Month: July 2022

Japan Bids Final Farewell to Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

Grieving Japanese paid their final farewells to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Tuesday. 

Scores of everyday people lined up outside Tokyo’s Zojoji Temple to bring flowers and other tokens of respect for Abe, who was gunned down last Friday in the western city of Nara during a campaign rally. Many of the mourners cried as they bowed in prayer in front of the temple. 

Zojoji Temple was the site of a private ceremony for the 67-year-old Abe that was limited to only his close friends and family. Abe’s casket was then removed from the temple and placed in a hearse for a long processional through downtown Tokyo to Kirigaya Funeral Hall for cremation with thousands of residents lined up along the route to wave their final goodbyes. 

The hearse was slated to drive by several significant venues from Abe’s political career, including the prime minister’s official office, the Parliament building and the headquarters of his Liberal Democratic Party. 

The suspected gunman in Abe’s assassination, 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, was immediately seized after he shot the ex-prime minister was taken into custody. 

Japanese news outlets say Yamagani, a former member of the country’s Self-Defense Forces, wanted to kill Abe because he believed him to be part of an unspecified religious group he blamed for his mother’s financial ruin. 

The Unification Church, a global religious movement founded in South Korea in the 1950s by the late Reverend Sun Myung Moon, confirmed Monday that Yamagami’s mother was a member, but did not comment on any donations she may have made. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. 

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China’s Central Wuhan Reports Cholera Case

Chinese authorities on Monday confirmed that a case of cholera had occurred in the central city of Wuhan where the outbreak of COVID-19 began before spreading globally. State media acknowledged that the case has sparked public worries in a society still coping with the COVID outbreak. 

China’s official media Xinhua published the news on the front page of its website Monday evening local time, citing a public announcement issued by Wuchang district government’s center for disease control. Wuchang is a district with a little more than one million residents in the city of Wuhan and is home to Wuhan University where the case was reported. 

The news item is no longer on Xinhua’s front page as of Tuesday morning local time, nor can it be found in the Local News section of the website, a category it fell under previously. 

Wuhan University announced on Monday that a graduate student with gastro disease history was admitted at the university’s hospital on July 8 after experiencing fever, vomiting and diarrhea. The student has since been transferred twice, each time to a higher-level hospital, and is currently in quarantine, the university said. 

The dormitory where the student stayed, as well as the lab where the student worked, had both been locked down beginning the evening of July 9, the university said. Three close contacts, including two roommates, and a third person who had dined with the student prior to the student’s hospitalization, have been quarantined. 

Between the evening of July 9 and early morning the next day, 254 students who lived in the same dormitory building plus three dormitory building managers and 15 vendors have been tested. Potentially affected areas are temporarily locked down, relevant personnel have been quarantined “according to regulation” and have been given preventive medicine, the university said. 

The university has also taken “environmental” samples of public areas of the dormitory building, dormitory rooms, bathrooms, waste disposal channels, and the building where the student worked. The areas have also been disinfected. 

Staff at the hospitals who came into contact with the student have been tested. 

The university reported that its hospital has treated 19 additional cases of diarrhea between July 1 and 10, and that tests for cholera were being performed. 

The university said on Monday that up until July 10 evening local time, no other O1 or O138 strain, which was confirmed in the student, has been detected among 264 closely monitored individuals. 

O1 and O138 are the only two strains of the cholera bacteria that cause outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization. 

Cholera is only the second infectious disease classified by the Chinese government as Type A infectious disease, the other is plague. COVID-19, AIDS, Rabies, bird flu and malaria are among dozens classified as Type B, a less severe category. 

The English-language Global Times, part of China’s state media, reported the Wuhan University case on Monday. The article quoted the university’s report that the patient was symptom-free after being treated and that the more than 200 students who lived in the same dormitory building all tested negative.

The report acknowledged that “While COVID-19 outbreaks are not over in China and the flu has hit provinces in South China, the newly found cholera case has sparked public worries [in China].” The same report also quoted a director at Wuhan University saying, “There’s no need for panic.” 

Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at the university, was quoted by Global Times as saying that “with largely improved sanitary conditions and medical treatment, cholera in China has been under control since 2000 and only sporadic cases have been reported in recent years.” 

According to the World Health Organization, cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with cholera bacteria. WHO describes cholera as “an extremely virulent disease that can cause severe acute watery diarrhea.” 

According to the WHO, it takes between 12 hours and 5 days for a person to show symptoms after ingesting contaminated food or water. Cholera affects both children and adults and can kill within hours if untreated. 

Most people infected with cholera bacteria do not develop any symptoms, according to WHO, although the bacteria are present in their feces for 1-10 days after infection and have the potential to affect other people.

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NASA to Release Images from Most Powerful Space Telescope

The U.S. space agency is set to release the full set of the first full-color images from the James Webb Space Telescope on Tuesday, a day after sharing a full-color picture showing stars and galaxies from deeper into the cosmos than ever seen before.

During a news briefing at the White House Monday to unveil the first NASA image, U.S. President Joe Biden said the telescope was “a new window into the history of our universe.”

The $10 billion telescope, the largest and most powerful telescope ever launched into space, peers farther into the cosmos than any before it.

A peek into the past

Scientists describe the telescope as looking back in time. That is because it can see galaxies that are so far away that it takes light from those galaxies billions of years to reach the telescope.

“Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. And that light that you are seeing on one of those little specs (in the picture) has been traveling for over 13 billion years,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who attended Monday’s news briefing along with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Webb telescope can see light that was created just after the Big Bang, the farthest humanity has peered into the past.

A successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor. It is also able to use the infrared spectrum, while the Hubble used mainly optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

The telescope is so precise, Nelson said, that scientists will be able to see the chemical composition of planets deep in space and determine if they are habitable or not.

“We are going to be able to answer questions that we don’t even know what the questions are yet,” he said.

Harris said the telescope would “enhance what we know about the origins of our universe, our solar system and possibly life itself.”

Into the cosmos

The telescope was launched December 25 from French Guiana in South America and traveled 1.6 million kilometers from Earth before beginning to capture images.

Biden said the telescope took a “journey 1 million miles into the cosmos … along the way unfolding itself, deploying a mirror 21 feet wide, a sunshield the size of a tennis court, and 250,000 tiny shutters, each one smaller than a grain of sand.”

Nelson said future images would peer even farther back into the origin of the cosmos, looking about 13.5 billion years into the past.

