Texas sued the federal government on Thursday over new guidance from the Biden administration directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions regardless of state bans on the procedure that came into effect in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the lawsuit argued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was trying to “use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The lawsuit focused on guidance issued Monday advising that a federal law protecting patients’ access to emergency treatment requires performing abortions when doctors believe a pregnant woman’s life or health is threatened.

The guidance came after President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Friday seeking to ease access to services to terminate pregnancies after the June 24 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which recognized a nationwide right of women to obtain abortions.

Abortion services ceased July 2 in Texas after the state’s highest court, at Paxton’s urging, cleared the way for a nearly century-old abortion ban to take effect.

HHS said the guidance from its U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services agency did not constitute new policy but merely reminded doctors of their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

But in the lawsuit filed in Lubbock, the Republican-led state of Texas argued that federal law has never authorized the federal government to compel doctors and hospitals to perform abortions and that the guidance was unlawful.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called it “unthinkable that this public official would sue to block women from receiving lifesaving care in emergency rooms, a right protected under U.S. law.”

About half the states are expected to move to restrict or ban abortions. Thirteen states, including Texas, had “trigger” laws on the books designed to snap into effect if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
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The World Health Organization is calling for action to stem the growing spread of deadly infections such as monkeypox and Ebola between animals and humans in Africa.

A new WHO analysis finds zoonotic outbreaks on the African continent have increased by 63% from 2012 to 2022 compared to the previous decade.

Globally, the WHO says more than 60% of human infectious diseases, and more than 75% of emerging infectious diseases, are caused by pathogens found in wild or domestic animals. It says those diseases sicken about one billion people and kill millions every year.

WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said zoonotic diseases pose a severe threat in Africa. In the past decade, she said outbreaks of the animal-transmitted illnesses accounted for one in three confirmed public health events in the region.

“A deeper dive reveals that Ebola and similar hemorrhagic fevers constitute nearly 70% of these outbreaks,” she said. “The remainder include, among others, monkeypox, dengue fever, anthrax, and plague. Although there has been a notable increase in monkeypox cases since April this year, compared to the same period in 2021, the positive news is the numbers are still lower than for the 2020 outbreak peak.”

That year, the WHO recorded its highest ever monthly cases in the region. So far this year, the health agency has reported more than 2,000 suspected cases of monkeypox. Of those, only 203 have been confirmed. Most cases and deaths are among males, with an average age of 17.

Moeti noted infections originating in animals have been jumping to humans for centuries, but the risk of mass infections and deaths has been relatively limited in Africa.

“As rising urbanization encroaches on the natural habitats of the continent’s wildlife, and the demand for food from an especially fast-growing population burgeons, the risk is heighted,” she said. “The addition of improved road, rail, and airlinks, which remove the natural barrier that poor transportation infrastructure provided, opens the way for the spread of zoonotic disease outbreaks from remote to urban areas.”

Moeti said Africa cannot be allowed to become a hotspot for emerging infectious diseases. She said an “all-hands-on-deck” approach is needed to counter the threat.

She said experts in human, animal, and environmental health must work together with communities to prevent and control zoonotic outbreaks from spreading across the continent.
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The U.S. is getting another COVID-19 vaccine choice as the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday cleared Novavax shots for adults. 

Novavax makes a more traditional type of shot than the three other COVID-19 vaccines available for use in the U.S. — and one that’s already available in Europe and multiple other countries. 

Nearly a quarter of American adults still haven’t gotten their primary vaccinations even this late in the pandemic, and experts expect at least some of them to roll up their sleeves for a more conventional option — a protein-based vaccine. 

The Maryland company also hopes its shots can become a top booster choice in the U.S. and beyond. Tens of millions of Americans still need boosters that experts call critical for the best possible protection as the coronavirus continues to mutate. 

For now, the FDA authorized Novavax’s initial two-dose series for people 18 and older. 

“I encourage anyone who is eligible for, but has not yet received, a COVID-19 vaccine to consider doing so,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement. 

Before shots begin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend how they should be used, a decision expected next week. 

