Four people are set to become the world’s first all-civilian crew to fly into Earth orbit when they blast off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Wednesday as space tourism takes its biggest leap yet. Weather conditions are 70% favorable for Wednesday night’s scheduled launch of Americans Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Chris Sembroski and Sian Proctor from the U.S. spaceport’s historic Launch Pad 39A, which was used for the Apollo moon missions during the 1960s and 70s. The four-member crew will fly into space aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft built by SpaceX, the privately-run company which has begun sending astronauts to the International Space Station. The fully automated Crew Dragon spacecraft will take the crew to an altitude of 575 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, just above the current positions of both the ISS and the Hubble Space Telescope. SpaceX said the four space tourists will “conduct scientific research designed to advance human health on Earth and during future long-duration spaceflights” before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean near the Florida coast three days later. The mission, dubbed Inspiration4, will be led by the 38-year-old Isaacman, a billionaire technology entrepreneur and founder of an online payment-processing company who is said to have paid SpaceX several million dollars for the flight. The 29-year-old Arceneaux is a childhood bone cancer survivor who has a titanium rod in her leg, which makes her the first person to fly in space with a prosthesis. Sembroski is a 42-year-old retired U.S. Air Force ballistic missile maintenance engineer who now works in the aviation industry, while 51-year-old Proctor is a geoscientist and community college professor who was a NASA astronaut finalist in 2009. Sembroski and Proctor were selected through a nationwide search contest, while Arceneaux is flying as a representative of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was treated during her battle with cancer and now works as a physician’s assistant. Isaacman is using the flight to raise $100 million for St. Jude, and has pledged $100 million of his own money to the hospital. Isaacman’s flight will far exceed those of fellow billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, who each took brief non-orbital flights to the edge of space aboard their own self-financed vehicles — Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, respectively — earlier this year. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Presse.
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Month: September 2021
Nicholas Upgraded from Tropical Storm to Category 1 Hurricane as Moves Towards Texas Coast
The Atlantic storm dubbed Nicholas has been upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane as it heads towards the southeastern coast of Texas. The National Hurricane Center says Nicholas is about 30 kilometers southeast of Matagorda, Texas, carrying maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers an hour, making it a Category 1 storm on the five-level scale that measures a storm’s maximum sustained wind speed and destructive potential. It is the sixth named hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. Nicholas, which has already begun to produce heavy rains and strong winds along parts of Texas and neighboring Louisiana, is expected to make landfall along the Texas coast before daybreak Tuesday morning. Forecasters expect the hurricane to travel along a northeastern path outside of the city of Houston before moving into Louisiana during the day. Forecasters have issued hurricane watches and warnings and storm surge warnings for several communities along the Texas coast, with the likelihood of life-threatening situations such as flash flooding. Nicholas is expected to produce between 15 and 30 centimeters of rain along the region into Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center also says there is a chance of “a tornado or two” along the upper Texas and southwest Louisiana coast through Tuesday morning. The flood-prone city of Houston was swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which dropped 152 centimeters of rain (60 inches) on the city over four days. “Listen to local weather alerts and heed local advisories about the right and safe thing to do, and you’ll make it through this storm just like you’ve had many other storms,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said during a news conference in Houston Monday. Forecasters say Nicholas is likely to gradually weaken over the next two or three days. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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Billie Eilish, Amanda Gorman, Lil Nas X Dazzle at Met Gala
Billie Eilish went full glam in a huge peach ball gown at the pandemic-delayed Met Gala on Monday night, while fellow host of the evening Amanda Gorman was breathtaking in blue custom Vera Wang with a diamond laurel wreath in her hair.Co-host Timothée Chalamet raced onto Fifth Avenue to take selfies with fans before walking up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for his entrance after a marching band and gymnast kicked off the long-awaited evening. Last year’s gala was canceled due to the pandemic.This year’s official theme of the fundraiser for the museum’s Costume Institute was “American Independence,” leaving plenty of room for interpretation. Just ask Lil Nas X, who did a Lady Gaga-esque strip tease on the carpet in gold Versace, from cape to armor to embellished jumpsuit.
Eilish, the belle of the ball, wore Oscar de la Renta. She told Vogue: “It was time for this. I feel like I’ve grown so much over the last few years.”Chalamet had sneakers on his feet but diamonds on his look. Chalamet called his look “a bit of everything,” just like America.Gorman’s dress, which included more than 3,000 hand-sewn crystals, was made to evoke a starry night sky. She told Vogue she felt like Lady Liberty, reimagined. Her crown, the star poet said, was a nod to publishing. Another of the hosts, Naomi Osaka, wanted to celebrate all her cultures — Japan, Haitian and the U.S. — and picked a Louis Vuitton gown designed in collaboration with her sister, Mari Osaka. It was a swirly blue, aqua and purple print with long black ruffle sleeves and a wide red sash.If this gala produced a trend, it’s huge statement sleeves, with some stars and stripes thrown in. There was a smattering of red, as in the red, white and blue of the American flag. Karlie Kloss wore red Carolina Herrera with huge ruffles at the neck and sleeves. Jennifer Hudson also chose red sans sleeves. Also in red: Ella Emhoff, the daughter of the country’s second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, and Vice President Kamala Harris. She wore a trouser look with a sheer top and a crystal design in all the right places.Dan Levy took the party’s theme to the extreme in a blue confection from Loewe. It had, according to the brand, “printed leg of mutton sleeves” on a polo shirt with an applique of two men kissing. Leon Bridges, meanwhile, honored his home state of Texas in a white cowboy hat and a blue suede fringe jacket. “It’s all about embodying the aesthetic of Texas,” said Bridges, with jewels in his hair.Yara Shahidi wore silver custom Dior complete with a head piece. She said she was inspired by Josephine Baker. Emma Chamberlain went for a gold mini with cutouts at the waist and chunky mirror and chain detail. Harris Reed put Iman in a huge golden hat.Gala overseer Anna Wintour arrived early with a wave to the crowd accompanied by her pregnant daughter, Bee, in a floral design with ruffles at the neck.Along with oh-so-many jumpsuits, there were plenty of classic red carpet looks and a wave of gold, the latter including a Peter Dundas look worn by Mary J. Blige. It plunged to the belly button and beyond at the front and back. Megan Fox, fresh from hear appearance at the MTV VMAs, also wore embellished Dundas, a red body hugger with crisscrossing at the front and sides. MJ Rodriguez, the “Pose” star and first transgender performer to pick up an Emmy nomination in a major acting category, wore an old glam, black-and-white corseted look from Thom Brown. The designer called it a modern-day twist on classic American sportswear. She attended the gala with purpose.”Not a lot of trans girls like myself get this opportunity,” she said. “The human condition is what I’m here for.”U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up in an Aurora James gown of white with a message splashed in red across the back: “Tax the Rich.”The evening had its share of what-the-heck moments, like a couple of horse heads on dresses and a green-haired Frank Ocean carrying a fake baby with a green face to match. Thom Browne gave the walking fashion statement Erykah Badu an extra-tall top hat with a bulky black look, a bunch of crystals and chunky bling around her neck.Her purse was a black leather dachshund.Dundas also dressed Ciara, who honored Seahawks hubby Russell Wilson with his No. 3 emblazoned on her lime green sequined gown. She added a little something extra — a Super Bowl ring — and carried a bedazzled purse in the shape of a football.She said the designer was inspired by the sporty vibe of the late great Geoffrey Beene.
