Corts

Ukrainian Mathematician Second Woman to Win Prestigious Mathematics Prize 

Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska on Tuesday became just the second woman to receive the prestigious Fields Medal, described as the Nobel Prize in mathematics.

The 37-year-old Viazovska, received the medal during a ceremony in Helsinki, Finland, along with three other mathematicians: 36-year-old Hugo Duminil-Copin of the University of Geneva, 39-year-old Korean-American June Huh of Princeton University, and 35-year-old British mathematician James Maynard of the University of Oxford.

The International Mathematical Union, which administers the Fields Medal, cited Viazovska, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, for her 2016 discovery that equal-sized spheres can be stacked symmetrically in the eighth dimension and higher. Her discovery proved a theory first proposed by German astronomer and philosopher Johannes Kepler more than 400 years ago.

The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40 years old.

The late Maryam Mirzakhani of Iran was the first woman to win the medal in 2014.

The ceremony was initially scheduled to be held in Saint Petersburg, Russia during a meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians. But it was moved to the Finnish capital after hundreds of mathematicians signed an open letter protesting the choice of Saint Petersburg after Russia invaded Viazovska’s native Ukraine in February.

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

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Canada Signs $15B Deal Over Indigenous Child Welfare Flaws

The Canadian government said Monday it had signed a $15.5 billion agreement to compensate First Nations children and families harmed by chronic underfunding of child welfare. 

The Assembly of First Nations and plaintiffs in two class action lawsuits agreed to the deal. 

Indigenous Services Canada, a government agency, said the settlement is the largest in Canadian history. 

“The parties have agreed on a plan for settling compensation claims to recognize the families and people who have suffered tremendously through discriminatory and systemically racist child-welfare practices,” said Patty Hajdu, the Indigenous services minister. 

The settlement accounts for half of an overall $31.1 billion deal that aims to reform Canada’s child welfare system, including five-year funding for the First Nations Child and Family Services program. 

The settlement must still be approved by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the Federal Court. 

Cindy Woodhouse, the Manitoba regional chief at the Assembly of First Nations, praised the deal. 

“And after three decades of advocacy and months of negotiations, I’m proud to say on behalf the AFN that we have reached another historic milestone for our children and their families,” she said in a statement. 

The First Nations Children and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations filed a complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act in 2007, arguing that Indigenous child welfare services were chronically underfunded compared with services provided to children in other communities. 

Data from the 2016 census shows that less than 8% of Canadian children under age 15 are Indigenous, but Indigenous youths make up more than half the children under 15 in foster care. 

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2016 that the federal government had discriminated against First Nations children. The government appealed the ruling, but the court upheld the decision.

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1.7 Million Locked Down in China’s Anhui Province

China placed 1.7 million people under lockdown in central Anhui province, where authorities reported nearly 300 new cases Monday in the latest of a string of outbreaks testing Beijing’s no-tolerance approach to COVID-19.

The country is the last major economy wedded to a zero-COVID strategy, responding to all cases with strict isolation orders and tough testing campaigns.

The outbreak in Anhui  — where officials first found hundreds of cases last week — comes as the Chinese economy begins to rebound from a months-long lockdown in Shanghai and disruptive COVID restrictions in the capital Beijing.

Two counties in the province — Sixian and Lingbi — announced lockdowns last week, with more than 1.7 million residents only permitted to leave their homes if they are getting tested.

Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed empty streets in Sixian over the weekend and people lining up for their sixth round of mass testing in recent days.

The province reported 287 new infections on Monday, including 258 people who had no symptoms, according to China’s National Health Commission, bringing the total cases found to just over 1,000.

Provincial governor Wang Qingxian urged local authorities to “seize every minute and earnestly implement quick screening” as well as rapid quarantine and reporting of cases, in a statement published by the Anhui government on Monday.

Neighboring Jiangsu province also reported 56 new local infections across four cities on Monday.

Photos shared widely online, verified by AFP Fact Check, showed hundreds of people in hazmat suits lining up in the city of Wuxi in Jiangsu, appearing to be waiting for buses to quarantine facilities.

Some of the shots showed babies in blue protective clothing carried by people with suitcases waiting outside a hospital in sweltering heat.

Temperatures in Wuxi have recently reached up to 36° C (97° F).

While cases remain low relative to China’s vast population, officials insist the zero-COVID policy is necessary to prevent a healthcare calamity, pointing to unevenly distributed medical resources and low vaccination rates among the elderly.

But the strategy has hammered the world’s second-largest economy and heavy-handed enforcement has triggered rare protests in the tightly controlled country.

China’s international isolation has also prompted some foreign businesses and families with the financial means to make exit plans.

National authorities announced a reduced quarantine requirement for international arrivals last month, rallying most Asian markets as investors hoped the move could provide a boost for Beijing’s COVID-slumped economy.

But health official Lei Zhenglong has insisted the new quarantine policy was “absolutely not a loosening of (COVID) prevention and control.”

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Visionary British Theater Director Peter Brook Dies Aged 97

Peter Brook, one of the world’s most innovative theater directors who perfected the art of staging powerful drama in bizarre venues, has died aged 97, his publisher said Sunday.

The British director used the world as his stage mounting productions ranging from challenging versions of Shakespeare through international opera to Hindu epic poems.

Brook put on plays in gymnasiums, deserted factories, quarries, schools and old gas works in towns around the world.

His 1970 Stratford production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” played all in white and with a huge, garlanded swing, secured his place in the annals of theater history.

According to Le Monde, Brook – who had been based in France since 1974 – died in Paris Saturday.

A statement from his publisher confirmed his death Sunday.

Although Brook was regarded with awe in theatrical circles, he was less well known among the wider public because of his refusal to bow to commercial taste. He left Britain to work in Paris in 1970.

