The head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warns Sudan’s fragile political stability could be at risk if the desperate needs of hundreds of thousands of flood victims are not urgently addressed. Severe floods have affected nearly 900,000 Sudanese, reportedly killing more than 120, rendering thousands of families homeless, and destroying farmlands and livelihoods.International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Secretary General Jagan Chapagain attends a ceremony in Geneva on July 22, 2020.Secretary-General Jagan Chapagain has just returned from a four-day assessment mission to Sudan. He said the impact of the worst floods in three decades is far beyond anything he had expected.“I visited an area called Algamayer on the outskirts of Khartoum. Homes, infrastructure and crops have been destroyed,”  Chapagain said. “The conditions are simply appalling. It is boiling hot — more than 40 degrees, and there is no shade. The camp we visited is surrounded by stagnant water, and mosquitoes are rife.”Chapagain said the only access to clean water or sanitary toilets is at the neighboring school, which is closed at night. He said people also lack sufficient shelter, toilets and mosquito nets, which means malaria is rampant and the risk of cholera and other diseases is high.He said children comprise about half of the flood victims and are particularly vulnerable. This humanitarian crisis, he said, also is taking a heavy toll on pregnant and lactating women, the elderly and disabled.He told VOA he is very concerned by the level of anger and frustration he encountered and its potential impact on the country’s stability.“There was a locust infestation in the beginning of the year,” Chapagain said. “There has been, of course, impact of the COVID. And, of course, with the political change, the expectations of the population on the government are very, very high — actually extremely high … I do believe that the pressure on the government could be very significantly increasing in coming months if these desperate needs are not addressed.”Sudan’s transitional government, which took office last year after long-time leader Omar al-Bashir was ousted, is struggling to build a stable political system and end political violence in the impoverished country.The International Red Cross has received just 15% of the $13 million appeal it launched in September to provide health care, shelter, water and sanitation and other essential relief for 200,000 Sudanese flood victims.Secretary-General Chapagain says it is urgent to act now. He warns the failure of the international community to support this life-saving operation will have fearful consequences for many thousands of people. 
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Wildfires churning out dense plumes of smoke as they scorch huge swaths of the U.S. West Coast have exposed millions of people to hazardous pollution levels, causing emergency room visits to spike and potentially thousands of deaths among the elderly and infirm, according to an Associated Press analysis of pollution data and interviews with physicians, health authorities and researchers.
Smoke at concentrations that topped the government’s charts for health risks and lasted at least a day enshrouded counties inhabited by more than 8 million people across five states in recent weeks, AP’s analysis shows.
Major cities in Oregon, which has been especially hard hit,  last month suffered the highest pollution levels they’ve ever recorded when powerful winds supercharged fires that had been burning in remote areas and sent them hurtling to the edge of densely populated Portland.
Medical complications began arising while communities were still enveloped in smoke, including hundreds of additional emergency room visits daily in Oregon, according to state health officials.
“It’s been brutal for me,” said Barb Trout, a 64-year-old retiree living south of Portland in the Willamette Valley. She was twice taken to the emergency room by ambulance following severe asthmatic reactions, something that had never happened to her before.
Trout had sheltered inside as soon as smoke rolled into the valley just after Labor Day but within days had an asthma attack that left her gasping for air and landed her in the ER. Two weeks later, when smoke from fires in California drifted into the valley, she had an even more violent reaction that Trout described as a near-death experience.
“It hit me quick and hard – more so than the first one. I wasn’t hardly even breathing,” she recalled. After getting stabilized with drugs, Trout was sent home but the specter of a third attack now haunts her. She and her husband installed an alarm system so she can press a panic button when in distress to call for help.
“It’s put a whole new level on my life,” she said. “I’m trying not to live in fear, but I’ve got to be really really cautious.”
In nearby Salem, Trout’s pulmonologist Martin Johnson said people with existing respiratory issues started showing up at his hospital or calling his office almost immediately after the smoke arrived, many struggling to breathe. Salem is in Marion county, which experienced eight days of pollution at hazardous levels during a short period, some of the worst conditions seen the West over the past two decades, according to AP’s analysis.
