Pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, said Friday they have filed for emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use their COVID-19 vaccine, saying they are poised to begin distribution within hours after authorization. The application comes after the companies said testing shows the vaccine has an effectiveness rate of 95 percent, with no serious safety concerns observed to date. In a news release, the companies say in addition to their submission to the FDA, they are seeking authorization from authorities in Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan and the U.K., and plan to submit applications immediately to other regulatory agencies around the world. FILE – A worker passes a line of freezers holding coronavirus disease vaccine candidate BNT162b2 at a Pfizer facility in Puurs, Belgium, in an undated photograph.With the COVID-19 pandemic surging around the world, the regulators will be under pressure to make a quick decision on the vaccine. In an interview, former U.S. FDA chief scientist Jesse Goodman explained the standard for emergency use authorization only requires that a product “may be effective.” He said the agency performs an assessment on whether the available data determines if the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks. During a White House briefing Thursday, the leading U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said he understands that people might be concerned about the speed with which these vaccines have been developed, but he expressed confidence that the vaccines will be safe. “The process of the speed did not compromise at all safety, nor did it compromise scientific integrity,” he said. “It was a reflection of the extraordinary scientific advances in these types of vaccines, which allowed us to do things in months that actually took years before.” Fauci cautioned that just because a vaccine appears to be on the way, people should not stop taking precautions. “If you’re fighting a battle and the cavalry is on the way, you don’t stop shooting. You keep going until the cavalry gets here. And then you might even want to continue fighting,” he said. Another U.S. company, Moderna, says it is not far behind with its COVID-19 vaccine. They report their vaccine is testing as strong as Pfizer’s, and they also plan to seek emergency authorization within weeks. 
 
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The U.S. space agency, NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), is set to launch a satellite Saturday designed to monitor rising sea levels, the latest in a series of orbiting spacecraft monitoring the status of the world’s oceans.
 
NASA says the satellite, called the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California early Saturday.  Named after former NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich, the U.S.-European satellite will be carried into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
 
The Sentinel-6 is about the size of a small pickup truck, and it will measure sea-surface height, wave-height and windspeed, allowing scientists to monitor changes in sea levels caused by climate change.  
 
The data that it collects on sea level variations near coastlines will provide information to support coastal management and with planning for floods, while its atmospheric measurements will enhance weather and hurricane forecasts.
 
NASA Sentinel 6 mission scientist Craig Donlon says the data gathered by the craft will be used alongside information provided by previous Sentinel satellites to build a more complete a picture of the oceans.  
 
“Sentinel-3 is providing the sea surface temperature and the ocean biology measurements. Sentinel-1 is providing radar imaging measurements of ocean swell waves, of sea ice. Sentinel-2 provides high resolution measurements in the coastal zone,” Donlon said.
 
Unlike previous Earth observation missions, the Sentinel-6 observatory will collect measurements at a much higher resolution and be able to measure smaller sea level variations near coastlines.
 