Scientists will use the Webb telescope to study stars, galaxies and planets as far as the edges of the cosmos, as well as look at objects closer to us with a sharper view, including our own solar system.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

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NASA Offers Farthest Look Into Cosmos

The U.S. space agency has released the first image from its new space telescope — a full color picture showing stars and galaxies from deeper into the cosmos than ever seen before. 

During a news briefing Monday at the White House to unveil the NASA image, U.S. President Joe Biden said the telescope was “a new window into the history of our universe.” 

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful telescope ever launched into space, peers farther into the cosmos than any before it. 

Scientists describe the telescope as looking back in time. That is because it can see galaxies that are so far away that it takes light from those galaxies billions of years to reach the telescope. 

“Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. And that light that you are seeing on one of those little specs (in the picture) has been traveling for over 13 billion years,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who attended Monday’s news briefing along with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. 

The Webb telescope can see light that was created just after the Big Bang, the farthest humanity has peered into the past. 

A successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor. It is also able to use the infrared spectrum, while the Hubble used mainly optical and ultraviolet wavelengths. 

The telescope is so precise, Nelson said, that scientists will be able to see the chemical composition of planets deep in space and determine if they are habitable or not.  

“We are going to be able to answer questions that we don’t even know what the questions are yet,” he said. 

Harris said the telescope would “enhance what we know about the origins of our universe, our solar system and possibly life itself.” 

The telescope was launched December 25 from French Guiana in South America and traveled 1.6 million kilometers from Earth before beginning to capture images. 

Biden said the telescope took a “journey 1 million miles into the cosmos … along the way unfolding itself, deploying a mirror 21 feet wide, a sunshield the size of a tennis court, and 250,000 tiny shutters, each one smaller than a grain of sand.” 

A larger unveiling of photos from the telescope will be released by NASA Tuesday at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.  

Nelson said future images would peer even farther back into the origin of the cosmos, looking about 13.5 billion years into the past. 

Scientists will use the Webb telescope to study stars, galaxies and planets as far as the edges of the cosmos, as well as look at objects closer to us with a sharper view, including our own solar system. 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 

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In Spain, Culture Battle Rages over Store Signs

The red on beige sign outside La Torre shop advertises the kind of underwear earlier generations might have worn, mostly knickerbockers and girdles.

The shop — known as The Tower in English — has been a standard in Barcelona for more than 120 years, preserving a glimpse into the city’s past.

La Torre has withstood the relentless march of Starbucks, McDonald’s, and other international corporate chains which, critics say, have eaten up the souls of downtowns. Other period shops, cinemas or libraries have not been so fortunate and have been forced to close.

Campaigners in Spain are determined to safeguard a form of heritage which they say is increasingly under threat: the shop signs which advertise small businesses often run by families.

Described as the “Indiana Jones of the Lost Shop Signs” by the Spanish newspaper ABC, they advocate for everything from the Art Deco cinema signs, old-fashioned flashing Buy Easy signs and the ornate golden shoe shop signs.

The commercial signs outside shops that have long shaped the identity of cities, towns and villages are a part of our past, said volunteers from the Iberian Network in Defense of Graphic Heritage, a collective of about 50 projects across Spain.

Heritage

To most people, heritage sums up the idea of castles, priceless paintings, and royal jewels. But these campaigners contend that the urban landscape which most people inhabit every day is as much a part of our treasured past too.

Heritage legislation in Spain protects everything from cathedrals to castles to bullfighting but not shop signs – so far. So, campaigners must first convince local councils to protect these symbols of everyday life.

“We are against nostalgia because it says that the past is better than the present or the future. We want to preserve these shop signs because they represent something from the past that we can use to learn about for the future,” Alberto Nanclares, of the Iberian Network, told VOA in an interview.

Nanclares said the organization began in 2014 after the then government abolished a law which guaranteed cheap rents to companies, driving many small shops out of business. He said they plan to open a museum to show off the signs they have saved.

“It should be very popular because it will attract designers, architects, elderly people who want to see the past and people who want to take their grandparents to see the place where they grew up,” he added.

Laura Asensio is a graphic designer who has been working for an organization called Valladolid with Character. They hope to stop Valladolid, a northern Spanish, from becoming a bland version of many other cities across Europe.

Volunteers are mapping out the old shop signs which have been saved or at risk from being lost.

Asensio said she hopes to convince the city council to change local laws to preserve this part of the city’s heritage. A book will be published with photographs in December detailing this part of the city life for future generations.

“The reason we started this organization is to stop shop signs from being lost to globalization. All over Europe, city centers are being dominated by McDonalds, Zara, or Burger King,” she told VOA.

Laura Aseguradade, an interior designer, and member of the Iberian Network, said younger people may not appreciate the value of the architectural heritage of their own cities.

“But if you don’t value traditions and distinctiveness of your cities then Madrid ends up looking much like Barcelona or London with the same chains springing up due to globalization,” she told VOA from her home in Madrid.

“We are not against globalization, but the architectural heritage brings value to your city because it makes it different to other places which is important for tourism and the quality of life.”

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Frustrated by Gun Deaths, Entrepreneurs Turn to Technology

As the U.S. reels from a surge of recent mass shootings, some technologists are focusing on how to prevent casualties. VOA’s Julie Taboh spoke with a couple of entrepreneurs who have developed gun-detecting technologies.

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Looming Musk-Twitter Legal Battle Hammers Company Shares

Shares of Twitter slid more than 6% in the first day of trading after billionaire Elon Musk said that he was abandoning his $44 billion bid for the company and the social media platform vowed to challenge Musk in court to uphold the agreement. 

Twitter is now preparing to sue Musk in Delaware where the company is incorporated. While the outcome is uncertain, both sides are preparing for long court battle. 

Musk alleged Friday that Twitter has failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts it has. However, Twitter said last month that it was making available to Musk a ” fire hose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets when he raised the issue again after announcing that he would buy the social media platform. 

Twitter has said for years in regulatory filings that it believes about 5% of the accounts on the platform are fake but on Monday Musk continued to taunt the company, using Twitter, over what he has described as a lack of data. In addition, Musk is also alleging that Twitter broke the agreement when it fired two top managers and laid off a third of its talent-acquisition team. 

Musk agreed to a $1 billion breakup fee as part of the buyout agreement, though it appears Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and the company are settling in for a legal fight to force the sale. 