He often shunned traditional theatrical buildings for the “empty space” which could be transformed by light, words, improvisation and the sheer power of acting and suggestion.

“I can take any empty space and call it a stage,” he wrote in his ground-breaking 1968 book The Empty Space.

His quest for inspiration took him as far afield as Africa and Iran and produced a variety of original improvised plays marked by his eye for detail and challenging approach.

Born in London March 21, 1925, his father was a company director and his mother a scientist. He left school at 16 to work in a film studio and then went to Oxford University and took a degree in English and Foreign Languages.

In 1970 he transferred from Britain to work in Paris, founding the International Center of Theater Research which brought together actors and designers of many different nationalities.

Brook continued working into his 90s.

“Every form of theater has something in common with a visit to the doctor. On the way out, one should always feel better than on the way in,” he wrote in his 2017 book Tip of the Tongue.

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Climate Change Means More Mice, Demand for Pest Control in US

At her home in Rockford, Illinois, Rita Davisson said the “one or two” mice she normally sees during the waning winter months “have turned into more like 10 or 15” in the last couple years, and scientists say the warmer weather might have something to do with it.

The 66-year-old said the influx prompted her to contract a pest control service for the first time in the more than 30 years she’s lived in her house.

“They’re sneaking around the basement, the garage, my backyard,” she said. “The one trap I have just hasn’t been enough lately.”

Researchers say warming temperatures and milder winters have increased the population of the white-footed mouse, the most abundant small rodent found throughout much of the eastern U.S. and Canada, making more work for pest control experts.

Above-average temperatures were recorded across most eastern and central U.S. states last winter. Since 1970, average winter temperatures have increased by at least one degree Fahrenheit (0.6 Celsius) in every state, with states in the Northeast and the Great Lakes region warming by more than 3 degrees F (1.7 C).

While the mouse population typically decreases during long winters, warmer winters fueled by climate change mean fewer mice die before spring, said Christian Floyd, a wildlife biologist at the University of Rhode Island.

“These small mammals spend their whole lives shivering. They lose heat so fast,” Floyd said. “When you get a milder winter, they’re going to survive better. The mice don’t have to shiver as much, and they’re also less likely to die from starvation because they have more ability to hunt for food.”

Susan Hoffman, associate professor of biology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, said the white-footed mice have migrated past a transitional forest region that has long served as a dividing line for many species, noting that they’ve expanded “surprisingly fast” in North America — about 125 miles in 30 years, 15 times farther than previously expected.

The white-footed mouse, which has historically proliferated from the Tennessee Valley through the northern Atlantic Coast, has already expanded its northern limit into Québec, Hoffman said. By 2050, the mice population is predicted to have migrated north in even greater numbers, especially as the warming climate pushes their preferred forest habitats farther north, too.

This migration also has been documented with other species, including chipmunks, flying squirrels and meadow-jumping mice, she said.

“Multiple lines of evidence indicate that warmer temperatures, and overall climate effects, are permitting (white-footed mice) to survive farther north,” Hoffman said, adding that humans are also likely responsible for unintentionally carrying some mice north in cars, boats and RVs.

Scientists say the rodents’ spread could mean more mice in and around homes. Michael Bentley, director of training and education for the National Pest Management Association, noted that the increased mice activity also requires pest management technicians to spend more time eliminating food sources and entry points in homes to control mice populations.

That’s already the case in Indiana, where Allie Dickman, a director at AAA Pest Control, said technicians saw an uptick in mice calls this winter. Calls for more mice services at rural and suburban homes, as well as in urban buildings, have continued into the spring.

“Right now, I would say 30% to 40% of our calls involve mice, which is pretty surprising given the time of year,” Dickman said. “They’re just adapting and expanding more … and there’s more of them.”

Experts also warn of even greater public health implications, given that white-footed mice are natural reservoirs for Lyme disease bacteria, which can then infect ticks that are capable of transmitting Lyme disease to people.

The bacterial illness that can cause fever, fatigue, joint pain, and skin rash, as well as more serious joint and nervous system complications, is the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S.

Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire have so far experienced the largest increases in reported cases, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has attributed, in part, to climate change.

Fifty-three-year-old Elliot Smythe, who owns a farm near Randolph, Vermont, said he’s paying more attention to the growing numbers of mice and ticks and the property after his 15-year-old son contracted Lyme disease last fall.

“Living in a more rural area like I do, I didn’t mind mice that much,” Smythe said. “But when they keep coming, and they turn into a nuisance … well now I have a problem.”

Over time, the northward shift of mice could mean that more southern regions of the U.S. will see fewer rodents, Floyd said, but areas in the Midwest, New England and Canada could see them in greater numbers.

“We’re going to need more research to understand better where and how fast (the mice) are moving,” he said. “We’ll also need to learn more about how wetter conditions from climate change could also play a role. There’s a lot more to learn.”

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London Pride Parade Marks 50 Years, Looks Back on Progress

London Saturday celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first Pride parade, marking half a century of progress in the fight for equality and tolerance but with warnings that more still needs to be done. 

Several hundred people took part in the first march July 1, 1972, just five years after homosexuality was decriminalized in the U.K. 

Fifty years on, more than 600 LGBTQ+ groups danced, sang and rode floats along a similar route to the original protest, in the first Pride since the coronavirus pandemic, watched by huge cheering crowds. 

London Mayor Sadiq Khan told reporters the event, which organizers said was the “biggest and most inclusive” in its history, was a celebration of community, unity and progress. 

But he said it was also a reminder of the need to “campaign and never be complacent” and the need for “an open, inclusive, accepting world.” 

“We saw this time last week an attack in Oslo just hours before that parade, where two people lost their lives and more than 20 were injured,” he said. 