The satellite will be followed in 2025 by its twin, Sentinel-6B. Together, the pair is tasked with extending a nearly 30-year-long record of global sea surface height measurements. 
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Activists in Cameroon held events and marches for Thursday’s World Toilet Day, calling on authorities to provide more public bathrooms. Cameroonian authorities say 60% of its 25 million people lack toilets, fueling the spread of diseases such as cholera and dysentery.School authorities at Yaoundé’s Government Primary School Efoulan say they have close to 2,000 children and teachers but only five toilets, which are often unusable as they run short of water and toilet paper.The Cameroon Association to Improve Hygiene organized this and similar events in 30 schools in the capital to mark this year’s World Toilet Day.The group’s head, Edmond Kimbi, said hundreds of their members also marched in Yaoundé and coastal cities to demand more and better public toilets.”It is actually too regrettable that schools and universities have very few toilets, which lack water and are always dirty,” he said. “It is worse when you visit markets, where thousands of people visit the markets each day. The consequences of this is that nearby bushes and dark corners are being transformed into toilets, thereby making our towns always dirty.”Public toilets in Douala, Cameroon, Nov. 19, 2020. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)Authorities say a September outbreak of cholera, a bacterial disease spread through dirty water, in the port cities of Douala and Kribi killed at least 90 people.Dr. Sintieh Ngek, a medical officer with the Cameroon Baptist Convention, said the lack of toilets is spreading disease.”Waterborne and water-based diseases like cholera, like diarrheal diseases, will be more present, and it is worth noting that these diarrheal diseases are among the leading causes of mortality for children under 5 years of age,” the doctor said. “Secondly, if persons do not have toilets, they turn to use bushes, they turn to use streams. When this happens, bacteria from these feces are easily collected into water.”Yaoundé hygiene official Gabriel Minou said the city council is partnering with private companies to construct more public bathrooms. Meanwhile, he said, anyone caught defecating or urinating in the street or in rivers will pay fines of up to $20.Minou said the inability of the Yaoundé City Council to efficiently manage toilets is due to the fact that many users do not want to pay before using the public bathrooms. He said the Yaoundé City Council has ordered its hygiene services to repair public toilets and make sure people pay before using them. Minou said the council has also ordered intercity bus agencies to make sure toilets are provided free of charge to all passengers.The United Nations’ World Toilet Day seeks to raise awareness of more than half the world’s population living without access to safe sanitation and the deadly costs.The U.N. says globally more than 800 children under 5 die every day from diarrheal diseases due to poor sanitation.
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The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it would close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life. The independent, federally funded agency said it was too dangerous to keep operating the single-dish radio telescope — one of the world’s largest — given the significant damage it recently sustained. An auxiliary cable broke in August, tearing a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish and damaging the dome above it. Then on November 6, one of the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse. NSF officials noted that even if crews were to repair all the damage, engineers found the structure would still be unstable in the long term. The main entrance of the Arecibo Observatory is seen in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Nov. 19, 2020.”This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make, but the safety of people is our No. 1 priority,” said Sean Jones, the agency’s assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. “We understand how much Arecibo means to this community and to Puerto Rico.” He said the goal was to preserve the telescope without placing people at risk, but “we have found no path forward to allow us to do so safely.” The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. In its 57 years of operation, it endured hurricanes, endless humidity and a recent string of strong earthquakes. The telescope boasts a 305-meter-wide (1,000-foot-wide) dish featured in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” and the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.” Scientists worldwide have used the dish, along with the 900-ton platform hanging 450 feet above it, to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable. In recent years, the NSF-owned facility has been managed by the University of Central Florida.  Reaction to newsAlex Wolszczan, a Polish-born astronomer and professor at Pennsylvania State University who helped discover the first extrasolar and pulsar planets, told The Associated Press that while the news wasn’t surprising, it was disappointing. He worked at the telescope in the 1980s and early 1990s.  “I was hoping against hope that they would come up with some kind of solution to keep it open,” he said. “For a person who has had a lot of his scientific life associated with that telescope, this is a rather interesting and sadly emotional moment.” One of three concrete support towers for the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope is seen in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Nov. 19, 2020.The announcement saddened many beyond the scientific world as well, with the hashtag #WhatAreciboMeansToMe popping up on Twitter along with pictures of people working, visiting and even getting married or celebrating a birthday at the telescope. Slow farewellRalph Gaume, director of NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, stressed that the decision has nothing to do with the observatory’s capabilities, which have allowed scientists to study pulsars, to detect gravitational waves, as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed. “The telescope is currently at serious risk of unexpected, uncontrolled collapse,” he said. “Even attempts at stabilization or testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure.” The NSF said it intends to restore operations at the observatory’s remaining assets, including its two LIDAR facilities, one of which is on the nearby island of Culebra. Those are used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data. Officials also aim to resume operations at the visitor center. Wolszczan said the value of the telescope won’t instantly disappear because he and many other scientists are still working on projects based on observations and data taken from the observatory. “The process of saying goodbye to Arecibo will certainly take some years,” he said. “It won’t be instantaneous.” 