Most of Johnson’s patients are expected to recover but he said some could have permanent loss of lung function. Then there are the “hidden” victims who Johnson suspects died from heart attacks or other problems triggered by the poor air quality but whose cause of death will be chalked up to something else.
“Many won’t show up at the hospital or they’ll die at home or they’ll show up at hospice for other reasons, such as pneumonia or other complications,” Johnson said.
Based on prior studies of pollution-related deaths and the number of people exposed to recent fires, researchers at Stanford University estimated that as many as 3,000 people over 65 in California alone died prematurely after being exposed to smoke during a six-week period beginning Aug. 1. Hundreds more deaths could have occurred in Washington over several weeks of poor air caused by the fires, according to University of Washington researchers.
The findings for both states have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. No such estimate was available for Oregon.
Wildfires are a regular occurrence in Western states but they’ve grown more intense and dangerous as a changing climate dries out forests thick with trees and underbrush from decades of fire suppression. What makes the smoke from these fires dangerous  are particles too small for the naked eye to see that can be breathed in and cause respiratory problems.
On any given day, western fires can produce 10 times more particles than are produced by all other pollution sources including vehicle emissions and industrial facilities, said Shawn Urbanski, a U.S. Forest Service smoke scientist.
Fires across the West emitted more than a million tons of the particles in 2012, 2015 and 2017, and almost as much in 2018 — the year a blaze in Paradise, California killed 85 people and burned 14,000 houses, generating a thick plume that blanketed portions of Northern California for weeks. Figures for 2017 and 2018 are preliminary.
A confluence of meteorological events made the smoke especially bad this year: first, fierce winds up and down the coast whipped fires into a fury, followed in Oregon by a weather inversion that trapped smoke close to the ground and made it inescapable for days. Hundreds of miles to the south in San Francisco, smoke turned day into night, casting an eerie orange pall over a city where even before the pandemic facemasks had become common at times to protect against smoke.
AP’s analysis of smoke exposure was based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data compiled from hundreds of air quality monitoring stations. Census data was used to determine the numbers of people living in affected areas of Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Montana.
At least 38 million people live in counties subjected to pollution considered unhealthy for the general population for five days, according to AP’s analysis. That included more than 25 million people in California, 7.2 million in Washington, 3.5 million in Oregon, 1 million in Idaho and 299,000 people in Montana.
The state totals for the number of people exposed to unhealthy air on a given day were derived from counties where at least one monitoring site registered unhealthy air.
Scientists studying long-term health problems have found correlations between smoke exposure and decreased lung function, weakened immune systems and higher rates of flu. That includes studies from northwestern Montana communities blanketed with smoke for weeks in 2017.
“Particulate matter enters your lungs, it gets way down deep, it irrigates the lining and it possibly enters your bloodstream,” said University of Montana professor Erin Landguth. “We’re seeing the effects.”
The coronavirus raises a compounding set of worries: An emerging body of research connects increased air pollution with greater rates of infection and severity of symptoms, said Gabriela Goldfarb, manager of environmental health for the Oregon Health Authority.
Climate experts say residents of the West Coast and Northern Rockies should brace for more frequent major smoke events, as warming temperatures and drought fuel bigger, more intense fires.
Their message is that climate change isn’t going to bring worse conditions: they are already here. The scale of this year’s fires is pushing the envelope” of wildfire severity modeled out to 2050, said Harvard university climate researcher Loretta Mickley.
“The bad years will increase. The smoke will increase,” said Jeffrey Pierce an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University. “It’s not unreasonable that we could be getting a 2020-type year every other year.”
