 countries surveyed. Life expectancy rose in Denmark and Norway and for women in Finland. Meanwhile, male life expectancy fell by more than a year in Italy, Poland and Spain and fell by more than two years in the United States.  Another report in The Economist says that the death rate from COVID in the U.S. “is about eight times higher in America than in the rest of the rich world” due to vaccine hesitancy and other factors. The report said, …

“The pandemic has destabilized societies, economies, and governments. It has shown that there is no global security without global health security,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a recent address to ambassadors and representatives to the European Union’s political and security committee. “The fastest and best way to end this pandemic is with genuine global cooperation on vaccine supply and access,” Tedros said. “The longer vaccine inequity persists, the longer the social and economic turmoil will continue, and the more opportunity the virus has to circulate and change into more dangerous variants. We need a global realization that no country can vaccinate its way out of this pandemic in isolation from the rest of the world.” The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported Sunday it had recorded 234.6 million global COVID infections and nearly 5 million deaths. Thousands marched Saturday in Bucharest, Romania, to protest restrictions that begin Sunday to combat a jump in coronavirus infections. The European nation of 19 million is seeing a shocking rise in the daily number of coronavirus cases. A month ago, the number was about 1,000 new cases a day. On Saturday, Romania reported more than 12,500 new cases, its highest number since the pandemic began in March of last year. Protesters, mostly maskless, gathered outside government offices, shouting “Freedom, freedom without certificates,” and “Down with the government,” according to Reuters. One sign read: “Green certificates = dictatorship,” The Associated Press reported. The demonstration was organized by Romania’s far-right AUR party, …

In a normal year, the smokehouses and drying racks that Alaska Natives use to prepare salmon to tide them through the winter would be heavy with fish meat, the fruits of a summer spent fishing on the Yukon River like generations before them.  This year, there are no fish. For the first time in memory, both king and chum salmon have dwindled to almost nothing and the state has banned salmon fishing on the Yukon, even the subsistence harvests that Alaska Natives rely on to fill their freezers and pantries for winter. The remote communities that dot the river and live off its bounty — far from road systems and easy, affordable shopping — are desperate and doubling down on moose and caribou hunts in the waning days of fall.  “Nobody has fish in their freezer right now. Nobody,” said Giovanna Stevens, 38, a member of the Stevens Village tribe who grew up harvesting salmon at her family’s fish camp. “We have to fill that void quickly before winter gets here.”  Opinions on what led to the catastrophe vary, but those studying it generally agree human-caused climate change is playing a role as the river and the Bering Sea warm, altering the food chain in ways that aren’t yet fully understood. Many believe commercial trawling operations that scoop up wild salmon along with their intended catch, as well as competition from hatchery-raised salmon in the ocean, have compounded global warming’s effects on one of North America’s longest rivers.  The assumption …

A joint European-Japanese spacecraft got its first glimpse of Mercury as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.  The BepiColombo mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11:34 p.m. GMT Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft down.  After swooping past Mercury at altitudes of under 200 kilometers (125 miles), the spacecraft took a low-resolution black-and-white photo with one of its monitoring cameras before zipping off again.  The European Space Agency said the captured image shows the Northern Hemisphere and Mercury’s characteristic pock-marked features, among them the 166-kilometer-wide (103-mile-wide) Lermontov crater.  The joint mission by the European agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was launched in 2018, flying once past Earth and twice past Venus on its journey to the solar system’s smallest planet.  Five further flybys are needed before BepiColombo is sufficiently slowed down to release ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The two probes will study Mercury’s core and processes on its surface, as well as its magnetic sphere.  The mission is named after Italian scientist Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, who is credited with helping develop the gravity assist maneuver that NASA’s Mariner 10 first used when it flew to Mercury in 1974.  …

Delegates heading to the COP26 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow agreed they must deliver on the $100 billion per year pledge to help most vulnerable nations tackle climate change, COP26 president Alok Sharma said on Saturday.   Speaking after days of meetings at the pre-COP26 climate event in Italy, Sharma said there was a consensus to do more to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius target within reach, adding more needed to be done collectively in terms of national climate plans.   The COP26 conference in Glasgow aims to secure more ambitious climate action from the nearly 200 countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius – and preferably to 1.5 degrees – above pre-industrial levels. …