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Just as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, in February, four people set sail for one of the most remote places on Earth – a small camp on Kure Atoll, at the edge of the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.There, more than 1,400 miles from Honolulu, they lived in isolation for eight months while working to restore the island’s environment. Cut off from the rest of the planet, their world was limited to a tiny patch of sand halfway between the U.S. mainland and Asia. With no television or internet access, their only information came from satellite text messages and occasional emails.Now they are back, emerging into a changed society that might feel as foreign today as island isolation did in March. They must adjust to wearing face masks, staying indoors and seeing friends without giving hugs or hearty handshakes.”I’ve never seen anything like this, but I started reading the book The Stand by Stephen King, which is about a disease outbreak, and I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, is this what it’s going to be like to go home?'” said Charlie Thomas, one of the four island workers.The group was part of an effort by the state of Hawaii to maintain the fragile island ecosystem on Kure, which is part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the nation’s largest contiguous protected environment. The public is not allowed to land anywhere in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.Charlie Thomas, of Auckland, New Zealand, describes what her camp was like on Kure Atoll in Honolulu, Nov. 5, 2020.Kure is the only island in the northern part of the archipelago that is managed by the state, with the rest under the jurisdiction of the federal government. A former Coast Guard station, the atoll is home to seabirds, endangered Hawaiian monk seals and coral reefs that are teeming with sea turtles, tiger sharks and other marine life.Two field teams go there each year, one for summer and another for winter. Their primary job is removing invasive plants and replacing them with native species and cleaning up debris such as fishing nets and plastic that washes ashore.Before they leave, team members are often asked if they want to receive bad news while away, said Cynthia Vanderlip, the supervisor for the Kure program.”A few times a day, we upload and download email so people stay in touch with their family and friends. That’s a huge morale booster, and I don’t take it lightly,” Vanderlip said. “People who are in remote places … rely on your communication.”Thomas, the youngest member of the team at 18, grew up in a beach town in New Zealand and spent much of her free time with seabirds and other wildlife. She finished school a year early to start her first job as a deckhand for an organization dedicated to cleaning up coastlines before volunteering for the summer season on Kure Atoll.The expedition was her first time being away from home for so long, but she was ready to disconnect.”I was sick of social media, I was sick of everything that was sort of going on,” she said. “And I thought, you know, I am so excited to get rid of my phone, to lose contact with everything … I don’t need to see all the horrible things that are going on right now.”Once on Kure, getting a full picture of what was happening in the world was difficult.”I guess I didn’t really know what to think because we were getting so many different answers to questions that we were asking,” she said.Thomas is now in a hotel in quarantine in Auckland, where she lives with her parents, sister and a dog named Benny. She will miss hugs and “squishing five people on a bench to have dinner,” she said.Joining her on the island was Matthew Butschek II, who said he felt most alone when he received news about two deaths.His mother emailed to tell him that her brother had died. Butschek said his uncle was ill before the pandemic, and he was not sure if COVID-19 played a role in his death. He could not grieve with his family.Then Butschek, 26, who lives near Dallas, received word that one of his best friends had been killed in a car accident.”I remember reading that, thinking it was a joke and then realizing it wasn’t, so my heart started pounding and I was breathing heavily,” he said.While in quarantine last week, Butschek looked out the window of his cabin in Honolulu and saw school-aged children playing on rocks and climbing trees – all wearing face masks. It reminded him of apocalyptic movies.”It’s not normal for me. But everyone is like, yeah, this is what we do now. This is how we live,” he said.Leading the camp on Kure was wildlife biologist Naomi Worcester, 43, and her partner, Matthew Saunter, who live together in Honolulu.Worcester first visited the island in 2010 and has returned every year since. She’s a veteran of remote fieldwork in Alaska, Washington, Wyoming and the Sierra Nevada mountains.Working on the atoll means getting information about the world slowly, and often not at all, Worcester said.A few weeks ago, she departed Kure and arrived on Midway Atoll, where she and the rest of the crew stayed for several days before flying back to Honolulu. Midway has limited internet access and basic cable television. During a moment alone, she turned on a TV.”I think I turned it on during the middle of the World Series,” she recalled. “And it’s like some people are wearing face masks and some people aren’t. And there is the thing about the guy that tested positive in the middle of the game or something. I was just like … I don’t know, this is too much!”She also worries about the pandemic’s cost in a larger sense.”With so much uncertainty and so many emotions running high and, you know, our country is divided on so many things … there is kind of an underlying fear as far as what the future could hold and how people could respond.”Saunter, 35, has worked on Kure since 2010, the same year he met and began dating Worcester. They have been partners in life and on the island for a decade.In 2012, they began leading teams at the field camp.After so many years at the camp, Saunter said, isolation isn’t much of a factor for him. He believes the leadership skills he’s learned in the wilderness will translate well to life in the pandemic.To be successful on Kure, you have to tackle problems head-on and control your emotions, he said.”You know people’s emotions are getting the better of them, and it’s kind of at the cost of everybody, so it seems very irresponsible,” he said. “If we had taken it more seriously and practiced more precautions, we could have squashed this thing.”He remembers being on Kure when his sister called the outbreak a “pandemic.””I got an email from my sister and she used the word ‘pandemic,'” he said. “I thought to myself, huh, maybe we need to look that up, because what’s the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?”Now “it’s a word that’s in everybody’s vocabulary.”