“So, we’ve got to be conscious of the fact that there’s still a danger to this community of discrimination, bias and violence.” 

Khan’s predecessor as mayor, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said it gave him “the greatest pride to lead a country where you can love whomever you choose to love and where you can be free to be whoever you want to be.” 

The 50th anniversary was a “milestone,” he said, paying tribute to the bravery of those who did it first. 

Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay rights campaigner who took part in the 1972 march, said some from the original event have boycotted the modern-day sponsored version as “depoliticized and commercialized.” 

Campaigning 

In 1972, “Gay Pride,” as it was then known, was a demand for visibility and equality against a backdrop of lingering prejudice, discrimination and fear among many gay men and women about coming out. 

In the 1980s, Pride became a focal point for campaigning against legislation by prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government against the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools. 

It also helped to raise awareness and support for people with HIV/Aids. 

Now, with the rainbow flag of inclusion and tolerance spread ever more widely over the spectrum of human sexuality and gender, Pride in London is more celebration than protest. 

Tatchell said that despite victories such as same-sex marriage, “we are still fighting to ban LGBT+ conversion practices which seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” 

“We’re still fighting to secure trans people’s right to change their legal documents with ease by a simple statutory declaration. And of course, we are standing in solidarity with a global LGBT+ movement,” he told AFP. 

Julian Hows, now 67, was at the first march. He said, “progress is always incremental,” criticizing curbs on LGBTQ+ rights around the world. 

“We have to be vigilant. The price of liberation and to keeping people’s human rights intact is vigilance,” he added. 

 

Visibility 

Padraigin Ni Raghillig, president of Dykes on Bikes London, a motorcycle club for gay women, said the event retained part of its original campaigning spirit. 

“It’s still important, I think, to at least once a year to be out and about, and to say, ‘we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping,'” said Ni Raghillig, astride a Harley Davidson. 

Among those marching was a contingent from Ukraine, who criticized homophobia in Russia.  

This year’s Pride saw warnings for people with monkeypox symptoms to stay away, after public health officials said many cases in the U.K. were reported among gay and bisexual men. 

LGBTQ+ campaign group Stonewall said everyone had a part to play to stop the spread of monkeypox, which is passed through close contact regardless of sexual orientation.  

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Rock Star Randy Bachman Reunited With Beloved Stolen Guitar

Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman’s long search came to an end Friday when he was reunited in Tokyo with a cherished guitar 45 years after it was stolen from a Toronto hotel.

“My girlfriend is right there,” said Bachman, 78, a former member of The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, as the Gretsch guitar on which he wrote “American Woman” and other hits was handed to him by a Japanese musician who had bought it at a Tokyo store in 2014 without knowing its history.

He said all guitars are special, but the orange 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins he bought as a teenager was exceptional. He worked at multiple jobs to save money to buy the $400 guitar, his first purchase of an expensive instrument, he said.

“It made my whole life. It was my hammer and a tool to write songs, make music and make money,” Bachman told The Associated Press before the handover at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo.

When it was stolen from the Toronto hotel in 1977, “I cried for three days. It was part of me,” he said. “It was very, very upsetting.” He ended up buying about 300 guitars in unsuccessful attempts to replace it, he said.

Bachman talked frequently about the missing guitar in interviews and on radio shows, and more recently on YouTube programs on which he performed with his son, Tal.

In 2020, a Canadian fan who heard the story of the guitar launched an internet search and successfully located it in Tokyo within two weeks.

The fan, William Long, used a small spot in the guitar’s wood grain visible in old images as a “digital fingerprint” and tracked the instrument down to a vintage guitar shop site in Tokyo. A further search led him to a YouTube video showing the instrument being played by a Japanese musician, TAKESHI, in December 2019.

After receiving the news from Long, Bachman contacted TAKESHI immediately, and recognized the guitar in a video chat they had.

“I was crying,” Bachman said. “The guitar almost spoke to me over the video, like, ‘Hey, I’m coming home.’”

TAKESHI agreed to give it to Bachman in exchange for one that was very similar. So, Bachman searched and found the guitar’s “sister” — made during the same week, with a close serial number, no modifications and no repairs.

“To find my guitar again was a miracle, to find its twin sister was another miracle,” Bachman said.

TAKESHI said he decided to return the guitar because as a guitar player he could imagine how much Bachman missed it.

“I owned it and played it for only eight years and I’m extremely sad to return it now. But he has been feeling sad for 46 years, and it’s time for someone else to be sad,” TAKESHI said. “I felt sorry for this legend.”

He said he felt good after returning the guitar to its rightful owner, but it may take time for him to love his new Gretsch as much as that one.

“It’s a guitar, and it has a soul. So even if it has the same shape, I cannot say for sure if I can love a replacement the same way I loved this one,” he said. “There is no doubt Randy thought of me and searched hard (for the replacement), so I will gradually develop an affection for it, but it may take time.”

Bachman said he and TAKESHI are now like brothers who own guitars that are “twin sisters.” They are participating in a documentary about the guitar on which they plan to perform a song, “Lost and Found,” together.

They also performed several songs at Friday’s handover, including “American Woman.”

Bachman said he will lock the guitar up in his home so he will never lose it again. “I am never ever going to take it out of my house again,” he said.

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Canada Abortion Providers Prepare to Receive US Patients

Medical centers in Canada that perform abortions are preparing to receive patients from U.S. states that ban the procedure. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning a constitutional right to abortion in America is also being used as motivator to expand Canada’s abortion services and provide other forms of support to pregnant women.

Canada’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in 1988, 15 years after America’s landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion across the United States. 

 

Canada is the world’s second-largest land mass, and abortion services are not easily accessible for hundreds of kilometers in some rural areas, but most major urban areas have hospitals or medical centers where they are available.  

