The World Health Organization says a new coronavirus variant recently detected in France is nothing to be concerned about right now.

Scientists at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Foundation in the city of Marseille say they discovered the new B.1.640.2 variant in December in 12 patients living near Marseille, with the first patient testing positive after traveling to the central African nation of Cameroon.

The researchers said they have identified 46 mutations in the new variant, which they labeled “IHU” after the institute, that could make it more resistant to vaccines and more infectious than the original coronavirus.  The French team revealed the findings of a study in the online health sciences outlet medRxiv, which publishes studies that have not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.

Abdi Mahmud, a COVID-19 incident manager with the World Health Organization, told reporters in Geneva earlier this week that, while the IHU variant is “on our radar,” it remains confined in Marseille and has not been labeled a “variant of concern” by the U.N. health agency.

Meanwhile, an international team of health care advocates and experts is calling for 22 billion doses of mRNA vaccine to be administered around the world this year to stop the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant.  The team is urging the production of an additional 15 billion doses of mRNA vaccine, more than double the projected 7 billion doses.

The report says mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna have demonstrated the best protection against several variants by providing cross-immunity through so-called T-cells, an arm of the human immune system that kills virus-infected cells and keeps them from replicating and spreading.

The report was a collaboration among scientists at Harvard Medical School, Columbia University, New York University and the University of Saskatchewan and the advocacy groups PrEP4All and Partners in Health.
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World tennis No.1 Novak Djokovic has had his visa canceled by Australian authorities and is facing deportation. He had received a COVID-19 vaccination exemption to defend his title at the Australian Open but has reportedly failed to provide proper evidence to border officials.

The Serbian is the defending Australian Open champion, and a nine-time winner of the event, but the government said Thursday he’s no longer welcome.

He was detained at Melbourne airport Wednesday for several hours before border force officials announced that he had not met immigration regulations and would be deported.

Djokovic’s father had claimed his son was being held “captive.”

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic said he was a victim of “harassment.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is standing firm, though.

“On the issue of Mr. Djokovic, rules are rules and there are no special cases,” Morrison said. “That is the policy of the government, and it has been our government’s strong border protection policies and particularly in relation to the pandemic that has ensured that Australia has had one of the lowest death rates from COVID anywhere in the world. Entry with a visa requires double vaccination or a medical exemption. I am advised that such an exemption was not in place and as a result he is subject to the same rule as anyone else.”

With his visa revoked, Djokovic is now an “unlawful non-citizen” in Australia and is being held in immigration detention, where his movements are restricted after he was driven from Melbourne airport by government officials. It is also unclear whether Djokovic is allowed to communicate with his advisers, which is standard practice according to Australian law.

His lawyers are challenging the deportation order in Australia’s Federal Circuit Court.

The 34-year-old tennis star has not publicly confirmed his COVID-19 vaccination status.

He flew to Australia after being granted a controversial medical exemption. Tennis authorities said he had not received any special treatment, but many Australians, who have lived under some of the world’s toughest coronavirus restrictions, believed Djokovic had abused the system.

Australia’s states and territories Thursday reported more than 70,000 new COVID-19 cases. A total of 612,000 infections have been diagnosed in Australia since the pandemic began, according to official figures, 2,289 people have died.

More than 90% of the eligible population have been fully vaccinated.

To curb the spread of the virus, the Northern Territory imposed lockdown restrictions Thursday on unvaccinated residents, who must adhere to stay-home orders until next Monday. 

 
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Omicron may not cause as much lung damage as the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus, according to new lab studies.

That, plus vaccination, may help explain why patients with omicron are not being hospitalized or dying as often as patients infected with previous variants.

But omicron is still killing an average of 1,200 people each day in the United States, about equal to the peak of the second COVID-19 wave in July and August of 2020.

“If it’s milder compared to delta; delta was horrible,” said Joe Grove, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. “This has not necessarily just turned into the common cold all of a sudden. It is still something that we should be concerned about.”

Plus, experts caution, omicron’s ferocious infectiousness means the less virulent virus can still do a lot of damage, especially among the unvaccinated who are elderly or have preexisting conditions.

Lighter on the lungs

A set of new studies in lab animals and petri dishes found that omicron did not infect lung tissue as much as previous variants. And it didn’t cause as much damage or inflammation when it did.

Omicron had no problem infecting tissues in the nose and throat. A preference for the upper airway might help explain why omicron is so infectious, Grove said.

“It’s going to be more easily coughed or sneezed out and spread more easily,” Grove said. “But I am speculating here.”

The lab results are promising, but what happens in lab animals doesn’t always translate to people, Dr. Mike Diamond, an infectious diseases professor at Washington University School of Medicine, cautioned.

“You might say, ‘Well, maybe it’s less severe,'” he said. “But we don’t fully even know that it’s less severe in humans yet.”

Doctors in South Africa said that omicron patients had not been not as sick when the variant swept through that country. Health officials in the United Kingdom reported similar observations.

But it’s not clear if those cases were milder because of the virus or because people were less susceptible.

“In the U.K. there was a very high vaccination rate,” Diamond noted. “And then in South Africa, a lot of people got infected in the first wave, so they’re naturally immune.”

Some encouraging signs are starting to come in. According to an early study in Ontario, Canada, unvaccinated people infected with omicron were 60% less likely to be hospitalized or die than those infected with delta.

Experts warn, however, that the risk of severe disease may be lower, but the odds of catching omicron are higher. The huge number of people infected cancels out the advantage of the milder virus.

Unvaccinated and hospitalized

That’s why hospitals in parts of the United States are filling up again.

In this wave, most hospitalized patients are unvaccinated, by an overwhelming margin.

In New York City, for example, where COVID-19 is spiking again, unvaccinated patients are being hospitalized at a rate 30 times that of vaccinated patients.

The highest rates of hospitalization are among those over 65.

Even if omicron is milder, “it seems to be still doing quite a bit of damage in unvaccinated people,” said University of Texas Medical Branch virologist Vineet Menachery.

“The good news is that there does seem to be a trend that this virus is less severe than previous waves, especially if you’re vaccinated,” he said. For those who got their shots, “the threat of severe disease is probably off the table for most people.”

“On the other hand, for people who are not vaccinated, I think the threat is just as big as it was in March of 2020,” Menachery added. 
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Influential government advisers are strongly urging that teens as young as 12 get COVID-19 boosters as soon as they’re eligible, a key move as the U.S. battles the omicron surge and schools struggle with how to restart classes amid the spike. 

All Americans 16 and older are encouraged to get a booster, which health authorities say offers the best chance at avoiding the highly contagious omicron variant. Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration authorized an extra Pfizer shot for kids ages 12 to 15, as well — but that wasn’t the final hurdle. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes recommendations for vaccinations and on Wednesday, its advisers voted that a booster was safe for the younger teens and should be offered to them once enough time — five months — has passed since their last shot. And while the CDC last month opened boosters as an option for 16- and 17-year-olds, the panel said that recommendation should be strengthened to say they “should” get the extra dose. 

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky will weigh the panel’s advice before making a final decision soon. 

Vaccines still offer strong protection against serious illness from any type of COVID-19, including the highly contagious omicron variant, especially after a booster. But omicron can slip past a layer of the vaccines’ protection to cause breakthrough infections.

Studies show a booster dose at least temporarily revs up virus-fighting antibodies to levels that offer the best chance at avoiding symptomatic infection, even from omicron.

