The Supreme Court’s nine justices will gather in private Thursday for their first scheduled meeting since the leak of a draft opinion that would overrule Roe v. Wade and sharply curtail abortion rights in roughly half the states.

The meeting in the justices’ private, wood-paneled conference room could be a tense affair in a setting noted for its decorum. No one aside from the justices attends and the most junior among them, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is responsible for taking notes.

Thursday’s conference comes at an especially fraught moment, with the future of abortion rights at stake and an investigation underway to try to find the source of the leak.

Chief Justice John Roberts last week confirmed the authenticity of the opinion, revealed by Politico, in ordering the court’s marshal to undertake an investigation.

Roberts stressed that the draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated in February, may not be the court’s final word. Supreme Court decisions are not final until they are formally issued and the outcomes in some cases changed between the justices’ initial votes shortly after arguments and the official announcement of the decisions.

That’s true of a major abortion ruling from 1992 that now is threatened, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when Justice Anthony Kennedy initially indicated he would be part of a majority to reverse Roe but later was among five justices who affirmed the basic right of a woman to choose abortion that the court first laid out in roe in 1973.

Kennedy met privately with Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter to craft a joint opinion, with no hint to the public or even to other justices about what was going on.

“I think it’s tradition and decorum that everyone corresponds in writing about things that are in circulation,” said Megan Wold, a former law clerk to Alito. “But at the same time, there’s nothing to prevent a justice from picking up the phone to call, from visiting someone else in chambers.”

A major shift in the current abortion case seems less likely, at least partly because of the leak, abortion law experts and people on both sides of the issue said.

“I think the broad contours are very unlikely to change. To the extent the leak matters, it will make broad changes unlikely,” said Mary Ziegler, a scholar of the history of abortion at the Florida State University law school.

Sherif Gergis, a University of Notre Dame law professor who once was a law clerk for Alito, agreed. “I’ll be surprised if it changes very much,” Gergis said.

At least five votes in December

It’s not clear who leaked the opinion, or for what purpose. But Alito’s writing means that there were at least five votes in December to overrule Roe and Casey, just after the court heard arguments over a Mississippi law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Based on their questions at arguments, Justice Clarence Thomas and former President Donald Trump’s three appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett, seemed most likely to join Alito.

Roberts appeared the most inclined among the conservatives to avoid reaching a decision to overrule the landmark abortion rulings, but his questions suggested that he would at the very least vote to uphold the Mississippi law. Even that outcome would dramatically undermine abortion rights and invite states to adopt increasingly stricter limits.

If Roberts, who often prefers incremental steps in an effort to preserve the court’s legitimacy, wanted to prevent the court from overruling Roe and Casey, he’d need to pick up the vote of just one other colleague. That would be enough to deprive Alito of a majority.

The liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, are expected to dissent from either outcome. But no dissent, separate opinion from Roberts, or even a revised draft majority opinion has been circulated among the justices, Politico reported.

Majority opinions often change in response to friendly suggestions and barbed criticisms. The justices consider the internal back-and-forth a crucial part of their work.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remarked that pointed criticism from her friend and ideological opposite, Justice Antonin Scalia, made her opinions better. Scalia died in 2016; Ginsburg, four years later.

The lack of any other opinions surprised some former law clerks to the justices, though Wold said it’s also true that bigger, harder cases traditionally take more time.

Spring usually ‘tense’  

Several former clerks also said they expect the leak to be discussed at the weekly meeting on Thursday, at which the justices typically finalize opinions in cases they’ve heard and choose cases to hear in the coming months. The spring normally is a tense time at the court, with major decisions looming that often reveal stark divisions and sometimes produce sharp words.

“I would be shocked if it doesn’t come up,” Wold said, adding that, given what has happened, the court would probably take additional precautions with drafts circulating in the future, including limiting who has access to them.

Kent Greenfield, a Boston University law professor who spent a year as a clerk to Souter, also speculated that the leak would be on the table Thursday. “Roberts is in a complete bind. He has to address it, but it doesn’t strike me that he has many options,” Greenfield said.
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North Korea officially confirmed its first COVID-19 outbreak Thursday, with state media reporting a sub-variant of the highly transmissible omicron virus, known as BA.2, had been detected in Pyongyang.

“There has been the biggest emergency incident in the country, with a hole in our emergency quarantine front, that has been kept safely over the past two years and three months since February 2020,” the state media said.

The report said people in Pyongyang contracted the omicron variant, without providing details on case numbers or possible sources of infection.

The report was published as the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un chaired a Workers’ Party meeting to discuss responses to the first outbreak of the coronavirus. 
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Democratic party lawmakers in the U.S. failed Wednesday to pass a measure essentially codifying the right to an abortion. The vote comes after revelations the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the landmark ruling that legalized abortion. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.
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The U.S. set another record for drug overdose deaths last year with more than 107,000 fatalities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Wednesday. 

The provisional 2021 total represents a 15% jump from the previous record in 2020, and means there is roughly one overdose death in the country every 5 minutes.

While drugs like opioid painkillers, other opioids and heroin cause many deaths, fentanyl is the leading killer, causing 71,000 deaths last year, which was a 23% jump from the year before.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the latest numbers “truly staggering.”

Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. have been rising for more than two decades.

“It is unacceptable that we are losing a life to overdose every five minutes around the clock,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. 