The gala, which raises money for the museum’s Costume Institute, was pushed last year from its traditional May berth and morphed this year into a two-part affair marking the institute’s 75th anniversary. It coincides with the opening of “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” the first of a two-part exhibition at the Met’s Anna Wintour Costume Center. Organizers invited 400 guests, or about a third the number that usually attend.
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George Wein, Newport Jazz Festival Co-founder, Dies at 95
George Wein, an impresario of 20th century music who helped found the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals and set the template for gatherings everywhere from Woodstock to the south of France, died Monday. Wein, 95, died “peacefully in his sleep” in his New York City apartment, said Carolyn McClair, a family spokesperson. A former jazz club owner and aspiring pianist, Wein launched the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 under pouring rain and with a lineup for the heavens — Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Lester Young. Louis Armstrong was there the following year and Duke Ellington made history in 1956, his band’s set featuring an extraordinary, 27-chorus solo from saxophonist Paul Gonsalves that almost single-handedly revived the middle-aged Ellington’s career. Wein led the festival for more than 50 years, and performers would include virtually every major jazz star, from Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk to Charles Mingus and Wynton Marsalis. Just in 1965, the bill featured Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Ellington, Gillespie, Davis and Monk. FILE – Wynton Marsalis performs at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, on August 6, 2011.The success of Newport inspired a wave of jazz festivals in the U.S., and Wein replicated his success worldwide, his other projects including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. His multiday, all-star gatherings were also a model for rock festivals, whether Woodstock in 1969 or the Lollapalooza tours of recent years. Critic Gene Santoro observed in 2003 that without Wein, “everything from Woodstock to Jazz at Lincoln Center might have happened differently — if it happened at all.” Wein “can justifiably claim to have invented, developed and codified the contemporary popular music festival,” Santoro wrote. The idea for Newport came in part from locals Louis and Elaine Lorillard, who urged Wein to organize a jazz festival in their resort community in Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard, a socialite, complained that the summer scene was “terribly boring.” Her tobacco-heir husband backed her up with a $20,000 donation. Wein had never known of a large-scale jazz festival, so, in the spirit of the music, he improvised — seeking to combine the energy and musicality of a Harlem jazz club with the ambience of a summer classical concert in Tanglewood. “What was a festival to me?” Wein later said. “I had no rulebook to go by. I knew it had to be something unique, that no jazz fan had ever been exposed to.” FILE – In this 1963 file photo, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan perform at the festival in Newport, Rhode Island.In 1959, Wein joined with Pete Seeger and began a companion folk festival that would feature early performances by Joan Baez and Jose Feliciano among others and track the evolution of Bob Dylan from earnest troubadour to rule-breaking rock star. Dylan’s show in 1963 helped establish him as the so-called “voice of his generation,” but by 1965 he felt confined by the folk community and turned up at Newport with an electric band. The response was mostly positive, but there were enough boos from the crowd and conflicts backstage — Wein rejected the legend that Seeger tried to cut the power cables to Dylan’s amps — to make Dylan’s appearance a landmark in rock and folk history. In his memoir, “Myself Among Others,” Wein remembered confronting Dylan as he left the stage and insisted he return to play something acoustic. Years later, Wein remained moved by memories of hearing Dylan sing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” a farewell ballad in more ways than one. “It was a farewell to the idealism and purity of the folk revival,” Wein wrote. “There was no turning back — not for Dylan, not for anyone.” The Newport festivals have led to numerous films and concert albums, notably Murray Lerner’s Oscar-nominated 1967 documentary “Festival!” with Dylan, Johnny Cash and Howlin’ Wolf among the performers. Wein would later bring in Led Zeppelin, Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown and other rock and rhythm and blues acts. In 2020, when Newport went virtual because of the pandemic, Wein introduced Mavis Staples from his home in Manhattan. Wein himself had been a pianist since childhood and he maintained an active music career, releasing “Wein, Women and Song,” “Swing That Music” and several other albums and making yearly appearances at the Newport festival with his Newport All-Stars band. He was named a “Jazz Master” in 2005 by the National Endowment for the Arts and received an honorary Grammy in 2014. Years earlier, President Bill Clinton brought his saxophone to the White House stage for a celebration of the Newport Jazz Festival. The Newport festival lasted despite ongoing conflicts, whether objections from the locals in Newport, the declining appeal of jazz, or the demands and resentments of the musicians. In the mid-1970s, he was struggling financially and became among the first popular music promoters to work with corporate sponsors, notably the makers of Kool cigarettes. In 2005, he sold his company Festival Productions Inc. to Festival Network LLC and took on a more limited role at Newport. Six years later, he established the nonprofit Newport Festivals Foundation to oversee the summertime events. “I want the festivals to go on forever,” Wein told The Associated Press at the time. “With me it’s not a matter of business. This is my life.”