 

Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the 13 U.S. states along the border with Canada are free to allow abortions, restrict them or ban them entirely. 

 

Winnipeg is the capital of Manitoba, which borders North Dakota, a state that is expected to restrict access to abortion. 

 

Blandine Tona, director of clinical programs at the Women’s Health Clinic in Winnipeg, expects to see American patients visit the center, as some did before the coronavirus pandemic. She said this has had less to do with laws and more to do with proximity; some Americans are closer to Winnipeg than to states where abortion is still legal.

Martha Paynter, author of Abortion to Abolition, Reproductive Health Injustice in Canada, is not sure about the number of cross-border trips that might happen to access abortion services.   

 

Paynter, who has a doctorate in nursing, said there are costs and logistical obstacles for Americans to obtain care in Canada. However, she said, the situation is a motivator to expand access to abortions across the country.

“It seems unlikely because you’d have to pay for the travel, you’d have to have a passport — it would be quite a process,” she said. “I nevertheless think that we should prepare. This is a very good reminder of how we need to be ever vigilant and expanding access.”

Canada’s westernmost province of British Columbia shares a stretch of border with Washington state, where abortion services will continue to be widely available, but also Idaho, where a state law will soon ban the procedure if it survives court challenges. 

 

Michelle Fortin, executive director of Options for Sexual Health, formerly Planned Parenthood Association of British Columbia, said possible immigration issues such as requiring passports and having to cross an international border lead most Americans who seek abortion services to visit the nearest U.S. state that allows it.

Even so, she said, nobody will be turned away in Canada, and many Canadians are looking to offer other types of support as well.

“So I believe that any American that shows up who’s got a pregnancy that is unintended and unwanted would be served,” she said. “I don’t know that we’re going to see huge influx. I do know that there’s a lot of folks in Canada looking for ways in which we can support people in America to access abortion.”

Fortin said this support is mostly financial to help cover travel, child care and other costs for Americans.  She said this might also include sending pharmaceutical abortion medication into the United States, much like what has been done for years with other prescriptions that are cheaper in Canada than in the United States.

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Climate Envoy: Despite Legal Setbacks, US to Achieve Goals 

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Friday that setbacks for President Joe Biden’s climate efforts at home have “slowed the pace” of some of the commitments from other countries to cut climate-wrecking fossil fuels, but he insisted the U.S. would still achieve its own ambitious climate goals in time.

Kerry spoke to The Associated Press after a major Supreme Court ruling Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s options for regulating climate pollution from power plants. The ruling raised the prospect the conservative-controlled court could go on to hinder other efforts by the executive branch to cut the country’s coal, oil and gas emissions. It came after Democrats failed in getting what was to be Biden’s signature climate legislation through the narrowly divided Senate.

The Biden administration is striving now to show audiences at home and abroad that the U.S. can still make significant climate progress and strike deals with other countries to do the same. Scientists say only a few years are left to stave off the worst levels of global warming that triggers ever more deadly droughts, storms, wildfires and other disasters.

Kerry, Biden’s climate negotiator abroad, said he had not talked to foreign counterparts since the Supreme Court ruling, which some climate scientists called a gut punch and a disaster.

“But I’m confident they’ll ask me questions,” Kerry said. “But my answer is going to be look, we’re going to meet our goals … and the president is going to continue to fight for legislation from the Congress.”

“We absolutely are convinced we can meet our goals,” Kerry said.

Biden has pledged to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade and to have an emissions-free power sector by 2035. Despite two Democrats joining with Republicans to block what was supposed to be transformative legislation moving the United States to cleaner energy, Biden has managed to free significant funding for electric charging stations and some other moves. The EPA has pledged to release alternative regulations to limit climate damage from the power sector early next year.

Kerry cited continuing progress in climate efforts abroad this year, including more governments committing to faster cuts in emissions and more signing a U.S.-backed methane pledge targeting climate-damaging leaks, venting and flaring from natural gas industries.

“This decision by the Supreme Court … is disappointing, but … it doesn’t take away our ability to do a whole bunch of things that we need to get done,” Kerry said.

“President Biden has enormous authority to continue to move forward. We are going to move forward. I am absolutely confident about our ability to continue to offer leadership on a global basis, which we’re doing right now.”

Kerry also pointed to progress the U.S. was making in cutting fossil fuel emissions independently of the government efforts, including through electric cars and other marketplace technological advances, and through clean-energy pushes from California and dozens of other states, mostly those led by Democrats.

Kerry described legislation on tax credits to encourage cleaner energy as commonsense and doable. He declined to talk about the impact if even those failed to clear Congress.

“I wouldn’t be a gloomy-doomy over this,” he said. “I just say we got to work harder and fight harder.”

Asked if it was possible to ask China and other major polluters to make fast moves away from fossil fuels when the U.S. was struggling to meet some of its own goals, Kerry said, “They’ll make their own analysis. That will conceivably have an impact on what they decide to do or not.”

The administration’s setbacks getting major climate retooling through conservatives in Congress and the Supreme Court haven’t hurt the momentum he’s working for abroad in climate negotiations, Kerry insisted. “But I think it’s slowed the pace at which some of these things could happen,” he said.

“If the United States were able to accomplish more regarding our own goals, and we did so rapidly, that would put a lot of pressure on a lot of countries,” he said.

 

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UN Urges Ambitious Action to Protect Oceans

World leaders must do more to protect the oceans, a major U.N. conference concluded Friday, setting its sights on a new treaty to protect the high seas. 

“Greater ambition is required at all levels to address the dire state of the ocean,” the U.N. Ocean Conference in Lisbon said in its final declaration. 