“For Twitter this fiasco is a nightmare scenario and will result in an Everest-like uphill climb for Parag & Co. to navigate the myriad challenges ahead around employee turnover/morale, advertising headwinds, investor credibility around the fake account/bot issues, and host of other issues abound,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who follows the company, wrote Monday. 

The sell-off in Twitter shares pushed prices close to $34 each, far from the $54.20 that Musk agreed to pay for the company. That suggests, strongly, that Wall Street has serious doubts that the deal will go forward. 

While the outcome of any protracted legal battle cannot be known, experts in the legal and business sectors believe Twitter likely has a stronger case. 

Morningstar analyst Ali Mogharabi noted that, regarding the spam user count Musk is so focused on, Twitter has “for years explicitly stated in regulatory filings that the ‘below 5%’ spam count may not be accurate given that it is based on a sample and requires a lot of judgment.” 

Given current market conditions, Mogharabi said, Twitter may also have a solid argument that the layoffs and firings of the past weeks represent “an ordinary course of business.” 

“Many technology firms have begun to control costs by reducing headcount and/or delaying adding employees,” he said. “The resignations of Twitter employees cannot with certainty be attributed to any change in how Twitter has operated since Musk’s offer was accepted by the board and shareholders. 

Tech industry analysts say Musk’s interlude leaves behind a more vulnerable company with demoralized employees. 

“With Musk officially walking away from the deal, we think business prospects and stock valuation are in a precarious situation,” wrote CFRA Analyst Angelo Zino. “(Twitter) will now need to go at it as a standalone company and contend with an uncertain advertising market, a damaged employee base, and concerns about the status of fake accounts/strategic direction.” 

The uncertainty surrounding Twitter could also lead advertisers to curtail their spending on the platform, Mogharabi said. 

But “the drama” surrounding the deal, he added, “will also likely attract new users to the platform and increase engagement, especially given the upcoming midterm elections, which could convince advertisers to cut a bit less. In the long run, we think Twitter will remain one of the top five social media platforms for advertisers.” 

 

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Colorado’s First Sober Bar Offers Alternatives to Alcohol

Public health officials say one of the effects of the coronavirus lockdowns was that more people drank alcohol more heavily, with the World Health Organization warning of exacerbated health concerns and an increase in risky behaviors. As more bars reopen, Svitlana Prystynska takes us to one with a novel approach to drinking.

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New Coronavirus Mutant Raises Concerns in India and Beyond 

The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that’s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States.

Scientists say the variant — called BA.2.75 — may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It’s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5.

“It’s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,” said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “But it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase.” Whether it will outcompete BA.5, he said, is yet to be determined.

Still, the fact that it has already been detected in many parts of the world even with lower levels of viral surveillance “is an early indication it is spreading,” said Shishi Luo, head of infectious diseases for Helix, a company that supplies viral sequencing information to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The latest mutant has been spotted in several distant states in India and appears to be spreading faster than other variants there, said Lipi Thukral, a scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi. It’s also been detected in about 10 other countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Two cases were recently identified on the West Coast of the U.S., and Helix identified a third U.S. case last week.

Fueling experts’ concerns are a large number of mutations separating this new variant from omicron predecessors. Some of those mutations are in areas that relate to the spike protein and could allow the virus to bind onto cells more efficiently, Binnicker said.

Another concern is that the genetic tweaks may make it easier for the virus to skirt past antibodies — protective proteins made by the body in response to a vaccine or infection from an earlier variant.

But experts say vaccines and boosters are still the best defense against severe COVID-19. In the fall it’s likely the U.S. will see updated formulations of the vaccine being developed that target more recent omicron strains.

“Some may say, ‘Well, vaccination and boosting hasn’t prevented people from getting infected.’ And, yes, that is true,” he said. “But what we have seen is that the rates of people ending up in the hospital and dying have significantly decreased. As more people have been vaccinated, boosted or naturally infected, we are starting to see the background levels of immunity worldwide creep up.”

It may take several weeks to get a sense of whether the latest omicron mutant may affect the trajectory of the pandemic. Meanwhile Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at India’s Christian Medical College in Vellore, said the growing concern over the variant underlines the need for more sustained efforts to track and trace viruses that combine genetic efforts with real world information about who is getting sick and how badly. “It is important that surveillance isn’t a start-stop strategy,” she said.

Luo said BA.2.75 is another reminder that the coronavirus is continually evolving — and spreading.

“We would like to return to pre-pandemic life, but we still need to be careful,” she said. “We need to accept that we’re now living with a higher level of risk than we used to.”

 

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Biden to Unveil First Full-Color Images from Webb Telescope

The world will get its first view of a full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope at a White House event Monday. 

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to release the image, with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson giving remarks. 

NASA plans to release more full-color images Tuesday that it says will show the telescope “at its full power as it begins its mission to unfold the infrared universe.” 

The $10 billion telescope with a primary mirror measuring 6.5 meters in diameter launched in December 2021. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.

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Report: Uber Lobbied, Used ‘Stealth’ Tech to Block Scrutiny

As Uber aggressively pushed into markets around the world, the ride-sharing service lobbied political leaders to relax labor and taxi laws, used a “kill switch” to thwart regulators and law enforcement, channeled money through Bermuda and other tax havens and considered portraying violence against its drivers as a way to gain public sympathy, according to a report released Sunday.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit network of investigative reporters, scoured internal Uber texts, emails, invoices and other documents to deliver what it called “an unprecedented look into the ways Uber defied taxi laws and upended workers’ rights.”

The documents were first leaked to the British newspaper The Guardian, which shared them with the consortium.

In a written statement. Uber spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker acknowledged “mistakes” in the past and said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, hired in 2017, had been “tasked with transforming every aspect of how Uber operates … When we say Uber is a different company today, we mean it literally: 90% of current Uber employees joined after Dara became CEO.”

Founded in 2009, Uber sought to skirt taxi regulations and offer inexpensive transportation via a ride-sharing app. The consortium’s Uber Files revealed the extraordinary lengths that the company undertook to establish itself in nearly 30 countries.

The company’s lobbyists — including former aides to President Barack Obama — pressed government officials to drop their investigations, rewrite labor and taxi laws and relax background checks on drivers, the papers show.

The investigation found that Uber used “stealth technology” to fend off government investigations. The company, for example, used a “kill switch” that cut access to Uber servers and blocked authorities from grabbing evidence during raids in at least six countries. During a police raid in Amsterdam, the Uber Files reported, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick personally issued an order: “Please hit the kill switch ASAP … Access must be shut down in AMS (Amsterdam).”