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World Bank: Climate Change Could Force Migration of 216 Million People by 2050
A World Bank report released Monday suggests climate change could force 216 million people across six regions to migrate within their countries in the next 30 years, with “hotspots” emerging within the next nine years unless urgent steps are taken.
The “Groundswell Part 2” report examines how climate change is a powerful driver of migration within a nation because of its impact on people’s livelihoods through droughts, rising sea levels, crop failures and other climate-related conditions.
The original Groundswell climate report was published in 2018 and detailed projections and analysis for three world regions: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. “Groundswell 2” conducted similar studies on East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Both studies established different scenarios to explore potential future outcomes and identify internal climate in- and out- migration hotspots in each region — that is, the areas from which people are expected to move, and the areas to which they might go.
The study suggests that by 2050, sub-Saharan Africa could see as many as 86 million internal climate migrants; East Asia and the Pacific, 49 million; South Asia, 40 million; North Africa, 19 million; Latin America, 17 million; and eastern Europe and Central Asia, 5 million.
To slow the factors driving climate migration and avoid these worst-case outcomes, the report recommends a series of steps world leaders can take, including reducing global emissions in line with the goals established by the Paris 2015 climate agreement, and taking steps to better understand the drivers of internal climate migration, so appropriate policies to address them can be developed.
Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press.
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Cyber Arms Dealer Exploits New iPhone Software Vulnerability, Watchdog Says
A cyber surveillance company based in Israel developed a tool to break into Apple iPhones with a never-before-seen technique that has been in use since February, internet security watchdog group Citizen Lab said Monday. The discovery is important because of the critical nature of the vulnerability, which requires no user interaction and affects all versions of Apple’s iOS, OSX, and watchOS, except for those updated Monday. The vulnerability developed by the Israeli firm, named NSO Group, defeats security systems designed by Apple in recent years. Apple said it fixed the vulnerability in Monday’s software update, confirming Citizen Lab’s finding. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment regarding whether the hacking technique came from NSO Group. In a statement to Reuters, NSO did not confirm or deny that it was behind the technique, saying only that it would “continue to provide intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world with life-saving technologies to fight terror and crime.” Citizen Lab said it found the malware on the phone of an unnamed Saudi activist and that the phone had been infected with spyware in February. It is unknown how many other users may have been infected. The intended targets would not have to click on anything for the attack to work. Researchers said they did not believe there would be any visible indication that a hack had occurred. The vulnerability lies in how iMessage automatically renders images. IMessage has been repeatedly targeted by NSO and other cyber arms dealers, prompting Apple to update its architecture. But that upgrade has not fully protected the system. “Popular chat apps are at risk of becoming the soft underbelly of device security. Securing them should be top priority,” said Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had no immediate comment. Explosion in attacksCitizen Lab said multiple details in the malware overlapped with prior attacks by NSO, including some that were never publicly reported. One process within the hack’s code was named “setframed,” the same name given in a 2020 infection of a device used by journalists at Al Jazeera, the researchers found. “The security of devices is increasingly challenged by attackers,” said Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak. A record number of previously unknown attack methods, which can be sold for $1 million or more, have been revealed this year. The attacks are labeled “zero-day” because software companies had zero days’ notice of the problem. New cybersecurity focusAlong with a surge in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure, the explosion in such attacks has stoked a new focus on cybersecurity in the White House as well as renewed calls for regulation and international agreements to rein in malicious hacking. As previously reported, the FBI has been investigating NSO, and Israel has set up a senior inter-ministerial team to assess allegations that its spyware has been abused on a global scale. Although NSO has said it vets the governments it sells to, its Pegasus spyware has been found on the phones of activists, journalists and opposition politicians in countries with poor human rights records.