Novavax CEO Stanley Erck told The Associated Press he expected the U.S. to expand use of the vaccine beyond unvaccinated adults fairly quickly. 

Already, the FDA is evaluating it for those as young as 12, Erck said. Novavax also has submitted data on booster doses, including “mix-and-match” use in people who’d earlier received Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations. 

The Biden administration has bought 3.2 million Novavax doses so far, and Erck said vaccinations should begin later this month. 

Skeptic convinced

Sharon Bentley of Argyle, Texas, is one of the holdouts. Bentley was hesitant about the first COVID-19 vaccines, but then her husband volunteered for a Novavax trial, getting two doses and later a booster. 

Her husband’s positive experience with a more tried-and-true technology “convinced me,” Bentley said, adding that she planned to tell some unvaccinated friends about the option. 

The Novavax vaccine is made of copies of the spike protein that coats the coronavirus, packaged into nanoparticles that to the immune system resemble a virus. Then an immune-boosting ingredient, or adjuvant, that’s made from the bark of a South American tree is added and acts as a red flag to ensure those particles look suspicious enough to spark a strong immune response. 

Protein vaccines have been used for years to prevent hepatitis B, shingles and other diseases. It’s a very different technology than the dominant Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines that deliver genetic instructions for the body to produce its own copies of the spike protein. The lesser-used Johnson & Johnson option uses a harmless cold virus to deliver spike-making instructions. 

Like the other vaccines used in the U.S., the Novavax shots have proved highly effective at preventing COVID-19’s most severe outcomes. Typical vaccine reactions were mild, including arm pain and fatigue. But the FDA did warn about the possibility of a rare risk — heart inflammation — that also has been seen with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. 

The Novavax vaccine was tested long before the omicron variant struck. But last month, the company released data showing a booster dose promised a strong immune response even against omicron’s newest relatives — preliminary evidence that several of the FDA’s scientific advisers called compelling. 

Still, U.S. regulators are planning for a fall booster campaign using Pfizer and Moderna shots that better target omicron subtypes, and Novavax also has begun testing updated shots. Erck said the company could have updated doses available late in the year. 

European regulators recently cleared the Novavax vaccine to be used as young as age 12, and several countries have authorized booster doses of its original vaccine. 

Earlier manufacturing difficulties held up the vaccine, although Erck said those have been solved, and Novavax can meet global demand. Much of the company’s vaccine, including doses for the U.S., are being produced by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
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More than 1.8 billion people worldwide are at risk of severe floods, new research shows. Most reside in low- and middle-income countries in Asia, and four out of 10 live in poverty.

The figures are substantially larger than previous estimates. They show that the risk is concentrated among those least able to withstand and recover from flooding.

“I thought it was a valuable paper, indeed. Because this link between poverty and flood risk is kind of overlooked,” said hydrologist Bruno Merz, of the German Research Center for Geosciences, who was not involved in the study.

Flood risk assessments typically consider risk in monetary terms, which is highest in rich countries where more wealth is at stake. The new study focused on how flood exposure and poverty overlap.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study combined a global flood risk database with information on population density and poverty. The research focused on places where floods 15 centimeters deep or deeper happen at least once every 100 years on average.

The study found that nearly 90% of people at risk of severe flooding live in poor countries, not rich ones. More than 780 million flood-exposed people live on less than $5.50 per day.

The substantial overlap between high flood risk and poverty feeds into a vicious cycle that further concentrates flood protections in rich countries that have more resources to deal with floods in the first place, said flood risk researcher Jeroen Aerts of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Aerts was not involved in the study.

“It’s doing a cost-benefit analysis,” Aerts said. “Less money is going to poorer countries, because, of course, if the country is poorer, there are less dollars exposed.” Aerts said that this also happens within countries, which tend to invest in pricey flood protections for wealthy urban centers rather than for poorer rural areas.