Fending off even a mild infection is harder for vaccines to do than protecting against serious illness, so giving teens a booster for that temporary jump in protection is like playing whack-a-mole, cautioned Dr. Sarah Long of Drexel University. But she said the extra shot was worth it given how hugely contagious the omicron mutant is, and how many kids are catching it. 

More important, if a child with a mild infection spreads it to a more vulnerable parent or grandparent who then dies, the impact “is absolutely crushing,” said Dr. Camille Kotton of Massachusetts General Hospital. 

“Let’s whack this one down,” agreed Dr. Jamie Loehr of Cayuga Family Medicine in Ithaca, New York. 

The vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech is the only option for American children of any age. About 13.5 million children ages 12 to 17 have received two Pfizer shots, according to the CDC. Boosters were opened to the 16- and 17-year-olds last month. 

The CDC’s advisers were swayed by real-world U.S. data showing that symptomatic COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are between seven and 11 times higher in unvaccinated adolescents than vaccinated ones. 

If the CDC agrees, about 5 million of the younger teens, those 12 to 15, would be eligible for a booster right away because they got their last shot at least five months ago.

New U.S. guidelines say anyone who received two Pfizer vaccinations and is eligible for a booster can get it five months after their last shot, rather than the six months previously recommended. 

Children tend to suffer less serious illness from COVID-19 than adults. But child hospitalizations are rising during the omicron wave — the vast majority of them unvaccinated. 

During the public comment part of Wednesday’s meeting, Dr. Julie Boom of Texas Children’s Hospital said a booster recommendation for younger teens “cannot come soon enough.” 

The chief safety question for adolescents is a rare side effect called myocarditis, a type of heart inflammation seen mostly in younger men and teen boys who get either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. The vast majority of cases are mild — far milder than the heart inflammation COVID-19 can cause — and they seem to peak in older teens, those 16 and 17. 

The FDA decided a booster dose was as safe for the younger teens as the older ones based largely on data from 6,300 12- to 15-year-olds in Israel who got a Pfizer booster five months after their second dose. Israeli officials said Wednesday that they’ve seen two cases of mild myocarditis in this age group after giving more boosters, 40,000. 

Earlier this week, FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks said the side effect occurs in about 1 in 10,000 men and boys ages 16 to 30 after their second shot. But he said a third dose appears less risky, by about a third, probably because more time has passed before the booster than between the first two shots. 

 
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Exactly two years after the World Health Organization issued an alert about “a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause” in the central Chinese city of Wuhan that evolved into the global COVID-19 pandemic, the world is now struggling under the weight of the fast-moving omicron variant of the coronavirus that sparked the disease. 

In Brazil, a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by the omicron variant has prompted authorities in Rio de Janeiro to cancel its iconic Carnival street festival for the second consecutive year. 

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes announced the cancellation Tuesday during a speech carried live online. Paes said the “nature” and “democratic aspect” of Carnival makes it impossible to control the potential spread of the virus. 

But Paes said the traditional procession of Rio’s samba schools into the city’s Sambadrome stadium will take place next month, as authorities will impose mitigation efforts to inhibit the spread of the virus among spectators.

In Hong Kong, chief executive Carrie Lam on Wednesday announced a two-week ban on flights from eight nations to blunt a possible fifth wave of COVID-19 infections driven by omicron. The ban on incoming flights from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United States takes effect Sunday.

Authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese financial hub are keeping about 2,500 passengers of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship on board the vessel after discovering that nine passengers were close contacts of an omicron cluster in the city. The Spectrum of the Seas returned to Hong Kong on Wednesday, just days after leaving on a short cruise. The nine passengers were taken off the ship and placed in a quarantine center, where they have all tested negative. The remaining passengers and the ship’s 1,200 crew will have to undergo testing before they are allowed to disembark.

Italy has also imposed new measures to battle the virus, announcing Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccination will be mandatory, effective immediately, for people 50 and over. This requirement will remain in place until June 15, according to Reuters.

Overwhelmed by a new wave of coronavirus infections, Italy is one of the few European countries to announce such a measure. 

Since February 2020, when the pandemic began in Italy, the country has reported 138,000 deaths from the virus, the second highest death toll in Europe after Britain.

CDC statements

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has added the Caribbean island nation of Aruba on its list of destinations considered as “very high” risk of exposure to COVID-19. The CDC designates as “Level 4” any destination with more than 500 cases per 100,000 residents over the past 28 days.

The CDC issued a statement Tuesday on its controversial new guidelines for people who have been infected with COVID-19. The federal agency came under fire last week when it cut the amount of time infected Americans should quarantine from 10 days to five as long as they have no symptoms, while also stating that testing was not necessary after that five-day period.

Independent health experts urged the CDC to revise the guidelines to include a recommendation to seek testing after the five-day isolation periods amid the ever-growing omicron outbreak. But the agency instead issued documents supporting its new recommendations, while saying at-home rapid tests are not a reliable indication that a person is no longer contagious.

The CDC is recommending that people wear face masks everywhere for five days after emerging from isolation.

U.S. numbers

The U.S. has also reached a record single-day number of COVID-19 cases, with more than 1 million infections reported on Monday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The record high comes as the country continues to battle the omicron variant, resulting in rapid infection across the country on the heels of the holiday season.

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci warned Wednesday that Americans could not be complacent about the virus’ spread, saying that while the omicron variant is less severe, it may still overwhelm the country’s health system.

“[Omicron] could still stress our hospital system because a certain proportion of a large volume of cases, no matter what, are going to be severe,” Fauci told reporters during a White House briefing. 

According to Reuters, hospitalizations of COVID patients have risen by 45% in the past seven days and remain at over 111,000, a rate the country has not seen since January 2021.

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

The Inside Story: Crossing the Frontier

Episode 21 – January 6, 2022

 

Show Open Graphics:

 

Voice of KANE FARABAUGH, VOA Correspondent:

 

All Systems go, Falcon 9 Blasts off into space.

With high expectations, changing the trajectory of U.S. space exploration.

And signaling a new era in the aerospace industry.

 

 

 

Kelly DeFazio, Lockheed Martin Orion Site Director:

 

We’re going to take humans farther then we’ve ever gone before.

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

A return to the moon. More trips to Mars. And increased competition from China.

 

 

 

Rocky Kolb, Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor:

 

China is gaining rapidly on the U.S.

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

 

On The Inside Story: Crossing the Frontier.

 

 

The Inside Story:

 

 

Unidentified launch announcer:

 

Ok and here we go. 10. 9. 8. 7.6.5.4.3.2.1. Ignition!  And liftoff! Liftoff of Falcon 9 and IXPE. A new set of x-ray eyes to view the mysteries of our skies!

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

 

Hi, I’m Kane Farabaugh reporting from Cape Canaveral, Florida, where launches again are becoming a more frequent occurrence, thanks to the commercialization of space transportation in recent years, and a new initiative by NASA to return astronauts to the moon and eventually get them to Mars.

It’s a dramatic turnaround from just a decade ago at the end of the Space Shuttle program, when the industry here in Florida realized it needed to diversify to be competitive nationally and globally.

 

 

 

Dale Ketcham, Vice President, Space Florida:

 

I wasn’t born here but I moved here and learned how to walk on Cocoa Beach three years before NASA was created.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Not only has Dale Ketchum grown up with the U.S. space program, he’s watched it transform the economies of communities surrounding NASA’s Kennedy Space Center several times since the 1950s.

 

 

Dale Ketcham, Space Florida Vice President:

 

The space program continued to progress, but it was always government focused.