“That is why [U.S.] President [Joe] Biden’s new National Drug Control Strategy signals a new era of drug policy centered on individuals and communities, focusing specifically on the actions we must take right now to reduce overdoses and save lives,” he said. “Those actions include expanding access to high impact harm reduction tools like naloxone, quickly connecting more people to treatment, disrupting and dismantling drug trafficking operations, and improving data to systems that drive the Nation’s drug policy.”

One reason fentanyl is responsible for so many deaths is that it is cheap and often mixed into other drugs without the buyer’s knowledge.

“The net effect is that we have many more people, including those who use drugs occasionally and even adolescents, exposed to these potent substances that can cause someone to overdose even with a relatively small exposure,” Volkow said in a statement.

Methamphetamine caused 32,856 overdose deaths, cocaine in 24,538 deaths, and prescription pain medications in 13,503 deaths in 2021.

COVID-19 lockdowns had an impact on overdose deaths as they made getting treatment more difficult for drug users.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Researchers say DNA can replace hard drives to help store the world’s ever-increasing digital output. Matt Dibble has the story
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For the fourth time in seven years, the authority that administers one of Australia’s greatest natural treasures has reported widespread bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.

This occurs when the sea is too warm for too long. It forces the coral to expel microscopic symbiotic algae that gives it most of its energy and color.

Reefs can recover from bleaching, but it can take years. If water temperatures don’t return to normal, the coral can die. Large parts of the reef were killed off by mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017.

Officials say it’s happening again. They are hoping it won’t be as destructive as previous years, but serious threats remain.

David Wachenfeld, who is the chief scientist with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said reefs all over the world are under pressure.

“Often the Great Barrier Reef is used as a poster child for the impacts of climate change on coral reefs,” he said. “And I completely understand that, but climate change is a global problem. It needs a global solution, and it is all of the world’s coral reefs that are under threat.”

The United Nations is assessing the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef, as well as localized threats, including pollution and over-fishing.

In Canberra, the government has insisted it’s the “best-managed reef in the world” and that multi-million-dollar programs are boosting its resilience.

Conservationists argue, however, that Australia needs far more ambitious plans to curb its carbon emissions.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) said Wednesday that during a La Nina event, which is a naturally occurring weather cycle, eastern Australia receives more cloud cover and rain that should have “been a welcome reprieve for our Reef” from warmer ocean temperatures.

However, an AMCS spokesperson warned that bleaching was “becoming more and more frequent” and that this was “not normal.”

The Great Barrier Reef runs 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeastern coast and spans an area about the size of Japan.
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A new study led by the Marine Biological Association of the U.K. and the University of Southampton, along with experts in Australia and New Zealand, found that industrialized shipping could be killing large numbers of whale sharks.

Marine biologists have said that whale shark numbers have been falling in recent years, but it has not been clear why.

But a new international study suggests that collisions with shipping traffic could be a major factor.

Researchers examined satellite data to track about 350 whale sharks. They found that the world’s largest fish spend most of their time in waters used by freighters and other larger vessels.

The study showed that transmissions from the tags that monitor their movements often ended in busy shipping lanes. The international team, including experts from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, believe many sharks are probably being hit and killed by boats before sinking to the ocean floor.

Mark Erdmann is from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a scientist at Conservation International, a non-profit environmental organization.

He co-authored the study, and believes shipping is a major threat to whale shark populations, which are a protected species.

“If we are protecting them from fisheries, why are their populations still declining? And one thought is the fact that these are big oceanic plankti vores that move relatively slowly, feeding on the surface, spend 50% of their time in, kind of, top 10-20 meters of the water. So, it is possible that they are actually running into a lot of the global shipping. Now, what the study found is that, indeed, there is a tremendous amount of overlap between where whale sharks are moving and global shipping traffic. So, those are real collision-risk areas,” he said.

Most lethal strikes are likely to go undetected or unreported. At present, there are no regulations to protect endangered whale sharks against these types of collisions.

Whale sharks play an important role in the marine food web and healthy ocean ecosystems.

They can grow up to 20 meters long.

The study is published in the PNAS — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — journal.
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The world is creeping closer to the warming threshold international agreements are trying to prevent, with a nearly 50-50 chance that Earth will temporarily hit that temperature mark within the next five years, teams of meteorologists across the globe predicted. 

With human-made climate change continuing, there’s a 48% chance that the globe will reach a yearly average of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels of the late 1800s at least once between now and 2026, a bright red signal in climate change negotiations and science, a team of 11 different forecast centers predicted for the World Meteorological Organization late Monday. 

The odds are inching up along with the thermometer. Last year, the same forecasters put the odds at closer to 40%, and a decade ago it was only 10%. 

The team, coordinated by the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office, in their five-year general outlook said there is a 93% chance that the world will set a record for the hottest year by the end of 2026. They also said there’s a 93% chance that the five years from 2022 to 2026 will be the hottest on record. Forecasters also predict the devastating fire-prone megadrought in the U.S. Southwest will keep going. 

“We’re going to see continued warming in line with what is expected with climate change,” said UK Met Office senior scientist Leon Hermanson, who coordinated the report. 

These forecasts are big picture global and regional climate predictions on a yearly and seasonal time scale based on long-term averages and state of the art computer simulations. They are different from increasingly accurate weather forecasts that predict how hot or wet a certain day will be in specific places. 