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French officials said police have conducted early-morning searches of the homes of the current and former top government officials after a special French court ordered an investigation of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.France’s Health Ministry confirmed the dawn searches, which include the offices of the current health minister, Olivier Veran. Officials whose homes were searched include former prime minister Edouard Philippe, Veran, his predecessor, Agnes Buzyn, current Public Health Director Jerome Salomon, and former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye.The investigation was opened earlier this year after France’s Court of Justice received complaints from COVID-19 patients, doctors, police and others about the government’s slow response to the pandemic, shortages of protective equipment, and a poor plan for testing.  When he announced the investigation earlier this year, Paris chief prosecutor Remy Heitz said the investigation would have limited scope and would focus on public officials. Heitz said possible offenses could include the alleged failure to implement workplace anti-virus protection, failure to provide face masks to reduce infection, and failure to roll out a workable testing plan.The home searches came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron announced curfews in the Paris region and eight other French metropolitan areas to deal with the rising toll of new infections.French opposition member of parliament Jean-Luc Reitzer, who was hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this year, told French television he was shocked by the searches. “Do our citizens seriously believe that the shortages, which were real, were voluntary,” he said.
 
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The World Health Organization says the young and healthy may have to wait until 2022 to get a COVID-19 vaccine.  WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said Thursday health authorities will likely prioritize health care and frontline workers such as law enforcement and emergency responders, then the elderly.   Swaminathan said she hoped there would at least be one safe and effective vaccine against the novel coronavirus by 2021, but said it would only be available in “limited quantities.”   Over 170 potential COVID-19 vaccines are in various stages of testing around the world, including 10 that have entered late-stage, wide scale human testing.  U.S. pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have recently halted  late-stage trials of their experimental vaccines after a volunteer in each study became ill.   The race to develop a coronavirus vaccine comes amid a surge of new infections across Europe, sparking fears the continent is on the verge of a second wave of the outbreak as the winter season nears.   German Chancellor Angela Merkel and governors of the country’s 16 states have agreed to impose a new round of nationwide restrictions after posting a record-high 6,638 new cases on Wednesday, including the early closure of bars and restaurants and limiting the number of people allowed to gather in public.   French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday announced a 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for the region of Paris and at least seven other cities, including Lyon, Grenoble, Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier, Lille, Rouen and Saint-Étienne.  The curfew will take effect on Saturday and will remain in effect for at least four weeks.Northern Ireland is taking even more drastic measures, announcing a nationwide four-week lockdown on Wednesday, with schools closed for two weeks and all pubs and restaurants closed for the full month, except for pickup and delivery of food.   And news reports out of London say the British capital is about to be put under the second level of the government’s new three-tiered coronavirus alert system, which designates areas as medium, high and very high risk. The city of Liverpool has been placed under the third and highest tier, forcing officials to close all restaurants and bars.  Liverpool is one of several northern British cities experiencing a dramatic surge of new COVID-19 cases, including Merseyside, Manchester and Newcastle.The United States is also undergoing a steady rise of new coronavirus cases, averaging well over 50,000 new cases a day in recent weeks.  One of those new cases was Barron Trump, the son of President Donald Trump and his wife Melania, who were diagnosed with the disease nearly two weeks ago.Melania Trump announced the news in a letter released by the White House Wednesday in which she discussed her illness. She said the couple’s teenage son had tested positive shortly after she and the president were diagnosed, but was fortunately asymptomatic. Mrs. Trump said Barron has since tested negative for COVID-19.   Another prominent new coronavirus case is Nick Saban, the head coach of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team.  The school announced Wednesday that Saban has tested positive along with Greg Byrne, the school’s athletic director.  Saban has led the Crimson Tide, one of the most storied college football programs in the U.S., to five national championships.