The consortium also reported that Kalanick saw the threat of violence against Uber drivers in France by aggrieved taxi drivers as a way to gain public support. “Violence guarantee(s) success,” Kalanick texted colleagues.

In a response to the consortium, Kalanick representative Devon Spurgeon said the former CEO “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety.”

The Uber Files say the company cut its tax bill by millions of dollars by sending profits through Bermuda and other tax havens, then “sought to deflect attention from its tax liabilities by helping authorities collect taxes from its drivers.”

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Yellowstone Floods Reveal Forecasting Flaws in Warming World

The Yellowstone National Park area’s weather forecast the morning of June 12 seemed fairly tame: warmer temperatures and rain showers would accelerate mountain snow melt and could produce “minor flooding.” A National Weather Service bulletin recommended moving livestock from low-lying areas but made no mention of danger to people. 

By nightfall, after several inches of rain fell on a deep spring snowpack, there were record-shattering floods. 

Torrents of water poured off the mountains. Swollen rivers carrying boulders and trees smashed through Montana towns over the next several days. The flooding swept away houses, wiped out bridges and forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 tourists, park employees and residents near the park. 

As a cleanup expected to last months grinds on, climate experts and meteorologists say the gap between the destruction and what was forecast underscores a troublesome aspect of climate change: Models used to predict storm impacts do not always keep up with increasingly devastating rainstorms, hurricanes, heat waves and other events. 

“Those rivers had never reached those levels. We literally were flying blind not even knowing what the impacts would be,” said Arin Peters, a senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service. 

Hydrologic models used to predict flooding are based on long-term, historical records. But they do not reflect changes to the climate that emerged over the past decade, said meteorologist and Weather Underground founder Jeff Masters. 

“Those models are going to be inadequate to deal with a new climate,” Masters said. 

Another extreme weather event where the models came up short was Hurricane Ida, which slammed Louisiana last summer and then stalled over the Eastern Seaboard — deluging parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York with unprecedented rainfall that caused massive flooding. 

The weather service had warned of a “serious situation” that could turn “catastrophic,” but the predicted of 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) of rain for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania was far short of the 9 to 10 inches (23 to 25 centimeters) that fell. 

The deadly June 2021 heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest offered another example. Warmer weather had been expected, but not temperatures of up to 116 degrees (47C degrees) that toppled previous records and killed an estimated 600 or more people in Oregon, Washington state and western Canada. 

The surprise Yellowstone floods prompted a nighttime scramble to close off roads and bridges getting swept away by the water, plus rushed evacuations that missed some people. No one died, somewhat miraculously, as more than 400 homes were damaged or destroyed. 

As rockslides caused by the rainfall started happening in Yellowstone, park rangers closed a heavily used road between the town of Gardiner and the park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming. The road was later washed out in numerous places. 

The rain and snowmelt was “too much too fast and you just try to stay out of the way,” Yellowstone Deputy Chief Ranger Tim Townsend said. 

If the road hadn’t been closed, “we probably would have had fatalities, unquestionably” park Superintendent Cam Sholly said. 

“The road looks totally fine and then it’s like an 80-foot drop right into the river,” Sholly said. 

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was scheduled to visit Yellowstone on Friday to survey the damage and ongoing repairs. 

Within a matter of hours on June 12, Rock Creek, which runs through the city of Red Lodge and normally is placid and sometimes just ankle deep, became a raging river. When the weather service issued a flood warning for the creek, the water already had surged over its banks and begun to knock down bridges. 

By the time the warning was sent, “we already knew it was too late,” said Scott Williams, a commissioner for Carbon County, Montana, which borders Yellowstone. 

Red Lodge resident Pam Smith was alerted to the floods by something knocking around in her basement before dawn. It was her clothes dryer, floating in water pouring through the windows. 

Smith says her partner keeps track of the weather on his computer and they were aware rain was coming and that the creek was running high. But they were not aware of flooding threat when they went to bed the night before, she said. 

In a scramble to save belongings including her violins, the music teacher slipped on the wet kitchen floor and fell, shattering a bone in her arm. Smith recalls biting back tears and trudging through floodwaters with her partner and 15-year-old granddaughter to reach their pickup truck and drive to safety. 

“I went blank,” Smith said. “I was angry and like, ‘Why didn’t anybody warn us? Why was there no knock on the door? Why didn’t the police come around and say there’s flooding, you need to get out?'” 

Local authorities say sheriff’s deputies and others knocked on doors in Red Lodge and a second community that flooded. But they acknowledged not everyone was reached as numerous rivers and streams overflowed, swamping areas never known previously to flood. 

While no single weather event can be conclusively tied to climate change, scientists said the Yellowstone flooding was consistent with changes already documented around the park as temperatures warm. 

Those changes include less snowfall in mid-winter and more spring precipitation — setting the stage for flash floods when rains fall on the snow, said Montana State University climate scientist Cathy Whitlock. 

Warming trends mean spring floods will increase in frequency — even as the region suffers from long-term drought that keeps much of the rest of the year dry, she said. 

Masters and other experts noted that computer modeling of storms has become more sophisticated and is generally more accurate than ever. But extreme weather by its nature is hard to predict, and as such events happen more frequently there will be many more chances for forecasters to get it wrong. 

The rate of the most extreme rainstorms in some areas has increased up to a factor of five, Masters said. So an event with a 1% chance of happening in any given year — commonly referred to as a “one in 100-year” event — would have an approximately 5% chance of happening, he said. 

“We are literally re-writing our weather history book,” said University of Oklahoma Meteorology Professor Jason Furtado. 

That has widespread implications for local authorities and emergency officials who rely on weather bulletins to guide their disaster response approaches. If they’re not warned, they can’t act. 

But the National Weather Service also strives to avoid undue alarm and maintain public trust. So if the service’s models show only a slim chance of disaster, that information can get left out of the forecast. 

Weather service officials said the agency’s actions with the Yellowstone flooding will be analyzed to determine if changes are needed. They said early warnings that river levels were rising did help officials prepare and prevent loss of life, even if their advisories failed to predict the severity. 

Computer-based forecasting models are regularly updated to account for new meteorological trends due to climate change, Peters said. Even with those refinements, events like the Yellowstone flooding still are considered low-probability and so often won’t make it into forecasts based on what the models say is most likely to occur. 