 

 

Brian Baluta, Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast:

 

For 50 years roughly, Florida’s Space Coast was the place for launch.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Launch… but not production.  Most of the equipment used in the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs over those years was shipped to Florida for assembly.  When Atlantis touched down in 2011 on the final shuttle mission, it marked the end of an era in human spaceflight.  As launches decreased, the Space Coast’s economy suffered. 

 

 

 

Brian Baluta, Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast:

 

The job losses started to pile up and that happened to coincide with the Great Recession.  So it was really a one two punch for this area. In 2011, unemployment was 12 percent at that point. The economy and its outlook were not strong.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Brian Baluta, Vice President of the Economic Development Commission, or EDC of Florida’s Space Coast says that’s when his organization offered a concept that could change the fortunes of the area’s workforce –permanently. 

 

 

Brian Baluta, Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast:

 

And it started with taking the unusual step of reaching out to the companies who were likely to produce the successor to the Space Shuttle.  At the time it was called the Crew Exploration Vehicle and there wasn’t a contract for it yet.  But we reached out to Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman and Boeing – the companies that would likely compete and win for that contract, and we made the unusual pitch of – if you win the contract not only should you consider launching from Cape Canaveral, but you should consider assembling your spacecraft here.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

The concept took off.

 

 

Kelly DeFazio, Lockheed Martin Orion Site Director:

 

Just like diversifying a portfolio, if you diversify the area and your products you can ride through those lows.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Lockheed Martin won the contract to create NASA’s next generation spacecraft transporting humans back to the moon.  The Crew Exploration Vehicle, now called “Orion,” will be the capsule of the upcoming Artemis missions.  Some of Orion’s components are pieced together at Lockheed’s new Star Center near Titusville, Florida, which is a former home of Space Camp and the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

 

Kelly DeFazio, Lockheed Martin Orion Site Director:

 

The contractors and the government support teams are investing in the community. This particular center here was an 18 month, $20-million investment by Lockheed Martin and that is helping to expand the manufacturing footprint for the Space Coast and allowing us to be able to increase throughput over time as we rate and support our mission.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Kelly DeFazio is also a longtime resident of Florida’s Space Coast.  She now oversees the work at Lockheed Martin’s Star Center which includes creating wiring harnesses…

 

 

 

Unidentified technician:

 

This is basically the nervous system, so to speak, over the capsule.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

 

…and the application of thermal tiles that will protect the Orion capsule.

 

 

 

Unidentified technician:

 

The panel that covers the side hatch so the hatch would be basically where the while foam is.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

 

DeFazio says excitement is building.

 

 

Kelly DeFazio, Lockheed Martin Orion Site Director:

 

I think that it will start to become very clear with the launch of Artemis 1  that there is a difference, and you know what, we’re going to take humans farther than they have ever gone before.

 

 

Dale Ketcham, Space Florida Vice President:

 

When I was growing up with the original 7 astronauts in Cocoa Beach, it was really a frontier town. People were coming and going rapidly, only staying a little while.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

That Wild West frontier town description is also how Ketcham characterizes the present day Space Coast, with government contractors and private companies both jockeying for real estate and launch access. 

 

 

Dale Ketcham, Space Florida Vice President:

 

With the commercial sector coming, particularly after the retirement of the shuttle program, in many ways we’re going back… the workforce is younger.  Particularly with Space X.  They’re not afraid to fail.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Space X, Blue Origin, and Airbus’s One Web are just a few of the companies with facilities near the rocket launch pads at Kennedy Space Center, thanks in part to the efforts of the EDC and organizations like Space Florida, where Dale Ketchum now serves as Vice President.

 

 

Dale Ketcham, Space Florida Vice President:

 

We just had an announcement this week that there will be a small launch company called Astra coming here to build small rockets for small satellites which is a big new component of the whole space industry. They’re the first small rocket to come here. But we’ve also got Firefly, Relativity, coming, and others will be coming after that.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

The more the merrier says Ketchum.  Not only does it help the local economy, it also keeps the United States competitive globally in what he sees as a new space race.

 

 

Dale Ketcham, Vice President, Space Florida Vice President:

 

The Chinese will put more rockets into orbit than we will because the Chinese are competitive and very smart and very capable very well resourced and very committed, and they are the major competitors in space that will be our major competitor in space for our lifetime.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

 

One of the top generals in the U.S. Space Force says China’s space program has grown at “an incredible pace,” warning they could gain a military advantage over the United States if America does not step up its game.

 

There is hope among many in the U.S. aerospace industry that China’s success will provide the needed impetus for a new space race to advance exploration of the cosmos — perhaps in cooperation and not competition with China.

 

The steady stream of data Edwin Kite reviews from U.S. and Chinese rovers simultaneously exploring the surface of Mars keeps him busy at his University of Chicago laboratory. 

 

 

 

 

Edwin Kite, Planetary Geoscientist:

 

You can quickly go through a loop of making a discovery, forming a hypothesis based on that discovery and sending a new spacecraft to test it.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Gathering information in Kite’s field of study had traditionally been accomplished using telescopes and analyzing meteors and the few moon rocks U.S. astronauts brought to Earth in the 1960s and ’70s.

 

But the new Mars missions are helping Kite and his colleagues obtain a more direct and complete understanding of Mars, thanks to the information the craft and rovers from the different countries have collected throughout the red planet. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edwin Kite, Planetary Geoscientist:

 

We’re at a really early stage of Mars exploration. We’ve only scratched the surface of what there is to discover. We don’t know which country’s investigation is going to stumble over something that unlocks the next stage of exploration.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

During a U.S. House of Representatives appropriations hearing that was conducted remotely, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and former U.S. senator from Florida, signaled alarm at the recent success of the Chinese space program, which he says isn’t confined to the red planet. 

 

 

 

 

Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator:

 

They want to send three big landers to the south pole of the moon… and that’s where the water is. And we are still a year or two away from a much smaller lander going there.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Which is why Nelson is urging lawmakers to support NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to return humans — including the first woman — to the moon, with Mars as an eventual destination. 

 

Nelson says China is on a similar path. 

 

 

 

Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator:

 

I think that’s adding a new element as to whether or not we want to get serious and get a lot of activity going on landing… humans back on the surface of the moon.

 

 

 

 

 

Rocky Kolb, Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor:

 

China is gaining rapidly on the U.S., and the Europeans are also in this space race. 

 

 

 

 

 KANE FARABAUGH:

 

Rocky Kolb, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, believes a new space race could be positive.   

 

Kolb would like to see the U.S. and Chinese space programs collaborate rather than compete. 

 

 

 

 

Rocky Kolb, Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor:

 

So there’s a lot of talent in China that we could make use of, and a lot of resources in China, and they have money to explore space.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

But both Kite and Kolb acknowledge there is a limit to how much cooperation can realistically occur between the United States and China. 

 

 

 

Rocky Kolb, Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor:

 

The technology involved in the peaceful exploration of space can also be transported to military uses.

 

 

 

 

Edwin Kite, Planetary Geoscientist:

 

There are legal barriers to bilateral collaboration between NASA and the Chinese space program. But those don’t apply to non-NASA funded work by academic institutions.

 

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Which is why Kite and Kolb and the scientific community they represent worldwide continue to pore over the tantalizing clues relayed from Mars in order to better understand the origins of our own planet and species — knowledge that Kolb says isn’t confined to national borders. 