The new estimate for global flood exposure is higher than some earlier ones. For instance, one previous study predicted that 1.3 billion people would be exposed to severe floods by 2050 — 500 million fewer than are exposed today, according to the new estimate. The authors attribute their higher number to their use of better data covering more regions at higher resolution and combining the risks from coastal, river and surface water floods.

The study did not consider protections, such as levees or dikes, in its assessment of flood exposure. This “distorts the picture,” Merz said, since some flood-prone populations are well-protected, such as those in the Netherlands.

Rather than undermining the study’s findings, Merz thought that this could mean that an even greater proportion of the people threatened by floods lives in poor regions.

“In many low-income countries, there is no flood protection, so people will be flooded by a small flood … that occurs on average every five years. On the other hand, in Europe, in North America, many of the areas are protected (from floods that happen once every) 100 years, 200 years or even higher. And so, this is not included,” he said.

Unprotected, poorer regions could thus shoulder an even greater share of the actual risks from flood exposure than the paper suggests.

The new result offers a snapshot of flood risk around the world as it is today, not a projection of how it will develop in the future. Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of floods in much of the world. And although early warning systems have decreased flood fatalities, including in resource-poor regions, population growth in flood-prone areas will also put more people at risk in the future, Aerts said.

“The exposure to natural hazards, exposure to flooding — it’s larger than previously investigated. And the majority of those exposed people live in a vulnerable, poor region,” Aerts said. “I think that’s the takeaway, I think, and maybe one sentence more: This means that investments in … flood adaptation should be targeted at those areas.”
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Citing the fast-spreading omicron BA.5 coronavirus subvariant that now makes up a majority of U.S. cases, the White House on Tuesday said it will ensure the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, boosters, treatments and testing to combat the disease.

“Currently, many Americans are under-vaccinated, meaning they are not up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a news briefing Tuesday. “Staying up to date on your COVID-19 vaccines provides the best protection against severe outcomes.”

The subvariant, which the CDC says accounts for 65% of the variants circulating in the United States as of last week, reportedly could spread more easily despite vaccination or natural immunity.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking at the same briefing, said the subvariant does not cause a more severe illness or hospitalizations compared to other subvariants.

“Variants will continue to emerge. The virus circulates globally and in this country. We should not let it disrupt our lives, but we cannot deny that it is a reality that we need to deal with,” Fauci said.

The White House says it will focus on boosters, at-home testing, making good masks available and supporting people who are immunocompromised.

“We can prevent serious illness; we can keep people out of the hospital and especially out of the ICU. We can save lives, and we can minimize the disruptions caused by COVID-19. Even in the face of BA.5, the tools we have continue to work,” said Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator.

“We are at a point in the pandemic where most COVID-19 deaths are preventable,” he said.

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Grieving Japanese paid their final farewells to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Tuesday. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. 
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Chinese authorities on Monday confirmed that a case of cholera had occurred in the central city of Wuhan where the outbreak of COVID-19 began before spreading globally. State media acknowledged that the case has sparked public worries in a society still coping with the COVID outbreak. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most people infected with cholera bacteria do not develop any symptoms, according to WHO, although the bacteria are present in their feces for 1-10 days after infection and have the potential to affect other people.
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The U.S. space agency has released the first image from its new space telescope — a full color picture showing stars and galaxies from deeper into the cosmos than ever seen before. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Webb telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies.
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When Melissa, a nurse in the U.S. state of Alabama, went to pick up her regular prescription medication for rheumatoid arthritis last week, she was told the drug was on hold while the pharmacist checked she wasn’t going to use it to induce an abortion.

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

“The hell you do,” she recalled thinking.

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

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

Consequence of court ruling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Provider approval’ needed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re headed in the wrong direction and it’s terrifying. I have two daughters. I don’t want to see this,” she said.
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A Texas judge issued an order Friday to continue blocking the state from investigating two families of transgender youth who have received gender affirming medical care and said she was considering whether to prevent additional investigations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meachum set a Dec. 5 trial on whether to permanently block Texas’ investigations into the families.
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The Canadian government is set to put health warnings on each cigarette and ban certain types of plastics, parts of a new round of regulations from the Trudeau government.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next general election is expected to occur in October 2025, which is well after the new regulations take effect.
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Ghana’s health authorities say they have, for the first time, confirmed two fatal cases of the Marburg virus, a relative of the Ebola virus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prospective patients may suffer from fever, bloody diarrhea, bleeding from gums, bleeding of the skin, bleeding of the eyes and bloody urine.
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In a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank filled with a rare, liquefied gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable: dark matter.