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U.S. regulators Wednesday approved the first drug for the treatment of Ebola.The Food and Drug Administration OK’d the drug developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for treating adults and children with the Zaire Ebola virus strain, the most deadly of six known types. It typically kills 60% to 90% of patients.The drug was one of four tested during an outbreak in Congo that killed nearly 2,300 people before it ended in June. Survival was significantly better in study participants given Regeneron’s Inmazeb or a second experimental drug.The study was ended ahead of schedule last year so all patients could get access to those drugs.Regeneron’s treatment is a combination of three antibodies that work by killing the virus. It’s given once by IV.”When you have three drugs that bind to the (virus), there’s a low probability that the virus can evade all of them,” said Leah Lipsich, who heads Regeneron’s global program for infectious diseases.She said that should help prevent the virus from becoming resistant to the drug.Seeking U.S. approval first is a common strategy for drugmakers developing treatments for diseases mainly found in the tropics and in developing countries. The FDA’s action will make it easier for Regeneron to get approval or allow emergency use during outbreaks in African countries, where the approval process is not straightforward, Lipsich said.The study in Congo involved 681 people, who were give one of four treatments. After four weeks, about a third of those who got Regeneron’s drug had died. Results were about the same for a second drug. But about half had died among the groups given one of the other two drugs, ZMapp or remdesivir.Gilead Science’s remdesivir is now being used as a treatment for coronavirus.Ebola is very contagious and is spread mainly through contact with body fluids from infected people. Symptoms include fever, muscle pain, vomiting, kidney and liver damage, and sometimes internal and external bleeding.The FDA approved the first vaccine for Ebola in December.The U.S. government, which helped fund the approved drug’s development, will buy thousands of doses over the next six years to go into the Strategic National Stockpile. Ebola cases are rare in the U.S. but occasionally are diagnosed in travelers returning from areas with an outbreak.
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Scientists have discovered that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef lost more than half of its coral populations between 1995 and 2017.  Researchers at the The Great Barrier Reef stretches across 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeastern coast and is home to a wide variety of marine life, making it the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem. The region was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1981. 
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Another pharmaceutical company halted testing of an experimental COVID-19 drug treatment because of safety concerns. U.S.-based Eli Lilly and Company announced Tuesday that the clinical trial of its coronavirus antiviral drug had been paused by independent monitors “out of an abundance of caution,” but did not go into details.   The drug, which Eli Lilly is developing with Canadian-based biotech firm AbCellera, is part of a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which are made to act as immune cells that scientists hope can fight off the virus. The antibody therapy was similar to one given to U.S. President Donald Trump after he tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month.   The study, which launched in August, aimed to enroll 10,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients in the United States.   Eli Lilly applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization for the drug to be used for mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 infections based on preliminary results from a different clinical trial.   A day before the pause, U.S. drug maker Johnson & Johnson halted its late-stage clinical trials of its experimental vaccine after a participant was diagnosed with an unexplained illness.    Johnson & Johnson had just launched a wide scale test of its single-dose vaccine involving 60,000 volunteers across more than 200 locations in the United States and internationally, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and South Africa.    The Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial is the second to be put on hold after a volunteer became ill after receiving the vaccine.  U.S.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca halted its late-stage trial of a vaccine developed with the University of Oxford early last month after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.Hospital Puc de Campinas (SP), Brazil on October 2, 2020 will receive doses of the new vaccine against coronavirus from the American company Johnson & Johnson, which will be tested on 1,000 volunteers from the Campinas region.The late-stage testing of that vaccine has resumed in Britain, Brazil, India and South Africa, but remains on hold in the United States.   The World Bank said Tuesday that it has approved a $12 billion package for developing countries to purchase and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments. Meanwhile, both The New York Times and The Washington Post say the Trump administration has embraced the strategy of herd immunity as the means of stopping the COVID-19 pandemic. Herd immunity happens when a population is protected from a virus because a threshold immunity has been reached in that society.       The newspapers say anonymous senior administration officials told reporters Monday they are embracing a strategy to allow the spread of the coronavirus among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and other vulnerable populations in order to keep the nation’s economy up and running.   The officials cited a petition titled “The Great Barrington Declaration” posted online on October 4, that argues against lockdowns and ignores current scientific guidance on blunting the spread of COVID-19, including wearing masks and engaging in social distancing.   The petition says the strategy, called “Focused Protection,” is “the most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity.”  The declaration’s lead authors include Dr. Scott Atlas, a neurologist who has emerged as one of President Trump’s main advisors on the pandemic.   The Trump administration’s embrace of herd immunity runs counter to a stance by the World Health Organization, which calls the strategy unethical.   Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, told reporters Monday in Geneva that health officials should only try to achieve immunity through vaccination, not through exposing people to the virus.    Health authorities in the Netherlands said Tuesday that an 89-year-old woman is the first known case of someone who died after contracting COVID-19 for a second time.  Researchers acknowledge the woman’s immune system had been weakened from the treatment she received from a rare form of bone marrow cancer. The woman’s death coincides with a new study that suggests that a person infected with COVID-19 is still vulnerable to the disease. A report published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal revealed a 25-year-old man in (the western U.S. state of) Nevada first tested positive with COVID-19 back in April, then a second time in June with more severe symptoms that led to him being placed on oxygen.     Researchers say the man was infected with two distinct strains of the novel coronavirus, but could not be sure why the second infection was worse. He may have been exposed to a higher dose of the virus the second time, or the later version was more virulent than the first. 