 

 

 

 

Rocky Kolb, Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor: 

 

I think it would be great in the future if the U.S. could cooperate with China in the same way that now we cooperate with the European observatories and the European Space Agency.  It adds a lot to the table. So there’s a lot of talent in China that we could make use of, and a lot of resources in China, and they have money to explore space. And I think this is something that mankind should do together. And hopefully in the next few years we’ll have a better relationship in science and we will do it together.

There is only one Mars. It doesn’t belong to the U.S., and it doesn’t belong to China.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

The future of space travel looks promising with private investment fueling this phase of space exploration. According to a 2020 report by Space Capital, 8.9 billion dollars was invested in space companies through private financing.

 

Elon Musk and his aerospace company, Space X, are the leaders in NASA’s “Gateway to Mars” effort.

And the billionaire’s vision of constructing a spaceport in a town best known for its battlefield is receiving mixed reviews from those who live there.

 

From Boca Chica at the tip of Texas, here’s VOA’s Elizabeth Lee:

 

 

ELIZABETH LEE, VOA Correspondent:

At the southern tip of Texas called Boca Chica, along Texas Highway 4, you’ll see the historical site of the last battle of the American Civil War – and a few more minutes down the road there is another history making view – a spaceport that is the beginning of what could be interplanetary travel.

 

SpaceX has been building and testing prototypes for its next generation rocket called Starship, to one day, fly humans to the moon and Mars.

 

 

 

 

 

David Santilena, Rocket Ranch Boca Chica Owner:

 

People are going to want to come down and they’re going to want to see this, this crazy pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

 

 

 

ELIZABETH LEE:

 

David Santilena is an airline pilot who has not been flying because of the pandemic. When SpaceX picked South Texas as the site of a spaceport for Starship, Santilena saw an opportunity.

David Santilena, Rocket Ranch Boca Chica Owner:

 

You know what? You only live once, so I bought it and then it was a tremendous amount of work but it’s really coming along.

 

 

 

ELIZABETH LEE:

 

He purchased land near SpaceX’s future spaceport and started building to make it a destination for space lovers to watch launches – with campsites and trailers for rent.

 

 

 

David Santilena, Rocket Ranch Boca Chica Owner:

 

If it lands, it’s going to be amazing. If it crashes, it’s going to be amazing.  Either way, I’m going to be there watching.

 

 

 

ELIZABETH LEE:

 

Residents have seen successes and failures, such as this high-altitude flight test that met a spectacular end.

 

SpaceX founder Elon Musk congratulated his team on social media saying, “we got all the data we needed.”

 

Musk describes South Texas as the gateway to Mars. He says he is highly confident humans can land on the Red Planet in six years. 

 

Since SpaceX broke ground in 2014 in South Texas, it’s been building and conducting tests for a working Starship, a rapidly reusable rocket that aims to make interplanetary space travel like air travel. The site has brought jobs to this area.

 

But progress comes at a price. Some residents who live in the village near the new spaceport say they’ve had to sell their homes to SpaceX at prices they wished were higher. In their place, SpaceX employees have moved in.

 

 

 

 

Maria Pointer, Former Boca Chica Area Resident:

 

We had a home that SpaceX needed, and that home was right in the middle of the compound for the production shipyard. We had no way to get away from the construction.

 

ELIZABETH LEE:

 

Maria Pointer negotiated with SpaceX and moved out in March, and SpaceX employees quickly moved in.

 

 

 

Maria Pointer, Former Boca Chica Area Resident:

 

I had to make lemonade out of lemons. I was not going to just take this lying down and say, ‘Oh woe is me they’re going to take everything I have.’ No, no I’m going to reinvent the Pointers so that we have fun.

 

 

 

ELIZABETH LEE:

 

The experience has been bittersweet for her.  From her new home, she’s enjoyed watching the development of the rocket prototypes and writing about it. But she wishes SpaceX could have picked a different location so her life wouldn’t be uprooted and the wildlife in the area stays preserved. 

 

Pointer will continue to write about SpaceX on social media for her followers, just as Santilena will share future launches with anyone who decides to stop by Rocket Ranch.

 

Elizabeth Lee, VOA News.

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

2021 was a historic year for all-things space – from the success of private spaceflight companies to robots exploring Mars in a road trip for the ages.

 

VOA’s Arash Arabasadi beams us through the Year in Space:

 

 

 

ARASH ARABASADI, VOA Correspondent:

This year, the world witnessed space history not once, not twice, but three times as the private spaceflight companies Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX successfully launched their space tourism businesses.

 

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic became the first to reach the space boundary – in early July…

While Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, flew a few days later and a bit higher on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

 

Among the passengers was pilot Wally Funk, who at the time became the oldest person in space at age 82.

 

But, just a few months later, 90-year-old actor William Shatner, claimed that title when he also rode aboard Blue Origin. Shatner made famous the role of Captain James T. Kirk on the iconic 1960s TV show, “Star Trek.”  

 

 

Misty Snopkowski, NASA:

 

If you take a step back and look at 2021, it’s been a really amazing year.  I think that, at this point, we’re kind of experiencing a renaissance in human spaceflight.

 

 

ARASH ARABASADI:

NASA’s Misty Snopkowski tells VOA SpaceX’s fundraiser flight for St. Jude Children’s Hospital – may have been the most significant of the year.

 

 

 

Misty Snopkowski, NASA:

 

Because Inspiration 4 was successful, I think that’s going to stimulate more activities in low-Earth orbit and really enable more people to go into space.

 

 

 

 

ARASH ARABASADI:

The entire mission was bankrolled by a billionaire on board the flight.

 

 

 

Greg Autry, Thunderbird School of Global Management:

 

Now, the private investment into space is bigger than the NASA budget. The private industry is putting more money into space than the government is into space, so this is definitely, in my opinion, the inflection point for the industry.

 

 

ARASH ARABASADI:

Autry says reusable hardware makes going into space cost-efficient and more eco-friendly than single-use rockets. But he adds that it probably won’t be us making those first trips.

Greg Autry, Thunderbird School of Global Management:

 

I think before you see people, though, you’ll probably see cargo.  So, you’ll see sushi coming from Tokyo to London in an hour. That’s crazy, but I know there are crazy people who will pay for that.

 

 

 

 

ARASH ARABASADI:

In other news this year, NASA landed on Mars.  The Perseverance rover – or Percy for short – and its travel buddy, the Ingenuity helicopter, began a quest for signs of ancient life.  The flight took about seven months before a dramatic landing on the Martian surface.

 

That’s all fine, says Autry, but he says the focus should be closer to home.

 

 

Greg Autry, Thunderbird School of Global Management:

 

We could run onto Mars, we could spend a lot of public money, we could stick that flag there, and bring back a soil sample and maybe discover life. But it wouldn’t have actually done anything for people on Earth, right?”

 

 

 

ARASH ARABASADI:

What would do something for people on Earth, he says, is eventually moving mining and manufacturing industries off the planet and onto the moon.

 

But before that happens, NASA plans to launch its Artemis (one) mission next February.  It is the first of three missions with the end goal of landing the first woman and next man on the moon by 2025.

NASA’s Snopkowski tells VOA future moon-missions will include a public-private partnership that will drive down costs for the space agency.

 

 

 

 

Misty Snopkowski, NASA:

 

One of NASA’s goals is to be just one of many customers, right, in this commercial space strategy that we’ve laid out.  And so, in that goal, NASA would be only purchasing what they need as far as goods and services go.

 

 

 

 

ARASH ARABASADI:

Before we turn the page on this year, a look at Space Oddities 2021.There was the first known French crepe made in space, tests on the immune systems of baby bobtail squid, and the first ever space games.