The meeting in the Portuguese capital — attended by government officials, experts and advocates from 140 countries — is not a negotiating forum. But it sets the agenda for final international negotiations in August on a treaty to protect the high seas — those international waters beyond national jurisdiction. 

“Biodiversity loss, the decline of the ocean’s health, the way the climate crisis is going … it all has one common reason, which is … human behavior, our addiction to oil and gas, and all of them have to be addressed,” Peter Thomson, U.N. special envoy for the ocean, told AFP. 

Oceans produce half the oxygen we breathe, regulate the weather and provide humanity’s single largest source of protein. 

They also absorb a quarter of CO2 pollution and 90% of excess heat from global warming, thus playing a key role in protecting life on Earth. 

But they are being pushed to the brink by human activities.  

Sea water has turned acidic, threatening aquatic food chains and the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon. Global warming has spawned massive marine heat waves that are killing off coral reefs and expanding dead zones bereft of oxygen. 

Humans have fished some marine species to the edge of extinction and used the world’s waters as a rubbish dump.  

 

Patchwork of agreements

Today, a patchwork of agreements and regulatory bodies govern shipping, fishing and mineral extraction from the seabed.

Thomson said he was “very confident” national governments could agree on a “robust but operable” high seas treaty in August. 

Tiago Pitta e Cunha, head of Portuguese foundation Oceano Azul (Blue Ocean), said: “Pressure has increased a lot on less interested countries to create an effective mechanism to protect the high seas.” 

Laura Meller of Greenpeace called for more action. 

“We know that if words could save the oceans, then they wouldn’t be on the brink of collapse,” she told AFP. “So in August when governments meet at the United Nations, they really need to finalize a strong global ocean treaty.” 

Efforts to protect the oceans will then continue at two key summits later this year: U.N. climate talks in November and U.N. biodiversity negotiations in December. 

Overfishing, mining, plastic

At the heart of the draft U.N. biodiversity treaty is a plan to designate 30% of Earth’s land and oceans as protected zones by 2030.

Currently, under 8% of oceans are protected.

A number of new, protected marine areas could be declared off-limits to fishing, mining, drilling or other extractive activities that scientists say disrupt fragile seabed ecosystems. 

Making things worse is an unending torrent of pollution, including a rubbish truck’s worth of plastic every minute, the United Nations says.  

“The ocean is not a rubbish dump,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday. “It is not a source of infinite plunder. It is a fragile system on which we all depend.”

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Researchers Forecast Volcanic Eruptions Using Satellite Data 

Scientists appear one step closer to predicting volcanic eruptions — a problem that has vexed volcanologists for decades. Research published last week in Nature Geoscience found that using satellite observations to calculate how quickly underground molten rock, or magma, accumulates beneath volcanoes could forecast certain eruptions weeks or months in advance.   

 

“Any kind of information we can use to get at this forecasting thing is going to be important, because the more time you have to warn people that they can take some action, the more you can decrease the impacts of eruptions,” volcanologist Michael Poland of the United States Geological Survey told VOA. “That’s all we have, really, in terms of decreasing eruption impacts — to get out of the way.”   

 

Most volcanoes don’t erupt without warning. They swell up, set off small earthquakes and let off gas leading up to an eruption — what volcanologists call “unrest.” But while volcanoes rarely erupt completely out of the blue, it’s also not uncommon for unrest to settle down without an eruption.    

 

“The challenge is to understand when these changes in these monitoring parameters will lead to eruption, and when it doesn’t,” Federico Galetto, a volcanologist at Cornell University and first author of the new study, told VOA.   

 

Currently, the gold standard for eruption forecasting involves highly localized observation of individual volcanoes, said Poland. But most volcanoes aren’t closely monitored on the ground. In contrast, deformation — how volcanoes bulge and distort during unrest — can be measured from space for even the most remote volcanoes.   

 

“The satellite deformation technique has really shown that a lot of these volcanoes inflate and deflate, and that allows us to help get to that sort of forecasting ‘Holy Grail’ in some places where there aren’t ground-based data,” said Poland.  

Unfortunately, deformation alone can’t reliably forecast eruptions. But Galetto and his colleagues thought that magma flow rate, which can be calculated using deformation data, might work better.    

 

To find out, they considered 45 episodes of unrest in basaltic calderas — common volcanoes that usually look like flat, broad shields of dark basalt rock, including the volcanoes of Hawaii, Iceland and the Galápagos Islands. Basaltic calderas are considered relatively easy to study thanks to relatively shallow magma chambers — pools of molten rock beneath the Earth’s surface — and frequent eruptions, and they have been observed for a long time.     

 

“They picked a subset where we have a lot of information and a lot of observations, these basaltic calderas,” said Poland. “These types of volcanoes, we have a lot of experience with … they tend to be great laboratories.”   

 

Galetto’s analysis revealed that magma flow rate reliably predicted whether unrest would end in a magma chamber rupture — which usually causes eruption — or just fizzle out.   

 

All volcanoes in the dataset with magma flow rates greater than one-tenth of a cubic kilometer per year — roughly 40,000 Olympic swimming pools — ruptured their magma chambers within a year. Inflow rates 10 times lower didn’t lead to a magma chamber rupture in 89% of cases, and never before more than a year of unrest. Volcanoes with middling flow rates were harder to predict, with factors like rock type and magma chamber size coming into play.   

 

“This is really promising,” said Galetto. “That seems to [be] working very well in these types of volcanoes.”    

 

Calculations by Galetto and his team suggest that low magma flow rates don’t tend to cause eruptions because slow-filling magma chambers behave a bit like viscous silly putty or molasses, oozing outward to accommodate a slow trickle of incoming magma without rupturing. Fast flow rates drive up pressure abruptly enough to crack magma chambers instead of just squeezing them.    

