China and the United States, the world’s two biggest carbon polluters, have reached a new agreement to take urgent measures to curb climate change.The two countries said in a joint statement late Saturday that they “are committed to cooperating with each other” and other nations to deal with the climate crisis “with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.”U.S. special envoy for climate John Kerry and Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua reached the agreement during three days of talks last week in Shanghai, just days ahead of the virtual summit on the issue being hosted this week by U.S. President Joe Biden.Kerry told reporters in Seoul on Sunday that he considers the language of the document to be “strong” and that China and U.S. agreed on “critical elements on where we have to go.”But Kerry, a former U.S. secretary of state and the losing Democratic candidate for president in 2004, added, “I learned in diplomacy that you don’t put your back on the words, you put on actions. We all need to see what happens.”China, the world’s biggest carbon polluter, and the second worst, the United States, emit nearly half of the fossil fuel fumes that are warming the planet’s atmosphere. Their cooperation would be crucial in combating man-made pollution.The U.S., the world’s biggest economy, and No. 2 China, are trade rivals across the globe and have contentious relations on human rights and China’s territorial claims surrounding Taiwan, which the U.S. supplies with military weapons even as it continues its “one China” policy, recognizing Beijing as the sole Chinese government.Kerry noted that China is the world’s biggest coal user and discussed ways to transition to other forms of energy.“I have never shied away from expressing our views shared by many, many people that it is imperative to reduce coal, everywhere,” he said.Su Wei, a member of the Chinese negotiation team, told state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday that the two countries reached a consensus for future cooperation on climate issues.  Biden has invited 40 world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, to the climate summit on Thursday and Friday. Biden’s Earth Day Summit Aims for Reset on Climate ChangeStakes are rising, but delivering will not be easyThe U.S. and other countries are expected to announce further targets to cut carbon emissions ahead of or at the summit, and pledge financial help for climate control by poorer countries. It appears unlikely that China will set new environmental control targets.Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told the Associated Press on Friday, “For a big country with 1.4 billion people, these goals are not easily delivered. Some countries are asking China to achieve the goals earlier. I am afraid this is not very realistic.”But Xi on Friday said China remained committed to climate goals he had announced last year, while adding that the climate issue should not be “a bargaining chip for geopolitics” or “an excuse for trade barriers,” an apparent reference to ongoing disputes with the United States.  “This is undoubtedly a tough battle,” Xi said in a conference call with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, according to an account of the meeting released by the Chinese foreign ministry.“China is sure to act on its words, and its actions are sure to produce results,” Xi said. “We hope that the advanced economies will set an example in momentum for emissions reductions, and also lead the way in fulfilling commitments for climate funding.”It is not clear whether Xi will join Biden’s summit, but Kerry Sunday said, “We very much hope that (Xi) will take part.”Within hours of taking office, Biden rejoined the 2015 Paris climate accord, reversing the withdrawal by his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump.The U.S.-China statement from the Shanghai meetings said the two countries would enhance “their respective actions and cooperating in multilateral processes, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.”It said both countries intend to develop individual pollution control strategies before the planned U.N. climate conference in Glasgow in late 2021 and take “appropriate actions to maximize international investment and finance in support of” the energy transition in developing countries.Both China and the U.S. have set goals to become carbon-neutral in the coming decades.Xi said last year that China would be carbon-neutral by 2060 and is aiming to reach a peak in its emissions by 2030.Biden says the U.S. will switch to an emissions-free power sector by 2035 and have an emissions-free economy by 2050. 
…

