Year: 2021

On Thursday, the eve of the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, U.S. President Joe Biden formally announced what had been disclosed a day earlier — that his administration would donate 500 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low- and middle-income countries. Here’s the latest from White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara, who is traveling with the president. …

Washington-area residents are increasingly out and about as COVID-19 cases fall in the U.S., including the capital region. But reluctance to get vaccinated persists in some quarters, despite extensive campaigns promoting inoculation — and warnings of the dangers of failing to get the jab. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.Camera: Laurel Bowman …

U.S federal workers will not be required to get a COVID-19 vaccine before returning to the office, according to guidance from the Biden administration released Thursday.The guidance says federal agencies should base their reopening plans on the percentage of employees who are vaccinated, but said revealing vaccination status would be voluntary.The guidance urged agencies to build in more flexibility for some workers, including more remote work and working outside normal business hours.About 60% of the 4-million-person federal workforce has been operating remotely during the pandemic, Reuters reported.Agencies are required to submit their plans for reopening by next week, the guidance stated, and they should be ready to implement the plans by July 19.According to the guidance, agencies’ “eventual post-pandemic operating state may differ in significant ways from [their] pre-pandemic operating state.”  …

NASA sends squids to space. Plus, the world’s wealthiest man makes out-of-this-world travel arrangements, and a soccer star talks game with an orbiting astronaut.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi  …

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced Thursday it will collaborate with the U.S. space agency NASA on an unmanned probe to study Venus, the third such mission to the planet announced this month.In a release, ESA said the probe will be called EnVision, and much like the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions announced by NASA earlier in June, its overall mission will be to collect data about Venus’ atmosphere and surface to unlock information about how the planet formed and evolved.Sunrise Special: Solar Eclipse Thrills World’s Northern TierFarther south, the upper portions of North America, Europe and Asia got a bite-size partial eclipse. It’s the first eclipse of the sun for North America since August 2017, when a total solar eclipse crisscrossed the USVenus is of particular interest to scientists because it is Earth’s closest neighbor in the solar system and strikingly similar to Earth in size and composition. Yet in its current form, it is inhospitable to life as we know it, with a surface temperature capable of melting lead.The EnVision probe will contain instruments to answer questions as to how Venus got that way. The spacecraft will include a “sounder” to help reveal what lies below the surface of the planet. Spectrometers on the probe will study both the surface and the atmosphere, monitoring for trace gases that might indicate an active volcano.NASA will contribute the VenSAR radar system to image and map the surface. The space agency will also be responsible for the project’s overall instrument management.Scientist from …

India posted a single-day world record Thursday of more than 6,000 COVID-19 deaths after one state revised a set of numbers.The eastern state of Bihar, one of India’s largest and poorest states, revised its death toll Wednesday from about 5,500 to 9,500 after the state’s high court ordered the government to review its records.Many experts have said India’s death toll is far higher than official reports after a devastating surge of new infections in April and May saw the emergence of hundreds of makeshift crematoriums and scores of bodies floating in rivers.The revised count pushed India’s one-day death toll to 6,148, outpacing the 5,444 recorded by the United States on February 12, according to Reuters.The world’s second-most populous nation now has 29.1 million total confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 355,705 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, second only to the United States with 33.4 million total cases and 598,766 deaths.In other news, a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Medicine reveals a slightly higher risk of a bleeding disorder from the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.  Researchers discovered some people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine in Scotland had developed a condition called ITP, or immune thrombocytopenic purpura, which causes bruising in some cases and also serious bleeding in others.The study also found very small increased risks of arterial blood clots and bleeding possibly associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.  …

The World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe urged caution Thursday, as 36 of the region’s 53 countries begin to ease COVID-19 restrictions, saying the continent’s vaccination rate is insufficient to prevent a resurgence.At a virtual briefing from his headquarters in Copenhagen, WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge acknowledged current pandemic numbers are headed in the right direction, with two consecutive months of decline in new cases, deaths, and hospitalizations.But Kluge cautioned that the highly transmissible Delta variant strain of the virus that causes COVID-19 – originally identified in India –   is “poised to take hold,” in the region, while many people above the age of 60 remain unvaccinated.The WHO Europe director noted that cases were declining at this time last year, only to surge again.“Over the course of last summer, cases gradually rose in younger age groups, then moved into older age groups, contributing to a devastating resurgence, lockdowns and loss of life, in the autumn and winter of 2020.”The difference this year, of course is the availability of vaccines. Kluge said so far, 30 percent of the region has received at least one vaccine dose and 17 percent are fully vaccinated. He said while that’s good progress, it’s not enough to prevent a resurgence of the virus once people begin traveling and attending large public events such as sports or festivals.He urged people to get vaccinated and to continue to use COVID-19 precautions, such as face masks, while enjoying the summer.Kluge also expressed gratitude for U.S. President Joe …