 

“That makes sense,” said Poland. “The faster you blow up the balloon, the more likely it’s going to pop.” But he also cautioned it’s going to be a challenge to use the new results to forecast specific volcanoes.    

 

“In volcanology, there’s always a level of local expertise for your volcano that’s needed, because every volcano is different,” he said. “But we can learn some general trends … that can help us out in guiding us in the right direction when we are looking at these specific systems we’re trying to forecast.   

 

Based on his results, Galetto thinks magma flow rate could help forecast eruptions weeks or months ahead for basaltic calderas. But there’s still work to be done. Fine-tuning forecast calculations with volcano-specific data as Poland described will be important for making good predictions, he said, as will collecting and analyzing better satellite deformation data.   

 

“My paper is just a starting point, not the ending point,” said Galetto. “We should start … to see if this relationship can be found out in other volcanoes. Because the other point is to try to extend these results not only to the group of volcanoes that I studied but also to try to extend these results to other groups of volcanoes. And it will be much more complicated.”    

 

 

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North Korea Implies South Korean Balloons Caused COVID Outbreak

Weeks after acknowledging its first coronavirus infections, North Korea appears to be blaming the outbreak on balloons sent by defector-activists in South Korea.

North Korean officials said Friday they traced the outbreak to an inter-Korean border region, where an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old child came into contact with “alien things” in early April.

The statement, published in the state-run Korean Central News Agency, did not specify what the objects were, but later warned residents to be on the lookout for balloons and other “alien things” in the area.

North Korean officials have long warned the coronavirus could enter the country through novel means, including through migratory birds, snow, air pollution or anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets sent by South Korean activists.

Earlier this week, South Korea-based defector Park Sang-hak said he launched 20 balloons with COVID-19 medical supplies, including masks, pain relievers and vitamin pills.

North Korea, an authoritarian state that prevents its citizens from accessing outside information, despises the balloon launches. In the past, it has used them as an opportunity to direct anger, and pressure, at South Korea.

Friday’s statement did not direct any anger toward South Korea. But some analysts said it could be part of an effort to keep North Koreans away from border areas.

On May 12, North Korea acknowledged for the first time that it is dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak. The admission came more than two years into a worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

Since then, North Korea has said its COVID-19 situation has vastly improved, though outside experts emphasize that even Pyongyang may not know the true extent of the outbreak.

Instead of reporting confirmed coronavirus cases, North Korea has posted daily counts of “fevered persons,” possibly because the country does not have enough COVID-19 testing supplies.

In total, North Korea has reported 4.74 million fever cases but only 73 deaths. If the fever cases were counted as confirmed COVID-19 cases, that would mean North Korea has achieved the world’s lowest COVID-19 fatality rate by far.

North Korea has an antiquated and poorly resourced medical system. It has rejected most international offers of pandemic aid, though it is thought to have recently accepted some vaccines from China.

In a statement Thursday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry slammed U.S. and Western offers of COVID-19 aid, calling them a “clumsy farce” and insisting that its own pandemic situation is rapidly improving.

In an unusually blunt statement last month, the World Health Organization said it assumes North Korea’s COVID-19 situation “is getting worse, not better.”

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WHO: COVID-19 Cases Rising Nearly Everywhere Around World

The number of new coronavirus cases rose by 18% in the last week, with more than 4.1 million cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.N. health agency said in its latest weekly report on the pandemic that the worldwide number of deaths remained similar to the week before, at about 8,500. COVID-related deaths increased in three regions: the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Americas.

The biggest weekly rise in new COVID-19 cases was seen in the Middle East, where they increased by 47%, according to the report released late Wednesday. Infections rose by about 32% in Europe and Southeast Asia, and by about 14% in the Americas, WHO said.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said cases were on the rise in 110 countries, mostly driven by the omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5.

“This pandemic is changing, but it’s not over,” Tedros said this week during a press briefing. He said the ability to track COVID-19’s genetic evolution was “under threat” as countries relaxed surveillance and genetic sequencing efforts, warning that would make it more difficult to catch emerging and potentially dangerous new variants.

He called for countries to immunize their most vulnerable populations, including health workers and people older than 60, saying that hundreds of millions remain unvaccinated and at risk of severe disease and death.

Tedros said that while more than 1.2 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally, the average immunization rate in poor countries is about 13%.

“If rich countries are vaccinating children from as young as 6 months old and planning to do further rounds of vaccination, it is incomprehensible to suggest that lower-income countries should not vaccinate and boost their most at-risk [people],” he said.

According to figures compiled by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, fewer than half of the 2.1 billion vaccines promised to poorer countries by the Group of Seven large economies have been delivered.

Earlier this month, the United States authorized COVID-19 vaccines for infants and preschoolers, rolling out a national immunization plan targeting 18 million of the youngest children.

American regulators also recommended that some adults get updated boosters in the fall that match the latest coronavirus variants.

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US Supreme Court Limits EPA in Curbing Power Plant Emissions

In a blow to the fight against climate change, the Supreme Court on Thursday limited how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

By a 6-3 vote, with conservatives in the majority, the court said that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.

The court’s ruling could complicate the administration’s plans to combat climate change. Its proposal to regulate power plant emissions is expected by the end of the year.

President Joe Biden aims to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade and to have an emissions-free power sector by 2035. Power plants account for roughly 30% of carbon dioxide output.

The justices heard arguments in the case on the same day that a United Nations panel’s report warned that the effects of climate change are about to get much worse, likely making the world sicker, hungrier, poorer and more dangerous in the coming years.

The power plant case has a long and complicated history that begins with the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. That plan would have required states to reduce emissions from the generation of electricity, mainly by shifting away from coal-fired plants.