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The head of Germany’s disease control agency said Thursday that while the coronavirus infection rate in the country remains serious, there are signs a partial lockdown is working.Germany implemented restrictive measures in early November to curb a nationwide surge in cases, closing bars, restaurants and other leisure venues but keeping schools and shops open.Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Robert Koch Institute chief Lothar Wieler said the number of new infections has since plateaued, with 22,609 reported on Thursday – roughly the same number as a week ago. He said the fact they are not rising is good news but cautioned that it was too early to say if this is a trend.Wieler said the overall number of cases is still too high, and there is a risk that hospitals may become overwhelmed. Wieler, however, also expressed optimism the numbers will start to go down now that they have stabilized.Wieler also said the news this week that at least two potential vaccines are showing better than 90 percent effectiveness was “extremely encouraging.” He said, “I know if the vaccines have an efficacy of more than 90% then they would be great weapons. That’s great.”Wieler said it was unclear how long the restrictions would remain in place. When they were implemented, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the plan was for them to run through November, in hopes the nation would be able to lift some of them in time for the Christmas holiday in December.The Robert Koch Institute reports Germany now has seen a total of 855,916 cases and 13,370 deaths from the infection. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease. 
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Thursday brought further good news from the global effort to produce a safe and effective vaccine against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  A report published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet says that a potential vaccine developed by British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford was safe and produced a strong immune response in both younger and older participants. 
The two-dose vaccine was given to 560 healthy adult volunteers in a second-stage clinical trial, including 240 volunteers 70 years of age and older.  Dr. Maheshi Ramasamy, a  University of Oxford researcher and co-author of the study, described the antibody and T-cell responses in the older volunteers as “robust.”  Pfizer Says Its Coronavirus Vaccine is 95% EffectivePfizer to seek approval within days for emergency use of vaccine COVID-19 poses the greatest risk for older adults and people with preexisting health conditions.  “We hope that this means our vaccine will help protect some of the most vulnerable people in society,” Ramasamy said, but he noted that further research still needs to be conducted.  The vaccine is currently undergoing final late-stage global clinical trials to prove its ultimate safety and efficacy.  The data from the Oxford-AstraZeneca Phase 2 trial comes as two U.S.-based  pharmaceutical companies report their COVID-19 vaccines are more than 90% effective against the virus.  Pfizer announced Wednesday that it will seek emergency approval for the vaccine it has developed in collaboration with Germany’s BioNTech. Moderna announced earlier this week that its vaccine is nearly 95% effective after an interim analysis of its late-stage study.   Moderna Announces  Second COVID Vaccine More Than 90% Effective Vaccine may be more accessible in rural areas and developing countries than Pfizer’sThe apparent progress toward a COVID-19 vaccine comes as many nations reimpose strict restrictions or lockdowns to fight a new wave of the virus.   Authorities in Tokyo announced Thursday it has raised its coronavirus alert level to its highest mark on a four-level scale after reporting a record-high 534 new COVID-19 cases.  The number of nationwide cases also surpassed 2,000 cases on Wednesday, another single-day record.   The Japanese government imposed a nationwide state of emergency in April, in the early days of the pandemic, but was not empowered to impose a mandatory quarantine under its constitution, which weighs heavily in favor of civil liberties.Russia has also reached a grim milestone, surpassing 2 million total coronavirus cases on Thursday after reporting 23,610 new cases over a 24-hour period, including 463 deaths. Of the more than 56.3 million total worldwide cases, Russia is in fourth place behind the United States, India, Brazil and France.  
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The United States has surpassed 250,000 coronavirus deaths as new cases surge in many parts of the country.New York City on Wednesday announced the closure of its school system, the nation’s largest, with the city recording a seventh consecutive day with a COVID-19 positivity rate above 3%.“Public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out [of] an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter.New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold. Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 18, 2020In-person school resumed for New York children between late September and early October, when the seven-day positivity rate was under 2%.Other major cities, including Boston and Detroit, have made recent moves to halt in-person classes for their schools.Across the United States there have been more than 11.5 million confirmed cases since the pandemic began.The current wave of infections is adding to that number at an increased rate with an average of nearly 160,000 new cases each day during the past week. That is about triple the number of new daily cases in the United States one month ago. More than 1,100 people are dying per day.Health care workers are dealing with the strain of a record number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.The surge has pushed leaders in many states to reimpose certain restrictions in order to try to slow the spread of the virus.Among the latest, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced Wednesday that all restaurants, bars and gyms would close for four weeks. Minnesota is adding four times as many new infections each day as it was in mid-October.Officials are expressing concerns about the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, a time when millions of Americans typically gather with family members and often travel to other parts of the country.Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam urged people in his state to stay home, saying doing so would be “an act of love.” He added that if people do decide to celebrate with others, they should do so in small groups and be outdoors.U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar urged similar caution in a Wednesday briefing.“Gathering indoors with people who aren’t members of your household is a high-risk activity for spreading the virus,” he said.There has been some optimistic news this week with two pharmaceutical companies announcing preliminary results showing their COVID-19 vaccines have been effective in trials.Azar said those developments mean that within weeks the Food and Drug Administration could authorize the vaccines and they could be ready for distribution.“Because of this work, by the end of December, we expect to have about 40 million doses of these two vaccines available for distribution, pending FDA authorization—enough to vaccinate about 20 million of our most vulnerable Americans—and production would continue to ramp up after that,” Azar said.The U.S. government has pursued a vaccination development program with the intention of making it so that no one in the country has to pay out of their own pocket to get a vaccine.
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The World Health Organization’s emergencies program director said Wednesday that vaccines alone would not end the COVID-19 pandemic and would do nothing to stop the current global surge in coronavirus infections.Mike Ryan made the comments during a virtual question-and-answer session from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.His comments came the same day that pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced that final results from the late-stage trial of their COVID-19 vaccine showed it was 95% effective.The companies said they had the required two months of safety data and would apply for emergency U.S. authorization within days.On Monday, Moderna released preliminary data for its vaccine, showing similar effectiveness.Ryan said the world would have to get through this current wave of COVID-19 infections without vaccines, which he said were not the total answer.”Some people think that vaccines will be, in a sense, the solution, the unicorn we’ve all been chasing. It’s not,” he said.He said the most important thing people could do now to keep hospitals and intensive care units from overflowing was to stop the spread of the disease through physical distancing measures. Once a viable vaccine is widely available, he said, it will be another tool that can be used.”Adding vaccines is going to give us a huge chance. But if we add vaccines and forget the other things, COVID does not go to zero,” Ryan said. “We need to add vaccination to the existing physical measures” to taking care and practicing good hygiene.  “And if we add that physical distancing and hygiene and care to vaccines, I think we will go a long way to getting rid of this virus.”
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The World Health Organization has officially declared an end to the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province, nearly six months after the first cases were reported. Health officials are hailing the end of this outbreak as a milestone and cause for celebration.  Combating Ebola in the remote, heavily forested region posed numerous logistical challenges, not least of which was reaching communities scattered across this geographically vast area and then gaining their trust.Bob Ghosn is head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Ebola Response Operation in the DRC   Speaking on a telephone line from Goma, he tells VOA tackling Ebola in itself is difficult enough.   But tackling two epidemics, Ebola and COVID-19, at the same time has proven to be a nightmare.“It also made the supply chain for Ebola response much more difficult because everything slowed down, borders have closed,” Ghosn said.  “There obviously were requests from all countries in the world for PPE equipment that was needed here.  So, that made things more difficult and last, but not least, the economic impact of COVID-19 is mind boggling in a country like DRC.” Equateur province, DRCThis was the third Ebola outbreak in DRC in the last three years.   It came just as another more serious epidemic in North Kivu province was winding down.  That epidemic, which lasted nearly two years, infected more than 3,400 people, killing nearly 2,300.  By comparison, the final toll in Equateur Province was 119 cases, including 55 deaths.  Ghosn says everyone in the affected areas is happy to be free of Ebola.  At the same time, he says this is no time for complacency.“Ebola could start again.  So, it is very important to keep it at zero,” Ghosn said.  “So, we got it at zero.  Now keeping it at zero requires a lot of work.  And, also to make sure that communities in DRC who really suffered through the whole Ebola outbreak and COVID-19 obviously, continue to get the support and the help they need because these are the most vulnerable communities in the world for that matter.”   Ghosn says outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola and COVID-19 cannot be prevented.  However, much can be done to be prepared to tackle these threats when they arise.  He says medical tools such as vaccines and treatments are important.  He says informing people ahead of time on how to protect themselves from epidemic-prone diseases is a necessity.
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Thousands of demonstrators rallied Wednesday in central Berlin to protest the parliamentary vote that would give Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government powers to enforce restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.Germany’s lower and upper houses of parliament are due to vote and pass laws Wednesday that could allow the government to impose restrictions on social contact, rules on mask-wearing, drinking alcohol in public, shutting shops and stopping sports events.
 