Temporary side effects including headache, fatigue and fever are signs the immune system is revving up — a normal response to vaccines. And they’re common.”The day after getting these vaccines, I wouldn’t plan anything that was strenuous physical activity,” said Dr. Peter Marks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief, who experienced fatigue after his first dose.Here’s what’s happening: The immune system has two main arms, and the first kicks in as soon as the body detects a foreign intruder. White blood cells swarm to the site, prompting inflammation that’s responsible for chills, soreness, fatigue and other side effects.This rapid-response step of your immune system tends to wane with age, one reason younger people report side effects more often than older adults. Also, some vaccines simply elicit more reactions than others.  That said, everyone reacts differently. If you didn’t feel anything a day or two after either dose, that doesn’t mean the vaccine isn’t working.  Behind the scenes, the shots also set in motion the second part of your immune system, which will provide the real protection from the virus by producing antibodies.Another nuisance side effect: As the immune system activates, it also sometimes causes temporary swelling in lymph nodes, such as those under the arm. Women are encouraged to schedule routine mammograms ahead of COVID-19 vaccination to avoid a swollen node being mistaken for cancer.  Not all side effects are routine. But after hundreds of millions of vaccine doses administered around the world — and intense safety monitoring …

Hong Kong will allow children age 12 and above to receive the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine as it seeks to boost immunization rates in the city. Government officials said Thursday they will offer the vaccine to about 240,000 children from 12 to 15 years old starting Friday, joining other countries that have started vaccinating children. The move comes as Hong Kong is urging its 7.5 million population to get inoculated. Since its vaccination drive began in late February, just over 15% of the population has been fully vaccinated. The city has seen widespread vaccine hesitancy due to a mistrust of the government and outsized fears of side effects after several people died following inoculations, despite a determination that the deaths were not directly related to the vaccine. “The government attaches high importance to getting adolescents and students vaccinated, and it is the government’s hope that more students, parents and teachers will be vaccinated,” said Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip. Since they are below 18, children must obtain parental approval before they can be vaccinated. Health minister Sophia Chan urged parents to let their children get vaccinated to “help them to go back to school for their normal lives as soon as possible.” Students in kindergarten through secondary school are currently attending only half-day classes as part of preventive measures during the pandemic. The semi-autonomous Chinese city is offering the Pfizer vaccine — better known as BioNTech in the city — and the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine. Hong Kong officials say those wanting to receive the Pfizer vaccine must do so …

A “swarm” of bug-tracking drones and tiny radars are being developed to help conservation of rare insects in New Zealand.  The new tag-and-track technology is being developed at the University of Canterbury on New Zealand’s South Island. Researchers hope it could lead to a deeper understanding of New Zealand’s threatened and endangered insects. The research draws on years of experience in the area of bird conservation, where radio tracking methods have helped to protect many vulnerable species. Experts have said that at a stretch the technology could also be used to study large invertebrates such as giant land snails but was simply too big and heavy for most insects. Researchers have now made about 20 tiny so-called harmonic radar tags that are fitted to insects. They would then be tracked by a “swarm” of drones. Steve Pawson, from the university’s College of Engineering, says bird-tracking technology has been a major inspiration. “They have been doing radio tracking on many of these species over several decades now and the information that they learn from that really informs the conservation management. So, understanding how far do these things move, where do they go foraging, what are their foraging behaviors? Even things as simple as how long things live for. Unfortunately, the radio tracking technologies that are out there at the moment are too heavy to use on small insects. There is only a handful of our heaviest insects that can carry those and so we are really limited in our understanding of how invertebrates are moving through the environment, and if we have that knowledge then we can incorporate it in our decision making and our planning …

By any measure, the number of those being vaccinated against COVID-19 in Africa are running behind the rest of the world. Health experts warn that failure to inoculate the 1.3 billion people on the continent will have a huge impact on its health care systems and economies. More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, most African countries have vaccinated only a tiny fraction of their populations.Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, has fully vaccinated just 0.1% of its citizens.The Africa Center for Disease Control says three countries — Tanzania, Burundi, Eritrea — and the self-declared Sahrawi Republic have yet to receive any vaccines, while Burkina Faso has received 115,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine but has not yet administered a single jab.Abdhalah Ziraba, an epidemiologist and the head of the health system at the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, says the failure to inoculate is partly due to vaccine hesitancy among the population, and underdeveloped health care systems, especially in non-urban areas. “In Africa, most people live in rural areas. The health care system that should be the system to deliver the vaccines to the last person is not as elaborate as the population is distributed. So, people are far away from where they can get access to vaccines, and as a consequence, they are definitely left out, but they remain at risk of getting exposed to COVID-19,” Zariba said.Kenya has fully vaccinated just 13,000 people out of a population of 50 million, although about 1 million …