But that plan never took effect. Acting in a lawsuit filed by West Virginia and others, the Supreme Court blocked it in 2016 by a 5-4 vote, with conservatives in the majority.

With the plan on hold, the legal fight over it continued. But after President Donald Trump took office, the EPA repealed the Obama-era plan. The agency argued that its authority to reduce carbon emissions was limited and it devised a new plan that sharply reduced the federal government’s role in the issue.

New York, 21 other mainly Democratic states, the District of Columbia and some of the nation’s largest cities sued over the Trump plan. The federal appeals court in Washington ruled against both the repeal and the new plan, and its decision left nothing in effect while the new administration drafted a new policy.

Adding to the unusual nature of the high court’s involvement, the reductions sought in the Obama plan by 2030 already have been achieved through the market-driven closure of hundreds of coal plants.

Power plant operators serving 40 million people called on the court to preserve the companies’ flexibility to reduce emissions while maintaining reliable service. Prominent businesses that include Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla also backed the administration.

Nineteen mostly Republican-led states and coal companies led the fight at the Supreme Court against broad EPA authority to regulate carbon output.

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Drag and Size-Inclusive Fashion on Display for Pride Month

June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Pride month. In the Western U.S. city of Denver, a museum exhibition features fashions from the gender-inclusive DCR Studios. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns caught up with designer Darlene Ritz at the show.
Videographers: Scott Stearns, Jodi Westrum

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Fears of Cholera Outbreak Surface in Ukraine

As Russia pounds Ukrainian cities to rubble, water and sewer systems have broken down in some places. The British Defense Ministry says Mariupol is at risk of a major cholera outbreak. Just how big the threat is, though, is not clear. Scientists disagree over where the strains of cholera that can cause a major outbreak come from, and whether they are present in Ukraine currently. Producer:  Steve Baragona

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FDA Advisers Recommend Updating COVID-19 Booster Shots for Fall

At least some U.S. adults may get updated COVID-19 shots this fall, as government advisers voted Tuesday that it’s time to tweak booster doses to better match the most recent virus variants. 

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration wrestled with how to modify doses now when there’s no way to know how the rapidly mutating virus will evolve by fall — especially since people who get today’s recommended boosters remain strongly protected against COVID-19’s worst outcomes. 

Ultimately, the FDA panel voted 19-2 that COVID-19 boosters should contain some version of the super-contagious omicron variant, to be ready for an anticipated fall booster campaign. 

“We are going to be behind the eight-ball if we wait longer,” said one adviser, Dr. Mark Sawyer of the University of California, San Diego. 

The FDA will have to decide the exact recipe, but expect a combination shot that adds protection against either omicron or some of its newer relatives to the original vaccine. 

“None of us has a crystal ball” to know the next threatening variant, said FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks. But “we may at least bring the immune system closer to being able to respond to what’s circulating” now rather than far older virus strains. 

It’s not clear who would be offered a tweaked booster — they might be urged only for older adults or those at high risk from the virus. But the FDA is expected to decide on the recipe change within days and then Pfizer and Moderna will have to seek authorization for the appropriately updated doses.

Current COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives globally. With a booster dose, those used in the U.S. retain strong protection against hospitalization and death but their ability to block infection dropped markedly when omicron appeared. And the omicron mutant that caused the winter surge has been replaced by its genetically distinct relatives. The two newest omicron cousins, called BA.4 and BA.5, together now make up half of U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Pfizer and Moderna already were brewing boosters that add protection to the first omicron mutant. Their combination shots, what scientists call “bivalent” vaccines, substantially boosted levels of antibodies capable of fighting that variant more than simply giving another dose of today’s vaccine. 

Both companies found the tweaked shots also offered some cross-protection against those worrisome BA.4 and BA.5 mutants, too, but not nearly as much. 

Many scientists favor the combination approach because it preserves the original vaccines’ proven benefits, which include some cross-protection against other mutants that have cropped up during the pandemic. 

The question facing FDA is the correct recipe change. Both companies said they’d have plenty of omicron-targeted combo shots by October, but Moderna said switching to target omicron’s newest relatives might delay its version another month. 

Further complicating the decision is that only half of vaccinated Americans have received that all-important first booster. And while the CDC says protection against hospitalization has slipped some for older adults, a second booster that’s recommended for people 50 and older seems to restore it. But only a quarter of those eligible for the additional booster have gotten one. 

Marks said that by tweaking the shots, “we’re hoping we can convince people to go get that booster to strengthen their immune response and help prevent another wave.” 

The logistics would be challenging. Many Americans haven’t had their first vaccinations yet, including young children who just became eligible — and it’s not clear whether tweaked boosters eventually might lead to a change in the primary vaccine. But the FDA’s advisers said it’s important to go ahead and study updated vaccine recipes in children, too. 

And one more complexity: A third company, Novavax, is awaiting FDA authorization of a more traditional kind of COVID-19 vaccine, protein-based shots. Novavax argued Tuesday that a booster of its regular vaccine promises a good immune response against the new omicron mutants without a recipe change. 

Advisers to the World Health Organization recently said omicron-tweaked shots would be most beneficial as a booster only because they should increase the breadth of people’s cross-protection against multiple variants. 

“We don’t want the world to lose confidence in vaccines that are currently available,” said Dr. Kanta Subbarao, a virologist who chairs that WHO committee.

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US Officials Announce More Steps Against Monkeypox Outbreak 

Reacting to a surprising and growing monkeypox outbreak, U.S. health officials on Tuesday expanded the group of people recommended to get vaccinated against the monkeypox virus. 

They also said they are providing more monkeypox vaccine, working to expand testing, and taking other steps to try to get ahead of the outbreak. 

“We will continue to take aggressive action against this virus,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, who has also been playing a role in how the government deals with monkeypox. 