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Britain to Offer COVID-19 Vaccines to 12-to-15-year-Olds
Britain’s chief medical officer (CMO), Professor Chris Whitty, recommended Monday that children between the ages of 12 and 15 be offered the COVID-19 vaccine, saying they would benefit from reduced disruption to their education. More than a week ago, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, the panel that advises British health departments on immunization policies, issued a statement saying the “margin of benefit” to inoculating children of those ages was too small for them to recommend the government do so. Britain’s Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty attends a remote press conference to update the nation on the COVID-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on June 10, 2020.But Monday, Whitty, along with his counterparts from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, told reporters they are recommending to their respective health ministers that the age group be given a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. They have yet to decide on whether to give the students a second dose. Whitty stressed the vaccinations should be “an offer,” not a mandate, adding, “We do not think this is a panacea. This is not a silver bullet … but we think it is an important and potentially useful additional tool to help reduce the public health impacts that come through educational disruption.” Whitty said the CMOs have shared their recommendations with their ministers, and it is now up to the ministers to decide how to respond. The United States, Israel and some European countries have rolled out vaccinations to children more broadly, putting pressure on the British government to follow suit. Britain has experienced more than 134,000 deaths from COVID-19, and a rapid start to its immunization rollout has slowed, with 81% of those over 16 receiving two vaccine doses. Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
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On with the Show: Amid Pandemic, Broadway Prepares to Reopen
Broadway will welcome back musical lovers and playgoers this fall as theaters in New York City reopen at 100% capacity despite an ongoing threat of the spread of COVID-19. Tina Trinh reports.Camera: Tina Trinh, Janine Phakdeetham Produced by: Tina Trinh
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New Zealand’s Largest City Remains in Strict Lockdown
New Zealand’s prime minister has announced Monday that the country’s largest city, with a population of 1.7 million, will remain in a strict lockdown in an effort to curb small outbreaks of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus.“It’s clear there is no widespread transmission of the virus in Auckland,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, “but so long as we have new cases emerging, there are risks,” she added speaking at a news conference.Auckland’s lockdown has been extended to September 21, with 33 new cases recorded Monday, following weekend reports of 23 and 20 cases.New Zealand went into a countrywide snap lockdown on August 17. Some restrictions, allowing people to go back to offices and schools, were lifted elsewhere in New Zealand last week.Israel was warned that Israeli travelers who went to the Ukrainian city of Uman for Rosh Hashanah celebrations and re-entered Israel with fake negative COVID test results will face full criminal charges.“The Israeli government views the matter of patients fraudulently entering Israel by falsifying documents very seriously,” the office of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported that by Friday 17,000 of the travelers had returned home and 1,600 had tested positive for COVID. Israel says 25,000 Israelis made the pilgrimage to Uman. More than150 Israelis are suspected of using fake negative coronavirus test results to return home, according to The New York Times.Britain’s Health Ministry announced Sunday that it would reverse its decision to require ‘vaccine passports’ for Britons entering nightclubs and bars.Health Minister Sajid Javid said that the idea, which faced pushback from conservative lawmakers, had been shelved but would be reconsidered if rates of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, increased substantially.Britain is expected to announce this week its plans for inoculating 12- to 15-year-old youngsters in the battle against the virus. The vaccine campaign will likely start later this month.Students apply hand sanitizer in a class at the Viqarunnisa Noon School College after the government has withdrawn restrictions on educational institutions following a decrease in the number of cases of COVID-19 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sept. 12, 2021.Elsewhere, Bangladesh reopened schools after over 500 days of closure Sunday, as the government reported that 97% of teachers throughout the country have been fully vaccinated.Children were still required to wear masks in schools and the government warned against being lax on safety measures. For now, students in each class will attend school once a week.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Monday that it has recorded 224.7 million COVID cases worldwide. The center said 5.7 million vaccines have been administered.(Some information for this report came from Reuters.)
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SpaceX to Launch Private, All-civilian Crew into Earth Orbit
SpaceX is set to launch four people into space Wednesday on a three-day mission that is the first to orbit the Earth with exclusively private citizens on board, as Elon Musk’s company enters the space tourism fray. The “Inspiration4” mission caps a summer that saw billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cross the final frontier, on Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin spaceships respectively, a few days apart in July. The SpaceX flight has been chartered by American billionaire Jared Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payment. He is also a seasoned pilot. The exact price he paid SpaceX hasn’t been disclosed, but it runs into the tens of millions of dollars. The mission itself is far more ambitious in scope than the few weightless minutes Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin customers can buy. The SpaceX Crew Dragon will be flying further than the orbit of the International Space Station. “The risk is not zero,” said Isaacman in an episode of a Netflix documentary about the mission. “You’re riding a rocket at 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) per hour around the Earth. In that kind of environment there’s risks.” SpaceX has already given no fewer than ten astronauts rides to the ISS on behalf of NASA — but this will be the first time taking non-professional astronauts. Lift-off is scheduled for Wednesday from 8:00 pm Eastern Time (0000 GMT) from launch pad 39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Center in Florida, from where the Apollo missions to the Moon took off. ‘Are we going to the Moon?’In addition to Isaacman, who is the mission commander, three non-public figures were selected for the voyage via a process that was first advertised at the Super Bowl in February. Each crew member was picked to represent a pillar of the mission. The youngest, Hayley Arceneaux, is a childhood bone cancer survivor, who represents “hope.” She will become the first person with a prosthetic to go to space. “Are we going to the Moon?” she asked, when she was offered her spot. “Apparently people haven’t gone there in decades. I learned that,” she laughed, in the documentary. The 29-year-old was picked because she works as a Physician Assistant in Memphis for St. Jude’s Hospital, the charitable beneficiary of Inspiration4. One of the donors secured the seat of “generosity”: Chris Sembroski, 42, is a former US Air Force veteran who now works in the aviation industry. The last seat represents “prosperity” and was offered to Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old earth science professor who, in 2009, narrowly missed out on becoming a NASA astronaut. She will be only the fourth African American woman to go to space. Months of trainingThe crew’s training has lasted months and has included experiencing high G force on a centrifuge — a giant arm that rotates rapidly. They have also gone on parabolic flights to experience weightlessness for a few seconds and completed a high altitude, snowy trek on Mount Rainier in the northwestern United States. They spent time at the SpaceX base, though the flight itself will be fully autonomous. Over the three days of orbit, their sleep, heart rate, blood and cognitive abilities will be analyzed. Tests will be carried out before and after the flight to study the effect of the trip on their body. The idea is to accumulate data for future missions with private passengers. The stated goal of the mission is to make space accessible for more people, although space travel remains for the moment only partially open to a privileged few. “In all of human history, fewer than 600 humans have reached space,” said Isaacman. “We are proud that our flight will help influence all those who will travel after us.”