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Another pharmaceutical company halted testing of an experimental COVID-19 drug treatment because of safety concerns. U.S.-based Eli Lilly and Company announced Tuesday that the clinical trial of its coronavirus antiviral drug had been paused by independent monitors “out of an abundance of caution,” but did not go into details.   The drug, which Eli Lilly is developing with Canadian-based biotech firm AbCellera, is part of a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which are made to act as immune cells that scientists hope can fight off the virus. The antibody therapy was similar to one given to U.S. President Donald Trump after he tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month.   The study, which launched in August, aimed to enroll 10,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients in the United States.   Eli Lilly applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization for the drug to be used for mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 infections based on preliminary results from a different clinical trial.   A day before the pause, U.S. drug maker Johnson & Johnson halted its late-stage clinical trials of its experimental vaccine after a participant was diagnosed with an unexplained illness.    Johnson & Johnson had just launched a wide scale test of its single-dose vaccine involving 60,000 volunteers across more than 200 locations in the United States and internationally, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and South Africa.    The Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial is the second to be put on hold after a volunteer became ill after receiving the vaccine.  U.S.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca halted its late-stage trial of a vaccine developed with the University of Oxford early last month after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.Hospital Puc de Campinas (SP), Brazil on October 2, 2020 will receive doses of the new vaccine against coronavirus from the American company Johnson & Johnson, which will be tested on 1,000 volunteers from the Campinas region.The late-stage testing of that vaccine has resumed in Britain, Brazil, India and South Africa, but remains on hold in the United States.   The World Bank said Tuesday that it has approved a $12 billion package for developing countries to purchase and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments. Meanwhile, both The New York Times and The Washington Post say the Trump administration has embraced the strategy of herd immunity as the means of stopping the COVID-19 pandemic. Herd immunity happens when a population is protected from a virus because a threshold immunity has been reached in that society.       The newspapers say anonymous senior administration officials told reporters Monday they are embracing a strategy to allow the spread of the coronavirus among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and other vulnerable populations in order to keep the nation’s economy up and running.   The officials cited a petition titled “The Great Barrington Declaration” posted online on October 4, that argues against lockdowns and ignores current scientific guidance on blunting the spread of COVID-19, including wearing masks and engaging in social distancing.   The petition says the strategy, called “Focused Protection,” is “the most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity.”  The declaration’s lead authors include Dr. Scott Atlas, a neurologist who has emerged as one of President Trump’s main advisors on the pandemic.   The Trump administration’s embrace of herd immunity runs counter to a stance by the World Health Organization, which calls the strategy unethical.   Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, told reporters Monday in Geneva that health officials should only try to achieve immunity through vaccination, not through exposing people to the virus.    Health authorities in the Netherlands said Tuesday that an 89-year-old woman is the first known case of someone who died after contracting COVID-19 for a second time.  Researchers acknowledge the woman’s immune system had been weakened from the treatment she received from a rare form of bone marrow cancer. The woman’s death coincides with a new study that suggests that a person infected with COVID-19 is still vulnerable to the disease. A report published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal revealed a 25-year-old man in (the western U.S. state of) Nevada first tested positive with COVID-19 back in April, then a second time in June with more severe symptoms that led to him being placed on oxygen.     Researchers say the man was infected with two distinct strains of the novel coronavirus, but could not be sure why the second infection was worse. He may have been exposed to a higher dose of the virus the second time, or the later version was more virulent than the first. 