But even if the world hits that mark of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times — the globe has already warmed about 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s — that’s not quite the same as the global threshold first set by international negotiators in the 2015 Paris agreement. In 2018, a major United Nations science report predicted dramatic and dangerous effects on people and the world if warming exceeds 1.5 degrees. 

The global 1.5 degree threshold is about the world being that warm not for one year, but over a 20- or 30-year time period, several scientists said. This is not what the report predicts. Meteorologists can only tell if Earth hits that average mark years, maybe a decade or two, after it is actually reached because it is a long-term average, Hermanson said. 

“This is a warning of what will be just average in a few years,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the forecast teams. 

The prediction makes sense given how warm the world already is and an additional tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) is expected because of human-caused climate change in the next five years, said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth, who wasn’t part of the forecast teams. Add to that the likelihood of a strong El Niño — the natural periodic warming of parts of the Pacific that alter world weather — which could toss another couple of tenths of a degree on top temporarily, and the world gets to 1.5 degrees. 

The world is in the second straight year of a La Niña, the opposite of El Niño, which has a slight global cooling effect but isn’t enough to counter the overall warming of heat-trapping gases spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, scientists said. The five-year forecast says that La Niña is likely to end late this year or in 2023. 

The greenhouse effect from fossil fuels is like putting global temperatures on a rising escalator. El Niño, La Niña and a handful of other natural weather variations are like taking steps up or down on that escalator, scientists said. 

On a regional scale, the Arctic will still be warming during the winter at a rate three times more than the globe on average. While the American Southwest and southwestern Europe are likely to be drier than normal the next five years, wetter than normal conditions are expected for Africa’s often arid Sahel region, northern Europe, northeastern Brazil and Australia, the report predicted. 

The global team has been making these predictions informally for a decade and formally for about five years, with greater than 90% accuracy, Hermanson said. 

NASA top climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said the figures in this report are “a little warmer” than what NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration use. He also had doubts about skill level on long-term regional predictions. 

“Regardless of what is predicted here, we are very likely to exceed 1.5 degrees C in the next decade or so, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are committed to this in the long term — or that working to reduce further change is not worthwhile,” Schmidt said in an email. 
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Democrats are moving forward this week on a Senate vote on a bill that would codify abortion rights into federal law, in the wake of a leaked draft from the Supreme Court that signals a possible end to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. As Arash Arabasadi reports, the legislation is expected to be blocked by Senate Republicans.
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The U.S. Supreme Court may overturn federal protections for abortions, according to a leaked draft of an opinion expected in the next few months. That would leave the legal status of abortions up to individual states. For VOA, Deana Mitchell reports from Texas, where women are not permitted to have abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy.
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Millions of Beijing residents queued up for another round of COVID-19 tests Sunday as China’s capital seeks to trace and isolate every infection to contain a small but stubborn outbreak — and avoid a Shanghai-type prolonged lockdown.

Strict COVID curbs in Beijing, Shanghai and dozens of other major cities across China are taking a psychological toll on its people, weighing on the world’s second-largest economy and disrupting global supply chains and international trade.

But Chinese authorities are unwavering in their commitment to stamp out the coronavirus, rather than live with COVID like many countries that are easing or ditching virus measures. Last week the authorities threatened action against critics of the zero-COVID policy.

Most of the 25 million people in the commercial hub of Shanghai, China’s most populous city, had been confined to their housing compounds for more than a month. Many complain of not being able to get food or to access emergency health care or other basic services.

Parts of Shanghai have seen their risk levels officially downgraded to the point where government rules would in theory allow them to leave their residences.

But while some were allowed out for brief walks or grocery trips, most were still stuck behind the locked gates of their compounds, causing widespread frustration and occasionally leading to rare altercations with hazmat-suited authorities.

Beijing was desperate to avoid such drama, relentlessly working to track and isolate infections.

On Sunday, residents lined up for another round of tests in the Chaoyang, Fangshan and Fengtai districts and small parts of others where infections had been detected over the past two weeks.

It has become an almost daily routine in the capital. Even if they are not subject to the mass tests, many still need to show a recent negative result to get to work or enter various venues.

Health app ‘abnormalities’

Beijing has closed gyms and entertainment venues, banned dine-in services at restaurants and shut scores of bus routes and almost 15% of its sprawling subway system.

The streets were less hectic than usual, with many not wanting to risk any activity that could classify them as close contacts of COVID patients, forcing them into quarantine.

Businesses that remained open were suffering.

A barber who asked to be identified only by his surname, Song, said his salon at a high-end shopping mall in Chaoyang has seen far fewer clients since the outbreak.

“They’re afraid of getting abnormalities in their health apps,” Song said, referring to the mobile monitoring software all residents must use. “North of us are malls and offices that have been sealed, and their apps might mark them as close contacts if they came.”

Song said his salon will try to stay open for as long as possible, but he was not sure for how long.

Beijing’s daily COVID cases are in the dozens, much lower than Shanghai’s at this point in its own outbreak, when infections were in the triple digits and rising.

Shanghai’s cases fell for a ninth day, Sunday data showed, but remained in the thousands.

Like other cities in China, Shanghai is building thousands of permanent PCR testing stations. With most residents still indoors, this seems to anticipate a gradual return to normal life when people are back out on the streets.

But authorities have warned that remains far off.

Top Chinese leaders meeting last week said the nation would fight any comment or action that distorted, doubted or repudiated its COVID policy. Shanghai party and city officials have also warned against complacency.
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In a bid to protect coastal communities from climate change and encourage investment, African nations are increasingly turning to mangrove restoration projects, with Mozambique becoming the latest addition to the growing list of countries with large scale mangrove initiatives.