Scientists are pretty sure the invisible stuff makes up most of the universe’s mass and say we wouldn’t be here without it — but they don’t know what it is. The race to solve this enormous mystery has brought one team to the depths under Lead, South Dakota.

The question for scientists is basic, says Kevin Lesko, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: “What is this great place I live in? Right now, 95% of it is a mystery.”

The idea is that a mile of dirt and rock, a giant tank, a second tank and the purest titanium in the world will block nearly all the cosmic rays and particles that zip around — and through — all of us every day. But dark matter particles, scientists think, can avoid all those obstacles. They hope one will fly into the vat of liquid xenon in the inner tank and smash into a xenon nucleus like two balls in a game of pool, revealing its existence in a flash of light seen by a device called “the time projection chamber.”

Scientists announced Thursday that the five-year, $60 million search finally got underway two months ago after a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, the device has found nothing. At least no dark matter.

That’s OK, they say. The equipment appears to be working to filter out most of the background radiation they hoped to block.

“To search for this very rare type of interaction, job number one is to first get rid of all of the ordinary sources of radiation, which would overwhelm the experiment,” said University of Maryland physicist Carter Hall.

And if all their calculations and theories are right, they figure they’ll see only a couple fleeting signs of dark matter a year. The team of 250 scientists estimates they’ll get 20 times more data over the next couple of years.

By the time the experiment finishes, the chance of finding dark matter with this device is “probably less than 50% but more than 10%,” said Hugh Lippincott, a physicist and spokesman for the experiment in a Thursday news conference.

While that’s far from a sure thing, “you need a little enthusiasm,” Lawrence Berkeley’s Lesko said. “You don’t go into rare search physics without some hope of finding something.”

Two hulking Depression-era hoists run an elevator that brings scientists to what’s called the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment in the Sanford Underground Research Facility. A 10-minute descent ends in a tunnel with cool-to-the-touch walls lined with netting. But the old, musty mine soon leads to a high-tech lab where dirt and contamination is the enemy. Helmets are exchanged for new, cleaner ones and a double layer of baby blue booties go over steel-toed safety boots.

The heart of the experiment is the giant tank called the cryostat, lead engineer Jeff Cherwinka said in a December 2019 tour before the device was closed and filled. He described it as “like a thermos” made of “perhaps the purest titanium in the world” designed to keep the liquid xenon cold and keep background radiation at a minimum.

Xenon is special, explained Aaron Manalaysay, experiment physics coordinator, because it allows researchers to see if a collision is with one of its electrons or with its nucleus. If something hits the nucleus, it is more likely to be the dark matter that everyone is looking for, he said.

These scientists tried a similar, smaller experiment here years ago. After coming up empty, they figured they had to go much bigger. Another large-scale experiment is underway in Italy run by a rival team, but no results have been announced so far.

The scientists are trying to understand why the universe is not what it seems.

One part of the mystery is dark matter, which has by far most of the mass in the cosmos. Astronomers know it’s there because when they measure the stars and other regular matter in galaxies, they find that there is not nearly enough gravity to hold these clusters together. If nothing else was out there, galaxies would be “quickly flying apart,” Manalaysay said.

“It is essentially impossible to understand our observation of history, of the evolutionary cosmos without dark matter,” Manalaysay said.

Lippincott, a University of California, Santa Barbara, physicist, said “we would not be here without dark matter.”

So while there’s little doubt that dark matter exists, there’s lots of doubt about what it is. The leading theory is that it involves things called WIMPs — weakly interacting massive particles.