The abortion rights battle takes to the streets across America Saturday, with hundreds of demonstrations planned as part of a new “Women’s March” aimed at countering an unprecedented conservative offensive to restrict the termination of pregnancies.   The fight has become even more intense since Texas adopted a law on September 1 banning almost all abortions, unleashing a veritable legal guerrilla warfare and a counterattack in Congress, but with few public demonstrations until now.   Two days before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will have the final say on the contentious issue, is due to reconvene, nearly 200 organizations have called on abortion rights defenders to make their voices heard from coast to coast.   The flagship event will be held in the nation’s capital Washington, where thousands are expected to march to the Supreme Court, which nearly 50 years ago recognized the right of women to have an abortion in its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.   Now the court, stacked by former President Donald Trump with conservative justices, seems ready to head in the opposite direction.     It has already refused to block the Texas law and has accepted reviewing a restrictive Mississippi law that could provide an opportunity to overturn its precedent.   Rallies are planned in these two conservative states’ capitals, Austin and Jackson, as well as in more than 600 cities in all 50 states. According to the organizers, nearly a quarter million people are expected to turn out across the United States.   …

Droughts that cause leaves to turn brown and wither before they can reach peak color. Heat waves prompting leaves to fall before autumn even arrives. Extreme weather events like hurricanes that strip trees of their leaves altogether. For a cheery autumnal activity, leaf peeping is facing some serious threats from the era of climate change. Leaf peeping, the practice of traveling to watch nature display its fall colors, is a beloved annual activity in many corners of the country, especially New England and New York. But recent seasons have been disrupted by weather conditions there and elsewhere, and the trend is likely to continue as the planet warms, said arborists, conservationists and ecologists. Typically, by the end of September, leaves cascade into warmer hues throughout the U.S. This year, many areas have yet to even pivot from their summer green shades. In northern Maine, where peak conditions typically arrive in late September, forest rangers had reported less than 70% color change and moderate leaf drop on Wednesday. Across the country in Denver, high temperatures have left “dead, dry edges of leaves” early in the season, said Michael Sundberg, a certified arborist in the area. “Instead of trees doing this gradual change, they get thrown these wacky weather events. They change all of a sudden, or they drop leaves early,” Sundberg said. “Its been a few years since we’ve had a really good leaf year where you just drive around town and see really good color.”   The reason climate change …

At the virtual COVID-19 summit on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly last week, U.S. President Joe Biden announced an additional donation of 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to low-income and lower-middle-income countries, bringing total U.S. pledged donations to 1.1 billion shots. “I made — and I’m keeping — the promise that America will become the arsenal of vaccines as we were the arsenal of democracy during World War II,” Biden said at the summit. Here are some facts and context surrounding that claim. How many doses has the U.S. pledged and shipped? Of the 1.1 billion doses the U.S. has promised, nearly 172 million have been shipped to more than 100 countries, according to the State Department. Most are distributed via COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing initiative co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the World Health Organization; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and some through bilateral agreements. This makes the U.S. the global leader in both pledged and shipped doses, according to data compiled by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center as of October 1. The next-largest pledges come from the European Union (500 million), France (120 million), and the United Kingdom, Germany and China (100 million each). Countries that have shipped the most donations after the U.S. are China (47 million), EU (33.8 million), Japan (21.5 million) and Germany (9.9 million). The 1.1 billion doses pledged is in line with the administration’s commitment to donate three shots for every shot administered domestically. So far, …

The U.S. is the global leader in vaccine donations, pledging to send 1.1 billion doses to help the world fight the COVID-19 pandemic. But it has shipped only 15% of the doses it has promised. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report. Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov  …

The United States has surpassed 700,000 deaths from COVID-19, the highest of any country. The U.S. recorded 700,258 deaths Friday evening, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Brazil has the second-highest number of deaths, with 597,255. India has 448,339; Mexico, 277,507; and Russia, 204,424, according to Johns Hopkins. Globally, nearly 4.8 million people have died from COVID-19. U.S. health officials say cases have been declining across the United States in recent weeks. However, while the latest wave of COVID-19 has peaked across the country as a whole, some states, especially in the North, are seeing case numbers rise. In other developments in the U.S., California became the first state to announce a vaccine mandate for schoolchildren once the Food and Drug Administration formally approves COVID-19 vaccines for younger age groups. Currently, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been fully approved for people age 16 and older and cleared for emergency use in children ages 12-15. Once the vaccine is fully approved for the younger age group, California will mandate it for students in seventh through 12th grades. After it is approved for anyone 5 and older, the state will mandate the vaccine for children in kindergarten through sixth grade. Students will be granted exemptions for religious and medical reasons. In Washington, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh tested positive for COVID-19, despite having been vaccinated. The court said the 54-year-old justice had no symptoms. The positive test forced Kavanaugh to miss Friday’s ceremonial swearing in for Justice Amy …