“It’s really difficult to balance that feeling that you’ve got that this could get really bad, but the likelihood of it getting really bad is so small,” Peters said. He added that the dramatic swing from drought to flood was hard even for meteorologists to reconcile and called it “weather whiplash.” 

To better communicate the potential for extreme weather, some experts say the weather service needs to change its forecasts to inform the public about low probability hazardous events. That could be accomplished through more detailed daily forecasts or some kind of color-coded system for alerts. 

“We’ve been slow to provide that information,” North Carolina State University atmospheric scientist Gary Lackmann said. “You put it on people’s radars and they could think about that and it could save lives.” 

 

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NASA to Showcase Webb Space Telescope’s First Full-Color Images

Drawing back the curtain to a photo gallery unlike any other, NASA will soon present the first full-color images from its James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary apparatus designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the universe.

The highly anticipated July 12 unveiling of pictures and spectroscopic data from the newly operational observatory follows a six-month process of remotely unfurling various components, aligning mirrors and calibrating instruments.

With Webb now finely tuned and fully focused, astronomers will embark on a competitively selected list of science projects exploring the evolution of galaxies, the life cycles of stars, the atmospheres of distant exoplanets and the moons of our outer solar system.

The first batch of photos, which have taken weeks to process from raw telescope data, are expected to offer a compelling glimpse at what Webb will capture on the science missions that lie ahead.

NASA on Friday posted a list of the five celestial subjects chosen for its showcase debut of Webb, built for the U.S. space agency by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp.

Among them are two nebulae – enormous clouds of gas and dust blasted into space by stellar explosions that form nurseries for new stars – and two sets of galaxy clusters.

One of those, according to NASA, features objects in the foreground so massive that they act as “gravitational lenses,” a visual distortion of space that greatly magnifies the light coming from behind them to expose even fainter objects farther away and further back in time. How far back and what showed up on camera remains to be seen.

NASA will also publish Webb’s first spectrographic analysis of an exoplanet, revealing the molecular signatures from patterns of filtered light passing through its atmosphere. The exoplanet in this case, roughly half the mass of Jupiter, is more than 1,100 light years away. A light year is the distance light travels in a year – 9.5 trillion kilometers.

‘Moved me as a scientist … as a human being’

All five of the Webb’s introductory targets were previously known to scientists. One of them, the galaxy group 290 million light-years from Earth known as Stephan’s Quintet, was first discovered in 1877.

But NASA officials promise Webb’s imagery captures its subjects in an entirely new light, literally.

“What I have seen moved me as a scientist, as an engineer and as a human being,” NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy, who has reviewed the images, told reporters during a June 29 news briefing.

Klaus Pontoppidan, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, where mission control engineers operate the telescope, has promised the first pictures would “deliver a long-awaited ‘wow’ for astronomers and the public.”

The $9 billion infrared telescope, the largest and most complex astronomical observatory ever sent to space, was launched on Christmas Day from French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.

A month later, the 6,350-kilogram instrument reached its gravitational parking spot in solar orbit, circling the sun in tandem with Earth more than 1.6 million kilometers from home.

Webb, which views its subjects chiefly in the infrared spectrum, is about 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits Earth from 547 kilometers away and operates mainly at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

The larger light-collecting surface of Webb’s primary mirror – an array of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal – enables it to observe objects at greater distances, thus further back in time, than Hubble or any other telescope.

Its infrared sensitivity allows it to detect light sources that would otherwise be hidden in the visible spectrum by dust and gas.

Taken together, these features are expected to transform astronomy, providing the first glimpse of infant galaxies dating to just 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set the expansion of the known universe in motion an estimated 13.8 billion years ago.

Webb’s instruments also make it ideal to search for signs of potentially life-supporting atmospheres around scores of newly documented planets orbiting distant stars and to observe worlds much closer to home, such as Mars and Saturn’s icy moon Titan.

Besides a host of studies already lined up for Webb, the telescope’s most revolutionary findings may prove to be those that have yet to be anticipated.

Such was the case in Hubble’s surprising discovery, through observations of distant supernovas, that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing down, opening a new field of astrophysics devoted to a mysterious phenomenon scientists call dark energy.

The Webb telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies.

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Iran’s Outdoor Painters Seek to Capture, Preserve Old Tehran

Tehran residents accustomed to seething at slow-moving traffic, sweltering in summer heat and suffocating in smog may be surprised to find a growing number of outdoor painters reveling in the Iranian capital’s historic charm.

The overcrowded metropolis may be dusty and in need of beautification, but the honeycomb of alleyways that make up old Tehran is drawing throngs of artists out of their cramped studios and into the open streets — a trend that accelerated during the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic.

These devotees aim not only to capture Tehran’s vanishing old neighborhoods, but also help preserve them. Many areas have been bulldozed. Cranes punctuate the skyline as storied 19th-century quarters make room for modern high-rises.

“The paintings link us to past designs and feelings that are disappearing,” said Morteza Rahimi, a 32-year-old carpenter, art aficionado and resident of downtown Tehran. “They help us remember. … See how many old beautiful buildings have turned to rubble.”

Beside him, painter Hassan Naderali used loose brushstrokes and bright colors to capture the play of light and flicker of movement in an impressionist style. With a passion for painting en plein air, French for “in the open air,” Naderali seeks to depict the beauty in his dilapidated surroundings.

Population growth transforms city

Tehran has transformed into a teeming city of over 10 million people from just 4.5 million at the time of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The young theocracy’s population surge coincided with mass migration to Tehran after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion in the 1980s. As job and education opportunities lured even more people to the capital, the government responded to an emerging housing crisis with massive real estate developments.

Some of the city’s 19th-century gems, built by the Qajar kings not long after they moved Iran’s capital to Tehran in 1796, have been lost to new apartment towers in the past few decades.

Through social media, however, artists and historians have sought to counter the cultural amnesia amid escalating demolitions.

“Social media has caused awareness among people about the risks that jeopardize historic, old buildings,” said art expert Mostafa Mirzaeian, referring to the decadent palaces of the Qajars, best known for their elaborate mirrored mosaics. “People are learning about the value of older places and paying attention to their cultural and artistic dimensions.”

‘Our roots, our heritage’

For open-air painting fan Somayyeh Abedini, a government employee and resident of Tehran’s historic Oudlajan neighborhood, the conservationist thrust is personal. The arched horizons, leafy alleys and walled villas of Oudlajan serve as her muse, she said, evoking the spirit of her father who spent his entire life in the neighborhood.