Mozambique follows efforts across the continent — including in Kenya, Madagascar, Gambia and Senegal — and is touted as the world’s largest coastal or marine ecosystem carbon storage project. Known as blue carbon, carbon captured by these ecosystems can sequester, or remove, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a faster rate than forests, despite being smaller in size.

Mozambique’s mangrove restoration project — announced in February alongside its UAE-based partner Blue Forest Solutions — hopes to turn 185,000 hectares (457,100 acres) in the central Zambezia and southern Sofala provinces into a forest which could capture up to 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide, according to project leaders.

“Blue carbon can be utilized not only to sequester tons of carbon dioxide but to also improve the lives of coastal communities,” Vahid Fotuhi, the Chief Executive officer of Blue Forest, told the Associated Press. “There are around one million hectares of mangroves forests in Africa. Collectively they’re able to sequester more carbon dioxide than the total annual emissions of a country like Croatia or Bolivia.” He added these projects would create green jobs and promote biodiversity.

Africa’s major mangrove forests have been decimated in recent decades due to logging, fish farming, coastal development, and pollution, leading to increased blue carbon emissions and greater exposure of vulnerable coastal communities to flooding and other threats to livelihood.

But the continent’s growing attention on mangrove restoration can be attributed in part to the successful Mikoko Pamoja project, initiated in 2013 in Kenya’s Gazi Bay, which protected 117 hectares (289 acres) of mangrove forest and replanted 4,000 trees annually, spurring other countries to also address their damaged coastal land and recreate its success.

Mikoko Pamoja, Swahili for ‘mangroves together’, centered its efforts around protecting the small communities in Gazi and Makongeni villages from coastal erosion, loss of fish and climate change. It was dubbed the “world’s first blue carbon project” and earned the community of just 6,000 global fame, accolades, carbon cash and greater living standards.

“Mikoko Pamoja has led to development of projects in the community, including installation of water,” Iddi Bomani, the village chairperson of the Gazi community, said. “Everyone has water available in their houses.”

“It especially leads to improved livelihoods through job creation when done by communities,” Laitani Suleiman, a committee member of the Mikoko Pamoja, added.

Several other projects have come to fruition since. In Senegal, 79 million replanted mangrove trees are projected to store 500,000 tons of carbon over the next 20 years. Neighboring Gambia launched its own reforestation effort in 2017, with Madagascar following suit with its own preservation project two years later. Egypt is planning its mangrove restoration project ahead of hosting the United Nations climate conference in November this year.

The projects have sparked a clamor for the sale of carbon credits, a type of permit that allows for a certain amount of emissions as remuneration for forest restoration or other carbon offset projects. Gabon was offered a recent pay package of $17 million through the Central African Forest Initiative due to its protection efforts, but complaints persist on the low prices offered to African governments.

“Africa remains excluded from a lot of financing available under climate change,” Jean Paul Adam, head of the climate division at the Economic Commission for Africa, said, adding that a lack of financing means nations on the continent are unable to build up their resilience to climate change.

He added that “nature-based solutions and advocating for a fair development price of carbon” would propel the African economy.

And the benefits of reforestation can be significant, according to Coral Reef Alliance’s Marissa Stein.

“Restoring and protecting our marine habitats plays a key role in maintaining the health of our planet,” she said, adding that mangroves alone store up to four times more carbon per hectare than tropical rainforests. The Global Mangroves Alliance also estimates that mangroves reduce damages and flood risk for 15 million people and can prevent over $65 billion of property damage each year.
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The U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, reports the war in Ukraine is having a devastating impact on children, with tens of thousands requiring psychological and social care.

Millions of children in Ukraine have suffered from more than two months of relentless bombing and shelling, a lack of food, the inability to go to school, and the loss of other essential services. 

This psychological trauma, says UNICEF, has created a child protection crisis of extraordinary proportions.

U.N. agencies report more than 6,800 civilian casualties, including more than 3,300 killed. Some 7.7 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine and more than 5.7 million others have sought refuge in neighboring countries, including nearly two-thirds of all children in Ukraine.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine February 24, more than 90,000 children were living in institutions, orphanages, boarding schools, and other care facilities—nearly half of them are children with disabilities.

Speaking from the western city of Lviv, Aaron Greenberg, UNICEF’s Regional Child Protection Adviser for Europe and Central Asia Region, said tens of thousands of these children have been returned to families. Unfortunately, he said, many children are not receiving the care and protection they require, especially children with disabilities.

“The war has impacted all children’s psychosocial well-being. All of them,” he said. “Children have been uprooted from their homes, separated from caregivers, and directly exposed to war. Children have been shaken by bomb explosions and the blaring sirens of missile alert systems…. And, most importantly, many children have witnessed or experienced physical and sexual violence.”

Greenberg said UNICEF and partners are working to help these traumatized children. Since the war started, he said more than 140,000 children and their caregivers have received mental health and psychosocial services. He said UNICEF currently has 56 mobile units operating across the country, including in the east where fighting is most intense.

“Over 7,000 women and children have been reached by violence prevention, risk mitigation and violence response services, including GBV, gender-based violence, including in the eastern areas of the country,” he said. “But it is not enough. And although we are all working in overdrive, I think we must be prepared with more specialized services for child survivors of physical and sexual violence.”