Although most Germans accept the latest limited lockdown to tackle a second wave of the virus, a minority of right-wing critics say the law gives the government too much power. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has even compared the measures to the Enabling Act of 1933 that paved the way Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship.
 Germany Sees Signs for Cautious Optimism in COVID-19 Cases Infectious-disease expert says while new numbers are still high, the infection rate is down Berlin police, bolstered by forces from around the country, cordoned off a wide perimeter around the capital’s government center, and a series of protests planned outside of Germany’s Bundestag parliament building were banned due to security concerns.
 
At one point, security officers used a water cannon to subdue protesters and keep them away from the parliament building.  
 
One protester wore a face mask with the words “Merkel-Muzzle,” others held banners with slogans such as “For Enlightenment. Peace and Freedom.” But most protesters were neither wearing masks nor socially distanced.  
 
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, was widely praised for keeping infection and death rates below those of many of its neighbors in the first phase of the crisis but is now in the midst of a second wave, like much of the rest of Europe.
 
The number of coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 17,561 to more than 833,307, according to data Wednesday from the Robert Koch Institute. The death toll stands at more than 13,119.
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Iota continues to pound Nicaragua with strong winds and heavy rains even after weakening from a hurricane to a tropical storm. As of late Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Iota was carrying maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers an hour on a path towards Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  Forecasters say Tropical Storm Iota will dump between 7 to 20 kilometers of rain on a stretch of Central America from southern Nicaragua to southern Belize overnight, leading to “significant, life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding,” along with mudslides in higher areas. The storm is expected to weaken to a tropical depression through the night before dissipating sometime Wednesday.A woman sits near her house damaged the passing of Hurricane Iota, in Puerto Cabezas, Nov. 18, 2020.Iota made landfall Monday on the northeastern coast of Nicaragua Monday carrying maximum winds of 210 kilometers an hour, then grew in speed to 250 kilometers an hour, becoming a Category 5 storm — the top level on the five-level scale that measures a storm’s potential destructiveness.   The storm left scores of communities cut off from the outside world and forced thousands of residents to evacuate their homes.  At least eight people across the region have been killed, including two children who reportedly drowned while trying to cross a flooded river in Nicaragua. At least one person died in Providencia island, located in Colombia’s Caribbean archipelago, while another person was killed in Panama’s western Ngabe Bugle indigenous community.Iota is the 30th named storm of this year’s record-setting Atlantic hurricane season.  It struck just south of where Hurricane Eta made landfall on November 3 as a Category 4 storm, triggering flash flooding and landslides over parts of Central America and killing more than 130 people. 
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An agreement announced Tuesday paves the way for the largest dam demolition in U.S. history, a project that promises to reopen hundreds of miles of waterway along the Oregon-California border to salmon that are critical to tribes but have dwindled to almost nothing in recent years. If approved, the deal would revive plans to remove four massive hydroelectric dams on the lower Klamath River, creating the foundation for the most ambitious salmon restoration effort in history. The project on California’s second-largest river would be at the vanguard of a trend toward dam demolitions in the U.S. as the structures age and become less economically viable amid growing environmental concerns about the health of native fish. Previous efforts to address problems in the Klamath Basin have fallen apart amid years of legal sparring that generated distrust among tribes, fishing groups, farmers and environmentalists. Opponents of dam removal worry about their property values and the loss of a water source for fighting