Members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team said Friday that recent trials showing the effectiveness of the U.S. drug company Merck’s experimental new COVID-19 pill were certainly good news, but they stressed that vaccines would remain the best way to end the pandemic.    During the response team’s virtual briefing, top U.S. infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said early data from the studies on the Merck COVID-19 pill were “impressive,” including a 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths. White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said the U.S. government had already arranged to buy 1.7 million doses of the pill, with an option for more if needed. If approved for emergency use, the Merck pill would be the first COVID-19 treatment that could be taken orally and not through injection or intravenous drip. Fauci said he would not predict when the pill might be approved as both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention evaluate the medication. Vaccinations still seen as best choice But, Zients said, while the pill is very good news, vaccinations are still the best way out of the pandemic, and the response team spent the bulk of its briefing presenting statistics to encourage the unvaccinated 70 million U.S. residents to take the shot. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said new data from her agency demonstrated the vaccination’s value at preventing serious illness. The data, collected in August during the peak of the surge of infections caused by the delta variant …

A joint mission of the European and Japanese space agencies, the spacecraft BepiColombo is set to make a close, initial flyby of Mercury on Friday as part of a seven-year mission to put two probes in orbit around the solar system’s closest planet to the sun.  In a statement on its website, the European Space Agency explains the spacecraft, launched in 2018, will swoop by Mercury on Friday at an altitude of about 200 kilometers (124.3 miles), capturing imagery and data that will give scientists preliminary information on the planet they hope to explore in depth when the mission puts two probes into orbit there in 2025.  The ESA says the British-built spacecraft will make use of the gravitational swing of nine planetary flybys — one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury — together with the spacecraft’s solar electric propulsion system, to help steer into Mercury’s orbit.  The craft made a second flyby of Venus and collected pictures of the planet as it passed within 570 kilometers (354 miles) of its surface. The spacecraft’s main mission — in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) — is to study the structure of Mercury and its magnetic field. When BepiColombo finally arrives, it will release two probes that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury.  The ESA-developed probes will operate in Mercury’s inner orbit, while the JAXA probe will be in the outer orbit to gather data that would reveal the internal structure of …

The U.S. government says it wants to partner with African countries to combat climate change. A U.S. climate envoy, who is in South Africa to prepare for a key conference next month, said the fight must be an international one. “These kinds of damages do not limit themselves to one country,” said Jonathan Pershing, U.S. deputy special presidential envoy for climate change. “You can’t say I have got a problem and nobody else does. But neither would any country be immune. You don’t have to be a landlocked country or an island country or coastal country. We are all in this together.  “That brings me to why I have come to Africa. It’s the fastest growing continent, it’s a continent in many ways it represents the future, what it chooses to do could either leapfrog the past or follow the previous historical trajectory.”  The State of the Climate in Africa 2019 report, a publication coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, showed increasing climate change threats to people’s health, food and water.  The predictions on weather patterns, covering the years between 2020 and 2024, call for a continued warming trend and less rainfall in northern and southern Africa. This has major consequences for the continent. Farmers in Africa depend on their natural environment to grow crops, and due to unpredictable weather patterns, they are getting less food from the farms. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of undernourished people in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 45% since …

Geneticists, led by Harvard Medical School’s George Church, aim to bring the woolly mammoth back to life by 2027. But some experts aren’t sure it’s such a good idea. Karina Bafradzhian has the story. …

As COVID-19 has spread in Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country, so have myths about the virus, especially among children. A Nigerian author has written a children’s book to help them understand the pandemic and ways to avoid being infected. A team of educators arrives at a government school in Abuja. Equipped with books, face masks and sanitizers, they’re here to educate schoolchildren about the coronavirus pandemic and personal hygiene. The initiative is the brainchild of team leader Raquel Kasham Daniel, a Nigerian author and founder of the nonprofit Beyond the Classroom Foundation. She started the foundation 11 years ago to help make education accessible to vulnerable children. But she said when COVID-19 hit Nigeria last year, she had to focus on teaching children how to stay safe or reduce their risk of contracting the virus through her books. “Because COVID was evolving, I knew we’ll not have one edition of the book,” she said. “So, we’ve had different editions of the book where I’ve had to update it from time to time. The support that we’ve received has mostly come from social media and some funders who have seen our work.” The COVID-19 children’s book is titled There’s a New Virus in Town. It contains colorful images, along with text, to help children better understand the coronavirus. It also contains a quiz at the end where children can guess the next character or topic.   Twelve-year-old Jemila Abdul read it at the Abuja school. “I’ll wash my hands regularly, and …