Greenberg noted that children with disabilities have suffered disproportionately in this war and must receive urgent support. He added that the government, UNICEF, and partners are scaling up more services to these very vulnerable children.
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The third long-duration astronaut team launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) safely returned to Earth early Friday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida to end months of orbital research ranging from space-grown chilies to robots.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying three U.S. NASA astronauts and a European Space Agency (ESA) crewmate from Germany parachuted into calm seas in darkness at the conclusion of a 23-hour-plus autonomous flight home from the ISS.

The splashdown, at about 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) was carried live by a joint NASA-SpaceX webcast.

The Endurance crew, which began its stay in orbit on Nov. 11, consisted of American spaceflight veteran Tom Marshburn, 61, and three first-time astronauts — NASA’s Raja Chari, 44, and Kayla Barron, 34, and their ESA colleague Matthias Maurer, 52.

Camera shots from inside the crew compartment showed the astronauts strapped into their seats, garbed in helmeted white-and-black spacesuits.

It took splashdown-response teams less an hour to reach the capsule bobbing in the water, hoist it onto the deck of a recovery vessel and open the hatch to let the astronauts out for their first breath of fresh air in nearly six months.

The return from orbit followed a fiery re-entry plunge through Earth’s atmosphere generating frictional heat that sent temperatures outside the capsule soaring to 1,930 degrees Celsius.

Two sets of parachutes billowed open above the capsule in the final stage of descent, slowing its fall to about 24 kph before the craft hit the water off the coast of Tampa, Florida.

Applause from the SpaceX flight control center in suburban Los Angeles was heard over the webcast, which showed infrared images of the capsule on its final descent.

The newly returned astronauts were officially designated as NASA’s “Commercial Crew 3,” the third full-fledged, long-duration team of four that SpaceX has flown to the space station under contract for the U.S. space agency.

SpaceX, founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of electric carmaker Tesla Inc. who recently clinched a deal to buy Twitter, supplies the Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules now flying NASA astronauts to orbit from U.S. soil.

The company also controls those flights and handles the splashdown recoveries, while NASA furnishes the crews and launch facilities at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and manages U.S. space station operations.

Microgravity cotton & combustion

California-based SpaceX has launched seven human spaceflights in all over the past two years — five for NASA and two for private ventures — as well as dozens of cargo and satellite payload missions since 2012.

Crew 3 returned to Earth with some 250 kilograms of cargo, including loads of ISS research samples.

Aside from carrying out routine maintenance while in orbit some 400 kilometers above Earth, the astronauts contributed to hundreds of science experiments and technology demonstrations.

Highlights included studies of the genetic expression in cotton cells cultured in space, gaseous flame combustion in microgravity and the DNA sequences of bacteria inside the station. Crew members also tested new robot devices, harvested chili peppers grown in orbit and conducted experiments in space physics and materials science.

Barron and Chari performed a spacewalk to prepare the station for another in a series of new lightweight roll-out solar arrays, to be used eventually on the planned Gateway outpost that will orbit the moon.

Crew 3’s return comes about a week after they welcomed their replacement team, Crew 4, aboard the space station. One of the three Russian cosmonauts also now inhabiting the station, Oleg Artemyev, assumed command of the ISS from Marshburn in a handover before Endurance departed early Thursday.
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With the coronavirus killing an estimated 15 million people worldwide, including nearly 1 million in the United States, the Biden administration, despite a lack of funding for domestic and international pandemic response, is set to mobilize a global effort to end the acute phase of COVID-19.

The move comes as the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 pandemic directly or indirectly caused 14.9 million deaths worldwide from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021.

The U.S. will co-host the second Global COVID-19 Summit on May 12, following the first in September 2021. The virtual summit will mark a shift from a crisis management strategy to the more sustainable approach of building resilient public health systems.

“The virus — after omicron particularly — has shown us that we have to evolve our strategy,” a senior administration official told VOA. The goal, the official said, is to reduce transmission, deaths and hospitalizations rather than eradicate the virus.

The summit will focus on “supporting locally led solutions” toward global goals, which include getting shots into arms, enhancing access to tests and treatments, and generating sustainable financing for future pandemic preparedness.

“We cannot have just one solution, which might fit all of these different situations,” Dr. Thierno Baldé of the World Health Organization’s Africa regional office told VOA. “The reality is to try to understand that, and therefore to have the most appropriate solution constructed commonly, with different countries, with different partners.”

To galvanize international support, the U.S. will co-host the event together with CARICOM (Caribbean Community) chair Belize; Group of Seven president Germany; Group of 20 President Indonesia, and African Union chair Senegal.

No pandemic funding

The U.S., however, will bring no new pledges to the summit table. The administration’s request for $22.5 billion in additional COVID-19 response money, including $5 billion for global pandemic funding, has been stuck for weeks largely because of Republican lawmakers who insist they won’t pass it unless the administration brings back Title 42. The Trump-era order allows authorities at the Mexican border to turn away migrants during a pandemic emergency.

The lack of funding jeopardizes the administration’s global pandemic response, including Global Vax, an international initiative launched in December to turn vaccines into vaccinations in 11 African countries, and which is set to run out of money in September. It could also undermine the administration’s ability to galvanize other countries’ commitments, particularly at an event that has been designed with a “step up to speak up” approach, meaning that countries can secure a speaking role only if they bring either financial pledges or policy commitments to support summit goals.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA the summit would highlight to Congress the need for more funding so that the U.S. “can continue to be the arsenal of vaccines for the world.” She noted that even without the additional funding, the U.S. remains the largest contributor to the global fight against the pandemic.