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A trio of space travelers has launched successfully to the International Space Station, for the first time using a fast-track maneuver to reach the orbiting outpost in just three hours. NASA’s Kate Rubins along with Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos lifted off as scheduled Wednesday morning from the Russia-leased Baikonur space launch facility in Kazakhstan for a six-month stint on the station.   For the first time, they are trying a two-orbit, three-hour approach to the orbiting space outpost. Previously it took twice as long for the crews to reach the station.   They will join the station’s NASA commander, Chris Cassidy, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, who have been aboard the complex since April and are scheduled to return to Earth in a week. Speaking during Tuesday’s pre-launch news conference at Baikonur, Rubins emphasized that the crew spent weeks in quarantine at the Star City training facility outside Moscow and then on Baikonur to avoid any threat from the coronavirus.   “We spent two weeks at Star City and then 17 days at Baikonur in a very strict quarantine,” Rubins said. “During all communications with crew members, we were wearing masks. We made PCR tests twice and we also made three times antigen fast tests.” She said she was looking forward to scientific experiments planned for the mission.   “We’re planning to try some really interesting things like bio-printing tissues and growing cells in space and, of course, continuing our work on sequencing DNA,” Rubins said. Ryzhikov, who will be the station’s skipper, said the crew will try to pinpoint the exact location of a leak at a station’s Russian section that has slowly leaked oxygen. The small leak hasn’t posed any immediate danger to the crew.   “We will take with us additional equipment which will allow us to detect the place of this leak more precisely,” he told reporters. “We will also take with us additional improved hermetic material which will allow to fix the leak.” In November, Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov are set to greet NASA’s SpaceX first operational Crew Dragon mission, bringing NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi to the space station aboard the Crew Dragon vehicle. It follows a successful Demo-2 mission earlier this year. The Crew Dragon mission was pushed back from Oct. 31 into November, and no new date has been set yet. The delay is intended to give SpaceX more time to conduct tests and review data from an aborted Falcon 9 launch earlier this month. 
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Australia is trying to clarify reports of a Chinese ban on its coal imports. Industry sources have said Beijing told energy providers and steel firms to stop buying Australian coal. Trade tensions between the Asia-Pacific partners have deteriorated in recent years. Coal is one of the major Australian commodity exports to China, behind iron ore and liquefied natural gas.  So, any disruption to this multi-billion trade would hurt.  State-owned energy providers and steel mills in China have reportedly been told not to buy Australian coal.  Australian officials believe it could be temporary and part of informal quotas in China, or an attempt to restrict imports to protect China’s domestic coal mining industry. However, analysts have speculated that the reported ban on Australian coal could be part of an emerging trade war.     Earlier this year, China was infuriated when Canberra called for a global investigation into COVID-19, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Relations have also soured over allegations of Chinese interference in Australia’s domestic politics, cyber-espionage and the detention of Australian citizens in China. Beijing has accused Australia of being “anti-China.” Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham says he has not confirmed that coal exports to China are being disrupted. “We have also been working to seek a response from Chinese authorities in relation to the accusations that have been made publicly. But we take the reports seriously enough to certainly to try to seek some assurances from Chinese authorities that they are honoring the terms of the China-Australia free trade agreement,” Birmingham said.Earlier this year, Beijing effectively banned imports of Australian barley, placed restrictions on meat, and discouraged students and others from traveling to Australia.  In August, China said it had launched an anti-dumping investigation into Australian wine imports. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner. Australia owes its recent prosperity in large part to Chinese demand for iron ore and other resources.  Given this economic reality, standing up to Beijing isn’t easy. 
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Hot, dry conditions and intense winds across California are threatening to reinvigorate what has already been the worst fire season in state history, officials warned on Tuesday.Gusty winds in California’s north and extreme heat in its south are creating conditions that could fan wildfires that began earlier in the summer as well as spark new ones, leading state and federal authorities to urge residents to prepare.The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for a wide swath of Southern California as temperatures topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). The agency asked residents to exercise caution with any fire sources.Strong winds, low humidityThe California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said strong winds and low humidity could ramp up blazes in Northern California starting Wednesday.”While good progress has been made on a number of fires, this could hamper containment efforts,” Daniel Berlant, Cal Fire assistant deputy director, said on Twitter on Tuesday. “It means if a new fire breaks out, that that fire is going to be able to burn very rapidly.”Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), which provides power to much of California, said Monday it was considering proactively shutting off power as soon as Wednesday to as many as 50,000 state residents to mitigate fire risk.Over 4 million acres burned This year, wildfires have burned over 4 million acres in California — twice the total of 2018 which had been the highest on record. Five of the six largest fires in state history were in 2020. Thirty-one people have died, and over 9,200 structures have been destroyed.Fall has tended to be California’s peak wildfire season, but state officials say the season is growing longer each year.Experts say droughts and climate change from fossil fuels have made poorly managed forests much more flammable, leading to extreme fire activity. 