 

For 2022, look for more launches from the private spaceflight giants, NASA’s test trip to the moon, further research from Mars, and the U.S. Mint’s release of the Sally Ride quarter honoring the first American woman in space. 

Arash Arabasadi, VOA News.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

NASA recently revealed its next class of astronauts to train for missions to the moon and Mars.

Half of the 10 new astronauts are military pilots. One is a champion cyclist.

 

Outfitting the next generation of astronauts is a key component of the upcoming lunar mission.

 

A new NASA program has American college students competing to design a high-tech spacesuit for the next phase of interplanetary travel.

 

Bradley University student Zach Bachmann didn’t grow up thinking he’d be an astronaut.

 

 

 

 

Zach Bachmann, Student Team Lead:

 

I’m short, blind, and asthmatic so I can’t really be an astronaut if I wished to.

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

But a lifelong interest in video games and computers is putting him at the center of a nationwide effort to boost new space helmet technology for the next generation of astronauts.

 

 

 

Zach Bachmann, Student Team Lead:

 

I’ve always been into sci-fi and tech, so it sounded like this was kind of a cool project and I kinda just got wrapped into it.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

That “cool project” – NASA’s Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students, or S.U.I.T.S Design Challenge – allows college students to create spacesuit information displays within augmented reality environments.

 

 

 

Abby Irwin, Design Team Lead:

 

You still see the world around, but you would just have overlays.  So like the vitals would be an overlay, but they would still see the moon or whatever they are working on.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Abby Irwin works with Bachmann on Bradley’s S.U.I.T.S. team using the latest Microsoft Holo Lens to create and test their ideas.

 

 

 

Abby Irwin, Design Team Lead:

 

Our navigation we kind of got examples from flight software that pilots use and train with, but we also got like some ideas from the game Skyrim, how they do navigation in video games.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

While NASA has already announced a new spacesuit for the upcoming Artemis moon missions scheduled later this decade, the next challenge is figuring out the final version of the cutting-edge technology inside. That’s where S.U.I.T.S. plays a role.

 

Brandon Hargis, NASA Office of STEM Engagement Activity:

 

The idea was why don’t we put some funding toward having students contribute solutions to these technical challenges.

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

NASA’s Brandon Hargis says the S.U.I.T.s program helps NASA solve several old problems…

…. including handling the time delay communicating between the Earth and the Moon, and the longer lag time for signals to reach Mars.

 

 

 

 

Brandon Hargis, NASA Office of STEM Engagement Activity:

 

In this case 250,000 miles away from Earth on the moon, or several millions of miles away on Mars.  There’s somewhat of a delay in communications, (((end courtesy)) so if the astronaut has a little more autonomy to make some decisions based on the plan of the mission, augmented reality could help them do that.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

In a typical year, ten teams would travel to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to demonstrate their designs in person.  But due to the coronavirus pandemic, the current experience is all virtual and remote, giving more students a chance to participate.

 

 

 

 

Brandon Hargis, NASA Office of STEM Engagement Activity Manager:

 

Because we are doing this in a virtual environment this year, we actually invited twenty teams to participate in our virtual course online.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

Hargis says the students’ work has NASA ahead of schedule designing the technology.

 

 

 

 

Brandon Hargis, NASA Office of STEM Engagement Activity:

 

The work they are doing has spurred research in the field.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

 

When the first woman, and next men land on the moon, the design of the AR technology influenced by students like those at Bradley University will be there, right in front of astronauts’ faces, helping them boldly go, and do, what few have done before.

 

 

 

Abby Irwin, Design Team Lead:

 

I’m very proud of what we’ve come up with so far and where we could go.

 

 

 

Zach Bachmann, Student Team Lead:

 

I’m all for committing to more space exploration because it’s cool and ya know it’s the future.

 

 

 

 

KANE FARABAUGH:

 

That’s all we have for now.

 

I’m Kane Farabaugh here at The Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Connect with us at VOANews on Instagram and Facebook.

 

Stay up to date at VOANews.com 

 

See you next week for The Inside Story.

 

###

 

 
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President Joe Biden has directed his administration to buy an additional 10 million courses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill, Paxlovid, bringing the total to at least 20 million courses, as part of his strategy to combat omicron. He addressed the American public Tuesday as COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surge to record levels following the holidays. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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Illinois farmer Jack McCormick planted 350 acres of barley and radishes last fall as part of an off-season crop that he does not intend to harvest. Instead, the crops will be killed off with a weed killer next spring before McCormick plants soybeans in the same dirt. 

The barley and radishes will not be used for food, but Bayer AG will pay McCormick for planting them as the so-called cover crops will generate carbon offset credits for the seeds and chemicals maker. 

The purpose of cover crops is to restore soil, reduce erosion and to pull climate-warming carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The carbon trapped in roots and other plant matter left in the soil is measured to create carbon credits that companies can use to offset other pollution. 

The practice shows how the agriculture industry is adapting as a result of climate change. Farmers no longer make money merely by selling crops for food and livestock feed – they may also be paid for the role crops can play in limiting planet-warming emissions. 

More and more U.S. farmers are planting cover crops, from grasses like rye and oats to legumes and radishes. While some are converted into biofuels or fed to cattle, most are not harvested because their value is greater if they break down in the soil. 

Cover crops are a pillar of regenerative agriculture, and they are generally seen by environmentalists as an improvement over traditional agriculture. It is an approach to farming that aims to restore soil health and curb emissions through crop rotation, livestock grazing, cutting chemical inputs and other practices. 

Rob Myers, director for the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri, estimates cover crop plantings swelled to as much as 22 million acres in 2021. That is up 43% from the 15.4 million acres planted in 2017, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data. 

“There are so many things pushing cover crops forward. The carbon payments are the newest thing. We’ve seen a tremendous farmer interest in soil health,” he said. 

Myers estimates that by the end of the decade between 40 million and 50 million acres of cover crops will be planted annually. 

The surge will likely accelerate as government and private conservation programs expand, experts say. 

An even greater expansion of cover crop acreage in coming years could be a boon to seed and fertilizer companies, though the companies say it is hard to predict which cover crops farmers will decide to plant. 

Companies including Bayer, Land O’Lakes and Cargill Inc have launched carbon farming programs over the past two years that pay growers for capturing carbon by planting cover crops and reducing soil tillage. 

Land O’Lakes subsidiary Truterra paid out $4 million to U.S. farmers enrolled in its carbon program in 2021 for efforts the company says trapped 200,000 metric tons of carbon in soils. 

Others are expanding from small pilot programs, including Cargill, which aims to increase its sponsored sustainable farming programs to 10 million acres by the end of the decade, up from around 360,000 acres currently. Seedmaker Corteva Inc boosted its carbon offering from three U.S. states to 11 for the 2022 season. 

Federal conservation programs have for years paid farmers to set aside environmentally sensitive lands such as flood plains or wildlife habitat, and the Biden administration plans to expand those programs. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation targeted some $28 billion for conservation programs, including up to $5 billion in payments to farmers and landowners for planting cover crops, though the bill’s fate remains unclear. 

‘Want to do it’ 

Much of the growth in cover crop plantings to date has been led by a limited number of conservation-conscious farmers pursuing other goals such as soil fertility or water management. Program payments rarely cover the cost of seeds and labor. 

“You’ve got to want to do it,” said McCormick, who has increased his cover crop acres more than tenfold over the past six years and received his first payment from Bayer this autumn. 