Lack of global coordination

The first two years of the pandemic were marked by rich countries stockpiling more doses than they needed for boosters and protection against new variants, which threatened supplies to lower-income countries, where vaccination rates were low.

Now, with 2 billion doses of vaccine being produced each month, the problem is not a lack of supply but slowing demand and poor delivery capacity — problems that activists argue also stem from lack of coordination.

“If we’d had a coordinated global plan to end the pandemic, we wouldn’t now be in the situation where there’s quite a lot of vaccine doses but not enough money to actually distribute them in countries that need them,” Tom Hart told VOA. Hart is president of the ONE Campaign, an advocacy organization that fights preventable disease.

Beyond vaccines, the summit will also seek to improve access to testing and treatment, including by scaling up production and diversifying local and regional manufacturing capacity. Current efforts to achieve that include technology transfer agreements and the so-called TRIPS (Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver proposal by South Africa and India at the World Trade Organization that called for intellectual property waivers on COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics. While the proposal is supported by more than 100 member countries, negotiations have been gridlocked for months.

Test to treat

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has recently rolled out a national “test to treat” program that tests people for COVID-19 and immediately treats them with the Pfizer antiviral drug Paxlovid if results are positive. It now aims to introduce similar pilot projects in other countries.

“The exact model may be different because the health systems are different,” the administration official said, noting that additional hurdles need to be addressed, including securing supplies of the generic drugs nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, which make up Paxlovid — a drug that is prohibitively expensive for lower- to middle-income countries.

Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, told VOA that it would be up to Pfizer, Merck and other companies that already have antivirals on the market to work with countries and existing multilateral systems to get these “test to treat” pilot projects in place so when the money and the supply ramp up, countries can scale up quickly.

In March, the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed organization, signed agreements with 35 manufacturers in 12 countries to produce nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, but these are unlikely to be on the market until 2023. Udayakumar said the U.S. was working to make an affordable generic version of Paxlovid available within several months.

The Global COVID-19 Summit aims to secure pledges to help close the gap of about $15 billion in funding that the WHO says the world needs. While those pledges will be made, advocates are pessimistic.

“It’s not clear whether that’s being coordinated, whether one country or one region will have more than it needs and another region will go without,” Hart said. “That’s the problem with no coordination and no global plan.”
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There is renewed interest nuclear energy in Europe driven in part by climate goals but also the war in Ukraine – especially as the European Union moves to cut all energy ties with Russia. But tapping nuclear power remains expensive, time consuming and deeply controversial. For VOA, Lisa Bryant takes a look at the debate from Paris. Camera: Lisa Bryant
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It took two trips over state lines, navigating icy roads and a patchwork of state laws, for a 32-year-old South Dakota woman to get abortion pills last year.

For abortion-seekers like her, such journeys, along with pills sent through the mail, will grow in importance if the Supreme Court follows through with its leaked draft opinion that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and allow individual states to ban the procedure.

The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was concerned for her family’s safety, said the abortion pills allowed her to end an unexpected and high-risk pregnancy and remain devoted to her two children.

But anti-abortion activists and politicians say those cross-border trips, remote doctors’ consultations and pill deliveries are what they will try to stop next.

“Medication abortion will be where access to abortion is decided,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at Florida State University College of Law who specializes in reproductive rights. “That’s going to be the battleground that decides how enforceable abortion bans are.”

Use of abortion pills has been rising in the U.S. since 2000 when the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone — the main drug used in medication abortions. More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills, rather than surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

Two drugs are required. The first, mifepristone, blocks a hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. A second drug, misoprostol, taken one to two days later, empties the uterus. Both drugs are available as generics and are also used to treat other conditions.

The FDA last year lifted a long-standing requirement that women pick up abortion pills in person. Federal regulations now also allow mail delivery nationwide. Even so, 19 states have passed laws requiring a medical clinician to be physically present when abortion pills are administered to a patient.

South Dakota is among them, joining several states, including Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee and Oklahoma, where Republicans have moved to further restrict access to abortion pills in recent months.

Those moves have spurred online services that offer information on getting abortion pills and consultations to get a prescription. After the woman in South Dakota found that the state’s only abortion clinic could not schedule her in time for a medication abortion, she found an online service, called Just The Pill, that advised her to drive to Minnesota for a phone consultation with a doctor. A week later, she came back to Minnesota for the pills.

She took the first one almost immediately in her car, then cried as she drove home.

“I felt like I lost a pregnancy,” she said. “I love my husband and I love my children and I knew exactly what I had to say goodbye to and that was a really horrible thing to have to do.”

Besides crossing state lines, women can also turn to international online pharmacies, said Greer Donley, a professor specializing in reproductive health care at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. Some women also are having prescribed pills forwarded through states without restrictions.

“It allows for someone to have an abortion without a direct role of a provider. It’s going to be much harder for states to control abortion access,” she said, adding, “The question is how is it going to be enforced?”

Abortion law experts say it’s an unsettled question whether states can restrict access to abortion pills in the wake of the FDA’s decision.

“The general rule is that federal law preempts conflicting state law,” said Laura Hermer, a professor at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. “There is no question that the FDA has proper authority to regulate the drugs used in medication abortions. The question is whether a state can make a viable, winning argument that, for public health purposes, it needs to further regulate access to the relevant medications.”