“The old places in the neighborhood are our roots, our heritage,” Abedini said. “It’s a pity many of them were destroyed.”

The practice of outdoor painting in Tehran thrived during the pandemic, artists say, as many found solace and inspiration under the open sky when galleries and museums shuttered for months, and construction projects sputtered to a halt. The health crisis exacted a devastating toll on Iran, infecting over 7.2 million and killing over 141,000 people — the worst death toll in the Middle East.

As the chaos eased on Tehran’s streets, 58-year-old Naderali set up his studio outside. Venturing out with brushes, pencils, paint, a portable easel and papers, he painted away where he felt most alive — under the sun, feeling the breeze.

“I went out every day. Outdoor places were not so crowded, and I found more access to the places I liked to paint,” he said of his pandemic experience.

Naderali sells dozens of his paintings, many depicting old Persian palaces and traditional Tehran homes, to domestic and foreign clients.

A yearning for bygone eras drives high demand among Iranian buyers abroad, he said — excitement about a time when Achaemenids carved bas-reliefs into the walls of Persepolis in 500 B.C. and Isfahan thrived as a blue-tiled jewel of Islamic culture in the 17th century.

That nostalgia has sharpened as Iran, devastated by sanctions and cut off from the world economy, seethes with public anger over rising prices and declining living standards.

Talks to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump abandoned four years ago, have made no progress in the past year. The country’s poverty has deepened. But in many ways, Iran’s contemporary art scene has flowered despite the challenges.

For years after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution ousted the Western-backed monarchy and brought Shiite clerics to power, hard-liners outlawed modern art and even sought to ban painting. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s extensive collection, worth billions of dollars, sat in its vaults.

But the clerical establishment came to appreciate the art form during the grisly Iran-Iraq war that began in 1980. Paintings that paid tribute to the war-dead and lionized the leaders of the Islamic Revolution sprung up on the city’s drab walls.

Western art exhibited again

Many of the contemporary art museum’s works — including Monets, Picassos and Jackson Pollocks bought during Iran’s oil boom under the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — have been brought out in recent decades as cultural restrictions eased.

Last summer, just days before the election of President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric hostile to the cultural influence of the West, the museum reopened with a retrospective of American pop artist Andy Warhol.

Today, successful Iranian artists — including stars who exhibit abroad — have helped transform Tehran’s once-staid art market into a dynamic scene. Auction houses across the city fetch high prices for homegrown painters. An auction last Friday recorded sales of more than $2.2 million for 120 works.

Iranian state TV regularly broadcasts paint-along lessons, including the late American painter Bob Ross’ beloved PBS show “The Joy of Painting,” inspiring amateurs to create their own masterpieces.

Iran’s art schools are flourishing, with a majority of female students. Although exhibits require government licenses, swanky Tehran galleries showing new work by Iranian painters bustle with young crowds.

“Once a passerby told me, ‘Art gives birth in poverty and dies in wealth,'” remarked Naderali.

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‘Sopranos’ Actor Tony Sirico, ‘Paulie Walnuts,’ Dies at 79

Tony Sirico, who played the impeccably groomed mobster Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos and brought his tough-guy swagger to films including Goodfellas, died Friday. He was 79.

Sirico died at an assisted living facility in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said his manager, Bob McGowen. There was no immediate information on the cause of death.

A statement from Sirico’s family confirmed the death of Gennaro Anthony “Tony” Sirico “with great sadness, but with incredible pride, love and a whole lot of fond memories.”

McGowan, who represented Sirico for more than two decades, recalled him as “loyal and giving,” with a strong philanthropic streak. That included helping ex-soldiers’ causes, which hit home for the Army veteran, his manager said.

Steven Van Zandt, who played opposite Sirico as fellow mobster Silvio Dante on The Sopranos, saluted him on Twitter as “legendary.”

“A larger-than-life character on and off screen. Gonna miss you a lot my friend,” the actor and musician said.

Michael Imperioli, who portrayed Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos, called Sirico his “dear friend, colleague and partner in crime.”

“Tony was like no one else: he was as tough, as loyal and as big hearted as anyone I’ve ever known,” Imperioli said on Instagram.

Sirico was unconcerned about being cast in a string of bad guy roles, McGowan said, most prominently that of Peter Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri in the 1999-2007 run of the acclaimed HBO drama starring James Gandolfini as mob boss Tony Soprano. (Gandolfini died in 2013 at age 51).

“He didn’t mind playing a mob guy, but he wouldn’t play an informant,” or as Sirico put it, a “snitch,” McGowan said.

Sirico, born July 29, 1942, in New York City, grew up in the Flatbush and Bensonhurst neighborhoods where he said “every guy was trying to prove himself. You either had to have a tattoo or a bullet hole.”

“I had both,” he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview, calling himself “unstable” during that period of his life. He was arrested repeatedly for criminal offenses, he said, and was in prison twice. In his last stint behind bars, in the 1970s, he saw a performance by a group of ex-convicts and caught the acting bug.

“I watched ’em and I thought, ‘I can do that.’ I knew I wasn’t bad looking. And I knew I had the (guts) to stand up and (bull) people,” he told the Times. “You get a lot of practice in prison. I used to stand up in front of these cold-blooded murderers and kidnappers — and make ’em laugh.”

Sirico also was cast outside the gangster mold, playing police officers in the films Dead Presidents and Deconstructing Harry. Among his other credits were Woody Allen films including Bullets over Broadway and Mighty Aphrodite, and appearances on TV series including Miami Vice and voice roles on the Family Guy and American Dad!

Sirico is survived by daughter Joanne Sirico Bello; son Richard Sirico; his brother, Robert Sirico, a priest; and other relatives. 

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Elena Rybakina Stuns Herself, Ons Jabeur to Win Wimbledon

Elena Rybakina dropped the first set but roared back to defeat No. 3 seed Ons Jabeur and win the women’s singles title at Wimbledon on Saturday.  

Rybakina, the No. 17 seed who was born in Moscow but has represented Kazakhstan since 2018, triumphed 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 over the Tunisian at the All England Club in London.

Saturday’s clash marked the first Wimbledon title match between two first-time Grand Slam finalists in the Open Era.