If that’s the case, LUX-ZEPLIN could be able to detect them. And scientists want to find “where the WIMPs can be hiding,” Lippincott said.
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Cases of COVID-19 are surging again globally, due in large part to the rise of virus variant Omicron BA.5, which is much more contagious than its predecessors and is able to circumvent existing immunity in many people.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released data indicating that the BA.5 variant is now responsible for more than half of new cases and is poised to continue outcompeting older versions of the Omicron variant that remain in circulation.

The new variant is also carving its path across other countries. In the Americas, Brazil and Mexico are both experiencing upticks. In Europe, cases are on the rise across the continent, including in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Greece, among others. The United Kingdom is experiencing a rise as well.

In Asia, cases are rising in Japan, South Korea and India, among others. Cases are also climbing in Australia and New Zealand.

‘Worst’ variant yet

Public health experts are warning that despite the fact that death rates from COVID-19 remain low in the U.S., the Omicron BA.5 variant remains a major concern. Evidence suggests that a recent prior infection with COVID-19 offers little or no protection against reinfection with the new variant.

During past waves, it has typically been assumed that an individual who had recovered from a bout of COVID-19 would have enhanced immune protection against reinfection for a significant period of time.

“The Omicron subvariant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,” Dr. Eric Topol, a member of the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research, wrote in his popular Substack newsletter. “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility, well beyond Omicron (BA.1) and other Omicron family variants that we’ve seen.”

Even though people appear to be less likely to get extremely sick from the new variant, public health experts say that they are concerned about the possibility that as infections increase, more people will come down with lingering symptoms. So-called long COVID, which can include fatigue, shortness of breath, cognitive dysfunction and other adverse health events, has been detected in as many as one in five people who survive an infection.

Public health challenge

Rising case counts have public health experts deeply concerned about what will take place in the coming months.

“Right now, the public health stance should be maximizing vaccination, including boosters for those who are eligible and primary vaccination and boosters for children,” David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a public health foundation, told VOA. “That’s the absolutely critical, essential first step in a public health campaign to reduce the impact of COVID. That also should include planning for, we hope, a more specific vaccine in the fall against the Omicron variants.”

Blumenthal said he believed that the threat of long COVID meant that it also makes sense for people to continue wearing masks in public during surges in infection. However, he said he recognized that calling for more restrictions presented a serious challenge to public health officials, who will find themselves trying to persuade a pandemic-weary public to embrace masking again.

“I think that civic leaders — respected, nonmedical leaders, as well as personal physicians — are probably the best communicators at this point,” he said.

US in detail

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, in the 90 days ending on July 6, the average number of daily cases over the previous seven days in the U.S. rose to 106,193, from 34,795. However, the actual number of cases is believed to be far higher, because the prevalence of at-home testing means that the majority of cases are not reported to public health agencies.

The same data set shows that over the same 90-day period, the seven-day average of people hospitalized for COVID-19 rose to 35,637, from 14,904. While that marked a significant upward move in percentage terms, the absolute number of people currently hospitalized for the disease remains far below the more than 807,000 recorded at the peak in January.

Deaths from COVID-19 have actually fallen over the past 90 days, with a seven-day average of 309 recorded on July 6, compared with 507 recorded 90 days earlier. The current death rate remains near all-time lows since the beginning of the pandemic.

China changes direction

In China this week, Beijing became the first major city in the mainland to adopt a vaccination requirement for people to enter public spaces. Starting Monday, individuals will have to provide proof of vaccination to enter a broad range of public buildings in the city.

As recently as September of last year, the Chinese government had been explicitly against mandatory vaccination.

Wu Liangyou, a senior official with the National Health Commission, criticized municipalities that had instituted requirements like those coming into force in the capital, and said that all vaccination programs ought to remain voluntary.

Unlike many other countries, China has pursued what has been called a zero-COVID approach to managing the pandemic. The government has implemented major lockdowns across the country in efforts to slow or stop the spread of the disease.

The city of Xian, in the northwest of the country, is currently locked down because of a major outbreak of the disease caused by the new variant.