NASA hopes to score a 21st-century Wright Brothers moment on Monday as it attempts to send a miniature helicopter buzzing over the surface of Mars in what would be the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.Landmark achievements in science and technology can seem humble by conventional measurements. The Wright Brothers’ first controlled flight in the world of a motor-driven airplane, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903 covered just 120 feet (37 meters) in 12 seconds.A modest debut is likewise in store for NASA’s twin-rotor, solar-powered helicopter Ingenuity.If all goes to plan, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) whirligig will slowly ascend straight up to an altitude of 10 feet (3 meters) above the Martian surface, hover in place for 30 seconds, then rotate before descending to a gentle landing on all four legs.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 0 MB480p | 0 MBOriginal | 0 MB Embed” />CopyNASA’s Ingenuity helicopter begins a Slow spin test of its blades, April 8, 2021, the 48th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. (Credit: NASA)While the mere metrics may seem less than ambitious, the “air field” for the interplanetary test flight is 173 million miles from Earth, on the floor of a vast Martian basin called Jezero Crater. Success hinges on Ingenuity executing the pre-programmed flight instructions using an autonomous pilot and navigation system.“The moment our team has been waiting for is almost here,” Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung said at a recent briefing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles.NASA itself is likening the experiment to the Wright Brothers’ feat 117 years ago, paying tribute to that modest but monumental first flight by having affixed a tiny swath of wing fabric from the original Wright flyer under Ingenuity’s solar panel.The robot rotorcraft was carried to the red planet strapped to the belly of NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a mobile astrobiology lab that touched down on Feb. 18 in Jezero Crater after a nearly seven-month journey through space. Although Ingenuity’s flight test is set to begin around 3:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday (0730 GMT Monday), data confirming its outcome is not expected to reach JPL’s mission control until around 6:15 a.m. ET on Monday.NASA also expects to receive images and video of the flight that mission engineers hope to capture using cameras mounted on the helicopter and the Perseverance rover, which will be parked 250 feet (76 meters) away from Ingenuity’s flight zone.If the test succeeds, Ingenuity will undertake several additional, lengthier flights in the weeks ahead, though it will need to rest four to five days in between each to recharge its batteries. Prospects for future flights rest largely on a safe, four-point touchdown the first time.“It doesn’t have a self-righting system, so if we do have a bad landing, that will be the end of the mission,” Aung said. An unexpectedly strong wind gust is one potential peril that could spoil the flight.NASA hopes Ingenuity — a technology demonstration separate from Perseverance’s primary mission to search for traces of ancient microorganisms — paves the way for aerial surveillance of Mars and other destinations in the solar system, such as Venus or Saturn’s moon Titan.While Mars possesses much less gravity to overcome than Earth, its atmosphere is just 1% as dense, presenting a special challenge for aerodynamic lift. To compensate, engineers equipped Ingenuity with rotor blades that are larger (4-feet-long) and spin more rapidly than would be needed on Earth for an aircraft of its size.The design was successfully tested in vacuum chambers built at JPL to simulate Martian conditions, but it remains to be seen whether Ingenuity will fly on the red planet.The small, lightweight aircraft already passed an early crucial test by demonstrating it could withstand punishing cold, with nighttime temperatures dropping as low as 130 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius), using solar power alone to recharge and keep internal components properly heated.The planned flight was delayed for a week by a technical glitch during a test spin of the aircraft’s rotors on April 9. NASA said that issue has since been resolved. 
…

With nearly 60% of its population receiving the first COVID-19 vaccine, Israel is lifting its requirement Sunday to wear masks outdoors. The mask mandate remains in place, however, for enclosed spaces.Beginning April 24, France will require all travelers from Brazil to quarantine for 10 days.Brazil has 13.9 million COVID cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Only the U.S. and India have more cases, at 31.6 million and 14.5 million, respectively.More than 371,000 people have died in Brazil from COVID, Johns Hopkins reported. The U.S. is the only place that has more COVID deaths, at 566,893.On Sunday, India reported 261,500 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24-hour period.On Saturday, the worldwide COVID death toll surpassed 3 million.World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week the weekly number of new cases has more than doubled over the past two months, approaching the highest infection rate seen since the pandemic began.He said the infection numbers began to rise steadily in February, following six consecutive weeks of decline.
…

Nearly 700 patients were evacuated Saturday from Johannesburg’s Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, where a fire blazed through parts of the facility in South Africa’s largest city.No injuries or casualties have been reported. The fire has been contained but the hospital has been closed for seven days, said David Makhura, premier of Gauteng province where Johannesburg is located.Early Saturday morning the fire caused the third floor of the hospital’s parking garage to collapse.Sixty firefighters battled the blaze through the night. The fire started Friday morning and had been doused by the afternoon but then it reignited in the evening and continued burning overnight.The fire has caused extensive damage to the hospital, which has more than 1,000 beds and serves Johannesburg, a city of 6 million people, and the surrounding Gauteng province. It is one of the biggest public hospitals in the country.It is also a designated treatment center for COVID-19 in Gauteng. According to Makhura, the hospital had 13 COVID-19 patients, two in ICU and 11 in general wards at the time of the fire. They have all been transferred to other hospitals.”The fire has been contained into some areas. We are shutting down the hospital as a precautionary measure because there is a lot of smoke that went into other areas, including wards,” said Makhura.The fire started in a storeroom for dry surgical supplies, according to officials.Firefighters reported that the blaze re-started from smoldering medical supplies, including supplies of personal protective equipment used by staff treating patients with COVID-19, Makhura said. An investigation into the fire will be launched, he said.”Our firefighters have been receiving help from others in neighboring municipalities. It has been a tedious process trying to move patients. At first, we moved them to wards that were far away from the fire but we started to evacuate them,” said Gauteng health spokesperson Kwara Kekana. “That is still a process that is ongoing, we are now referring all patients to other hospitals.”
…