Hermer said she doesn’t think there is a valid public health reason because the published evidence is that the drugs are “exceptionally safe.” But if the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade and a state gives embryos and fetuses full rights as people “then all bets would be off.”

The Planned Parenthood regional organization that includes South Dakota doesn’t believe it can legally mail abortion pills to patients there.

Telemedicine providers have to abide by the laws of the state where the patient is, said Dr. Sarah Traxler, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood North Central States in St. Paul. She acknowledged that some organizations disagree.

“But,” she added, “we don’t feel like we have liberty to mail pills from Minnesota to other places in the country where it’s illegal to provide medication abortion.”

Sue Leibel, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony List, a prominent organization opposed to abortion, acknowledged that medication abortions have “crept up” on Republican state lawmakers.

“This is a new frontier and states are grappling with enforcement mechanisms,” she said, adding, “The advice that I always give — if you shut the front door, the pills are going to come in the back door.”

Leibel maintained women should not be prosecuted for seeking abortions, keeping with a long-standing principle of many abortion opponents. She suggested the next target for state enforcement should be the pharmacies, organizations and clinics that provide the abortion pills. She also said abortion-rights opponents should focus on electing a presidential candidate who would work to reverse the FDA’s decision.

The FDA said a scientific review supported broadening access to the drugs and found complications were rare. The agency has reported 26 deaths associated with the drug since 2000, though not all of those can be directly attributed to the medication because of existing health conditions and other factors.

However, with new legal battles on the horizon and abortion seekers going to greater lengths to obtain the procedure, Donley, the law school professor, worried that state lawmakers will turn their attention toward the women who get the pills.

Indeed, a Louisiana House committee advanced a bill Wednesday that would make abortion a crime of homicide for which a woman ending her pregnancy could be charged, along with anyone helping her.

“Many anti-abortion legislators might realize the only way to enforce these laws is to prosecute the pregnant person themselves,” Donley said. 
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The Global Network, an alliance of humanitarian and developmental agencies, says around 193 million people globally experienced extreme hunger last year, with more than half a million on the brink of famine in Ethiopia, southern Madagascar, South Sudan, and Yemen.

The network, which includes the European Union, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Food Program, is calling for action to tackle the life-threatening crisis.  

Authors of the report warn the crisis is set to worsen this year. They say the key drivers of food insecurity — conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic — are pushing increasing numbers of people into poverty.

The executive director of the World Food Program, David Beasley, calls it a perfect storm. He says whatever progress has been made in feeding the destitute is being lost because of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and now Ukraine. 

“As we look around the world, 276 million people marching towards starvation,” he said. “And now we have got the breadbasket of the world being turned into breadlines. Who would have ever thought that we would see this in our time, our lifetime. Mass migration taking place out of Ukraine. And it is going to devastate the food security situation around the world.” 

He notes Ukraine and Russia together produce 30 percent of the world’s wheat, 20 percent of the world’s maize, and up to 80 percent of sunflower seed oil. He says those supplies are not moving out of Ukraine because Russia has blockaded Black Sea ports. 

“If we do not get ahead of this thing, we will have not just famine in multiple countries around the world because, you know, we got additional droughts and all types of issues. But you will have destabilization of some nations and you will have mass migration by necessity. And no one wants that,” Beasley said. 

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell warns the global food crisis threatens child survival and development. 

“By stark contrast, inadequate nutrition is the leading cause of child mortality,” she said. “In fact, nearly half of all deaths of children under five are attributable to undernutrition. … We now estimate that by the end of 2021, 50 million children were suffering from wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition. We expect this number is now higher.” 

The Global Network is calling for coordinated, collective action to address the food and nutrition crisis. It says emergency funding is needed now to pull starving people back from the brink, and longer-term action is crucial to create more sustainable agri-food systems. 

 
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South African health officials are urging COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Aspen to keep its plant in the Eastern Cape province open. This follows a Reuters article quoting Aspen’s senior director saying they may have to shut down as there have been no orders for their rebranded COVID vaccine.

A South African-owned subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Aspen struck a deal with American company Johnson & Johnson in March to package, price, sell and distribute its vaccine in Africa.

This vaccine was rebranded as Aspenovax.

The move was hailed by many as there had been much concern about Africa’s reliance on imported vaccines which were often costly and at times in short supply.

But there have been no orders for Aspenovax.  South Africa’s National Health Department Spokesperson Foster Mohale said the lack of orders is due to low vaccination rates not only at home, but globally.

“Vaccine hesitancy is one of the factors which contribute to these low vaccination rates or demand for more vaccines which also affect the production. Because obviously we understand that they are in a business, they can’t keep on producing vaccines when they know that the demand for vaccines is very low. So, we understand the situation where they are, and we sympathize with them,” he said.

Mohale said for now, South Africa has enough vaccines. He adds that in March, 100,000 vaccines expired. And more are due to expire in June and July.

However, he said that Aspen’s vaccine plant is important because no one knows what the future holds.

“We will try to engage them not to rush their decision precisely because we anticipate especially our scientists, our epidemiologists, we anticipate that the fifth wave might hit the country, South Africa, during the winter season which is a few weeks away from now. As you can see the number of daily COVID-19 patients has been rising for the past seven days,” he said.