The administration said it was expanding the pool of people who are advised to get vaccinated to include those who may realize on their own that they could have been infected. That includes men who have recently had sex with men at parties or in other gatherings in cities where monkeypox cases have been identified. 

Most monkeypox patients experience only fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more serious illness may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body. 

The disease is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily among people. 

Last month, cases began emerging in Europe and the United States. Many — but not all — of those who contracted the virus had traveled internationally. Most were men who have sex with men, but health officials stress that anyone can get monkeypox. 

Case counts have continued to grow. As of Tuesday, the U.S. had identified 306 cases in 27 states and the District of Columbia. More than 4,700 cases have been found in more than 40 other countries outside the areas of Africa where the virus is endemic. 

There have been no U.S. deaths and officials say the risk to the American public is low. But they are taking steps to assure people that medical measures are in place to deal with the growing problem. 

One of the steps was to expand who is recommended to get vaccinated. Vaccines customarily are given to build immunity in people before they are ever infected. But if given within days or even a few weeks of first becoming infected, some vaccines can reduce severity of symptoms. 

A two-dose vaccine, Jynneos, is approved for monkeypox in the U.S. The government has many more doses of an older smallpox vaccine — ACAM2000 — that they say could also be used, but that vaccine is considered to have a greater risk of side effects and is not recommended for people who have HIV. So it’s the Jynneos vaccine that officials have been trying to use as a primary weapon against the monkeypox outbreak. 

So far, the government has deployed more than 9,000 doses of vaccine. U.S. officials on Tuesday said they are increasing the amount of Jynneos vaccine they are making available, allocating 56,000 doses immediately and about 240,000 more over the coming weeks. They promised more than 1 million more over the coming months. 

Another change: Until now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised that vaccines be given after exposure to people whom health officials identify as close personal contacts of cases. But on Tuesday, CDC officials say they are expanding the recommendation to people who were never identified but may realize on their own that they may have been infected. 

“It’s almost like we’re expanding the definition of who a contact might be,” said the CDC’s Jennifer McQuiston. If people have been to a party or other place where monkeypox has been known to spread “we recommend they come in for a vaccine,” she said. 

The CDC’s expansion follows similar steps taken in New York City and the District of Columbia. 

 

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Ghana Hosts NFL’s First African Development Camp

The National Football League (NFL), the top league in American-style football, has hosted its first African developmental camp in Ghana’s capital, Accra. The weeklong program was aimed at finding fresh talent and building the sport’s popularity across Africa. Senanu Tord reports from Accra, Ghana.

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Thailand Hosts Transgender Pageant as Equality Drive Hits Parliament

Held for the first time since the pandemic, the world’s biggest transgender pageant pulled contestants from as far apart as Honduras and India to Thailand, a country where gender equality law is under the spotlight. For VOA, Vijitra Duangdee has this story from Pattaya, Thailand.

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WNBA Star Brittney Griner Ordered to Trial Friday in Russia

Shackled and looking wary, WNBA star Brittney Griner was ordered to stand trial Friday by a court near Moscow on cannabis possession charges, about 4 1/2 months after her arrest at an airport while returning to play for a Russian team. 

The Phoenix Mercury center and two-time U.S. Olympic gold medalist also was ordered to remain in custody for the duration of her criminal trial. Griner could face 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of large-scale transportation of drugs. Fewer than 1% of defendants in Russian criminal cases are acquitted, and unlike in the U.S., acquittals can be overturned. 

At Monday’s closed-door preliminary hearing at the court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki, Griner’s detention was extended for another six months. Photos obtained by The Associated Press showed the 31-year-old in handcuffs and looking straight ahead, unlike a previous court appearance where she kept her head down and covered with a hood. 

Her detention and trial come at an extraordinarily low point in Moscow-Washington relations. She was arrested at Sheremetyevo Airport less than a week before Russia sent troops into Ukraine, which aggravated already-high tensions with sweeping sanctions by the United States and Russia’s denunciation of U.S. weapon supplies to Ukraine. 

Amid the tensions, Griner’s supporters had taken a low profile in hopes of a quiet resolution, until May, when the State Department reclassified her as wrongfully detained and shifted oversight of her case to its special presidential envoy for hostage affairs — effectively the U.S. government’s chief negotiator. 

Griner’s wife, Cherelle, urged President Joe Biden in May to secure her release, calling her “a political pawn.” 

Her supporters have encouraged a prisoner swap like the one in April that brought home Marine veteran Trevor Reed in exchange for a Russian pilot convicted of drug trafficking conspiracy. 

Russian news media have repeatedly raised speculation that she could be swapped for Russian arms trader Viktor Bout, nicknamed “The Merchant of Death,” who is serving a 25-year sentence on conviction of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and providing aid to a terrorist organization. 

Russia has agitated for Bout’s release for years. But the discrepancy between Griner’s case — she allegedly was found in possession of vape cartridges containing cannabis oil — and Bout’s global dealings in deadly weapons could make such a swap unpalatable to the U.S. 

Others have suggested that she could be traded in tandem with Paul Whelan, a former Marine and security director serving a 16-year sentence on an espionage conviction that the United States has repeatedly described as a set-up. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asked Sunday on CNN whether a joint swap of Griner and Whelan for Bout was being considered, sidestepped the question. 

“As a general proposition … I have got no higher priority than making sure that Americans who are being illegally detained in one way or another around the world come home,” he said. But “I can’t comment in any detail on what we’re doing, except to say this is an absolute priority.” 

Any swap would apparently require Griner to first be convicted and sentenced, then apply for a presidential pardon, Maria Yarmush, a lawyer specializing in international civil affairs, told Kremlin-funded TV channel RT. 

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