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Shanghai Suspends Schools, Flights as Typhoon Approaches China
Authorities in Shanghai and neighboring coastal regions canceled flights, and suspended schools, subways and trains as Typhoon Chanthu approached China after drenching Taiwan though causing little damage there. The storm, with winds of more than 170 kilometers per hour near its eye, had been downgraded from a super typhoon to a strong typhoon on Sunday evening and was expected to gradually weaken, Shanghai city authorities said in a post on their official WeChat account. But it was still expected to bring strong winds and heavy rain to coastal regions. The province of Zhejiang near Shanghai raised its emergency response to the highest level on Sunday, closing schools and suspending flights and rail services in some cities, the official Xinhua news service reported. Zhejiang also issued red alerts for flash floods in nine districts. Ningbo port, China’s second-biggest container transporting hub after Shanghai, had suspended operations since Sunday noon. The port just resumed from a weeks-long port congestion, following typhoon In-Fa in late-July and a COVID-19-related terminal closure in mid-August. In Shanghai, home to about 26 million people, all flights at the city’s larger Pudong International Airport were to be canceled from 11 a.m. local time (0300 GMT), while flights from the smaller Hongqiao airport in the west of the city were to be canceled from 3 p.m., the Shanghai government announced on WeChat. Port terminals in Shanghai regions suspended containers import and export services from Monday till further notice. The city also suspended subway services on some lines serving the city’s southern districts, and said parks, outdoor tourist attractions and playgrounds would be closed on Monday and Tuesday. Classes were also due to be suspended on Monday afternoon and Tuesday. Official forecasts called for rainfall of 250-280 millimeters in some areas of southeastern Jiangsu province, Shanghai and northeastern Zhejiang. The typhoon passed by Taiwan’s east coast over the weekend, disrupting transport and causing some power outages, but otherwise little damage.
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Medvedev Ends Djokovic’s Bid for Year Slam at US Open
Novak Djokovic’s bid for the first calendar-year Grand Slam in men’s tennis since 1969 ended one victory short with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 loss to Daniil Medvedev in the U.S. Open final on Sunday. Medvedev’s surprisingly lopsided triumph gave him his first major championship and prevented Djokovic from winning what would have been the record 21st of his career. The No. 1-ranked Djokovic entered this match 27-0 in 2021 at the sport’s four most important tournaments, enduring the burdens of expectations and pressure that came along with his two-track pursuit of history over the past seven months and, in New York, the past two weeks. He beat Medvedev in the Australian Open final on a hard court in February, then added titles on clay at the French Open in June and Wimbledon on grass in July. But Djokovic, a 34-year-old from Serbia, couldn’t get to 28-0. He simply was far from his best on this particular day. He made mistakes, 38 unforced errors in all. He wasn’t able to convert a break chance until it was too little, too late. He showed frustration, too, destroying his racket by pounding it three times against the court after one point, drawing boos from the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd and a code violation from the chair umpire.A lot of Djokovic’s issues had to do with the No. 2-ranked Medvedev, who used his 6-foot-6 (1.98-meter) frame to chase down everything and respond with seemingly effortless groundstrokes — much the way Djokovic wears down foes — and delivered pinpoint serving.Djokovic reached his record-equaling 31st Grand Slam final with six victories on the hard courts of Flushing Meadows. But he could not quite get the last one he wanted. He remains tied with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal with 20 major titles.And the last man to sweep a season’s singles trophies at the Slams remains Rod Laver, who did it twice — in 1962 and 1969 — and was in the stands Sunday. The last woman to accomplish the feat was Steffi Graf in 1988.Instead, Djokovic joins Jack Crawford in 1933 and Lew Hoad in 1956 as men who won a year’s first trio of Grand Slam tournaments and made it all the way to the U.S. Open final before losing.
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Bangladesh Schools Reopen After 18-Month COVID Shutdown
Children in Bangladesh flooded back into classrooms on Sunday as schools reopened after 18 months, one of the world’s longest coronavirus shutdowns.The resumption came after UNICEF warned that prolonged school closures during the COVID-19 crisis were worsening inequities for millions of children across South Asia.In the capital Dhaka, students at one school were welcomed with flowers and sweets, and told to wear masks and sanitize their hands. Some hugged each other in excitement.”We are really excited to be back at school,” 15-year-old Muntasir Ahmed told AFP as he entered the campus.”I am hoping to physically see all of my friends and teachers, not through a laptop window today.”At the gate, school officials checked the body temperatures of students before allowing them to enter.The school’s vice principal, Dewan Tamziduzzaman, said he “didn’t expect such a big number to be turning up on the first day.”Only 41% of Bangladesh’s 169 million population have smartphones, according to the country’s telecom operators’ association, which means millions of children cannot access online classes.Even with smartphones, students in many of Bangladesh’s rural districts do not have the high-speed internet access usually required for e-learning.’Enormous setbacks’UNICEF warned in a report released Thursday that the pandemic has accentuated “alarming inequities” for more than 430 million children in the region.”School closures in South Asia have forced hundreds of millions of children and their teachers to transition to remote learning in a region with low connectivity and device affordability,” UNICEF’s regional director, George Laryea-Adjei, said in a statement.”As a result, children have suffered enormous setbacks in their learning journey.”In India, 80% of children aged 14-18 years said they learnt less than when they were in a physical classroom, according to UNICEF.Among children aged between six and 13 years, 42% said they had no access to remote learning.”Their future is at stake,” Deepu Singh, a farmer in India’s Jharkhand state, said last week of his children ages 9 and 10.The pair have not been to school in a year and have no internet access at home, Singh told AFP, adding: “I do not know English. I cannot help him (my son), even if I want to.”Students in the rest of the region were similarly impacted, UNICEF reported.In Pakistan, 23% of young children had no access to any device for remote learning.Some towns in Nepal have been broadcasting radio lessons due to the lack of internet access.”We are (in) a dangerous situation,” Nepalese schoolteacher Rajani K.C. told AFP last week.”If the pandemic continues and the academic sector loses more years, what kind of human resource will the country have in the future?”