“If somebody wants to hand me a couple of bucks an acre for something I’m doing, I’ll take it. But I wouldn’t do it just for the incentive. I don’t think the incentives are great enough,” he said, adding that his main motivation is the role played by cover crops in improving soil and making his farm more drought tolerant. 

Similarly, Ohio farmer Dave Gruenbaum rapidly increased his cover crop plantings beginning five years ago after liquidating his dairy herd, expanding to all of his 1,700 acres in each of the past two years. 

“It’s about having something green growing year-round,” he said. “It’s amazing how the soil is changing.” 

Gruenbaum enrolled in a program administered by Truterra, which has helped to offset a portion of his planting and labor cost. 

Some experts caution that the shift to planting more off-season cover crops could result in narrower planting windows for farmers’ main cash crops, particularly if climate change triggers more volatile spring weather. 

Cover crop seed shortages are also likely. 

“There’s an incredible pulse of demand coming … The demand for seed is going to exceed supply so there’s going to be a huge supply challenge,” Jason Weller, president of Truterra, told an American Seed Trade Association conference in Chicago last month. 

While emissions from destroying the crops are minimal, some critics still say the practice will increase applications of farm chemicals as acres expand. 

Environmentalists say cover crop planting is still an improvement on traditional agriculture, which normally leaves fields fallow for half the year and foregoes an enormous amount of plants’ carbon-capture potential. 

“Cover crops can be a really important part of organic and regenerative farming systems,” said Amanda Starbuck, research director with Food and Water Watch. “But it all depends on how they’re being implemented.” 
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On the 40th anniversary of a famous skin cancer campaign, research has revealed that a high number of young Australians are not using sun protection. 

Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. A new multi-million-dollar awareness campaign hopes to repeat the success of the ‘Slip Slop Slap’ advertisement of the early 1980s.  

“Sid the seagull” the voice of the advertisement’s jingle, urged Australians to protect themselves from the sun with a shirt, sunscreen and a hat. It is an enduring message that has educated generations of people since it was released 40 years ago. 

But the government believes rates of skin cancer are too high. The disease kills about 1,300 Australians each year. Research has shown that more than a quarter of Australians do not use any protection from the sun’s ultra-violet radiation. 

Heather Walker, from the charity, the Cancer Council, says teenagers need to be reminded of the sun’s dangers. 

“We do have a lot of work to do particularly in the secondary school setting and with young adults. But encouragingly, older adults are using sun protection more. So, it does seem to be a dip in the lifecycle and then people do come back to sun protection, which is really encouraging. But the other group that needs a reminder in particular is men. So, in Australia twice as many men as women die from melanoma and that is a huge disparity,” Walker said.

Now, Australia is launching the first national skin cancer campaign in more than a decade. Sid the seagull’s famous ‘slip, slop, slap’ message has been updated to encourage Australians to also seek shade and slide on a pair of sunglasses. 

Health authorities have said that skin cancer is Australia’s most common cancer, and it is almost entirely preventable. 

The World Cancer Research Fund states that Australia has the highest melanoma rates in the world followed by New Zealand, Norway and Denmark. It is expected that 16,000 Australians will be diagnosed this year with melanoma, a malignant tumor associated with skin cancer, according to government figures. 

The Australian Cancer Council lists three main types of skin cancers: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma. 
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A community health service in Africa’s largest urban slum is helping poor people get affordable emergency services during the COVID pandemic.  The Kibera community emergency response team in Nairobi is offering a $1 monthly fee for access to emergency services, including an ambulance.  Victoria Amunga has more from Nairobi.

Camera:  Robert Lutta
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Conservationists are blaming climate change, land clearing and pesticides for the population crash of one of Australia’s most famous insects. Once a common sight, bogong moths have become rare in recent years. They are now recognized as endangered by the world’s leading scientific authority on vulnerable species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. 

The bogong moth is native to Australia. The mass migration of billions of the small insects has long been a spectacular sight in eastern Australia.   

Scientists say the moths are guided by the stars and the earth’s magnetic fields.  

They fly up to 1,000 kilometers from Queensland to the mountains of Victoria to shelter in caves from the heat of summer. In the caves, it was once estimated there were as many as 17,000 moths per square meter.  

But Jess Abrahams, a nature campaigner from the Australian Conservation Foundation says bogong moth numbers have collapsed.   

“It is a dramatic decline, and this population crash has been caused by climate change-fueled extreme drought in their breeding grounds in western Queensland. There has also been land clearing over many years, use of pesticides as well and the consequence is a huge crash in numbers and the flow-on affects to other species is of huge concern. This should be an alarm bell because we are in the midst of an extinction crisis. We are seeing (a) million species globally at risk of extinction and literally these things are disappearing before our very eyes,” Abrahams said.  

The decline of the bogong moth has a cascading effect on other species. They were a major source of food for another critically endangered animal, the mountain pygmy-possum. Fewer than 2,000 of Australia’s only hibernating marsupials are thought to be left in the wild.    

The moth is one of 124 Australian animals and plants that were added in December to the “Red List” of threatened species compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They include several other types of insects and the grey-headed flying fox, which is Australia’s largest bat.    

The Red List classifies how close global animal, plant and fungi species are to dying out, and includes sharks, rays and birds. Many populations are strained by global warming, deforestation, habitat loss and pollution.    

Campaigners are urging the Australian government to do more to save the moths that were once in such abundance in cities such as Sydney and Canberra that their vast numbers disrupted sporting events.  
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As the COVID-19 omicron variant surges across the United States, top federal health officials are looking to add a negative test along with its five-day isolation restrictions for asymptomatic Americans who catch the coronavirus, the White House’s top medical adviser said Sunday. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now considering including the negative test as part of its guidance after getting significant “pushback” on its updated recommendations last week. 

Under that Dec. 27 guidance, isolation restrictions for people infected with COVID-19 were shortened from 10 days to five days if they are no longer feeling symptoms or running a fever. After that period, they are asked to spend the following five days wearing a mask when around others.  

The guidelines have since received criticism from many health professionals for not specifying a negative antigen test as a requirement for leaving isolation.  

“There has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested,” Fauci said. “Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that, and I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.” 

Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said the U.S. has been seeing almost a “vertical increase” of new cases, now averaging 400,000 cases a day, with hospitalizations also up. 

“We are definitely in the middle of a very severe surge and uptick in cases,” he said. “The acceleration of cases that we’ve seen is really unprecedented, gone well beyond anything we’ve seen before.” 

Fauci said he’s concerned that the omicron variant is overwhelming the health care system and causing a “major disruption” on other essential services. 

“When I say major disruptions, you’re certainly going to see stresses on the system and the system being people with any kind of jobs … particularly with critical jobs to keep society functioning normally,” Fauci said. “We already know that there are reports from fire departments, from police departments in different cities that 10, 20, 25 and sometimes 30% of the people are ill. That’s something that we need to be concerned about, because we want to make sure that we don’t have such an impact on society that there really is a disruption. I hope that doesn’t happen.” 

The surging variant is ravaging other sectors of the workforce and American life. 

Wintry weather combined with the pandemic were blamed for Sunday’s grounding of more than 2,500 U.S. flights and more than 4,100 worldwide. Dozens of U.S. colleges are moving classes online again for at least the first week or so of the semester — and some warn it could stretch longer if the wave of infection doesn’t subside soon. Many companies that had been allowing office workers to work remotely but that were planning to return to the office early in 2022 have further delayed those plans.

The White House Correspondents’ Association announced on Sunday that the number of journalists allowed in the briefing room for at least the first few weeks of the year would be scaled back because of concerns about the fast-spreading virus. Typically, 49 reporters have seats for the daily briefing, but only 14 reporters will be seated under the restrictions. The White House limited capacity in the briefing room early in the pandemic but returned to full capacity in June 2021. 