China was initially slow to roll out vaccines, even to older members of the population, who remain the most vulnerable to the disease. Now, however, Johns Hopkins data indicate that nearly 90% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Whether Beijing’s decision to mandate vaccination for access to public spaces marks the beginning of a turn away from the lockdown-focused, zero-COVID policy is unclear.
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NASA sees success on a pair of launches from the Southern Hemisphere. Plus, prospective lunar rovers run the gauntlet on Earth, and an Independence Day anniversary for the American space program. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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African and European researchers are meeting in France to give fresh impetus to Africa’s ambitious Great Green Wall project, intended to fight climate change and support communities across the Sahel region. Much of the area is plagued by conflict and hunger, but scientists are looking at new ways to move ahead.

It’s been slow-going building Africa’s so-called Great Green Wall of trees and bushes intended to stretch nearly 8,000 kilometers from Mauritania in the west to tiny Djibouti in the east. Fifteen years into the project set to be complete in 2030, only a fraction of the reforestation has been realized. Eight of the 11 countries involved are grappling with unrest. Funding hasn’t matched the development challenge.

Still, environment professor Aliou Guissé points to tangible successes. In the Sahel area of his native Senegal, reforested areas are gaining ground. He said they’re home to larger and more diverse populations of animals, birds and insects than areas where trees haven’t been planted. Scientists are finding health and other benefits of local plants like desert date palms, which are valued by communities, might be commercialized and generate revenue.  

Guissé is co-director of the Tessekere Observatory in northern Senegal, which seeks a holistic approach to Green Wall development spanning areas like health, agriculture, the economy — and of course, the environment.

He and other experts meeting this week in the western French city of Poitiers want to widen their collaboration, currently happening in Burkina Faso and Senegal, to include researchers from other Sahel countries like Niger, Chad and possibly Mali. Despite unrest in those countries, they say progress — like building baseline data — can happen.  

The Tessekere Observatory’s other co-director, French anthropologist Gilles Boëtsch, said another goal is building partnerships between researchers and government agencies managing Green Wall development. The group is diving into new areas, like exploring the impact of animal-to-human-transmitted diseases, such as Ebola and COVID-19.  

Boetsch says their research doesn’t just benefit Africa’s Sahel, but also countries like France — already facing the fallout of a warming and changing climate.
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The World Health Organization warns new variants of COVID-19 are spreading and people must remain vigilant and employ public health measures to protect themselves from contracting and transmitting the deadly disease. 

The latest WHO figures show reported cases of COVID-19 have increased nearly 30 percent globally over the past two weeks. Current figures stand at nearly 558 million, including more than 6.3 million deaths. 

Data show BA.4 and BA.5 variants are driving new waves of the disease in Europe and the United States, while a different variant has been found in countries like India. 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said testing for COVID-19 has gone down dramatically, obscuring the true extent of the current disease surge. That, he warned, means too many people are not getting the treatments needed to prevent serious illness or death. 

“As the virus evolves, vaccine’s protection, while it still is really effective at preventing serious diseases and death, does wane. Decreasing immunity underscores the importance of boosters, especially for the most at risk,” Tedros said.

Tedros said the dangers posed by the new variants are high in developed countries, but are even greater in poorer countries, where people do not have access to new treatments and oral antivirals. 

The WHO executive director for health emergencies, Mike Ryan, said every country has gaps in its national readiness, preparedness, and surveillance plans. He said countries can and must do more to boost their pandemic response in tackling the new surge in COVID-19 cases. 

“We will see differential impacts in countries. So, depending on how strong that wall of immunity is in your community, depending on how well you deal with the vulnerabilities that people have, and depending on how well you are prepared to deal with that, I think we are going to see further waves of disease. And I think we will see them have a very differential impact between countries,” Ryan said. 

The World Health Organization urges people to implement tried and tested public health measures, such as testing, masking and vaccinating to protect themselves. 

Additionally, the WHO says it is crucial to accelerate research and development into next generation vaccines, tests and treatments to keep pace with the evolution of the coronavirus. 

 
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