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Prehistoric Winged Lizard Unearthed in Chile
Chilean scientists have announced the discovery of the first-ever southern hemisphere remains of a type of Jurassic-era “winged lizard” known as a pterosaur.Fossils of the dinosaur which lived some 160 million years ago in what is today the Atacama desert, were unearthed in 2009.They have now been confirmed to be of a rhamphorhynchine pterosaur — the first such creature to be found in Gondwana, the prehistoric supercontinent that later formed the southern hemisphere landmasses.Researcher Jhonatan Alarcon of the University of Chile said the creatures had a wingspan of up to 2 meters, a long tail, and pointed snout.”We show that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than known to date,” he added.The discovery was also “the oldest known pterosaur found in Chile,” the scientists reported in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
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A Tale of 2 COVID Vaccine Clinics: Lines in Kenya, Few Takers in Atlanta
Several hundred people line up every morning, starting before dawn, on a grassy area outside Nairobi’s largest hospital hoping to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Sometimes the line moves smoothly, while on other days, the staff tells them there’s nothing available and they should come back tomorrow.Halfway around the world, at a church in Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia, two workers with plenty of vaccine doses waited hours Wednesday for anyone to show up, whiling away the time by listening to music from a laptop. In six hours, one person came through the door.The dramatic contrast highlights the vast disparity around the world. In richer countries, people can often pick and choose from multiple available vaccines, walk into a site near their homes and get a shot in minutes. Pop-up clinics, such as the one in Atlanta, bring vaccines into rural areas and urban neighborhoods, but it is common for them to get very few takers.In the developing world, supply is limited and uncertain. Just more than 3% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated, and health officials and citizens often have little idea what will be available from one day to the next. More vaccines have been flowing in recent weeks, but the World Health Organization’s director in Africa said Thursday that the continent will get 25% fewer doses than anticipated by the end of the year, in part because of the rollout of booster shots in wealthier counties such as the United States.Bidian Okoth said he spent more than three hours in line at a Nairobi hospital, only to be told to go home because there weren’t enough doses. But a friend who traveled to the U.S. got a shot almost immediately after his arrival there with a vaccine of his choice, “like candy,” he said.”We’re struggling with what time in the morning we need to wake up to get the first shot. Then you hear people choosing their vaccines. That’s super, super excessive,” he said.Okoth said his uncle died from COVID-19 in June and had given up twice on getting vaccinated because of the length of the lines, even though he was eligible because of his age. The death jolted Okoth, a health advocate, into seeking a dose for himself.He stopped at one hospital so often on his way to work that a doctor “got tired of seeing me” and told Okoth he would call him when doses were available. Late last month, after a new donation of vaccines arrived from Britain, he got his shot.The disparity comes as the U.S. is moving closer to offering booster shots to large segments of the population even as it struggles to persuade Americans to get vaccinated in the first place. President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans, including private-sector employees, as the country faces the surging COVID-19 delta variant.Riley Erickson poses for a photo at Springfield Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sept. 8, 2021, where the disaster relief group CORE was offering COVID-19 vaccinations. The one person who showed up was a college student.About 53% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging about 145,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, along with about 1,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Africa has had more than 7.9 million confirmed cases, including more than 200,000 deaths, and the highly infectious delta variant recently drove a surge in new cases as well.John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Thursday that “we have not seen enough science” to drive decisions on when to administer booster shots.”Without that, we are gambling,” he said, and urged countries to send doses to countries facing “vaccine famine” instead.In the U.S., vaccines are easy to find, but some people are hesitant to get them.At the church in northwest Atlanta, a nonprofit group offered the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines for free without an appointment from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But site manager Riley Erickson spent much of the day waiting in an air-conditioned room full of empty chairs, though the group had reached out to neighbors and the church had advertised the location to its large congregation.Erickson, with the disaster relief organization CORE, said the vaccination rate in the area was low and he wasn’t surprised by the small turnout. The one person who showed up was a college student.FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2021, photo, medical workers prepare to remove the body of a coronavirus victim in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Machakos, Kenya.”When you put the effort into going into areas where there’s less interest, that’s kind of the result,” he said. His takeaway, however, was that CORE needed to spend more time in the community.Margaret Herro, CORE’s Georgia director, said the group has seen an uptick in vaccinations at its pop-up sites in recent weeks amid a COVID-19 surge fueled by the delta variant and the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine. It also has gone to meatpacking plants and other work locations, where turnout is better, and it plans to focus more on those places, Herro said.In Nairobi, Okoth believes there should be a global commitment to equity in the administration of vaccines so everyone has a basic level of immunity as quickly as possible.”If everyone at least gets a first shot, I don’t think anyone will care if others get even six booster shots,” he said.
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With More Doses, Uganda Takes Vaccination Drive to Markets
At a taxi stand by a bustling market in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, traders simply cross a road or two, get a shot in the arm and rush back to their work.Until this week, vaccination centers were based mostly in hospitals in this East African country that faced a brutal COVID-19 surge earlier this year.Now, more than a dozen tented sites have been set up in busy areas to make it easier to get inoculated in Kampala as health authorities team up with the Red Cross to administer more than 120,000 doses that will expire at the end of September.“All of this we could have done earlier, but we were not assured of availability of vaccines,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, who leads a team of scientists advising authorities on the pandemic response, speaking of vaccination spots in downtown areas. “Right now, we are receiving more vaccines and we have to deploy them as much as possible.”In addition to the 128,000 AstraZeneca doses donated by Norway at the end of August, the United Kingdom last month donated nearly 300,000 doses. China recently donated 300,000 doses of its Sinovac vaccine, and on Monday a batch of 647,000 Moderna doses donated by the United States arrived in Uganda.Suddenly Uganda must accelerate its vaccination drive. The country has sometimes struggled with hesitancy as some question the safety of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is no longer in use in Norway because of concerns over unusual blood clots in a small number of people who received it.Africa has fully vaccinated just 3.1% of its 1.3 billion people, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health officials across Africa have complained loudly of vaccine inequality and what they see as hoarding in some rich countries. Soon hundreds of millions of vaccine doses will be delivered to Africa through donations of excess doses by wealthy nations or purchases by the African Union.Africa is aiming to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by the end of 2022, a steep target given the global demand for doses. The African Union, representing the continent’s 54 countries, has ordered 400 million Johnson & Johnson doses, but the distribution of those doses will be spread out over 12 months because there simply isn’t enough supply.A nurse administers a coronavirus vaccination at Kisenyi Health Center in downtown Kampala, Uganda, Sept. 8, 2021.COVAX, the U.N.