Across the Eastern United States, billions of Brood X cicadas are emerging after 17 years underground. The noisy insects with the bright red eyes overwhelm predators by emerging in densities of 1 million per acre, scientists say. And the hum of mating males has been likened to the buzz of a chain saw. Cicadas have long fascinated one Washington, D.C.-based newspaper columnist, who has invited readers to muse poetic about cicadas. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has that story.    Camera: Laurel Bowman    …

A chartered airplane scheduled to take the U.S. presidential press corps from Washington to Europe was delayed for at least five hours late Tuesday after cicadas — large flying insects that are currently out in huge numbers in the region — apparently clogged the plane’s engines.Media reports say the flight, for members of the media to cover U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Europe, had been scheduled to depart Dulles Airport, in Virgina, at about 9 p.m. local time. But, the reports say, the press corps gathered at a nearby hotel, were told the plane had been delayed due to “cicada issues,” and would not leave until at least 2:40 a.m.A spokeswoman for Delta Airlines, which operated the charter, confirmed to The Washington Post that cicadas inside the engines had prevented the plane from taking off, requiring a new airplane and pilot. It was unclear how many cicadas got into engines and how they disrupted the mechanism.The Washington area is among 14 states, mostly in the eastern United States, periodically swarmed by cicadas. Billions of the insects emerged last month after 17 years underground in larval form to molt and find mates by making a loud buzzing with their wings. When they are in large groups, the sound can be deafening and heard for miles.Though completely harmless, the bugs are seemingly everywhere and on everything in the Washington region. Even President Joe Biden was not spared, getting buzzed by a cicada as he was boarding Air Force One early Wednesday, …

Four-year-old Kirill Zherebtsov  was born deaf and without ears. He was scheduled for a special surgery in California but a day before his flight, his mother died unexpectedly. What happened next is a story in resilience. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian   …

Officials in Australia have confirmed the discovery of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur, the largest ever found on the continent, and one of the largest to have ever lived.A study published Monday in the scientific journal Paleontology and Evolutionary Science describes how bones originally discovered in 2006 have been officially designated as Australotitan Cooperensis, a giant sauropod, a type of long-necked plant-eating dinosaur.Queensland Museum paleontologist Scott Hocknull told reporters Tuesday the animal stood five to six-and-a-half meters high and was 25 to 30 meters long from head to tail.The dinosaur is known as Australotitan for short, and affectionately as “Cooper” by the members of the team that conducted the study. The bones were originally discovered on a family farm in 2006 about 1,000 kilometers west of Brisbane in the Eromanga Basin.The team of paleontologists, geologists and volunteers spent 15 years studying the bones using 3-D digital scanning technology to compare the dinosaur with its close relatives, to determine and confirm what they had found. Hocknull said, “We compared Australotitan’s bones to all of these gigantic sauropods and it’s in the top 10 to 15.”The bones had been on display in the museum since 2007 pending the results of the study.That part of the titanosaur family lived about 100 million years ago. The Queensland Museum says they were the last surviving group of long-necked sauropod dinosaurs and the largest known land-dwelling animals to have ever lived. …

When to unlock? Britain’s Boris Johnson is coming under mounting pressure from Conservative lawmakers and their allies in the media to keep to a previously outlined timetable that would see virtually all pandemic restrictions relaxed on June 21 in England.    But a sudden surge in coronavirus infections has triggered fierce counter-lobbying from the government’s scientific advisers, who want a delay to the final easing of restrictions to assess the latest data and to ensure that variants, including the now-dominant Delta variant, first detected in India, aren’t resistant to vaccines.  FILE – Pedestrians walk past a sign warning members of the public about a “Coronavirus variant of concern,” in Hounslow, west London, Britain, June 1, 2021.Ministers have been hinting for days of a delay in what was earmarked as the final unlocking phase, and government officials say they are in a race between vaccinating people and the Delta variant. Businesspeople are also expressing frustration at any delay. Those angered by talk of delay include Andrew Lloyd-Webber, theater impresario and the composer of musicals, “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats.” He issued a threat to the government Wednesday, vowing to risk arrest by reopening his London theaters on June 21. If the final stage of unlocking was postponed, “We will say, ‘come to the theater and arrest us,’” he told local media. The Delta variant is at least 40% more infectious than the previous strain dominating Britain, say government advisory panels, and the surge in cases is being seen largely among the unvaccinated under-30-year-olds. …