While there is “accumulating evidence” that omicron might lead to less severe illness, he cautioned that the data remains early. Fauci said he worries in particular about the tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans because “a fair number of them are going to get severe disease.” 

He urged Americans who have not yet gotten vaccinated and boosted to do so and to mask up indoors to protect themselves and blunt the current surge of U.S. cases. 

The Food and Drug Administration last week said preliminary research indicates at-home rapid tests detect omicron but may have reduced sensitivity. The agency noted it’s still studying how the tests perform with the variant, which was first detected in late November. 

Fauci said Americans “should not get the impression that those tests are not valuable.” 

“I think the confusion is that rapid antigen tests have never been as sensitive as the PCR test,” Fauci said. “They’re very good when they are given sequentially. So, if you do them like maybe two or three times over a few-day period, at the end of the day, they are as good as the PCR. But as a single test, they are not as sensitive.” 

A PCR test usually needs to be processed in a laboratory. The test looks for the virus’s genetic material and then reproduces it millions of times until it’s detectable with a computer.  

Fauci said if Americans take the necessary precautions, the U.S. might see some semblance of more normal life returning soon. 

“One of the things that we hope for is that this thing will peak after a period of a few weeks and turn around,” Fauci said. He expressed hope that by February or March, omicron could fall to a low enough level “that it doesn’t disrupt our society, our economy, our way of life.” 

Fauci spoke on ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union.”  
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World-renowned Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter Richard Leakey, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humankind evolved in Africa, died on Sunday at the age of 77, the country’s president said.

The legendary paleoanthropologist remained energetic into his 70s despite bouts of skin cancer, kidney and liver disease. 

“I have this afternoon… received with deep sorrow the sad news of the passing away of Dr. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement late Sunday.

Born on December 19, 1944, Leakey was destined for paleoanthropology — the study of the human fossil record — as the middle son of Louis and Mary Leakey, perhaps the world’s most famous discoverers of ancestral hominids.

Initially, Leakey tried his hand at safari guiding, but things changed when at 23 he won a research grant from the National Geographic Society to dig on the shores of northern Kenya’s Lake Turkana, despite having no formal archaeological training. 

In the 1970s he led expeditions that recalibrated scientific understanding of human evolution with the discovery of the skulls of Homo habilis (1.9 million years old) in 1972 and Homo erectus (1.6 million years old) in 1975.

A TIME magazine cover followed of Leakey posing with a Homo habilis mock-up under the headline “How Man Became Man.” Then in 1981, his fame grew further when he fronted “The Making of Mankind,” a seven-part BBC television series. 

Yet the most famous fossil find was yet to come: the uncovering of an extraordinary, near-complete Homo erectus skeleton during one of his digs in 1984, which was nicknamed Turkana Boy.

As the slaughter of African elephants reached a crescendo in the late 1980s, driven by insatiable demand for ivory, Leakey emerged as one of the world’s leading voices against the then-legal global ivory trade.

President Daniel arap Moi in 1989 appointed Leakey to lead the national wildlife agency — soon to be named the Kenya Wildlife Service, or KWS.

That year he pioneered a spectacular publicity stunt by burning a pyre of ivory, setting fire to 12 tons of tusks to make the point that they have no value once removed from elephants.

He also held his nerve, without apology, when implementing a shoot-to-kill order against armed poachers. 

In 1993, his small Cessna plane crashed in the Rift Valley where he had made his name. He survived but lost both legs.

“There were regular threats to me at the time and I lived with armed guards. But I made the decision not to be a dramatist and say: ‘They tried to kill me.’ I chose to get on with life,” he told the Financial Times.

Leakey was forced out of KWS a year later and began a third career as a prominent opposition politician, joining the chorus of voices against Moi’s corrupt regime.

His political career met with less success, however, and in 1998 he was back in the fold, appointed by Moi to head Kenya’s civil service, putting him in charge of fighting official corruption.

The task proved impossible, however, and he resigned after just two years.

In 2015, as another elephant poaching crisis gripped Africa, President Kenyatta asked Leakey to again take the helm at KWS, this time as chairman of the board, a position he would hold for three years.

Deputy President William Ruto said Leakey “fought bravely for a better country” and inspired Kenyans with his zeal for public service.

Soft-spoken and seemingly devoid of personal vanity, Leakey stubbornly refused to give in to health woes.

“Richard was a very good friend and a true loyal Kenyan. May he Rest In Peace,” Paula Kahumbu, the head of Wildlife Direct, a conservation group founded by Leakey, posted on Twitter.
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France has lowered the age of its mask mandate to 6-year-old children, officials announced Saturday. The news comes just days before schools reopen Monday, following the winter holiday break.

While the mandate requires children to wear masks in indoor public places, the mandate will also include outside locations in cities like Paris and Lyon where an outside mandate is already in place.

The wildly contagious omicron variant, French authorities said Saturday, has resulted in four consecutive days of over 200,000 new infections.

The chief executive of Britain’s National Health Service Confederation told the BBC Saturday that the surge in COVID cases fueled by omicron may force hospitals to ban visitors.

“It’s a last resort. But, when you’re facing the kind of pressures the health service is going to be under for the next few weeks, this is the kind of thing managers have to do,” Matthew Taylor said.

Europe has surpassed 100 million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began nearly two years ago, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Worldwide, nearly 290 million cases have been recorded.

Nearly 5 million of Europe’s cases were reported in the last seven days, with 17 of the 52 countries or territories that make up Europe setting single-day new case records thanks to the omicron variant, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday.

More than 1 million of those cases were reported in France, which has joined the U.S., India, Brazil, Britain and Russia to become the sixth country to confirm more than 10 million cases since the pandemic began, Reuters reported.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that it has recorded 289.3 million global COVID cases and 5.4 million deaths.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and the Associated Press. 

 

 
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India’s health ministry reported 22,775 new cases of the coronavirus Saturday, saying the new cases bring the country’s omicron variant count to 1,431. Public health officials, however, have warned that the country’s COVID-19 tallies are likely undercounted.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported Saturday that paramedics in the Australian state of New South Wales had a “record breaking” level of calls overnight, resulting in its busiest night in 126 years, as the omicron variant of coronavirus sweeps across the globe.

New South Wales Ambulance Inspector Kay Armstrong told the newspaper the telephone calls included, “the usual business of New Year’s Eve – alcohol-related cases, accidents, obviously mischief – and then we had COVID on top of that.” The Herald reported paramedics also received “time-wasting calls from people wanting COVID-19 test results.”

The chief executive of Britain’s NHS Confederation said the omicron variant will “test the limits of finite NHS [National Health Service] capacity even more than a typical winter.” Matthew Taylor also predicted that hospitals will be forced to make “difficult choices” because of the variant.

CNN reports that more than 30 colleges and universities have changed the starting date of their spring semesters as the omicron variant crosses the United States.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center on Saturday reported 288.2 million global COVID-19 cases. The center said 9.1 billion vaccinations have been administered.
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Pakistan says it has administered 155 million COVID-19 vaccine doses as of Friday, fully vaccinating 70 million people, or 30% of the country’s total population, since launching the inoculation drive in February.

The South Asian nation of about 220 million reported its first case in early 2020 and since then the pandemic has infected about 1.3 million people and killed nearly 29,000 people, keeping the situation largely under control.