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Britain’s opposition Labor Party Leader Keir Starmer on Tuesday called on the government to implement a three-week temporary nationwide “circuit breaker” lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19 throughout Britain.Starmer made the proposal in a speech in London, one day after Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced his three-tiered regional alert plan designed to simplify and standardize the variety of COVID-related restrictions that have been imposed around the country.But Starmer said Britain is in a decisive moment in the fight against the virus and “there’s no longer time to give this prime minister the benefit of the doubt.””This was not inevitable, but it is now necessary,” he said, acknowledging that the restrictions are largely unpopular.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London, Oct. 12, 2020.He also said the lockdown idea comes from recommendations made by Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) which said “a package of stringent interventions is now urgently needed” to lower the rate of infection and take strain off hospitals and the National Health service.Quoting SAGE, the opposition leader said, “not acting now will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences.”Starmer proposed allowing only essential work and travel, restricting household mixing and that all pubs, bars and restaurants should be closed, but also be compensated. He said he understood the measures would require “significant sacrifices across the country.”The Labor Party leader added that schools would not have to close under his proposal, as the lockdown would be timed to coincide with an upcoming school holiday.Speaking directly to Prime Minister Johnson, Starmer said: “You know that the scientific evidence backs this approach … that the restrictions that you introduced won’t be enough.”Starmer’s words will only increase the pressure on the British leader, who has defended his decision not to re-introduce a full lockdown by saying he was trying to protect lives and livelihoods by balancing public health and the economy.
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The United Nations is warning that climate change is threatening the lives of millions of people throughout the world, and that demand for humanitarian aid could rise 50% by 2030. The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization released a report Tuesday that found more weather-related disasters such as heat waves, storms and droughts are occurring each year. “While COVID-19 generated a large international health and economic crisis from which it will take years to recover, it is crucial to remember that climate change will continue to pose an ongoing and increasing threat to human lives, ecosystems, economies and societies for centuries to come,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.  The 2020 State of Climate Services Report said 11,000 disasters attributed to weather have taken place over the past 50 years, causing 2 million deaths and $3.6 trillion in economic damage.  The report also said 108 million people worldwide needed humanitarian help in 2018 because of natural disasters. Despite the increase in weather-related disasters over that period, the report noted that the average number of fatalities from each disaster per year fell by one-third. In addition to the U.N., the report was prepared by 15 other international agencies and financial institutions. They urge governments to invest more in early-warning systems that can help countries more effectively respond and mitigate the impact of natural disasters.   
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The commercial space launch company Blue Origin, in partnership with the U.S. space agency NASA, launched an unmanned reusable suborbital rocket into space Tuesday and landed it on a West Texas launch site. The 12-minute flight, 100 kilometers to the edge of space and back, was a test of a number of new technologies, including two NASA precision descent and landing sensor systems, which could be used in future landers on the moon and Mars, and are able to intelligently identify and avoid potential hazards on target landing zones. FILE – A general view of the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket booster at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Apr. 5, 2017.The launch included Blue Origin’s six-person crew capsule, which is designed with future commercial passengers in mind, including what the company says are the largest windows ever designed for a spacecraft. Once in space, the capsule separated from the launch rocket. The reusable rocket, named New Shepard after the first U.S. astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, touched down at the Texas launch and landing site with a controlled, engine-powered descent. The capsule landed a short time later using three large parachutes.  The capsule contained a variety of experiments and other payloads, including postcards provided by children from across the country. Blue Origin is owned by U.S. investor and entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com.  
   
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