-backed program which aims to get vaccines to the neediest people in the world, said this week that its efforts continue “to be hampered by export bans, the prioritization of bilateral deals by manufacturers and countries, ongoing challenges in scaling up production by some key producers, and delays in filing for regulatory approval.”Uganda, a country of more than 44 million people, has recorded more than 120,000 cases of COVID-19, including just over 3,000 deaths, according to official figures. The country has given 1.65 million shots, but only about 400,000 people have received two doses, according to Wayengera. Uganda’s target is to fully vaccinate up to 5 million of the most vulnerable, including nurses and teachers, as soon as possible.At the Red Cross tent in downtown Kampala, demand for the jabs was high. By late afternoon only 30 of 150 doses remained, and some who arrived later were told to come back the next day.“I came here on a sure deal, but it hasn’t happened,” said trader Sulaiman Mivule after a nurse told him he was too late for a shot that day. “I will come back tomorrow. It’s easy for me here because I work in this area.”Asked why he was so eager to get his first shot, he said, “They are telling us that there could be a third wave. If it comes when we are very vaccinated, maybe it will not hurt us so much. Prevention is better than cure.”Mivule and others who spoke to the AP said they didn’t want to go to vaccination sites at hospitals because of they expected to find crowds there.Bernard Ssembatya said he had been driving by when he spotted the Red Cross’s white tent and went in for a jab on the spur of the moment. Afterward, he texted his friends about the opportunity.“I was getting demoralized by going to health centers,” he said. “You see a lot of people there and you don’t even want to try to enter.”Yet, despite enthusiasm among many, some still walked away without getting a shot when they were told their preferred vaccine was not yet available.The one-shot J&J vaccine, still unavailable in Uganda, is frequently asked for, said Jacinta Twinomujuni, a nurse with the Kampala Capital City Authority who monitored the scene.“I tell them, of course, that we don’t have it,” she said. “And they say, ‘OK, let’s wait for it.’”
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Disney to Debut Rest of 2021 Films in Cinemas First
Disney announced Friday that all of its films slated for release by the end of the year will be exclusively screened in cinemas first, bringing relief to theaters anxious to reconnect with audiences after the coronavirus pandemic devastated their industry.The animated film Encanto will be released on the big screen Nov. 24 and will not appear on Disney’s on-demand video platform until Dec. 24, the company said in a statement.Other planned projects, including The Last Duel by Ridley Scott, Eternals by Marvel Studios and West Side Story by Steven Spielberg, will be screened in theaters for at least 45 days before they are released elsewhere.The decision was eagerly awaited by traditional cinemas after the entertainment giant recently chose to release a series of big productions such as Black Widow, Jungle Cruise and Cruella on its Disney+ platform, diverting part of their revenue.Black Widow actor Scarlett Johansson has sued Disney, accusing the company of breach of contract and costing her millions of dollars in box office revenue after it released the film on its video platform.Two years ago, Disney was producing content for both theaters and television channels, but it now has direct access to its audience via streaming, a trend accelerated by the pandemic.In mid-August, Disney boss Bob Chapek said he favored “flexibility” and the ability to “follow the consumer wherever he goes.”During a presentation of the company’s financial results, he said “when theaters reopened, there was immense reluctance from the public to return.”Warner Bros. studios has also been heavily criticized for its decision to release all of its new movies for the rest of the year on its HBO Max platform.
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WHO: Low-Income Countries Still Lack Enough COVID-19 Vaccines
The World Health Organization says low-income countries still do not have enough COVID-19 vaccines and is urging wealthier nations to deliver more doses. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has this report.
Producer: Kim Weeks
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US Military Developed Computer Program to Help Treat Severe Burns
Every year close to 200,000 people die from burns, according to World Health Organization data. The WHO says most of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Since the United States entered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, US military burn specialists have changed the way serious burns are treated. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Apple Must Loosen App Store Grip, Judge Says; What’s the Impact?
Apple will be forced to loosen the grip it holds on its App Store payment system, a U.S. federal judge ruled Friday in a closely watched battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games.Though app makers will be able to take steps to skirt the up to 30% commission Apple takes on sales, the tech giant avoided being branded an illegal monopoly in the case.Here are some key questions on the App Store and the impact of the ruling:How does the App Store work?The App Store acts as the lone gateway for mobile applications of any kind onto iPhones or other Apple devices. Apple requires developers to adhere to its rules for what apps can or can’t do, and Apple makes them use the App Store payment system for all transactions there.Apple takes a commission of up to 30% of app purchases or transactions, contending it is a fair fee for providing a safe, global platform for developers to hawk their creations.Apple maintains that 85% of the estimated 1.8 million apps at the digital shop pay nothing to the Silicon Valley based tech giant.What was the ruling?The ruling by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers said that Apple’s control of the App Store did not amount to a monopoly, but that it must let developers include links to other online venues for buying content or services.App makers will be able to provide links that users can click on to take them to another website to buy content or otherwise interact. Apple can still require its payment system to be used for in-app purchases, meaning it should still get its share of transactions such as buying virtual gear in a game or a subscription.Gonzalez Rogers wrote that Apple violated California’s laws against unfair competition but that it was not “an anti-trust monopolist … for mobile gaming transactions.”Big change?The biggest change lovers of Apple mobile gadgets might notice is that apps should start showcasing links enticing them to leave the App Store to spend money.Apple representatives called the ruling a validation of the App Store business model.The judge did not order Apple to let Fortnite back into the App Store, and the studio’s CEO Tim Sweeney said on Twitter that the game would return only “when and where Epic can offer in-app payment in fair competition with Apple.”Bite out of Apple’s revenue?It will be difficult to estimate what sort of bite the ruling will take from the company’s income.Most of the offerings at the App Store are created by small developers who haven’t built their own payment systems the way Epic Games runs its own online shop, analyst Carolina Milanesi said.Small developers likely see benefits to using Apple’s payment system and provided perks, such as promoting apps or handling refunds, the analyst added.App users might also feel more comfortable trusting transactions on Apple’s platform rather than entering credit card or other information in on third-party websites.”How many developers can do something else when it comes to payment systems and how many customers are interested in using something else?” Milanesi asked. “I don’t think this ruling is a problem for Apple from a revenue perspective.”And Apple may be planning to more than offset any lost revenue with its own advertising business, according to the analyst.