“Of the total eligible population [age 12 and above], 46% is fully vaccinated and 63% has received at least one dose,” Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar who heads the National Command and Operation Center that oversees Pakistan’s pandemic response, tweeted.

 

The government had set the target in May and achieved it “with the help of countless workers, citizens and leadership across the country,” tweeted Faisal Sultan, the special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on national health services.

 

Faisal advised Pakistanis to continue to use masks, avoid crowded places and ensure social distancing in the wake of rising cases of infection from the omicron variant.

Officials said Pakistan has received a total of 247 doses of COVID-19 vaccine to date. The government has purchased 157 million while 78 million arrived through the COVAX dose-sharing program, including 32.6 million donated by the United States, and nearly 9 million donated from China.

 

The United Nations and other global partners have acknowledged Pakistan’s effective response to the pandemic, citing the country’s success in vaccinating children against polio and other transmittable diseases through mass immunization campaigns.

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the federal health ministry adapted its facilities to vaccinate adults, who make up about half of Pakistan’s population, according to a recent UNICEF statement. 
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Record snowfalls in the western United States that closed roads and caused flight delays also brought some good news for drought-hit California on Thursday, with officials saying the state’s snowpack is now well above normal. 

After a string of mountain blizzards, snowpack measured at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada stands at more than 200% of its average for this date, according to the first measurement of the season by California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR). The Sierra Nevada supplies almost a third of the state’s water needs, once the snow runs off to reservoirs and aqueducts. 

Statewide, snowpack is 160% of its average, the DWR said. 

“We could not have asked for a better December in terms of Sierra snow and rain,” said Karla Nemeth, the director of the DWR. 

Droughts in California are growing more frequent and intense with climate change, according to scientists, threatening the state’s already tenuous water supply and creating conditions for dangerous wildfires. 

Despite the precipitation-heavy end to 2021, the DWR warned against complacency. 

The state would still have to see “significant” precipitation in January and February to make up for the two previous winters, the state’s fifth- and second-driest water years on record, the DWR said. 

“California continues to experience evidence of climate change with bigger swings between wet and dry years and even extreme variability within a season,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of DWR’s Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit. 

He added that a wet start to the winter season did not necessarily mean precipitation in 2022 would end above average. 

 
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South Africa has lifted a midnight-to-4 a.m. curfew on people’s movement, effective immediately, saying the country has passed the peak of its fourth COVID-19 wave driven by the omicron variant, a government statement said Thursday. 

However, wearing a face mask in public places remains mandatory. Failure to wear a mask in South Africa when required is a criminal offense. 

The country made the curfew and other changes based on the trajectory of the pandemic, levels of vaccination in the country and available capacity in the health sector, according to a press release issued by Mondli Gungubele, a minister in the presidency. 

South Africa is at the lowest of its five-stage COVID-19 alert levels. 

“All indicators suggest the country may have passed the peak of the fourth wave at a national level,” a statement from the special cabinet meeting held earlier Thursday said. 

Data from the Department of Health showed a 29.7% decrease in the number of new cases detected in the week ending December 25 compared with the number of cases found in the previous week, at 127,753, the government said. 

South Africa, with close to 3.5 million infections and 91,000 deaths, has been the worst-hit country in Africa during the pandemic on both counts. 

Besides lifting the restrictions on public movement, the government also ruled that alcohol shops with licenses to operate after 11 p.m. local time may revert to full license conditions, a welcome boon for traders and businesses hard hit by the pandemic and looking to recover during the festive season. 

“While the omicron variant is highly transmissible, there have been lower rates of hospitalization than in previous waves,” the statement said.
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NASA successfully launched its much-anticipated next-generation space telescope.  Now come weeks of nervousness for project scientists who can only hope the next steps go as planned.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. 

Produced by: Arash Arabasadi 

Camera :  AP/ NASA TV/ PURDUE UNIVERSITY/ YOUTUBE NASA/  “ARMAGEDDON” / TOUCHSTONE PICTURES – JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILMS/ NASA JOHNS HOPKINS APL
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The top infectious disease expert in the United States is urging Americans to avoid taking part in mass New Year’s Eve celebrations as the nation continues to set record-breaking levels of daily new coronavirus infections driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.

The U.S. posted 489,267 new COVID-19 infections on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, just two days after recording a new single-day record of 512,553.

The U.S. is now averaging more than 265,000 new coronavirus cases per day, breaking the previous mark of 250,000 daily new infections set in January.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said Wednesday he “strongly recommends” that people cancel plans to attend large holiday parties with “30, 40, 50 people” this year, and instead spend the time with small gatherings of friends or relatives who are vaccinated and have received a booster shot.

In an interview Wednesday on financial cable network CNBC, Fauci also predicted the current omicron-driven surge may hit its peak in the U.S. by the end of January.

Health experts say despite omicron’s fast-moving spread around the world since it was first detected in South Africa last month, it appears to cause less severe illnesses than other versions of the coronavirus. However a World Health Organization official warned this week it is still too early to tell how omicron will affect older, more vulnerable people.

Meanwhile, a new study out of South Africa suggests a booster shot of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine provides strong protection against the omicron variant.

Researchers at the South African Medical Research Council say the booster shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was given to about 69,000 health care workers between November 15 and December 20. The results show the effectiveness at preventing hospitalization rose from 63% shortly after it was administered to 84% 14 days later, and 85% within one to two months.

Also, a separate study involving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States suggests the vaccine provides a 41-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies when used as a booster shot for people who received the two-dose Pfizer vaccine.

Doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston also told CNN the Johnson & Johnson booster produces a five-fold increase in so-called T cells, an arm of the human immune system that kills virus-infected cells and keeps them from replicating and spreading.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Tidal waves and coastal erosion have submerged an entire fishing community on Ghana’s eastern coast. Many villagers had already been relocated from past tidal waves and have petitioned the government for a permanent solution. Senanu Tord reports from the village of Fuvemeh in Ghana. 

Camera: Senanu Tord 

 
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The World Health Organization is warning that the rapid circulation of the omicron and delta variants of the coronavirus is leading to a tsunami of cases, severe disease and surging deaths among the unvaccinated.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that while science had led to the development of COVID-19 vaccines, the global death toll from the disease has kept rising.

In 2020, the World Health Organization reported 1.8 million deaths globally, a number that pales in comparison to the additional 3.5 million deaths reported in 2021.

 

Tedros said the reason for the climb was that politics has too often trumped the need to work together to defeat this pandemic.

“Populism, narrow nationalism and hoarding of health tools, including masks, therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines, by a small number of countries undermined equity and created the ideal conditions for the emergence of new variants,” he said.

Tedros condemned the misinformation and disinformation that often has been spread by a small number of people for undermining science and trust in lifesaving health tools. He said these twin evils have driven vaccine hesitancy and are to blame for the disproportionately large number of unvaccinated people dying from the delta and omicron strains of the coronavirus.

He warned that the virus that causes COVID-19 would continue to evolve and threaten the health system if nations did not improve their collective response. He said it was time to rise above short-term nationalism and protect populations and economies against future variants by addressing global vaccine inequity.

“Ending health inequity remains the key to ending the pandemic,” Tedros said. “As this pandemic drags on, it is possible that new variants could evade our countermeasures and become fully resistant to current vaccines or past infection, necessitating vaccine adaptations.”

The WHO chief said it was time to banish the politics of populism and self-interests that have been derailing the global response to the pandemic. He asked everyone to make a New Year’s resolution to get behind WHO’s campaign to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population by the middle of 2022.
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