Jabeur, who entered as the heavy favorite, jumped out to a 2-1 lead when she broke Rybakina’s serve early in the first set. With Rybakina serving to stay in the set at 3-5, Jabeur broke once again.

But the second set was a different story.  

After winning points on just 53 percent of her first serves in the first set, Rybakina changed her strategy, serving primarily to Jabeur’s backhand. It paid off as she won 73 percent of the first points on her serve and hit 13 winners to seven unforced errors.

And as frustration set in for Jabeur in the second set, so did the miscues. Her percentage of points won on first serve dropped from 80 percent in the first set to 59 percent, and her serve was broken twice by Rybakina, who saved all four of her break points. Jabeur had seven winners against nine unforced errors.

Jabeur dropped serve in the first game of the third set but had a chance to turn the momentum. With the 23-year-old Rybakina serving up 3-2, Jabeur quickly put her down 0-40 and had a triple break point to tie the match.  

But Rybakina fought back, winning five straight points to take a commanding 4-2 lead and then the title.

In her on-court interview, Rybakina said her goal was just to last until the second week of Wimbledon. Her win shocked even her.

“I’m gonna be honest. In [the] second week of Grand Slam at Wimbledon to be a winner, I mean it’s just amazing,” she said.

Asked later about her low-key reaction to the victory, Rybakina said that’s just her personality.

“I’m always very calm. I don’t know what should happen,” she said. “When I was giving [my] speech in the end I was thinking, ‘I’m going to cry right now,’ but somehow, I hold it. Maybe later when I’m going to be alone in the room, I’m going to cry nonstop. I don’t know.

“Maybe because I believe that I can do it deep inside. But [the] same time it’s, like, too many emotions. I was just trying to keep myself calm. Maybe one day you will see [a] huge reaction from me, but unfortunately not today.” Jabeur, 27, was the first Arab woman and the first woman from Africa to play for a Grand Slam title.

“I love this tournament so much and I feel really sad, but I mean it’s tennis,” she said after receiving her runner-up trophy from Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge. “There is only one winner. … I’m trying to inspire, you know, many generations from my country. I hope they’re listening.”

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US Abortion Ruling Threatens Access to Arthritis Drug

When Melissa, a nurse in the U.S. state of Alabama, went to pick up her regular prescription medication for rheumatoid arthritis last week, she was told the drug was on hold while the pharmacist checked she wasn’t going to use it to induce an abortion.

“He said, ‘Well I have to verify if you’re on any contraceptives to prevent pregnancy.’ ”

“The hell you do,” she recalled thinking.

Melissa, who is in her early 40s and asked to be identified only by her first name for fear that speaking out might affect her livelihood, then called her doctor, who succeeded in having the pharmacy in the Southern U.S. state release the medicine.

“I picked it up a couple hours later, but I felt violated,” she told AFP. She said that she’d had a hysterectomy six years ago and that her lack of recent contraceptive history might have led the pharmacist to suspect she was pregnant.

Consequence of court ruling

Stories of people facing similar struggles have come to light in the weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade on June 24, highlighting an overlooked consequence of new state-level bans or severe restrictions on abortion.

It’s not yet clear how widespread the cases are, but national organizations including the Lupus Foundation of America and the American College of Rheumatology said they were aware of such concerns and were asking people affected to come forward.

“The Arthritis Foundation supports unencumbered access to and coverage of FDA-approved drugs for managing arthritis in alignment with scientific and clinical guidelines, as well as evidence-based medical recommendations,” the organization said.

The issue centers on methotrexate, a drug that tempers inflammation and is commonly used against autoimmune conditions including inflammatory arthritis, psoriasis and lupus.

Methotrexate stops cell division and is given in higher doses as a cancer drug.

It can also sometimes be used in medical abortions, though not as frequently as the Food and Drug Administration-approved combination of two other drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol.

Nevertheless, many states have passed laws carrying threats of legal action against health care workers and pharmacies providing methotrexate.

Another woman contacted by AFP, a 20-year-old university student from Ohio, said she has had a methotrexate prescription since 2020 to treat her lupus, which affects her kidneys and liver and causes joint pain.

A pharmacist at a national chain told her they were “no longer accepting prescriptions for methotrexate unless it was for the FDA-approved use of [treating] breast cancer, or the patient was not presumably fertile,” she said.

She tried again, without success, to fill her prescription at a family-owned pharmacy, and this week got a letter from her doctor’s office stating the practice would no longer be prescribing methotrexate because of the number of patients having difficulty accessing it.

Though the first pharmacy later changed its position, the experience left her “annoyed and angry,” she said.

‘Provider approval’ needed

A third woman, Jennifer Crow, 48, a writer and produce gardener in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, told AFP she’d received an automated call from CVS Pharmacy saying her methotrexate refill had been declined “pending provider approval.”

Crow said methotrexate had helped her enormously in managing her inflammatory arthritis, allowing her to roll out of bed and get dressed without severe pain, and walk without a cane for the first time in years.

Though her doctor was able to resolve the situation, Crow, who has also had a hysterectomy, said she was worried for others with chronic illnesses who don’t have the same access to resources that she does.

In statements to AFP, national pharmacy chains CVS and Walmart confirmed they were working to adhere to new state regulations in light of the high court’s decision to revoke the constitutional right to an abortion.

“We encourage providers to include their diagnosis on the prescriptions they write to help ensure patients have quick and easy access to medications,” CVS added.

Alisa Vidulich, policy director of the Arthritis Foundation, told AFP she was hopeful the situation might be remedied quickly as medical professionals and pharmacies developed new guidelines.

“But that may not actually be the case in all states, and it may in fact turn into a longer-term issue,” she said.

Melissa, the nurse, said she was incensed at the double standard that allowed one of her best friends, who is a man, to get his methotrexate prescription filled right away with no questions asked.

“We’re headed in the wrong direction and it’s terrifying. I have two daughters. I don’t want to see this,” she said.

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Texas Judge Blocks Investigations Of 2 Trans Youth Families

A Texas judge issued an order Friday to continue blocking the state from investigating two families of transgender youth who have received gender affirming medical care and said she was considering whether to prevent additional investigations.

The ruling extends in part a temporary order issued last month blocking investigations against three families who sued and preventing any similar investigations against members of the LGBTQ advocacy group PFLAG Inc. The group has more than 600 members in Texas.