wildfires. Lawsuits challenging the agreement are possible. “This dam removal is more than just a concrete project coming down. It’s a new day and a new era,” Yurok Tribe chairman Joseph James said. “To me, this is who we are, to have a free-flowing river just as those who have come before us. … Our way of life will thrive with these dams being out.” FILE – The Iron Gate Dam, powerhouse and spillway are on the lower Klamath River near Hornbrook, Calif., March 3, 2020.A half-dozen tribes across Oregon and California, fishing groups and environmentalists had hoped to see demolition work begin as soon as 2022. But those plans stalled in July, when U.S. regulators questioned whether the nonprofit entity formed to oversee the project could adequately respond to any cost overruns or accidents. The new plan makes Oregon and California equal partners in the demolition with the nonprofit entity, called the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, and adds $45 million to the project’s $450 million budget to ease those concerns. Oregon, California and the utility PacifiCorp, which operates the hydroelectric dams and is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, will each provide one-third of the additional funds. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must approve the deal. If accepted, it would allow PacifiCorp and Berkshire Hathaway to walk away from aging dams that are more of an albatross than a profit-generator, while addressing regulators’ concerns. Oregon, California and the nonprofit would jointly take over the hydroelectric license from PacifiCorp while the nonprofit will oversee the work. Buffett said the reworked deal solves a “very complex challenge.” “I recognize the importance of Klamath dam removal and river restoration for tribal people in the Klamath Basin,” Buffett said in a statement. “We appreciate and respect our tribal partners for their collaboration in forging an agreement that delivers an exceptional outcome for the river, as well as future generations.”  Removed would be the four southernmost dams in a string of six constructed in southern Oregon and far Northern California beginning in 1918.  They were built solely for power generation. They are not used for irrigation and not managed for flood control. The lowest dam on the river, the Iron Gate, has no “fish ladder,” or concrete chutes, that fish can pass through.  Importance of salmonThat’s blocked hundreds of miles of potential fish habitat and spawning grounds, and fish populations have dropped precipitously in recent years. Salmon are at the heart of the culture, beliefs and diet of a half-dozen regional tribes, including the Yurok and Karuk — both parties to the agreement — and they have suffered deeply from that loss. FILE – A man looks at a tank holding juvenile chinook salmon being raised at the Iron Gate Hatchery at the base of the Iron Gate Dam near Hornbrook, Calif., March 3, 2020.Coho salmon from the Klamath River are listed as threatened under federal and California law, and their population in the river has fallen anywhere from 52% to 95%. Spring chinook salmon, once the Klamath Basin’s largest run, has dwindled by 98%. Fall chinook, the last to persist in any significant numbers, have been so meager in the past few years that the Yurok canceled fishing for the first time in the tribe’s memory. In 2017, they bought fish at a grocery store for their annual salmon festival. “It is bleak, but I want to have hope that with dam removal and with all the prayers that we’ve been sending up all these years, salmon could come back. If we just give them a chance, they will,” said Chook-Chook Hillman, a Karuk tribal member fighting for dam removal. “If you provide a good place for salmon, they’ll always come home.” Lawsuit to stop demolitionResidents have been caught in the middle. As tribes watched salmon dwindle, some homeowners around a huge reservoir created by one of the dams slated for removal have sued to stop the demolition.  They say their waterfront property values have already fallen by half because of news coverage associated with demolition, and they worry about losing a water source for fighting wildfires in an increasingly fire-prone landscape. Many also oppose the use of ratepayer funds for the project. More than 1,720 dams have been dismantled around the U.S. since 2012, according to American Rivers, and 26 states undertook dam removal projects in 2019 alone. The Klamath River project would be the largest such project by far if it proceeds. 
 
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