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How Did It Come to This? Why Biden Is Mandating COVID Vaccines
Just over two months ago, on Independence Day, President Joe Biden declared that the United States was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” Vaccines had driven down the average daily death toll from COVID-19 from more than 3,400 at the start of the year to around 400 in early July. It didn’t last. On Thursday, with about 1,500 Americans dying of COVID-19 each day, according to ourworldindata.org, Biden announced new measures aimed at beating back the virus again. Public health experts applaud the stepped-up efforts, including new vaccine mandates and increased access to testing. But some say they do not go far enough. And they note that the Biden administration’s mixed messaging deserves some of the blame for the current situation. ‘Pandemic of the unvaccinated’ Despite vaccines that are safe, effective, free and widely available, one-quarter of the adult population has not yet taken its first shot. The highly contagious delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus has ripped through this unprotected population like California wildfire, overwhelming hospitals in parts of the country and dampening the economic recovery that was starting to take hold. FILE – In this Aug. 26, 2021 file photo, a syringe is prepared with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccine clinic in Santa Ana, Calif.The United States has the highest death rate and the second-lowest vaccination rate among major industrialized nations, according to ourworldindata.org. “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Biden said. The United States is also unusual among industrialized nations for the level of political division over pandemic measures. Resistance to COVID-19 restrictions that started among conservatives during the Trump administration has persisted under Biden. Republican elected officials have pushed back against mask and vaccine mandates as unconstitutional infringements of personal liberty. The Republican governors of Texas and Florida have barred local school districts from requiring masks in classrooms. Biden’s new plan will require teachers and federal employees to be vaccinated. It mandates that private businesses with more than 100 employees must require their workers to get the shots or be tested weekly. Biden took aim in his speech Thursday at “elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.” Those officials shot back. “See you in court,” Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem wrote on Twitter. South Dakota will stand up to defend freedom. FILE – In this Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, file photo, students, some wearing protective masks, arrive for the first day of school at Sessums Elementary School in Riverview, Fla.‘Not safe’ Overall, public health officials said the Biden administration is doing the right thing. The administration is mandating vaccines under its purview to make workplaces safe. “It is not safe at this moment to return to a workspace where there are large numbers of unvaccinated people. It is just not,” said Brown University School of Public Health Dean Ashish Jha at a news briefing. “While I appreciate the rights of people who choose not to be vaccinated, people also have a right to be able to go to work and not get infected, not get sick and not die.” Jha said the administration also should have required vaccination at colleges and universities and for interstate travel, areas where the federal government has jurisdiction. “These things largely work,” he said. “People don’t love them, but they work.”
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US Soccer Chief Vows to Equalize World Cup Payments in Gender Pay Dispute
United States Soccer Federation President Cindy Parlow Cone said Friday the body hopes to “equalize” World Cup prize money for its men’s and women’s national teams as part of efforts to settle ongoing litigation with its women footballers. In an open letter addressed to U.S. fans, Parlow Cone said the gulf in prize money paid out by FIFA in the men’s and women’s tournaments was “by far the most challenging issue” facing U.S. Soccer in pay negotiations with men’s and women’s teams. The question of World Cup prize money formed a prominent part of a lawsuit filed by the U.S. women’s soccer team in 2019, which accused the USSF of “stubbornly refusing” to pay its men and women players equally. FILE – Cindy Parlow Cone of U.S. Soccer attends a meeting of the organization’s board of directors in Chicago, Dec. 6, 2019.A federal judge later rejected the claim of pay discrimination, but the U.S. women have appealed. The 2019 lawsuit cited the discrepancy in World Cup prize money payments paid to the two teams in 2014 and 2015. The U.S. men received $5.375 million for reaching the round of 16 at the 2014 World Cup, while the women received $1.725 million for winning the 2015 tournament. The USSF has argued that its hands are tied because the prize money is set by FIFA, which awarded $38 million to France for winning the 2018 men’s World Cup in Russia, but only $4 million to the American women for winning the 2019 Women’s World Cup. “FIFA alone control those funds,” Parlow Cone said in her letter on Friday. “And U.S. Soccer is legally obligated to distribute those funds based on our current negotiated collective bargaining agreements with the men’s and women’s teams.” However, Parlow Cone said U.S. Soccer wants to bring the men’s and women’s national teams together to “rethink how we’ve done things in the past.” “To that end, we have invited the players and both Players Associations to join U.S. Soccer in negotiating a solution together that equalizes World Cup prize money between the USMNT and USWNT,” she wrote. “Until FIFA equalizes the prize money that it awards to the Men’s and Women’s World Cup participants, it is incumbent upon us to collectively find a solution. “U.S. Soccer is ready and willing to meet with both groups of players as soon as possible and as often as needed to determine that innovative solution.” Parlow Cone said the USSF had wanted to negotiate a single collective bargaining agreement covering men’s and women’s teams but had met resistance. Accordingly, the USSF is negotiating separate agreements. U.S. Soccer said the body “will be offering the USMNT and the USWNT the exact same contract, just as we have in past negotiations.” “That means offering CBAs that include equalized FIFA prize money, identical game bonuses and identical commercial and revenue sharing agreements.” A spokeswoman for the U.S. women’s team said Parlow Cone’s letter showed that the USSF “finally acknowledged that they pay women less than men and must correct this ongoing disparity by reaching an equal pay collective bargaining agreement and resolving the ongoing lawsuit. “Letters to fans are not a substitute.”
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