In her order Friday, Judge Amy Clark Meachum said she was still weighing whether to issue a similar order prohibiting similar investigations against the third family and PFLAG members. An order preventing those investigations had been set to expire Friday. An attorney last month said the third family of a transgender minor had learned after the lawsuit’s filing that the state had dropped its investigation into them.

The two families to whom Friday’s order applies would “suffer probable, imminent, and irreparable injury in the interim” without the order, Meachum wrote.

The ruling was the latest against the state’s efforts to label gender affirming care as child abuse.

The Texas Supreme Court in May allowed the state to investigate parents of transgender youth for child abuse while also ruling in favor of one family that was among the first contacted by child welfare officials following order by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

The latest challenge was brought by Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the families of three teenage boys — two 16-year-olds and a 14-year-old — and PFLAG.

“The Court recognized yet again that being subjected to an unlawful and unwarranted investigation causes irreparable harm for these families who are doing nothing more than caring for and affirming their children and seeking the best course of care for them in consultation with their medical providers,” the groups said in a statement.

The families had talked in court filings about the anxiety that the investigations created for them and their children. The mother of one of the teens said her son attempted suicide and was hospitalized the day Abbott issued his directive. The outpatient psychiatric facility where the teen was referred reported the family for child abuse after learning he had been prescribed hormone therapy, she said in a court filing.

A judge in March put Abbott’s order on hold after a lawsuit was brought on behalf of a 16-year-old girl whose family said it was under investigation. The Texas Supreme Court in May ruled that the lower court overstepped its authority by blocking all investigations going forward.

The lawsuit that prompted that ruling marked the first report of parents being investigated following Abbott’s directive and an earlier nonbinding legal opinion by Paxton labeling certain gender-confirming treatments as “child abuse.” The Texas Department of Family and Protective Service has said it opened nine investigations following the directive and opinion.

Abbott’s directive and the attorney general’s opinion go against the nation’s largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions filed in statehouses nationwide.

Arkansas last year became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender-confirming treatments for minors, and Tennessee approved a similar measure. Judges have blocked laws in Arkansas and Alabama, and both of those states are appealing.

Meachum set a Dec. 5 trial on whether to permanently block Texas’ investigations into the families.

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Millions of Canadians Lose Mobile, Internet Services

Millions of Canadians found out Friday what it is like to live without access to the internet and mobile phone service.

Rogers Communications, the country’s largest mobile and internet provider, experienced a major outage, beginning Friday morning and lasting most of the day.

The outage affected retailers, credit card and debit transactions, court proceedings, government agencies, calls to emergency services and much more.

“Today we have let you down,” Rogers posted on Twitter, without offering an explanation. “We are working to make this right as quickly as we can. We will continue to keep you updated, including when services will be back online.”

Late Friday, the Toronto-based telecommunications firm said it had begun restoring services.

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Canada Plans Health Warnings on Every Cigarette

The Canadian government is set to put health warnings on each cigarette and ban certain types of plastics, parts of a new round of regulations from the Trudeau government.

“Poison in every puff.” By 2023, this is the warning the Canadian government is planning on having on each cigarette sold in the country. This will make Canada the first in the world to do so, much as it did with graphic health warnings on packages of cigarettes in 2001.

Changes are also proposed for the health warnings on packages; they would be required to cover 75 percent of the back and front of each package and include warnings about colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, cervical cancer and diabetes. These are among the 16 diseases — besides lung cancer — believed caused by cigarettes.

Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, said putting a warning on each cigarette will make sure the health message gets delivered every single time one is lit.

“Sometimes you experiment by smoking, by ‘borrowing’ a cigarette from a friend or a brother or sister without directly touching the package. And so … this type of reach to kids experimenting is a very positive thing,” he said. “Sometimes smokers who go out for a smoke break will just take a cigarette, not the full package, when they go outside.”

The Canadian government is also banning the importing or manufacturing of plastic bags and containers, like those used for restaurant takeout meals, by the end of 2022. It will ban sales of the bags and containers by the end of 2023 and exports of them by year’s end in 2025.  

The government is also working toward abolishing many single-use plastics, like those for straws, stir sticks for drinks, cutlery and the plastic rings used to hold together six- and 12-packs of cans and bottles.

Plastic was listed as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in 2021.

Sarah King, head of Greenpeace Canada’s oceans and plastics campaign, said the move is a good start, but there is still more work to be done.

“We still aren’t even at the starting line in terms of tackling Canada’s plastic waste and pollution problem,” she said. “So, you know, we definitely are keen to see the government take plastic reduction more seriously and start accelerating our transition to more reuse-, refill-centered systems.”

But Stewart Prest, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, said some Canadians would be upset by the new initiatives, seeing them as examples of over-regulation and the extension of a so-called “nanny state.”

“I think reactions will be divided,” he said. “I think this is the kind of issue that’s going to fit very well within the existing political dynamic polarization that we see in Canada, where any attempt by the government to regulate — to try to nudge Canadians in a particular direction — is going to be met with great, extreme skepticism in some quarters.”

The next general election is expected to occur in October 2025, which is well after the new regulations take effect.

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Ghana Records First-Ever Suspected Cases of Marburg Virus Disease

Ghana’s health authorities say they have, for the first time, confirmed two fatal cases of the Marburg virus, a relative of the Ebola virus.

In a statement on Thursday, the Ghana Health Service said the two cases of Marburg Virus Disease (MVD) were detected in the Ashanti region – about 250 kilometers from the capital, Accra.

“Blood samples were sent to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research,” the statement said, adding, “Preliminary results suggest the infection is due to the Marburg virus.”

Applying standard procedure, the samples have been sent to the Institut Pasteur in Senegal, a World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating center, for confirmation, the statement added.

The two patients from the southern Ashanti region – both deceased and unrelated – showed symptoms that included diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting, the WHO said on its website.

So far, 34 persons have since been quarantined and are being monitored for coming in contact with the two infected persons.

The health directorate in the region, according to the statement, is “currently conducting further investigations on the cases and contacts.”

It would be the second time Marburg is being detected in West Africa, if Ghana’s case is confirmed by the WHO. Guinea confirmed a single case in September 2021.

Marburg virus is transmitted by infected persons or animals from direct contact with body fluids, blood and other discharges from the affected person or animal. The incubation period for the disease is two to 21 days.

The WHO said Marburg is a disease with a case fatality rate of up to 88%.

Prospective patients may suffer from fever, bloody diarrhea, bleeding from gums, bleeding of the skin, bleeding of the eyes and bloody urine.

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