Professor Petro Terblanche, who is the managing director of South African company, Afrigen, which in a continent-first made an mRNA COVID vaccine using Moderna’s data — said the situation at Aspen is a tragedy for the industry.

“This is just indicating again how important it is that this continent looks at policy reform. This is about how are we going to make sure that we give preferential procurement to local companies. How are we going to make sure that we create a marketplace and eco-system that will absorb local capacity? Otherwise, we will not have capacity locally in a sustainable manner and we’re going to get the next pandemic and we will be unprepared, and we will not have health security,” said Terblanche.

She believes money should also be put into educating people on the importance of vaccines.

“We need to ensure that we also put effort into advocacy for vaccination. Because we now have 17% of the continent that is vaccinated. We need to get them to at least 40% to ensure that we fully arrest this pandemic,” she said.

Mohale was unable to say when the Health Department would be meeting with Aspen’s executives.
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A body inside a barrel was found over the weekend on the the newly exposed bottom of Nevada’s Lake Mead as drought depletes one of the largest U.S. reservoirs. Officials say the discovery could be the first of more grim finds. 

“There is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS-TV on Monday. 

The lake’s level has dropped so much that the uppermost water intake at drought-stricken Lake Mead became visible last week. The reservoir on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam has become so depleted that Las Vegas is now pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead, which also stretches into Arizona. 

Personal items found inside the barrel indicated the person died more than 40 years ago in the 1980s, Spencer said. 

He declined to discuss a cause of death and declined to describe the items found, saying the investigation is ongoing. 

Police plan to reach out to experts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to analyze when the barrel started eroding. The Clark County coroner’s office will try to determine the person’s identity. 

Boaters spotted the barrel Sunday afternoon. National Park Service rangers searched an area near the lake’s Hemenway Harbor and found the barrel containing skeletal remains. 

Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico. 
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Health officials are still trying to identify the cause of cases of acute and severe hepatitis that have infected scores of children in 16 countries, mainly in Europe.

Over 170 cases of acute severe hepatitis in children aged between 1 month and 16 years have been reported from 16 countries, 12 in Europe.  Most cases have been found in Britain.  Other infections have been reported from the United States, Canada, Israel, and Japan.

The World Health Organization reports 17 children have required liver transplantation and one child has died.  Hepatitis in children sometimes can lead to chronic liver disease and liver failure.

Philippa Easterbrook is a scientist at the WHO’s program of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections.  She said the origin of these infections in children remains unknown.  She said investigations have shown that none of the children have the common viral causes of hepatitis A, B, C or E.

“The questionnaires have not identified any common exposure—be it to a toxin or a particular food and no strong travel history.  And importantly, very few of the children have received COVID vaccinations.  So, there does not appear to be a link with COVID vaccine,” she said.

Easterbrook says one line of inquiry is to see whether there is a possible link to adenovirus.  This is a common infection in children, which can cause respiratory illness, gastroenteritis, conjunctivitis and bladder infection.

She said a few cases of unexplained hepatitis in children occur every year in most countries.  She said scientists are trying to ascertain whether the current apparent infection rate is truly unusually high or just a result of better reporting.

“The suggestions are there is a clear significant increase above that background rate in several of the countries that have been able to report this data with some confidence.  But that is what we are trying to establish in the various countries now that we are working with to investigate those cases and establish whether this is the case,” said Easterbrook.

The WHO says toxicology, immunology, and other studies will continue in hospitals.   It notes the likelihood that more cases will be detected before the cause of this infection can be confirmed and before more control and prevention measures can be taken. 
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Many Chinese are marking a quiet May Day holiday this year as the government’s zero-COVID approach restricts travel and enforces lockdowns in multiple cities.

All restaurants in Beijing are closed to dine-in customers from Sunday through the end of the holiday on Wednesday, open only for takeout and delivery. Parks and tourist attractions in the Chinese capital are limited to 50% of their capacity. The Universal Studios theme park in Beijing, which opened last year, said it had shut down temporarily.

The pandemic situation varies across the vast nation of 1.4 billion people, but the Transport Ministry said last week that it expected 100 million trips to be taken from Saturday to Wednesday, which would be down 60% from last year. Many of those who are traveling are staying within their province as local governments discourage or restrict cross-border travel to try to keep out new infections.

China is sticking to a strict zero-COVID policy even as many other countries are easing restrictions and seeing if they can live with the virus. Much of Shanghai — China’s largest city and a finance, manufacturing and shipping hub — remains locked down, disrupting people’s lives and dealing a blow to the economy.

The major outbreak in Shanghai, where the death toll has topped 400, appears to be easing. The city recorded 7,872 new locally transmitted cases on Saturday, down from more than 20,000 a day in recent weeks. Outside of Shanghai, only 384 new cases were found in the rest of mainland China.

Beijing, which has tallied 321 cases in the past nine days, is restricting activity to try to prevent a large outbreak and avoid a city-wide lockdown similar to Shanghai. Individual buildings and housing complexes with coronavirus cases have been locked down. Visitors to many office buildings and tourist sites such as the Great Wall must show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within the previous 48 hours.

Online booking agency Ctrip said last week that people were booking travel to cities that were mostly virus-free, such as Chengdu in Sichuan province and the nearby city of Chongqing. Other popular destinations included Wuhan, where the world’s first major outbreak of COVID-19 occurred in early 2020. About half the orders on the Ctrip platform were for travel within a province.
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