The United States and China are “committed to cooperating” on the pressing issue of climate change, the two sides said in a joint statement Saturday, following a visit to Shanghai by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry.”The United States and China are committed to cooperating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands,” said the statement from Kerry and China’s special envoy for climate change Xie Zhenhua.Kerry, the former U.S. secretary of state, was the first official from President Joe Biden’s administration to visit China, signaling hopes the two sides could work together on the global challenge despite sky-high tensions on multiple other fronts.The joint statement listed multiple avenues of cooperation between the United States and China, the world’s top two economies, which together account for nearly half of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.It stressed “enhancing their respective actions and cooperating in multilateral processes, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.”Biden has made climate a top priority, turning the page from his predecessor Donald Trump, who was closely aligned with the fossil fuel industry.Biden has rejoined the 2015 Paris accord, which Kerry negotiated when he was secretary of state and committed nations to taking action to keep temperature rises at no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
…

The 300-million-year-old shark’s teeth were the first sign that it might be a distinct species.The ancient chompers looked less like the spearlike rows of teeth of related species. They were squatter and shorter, less than an inch long, around 2 centimeters.”Great for grasping and crushing prey rather than piercing prey,” said discoverer John-Paul Hodnett, who was a graduate student when he unearthed the first fossils of the shark at a dig east of Albuquerque in 2013.This week, Hodnett and a slew of other researchers published their findings in a bulletin of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science identifying the shark as a separate species.He named the 6.7-foot (2-meter) monster Dracopristis hoffmanorum, or Hoffman’s Dragon Shark, in honor of the New Mexico family that owns the land in the Manzano Mountains where the fossils were found. Hodnett said the area is rife with fossils and easy to access because of a quarry and other commercial digging operations.The name also harkens to the dragonlike jawline and 2.5-foot (0.75-meter) fin spines that inspired the discovery’s initial nickname, “Godzilla Shark.”Seven years of workThe formal naming announcement followed seven years of excavation, preservation and study.The 12 rows of teeth on the shark’s lower jaw, for example, were still obscured by layers of sediment after excavation. Hodnett saw them only by using an angled light technique that illuminates objects below.Hodnett is now the paleontologist and program coordinator for the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission’s Dinosaur Park in Laurel, Maryland. His fellow researchers come from the New Mexico museum, as well as St. Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania, Northern Arizona University and Idaho State University.The recovered fossil skeleton is considered the most complete of its evolutionary branch — ctenacanth — that split from modern sharks and rays around 390 million years ago and went extinct around 60 million years later.Back then, eastern New Mexico was covered by a seaway that extended deep into North America. Hodnett and his colleagues believe that Hoffman’s dragon shark most likely lived in the shallows along the coast, stalking prey like crustaceans, fish and other sharks.New Mexico’s high desert plateaus have also yielded many dinosaur fossils, including various species of tyrannosaurus that roamed the land millions of years ago when it was a tropical rainforest. 
…

Nigerian authorities are stepping up efforts to vaccinate more people against COVID-19 after a slow rollout blamed on misinformation. Authorities aim to vaccinate over 80 million Nigerians by year’s end but are running far behind schedule. 
An Abuja vaccination center, which opened March 16, one week after Nigeria’s official vaccine rollout, vaccinates between 50 and 100 people daily. It is one of many vaccination locations in the Nigerian capital. Abuja resident Olu Agunbiade visited the center to get his first shot and says receiving the vaccine makes him feel safer.  “I can venture out into the world with a form of protection,” he told VOA. “I know that doesn’t mean I can’t still contract COVID, but at least I have antibodies, I can fight it.”  Nigeria received about 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine early last month.  Authorities say they will vaccine around 80 million people by the end of the year, but so far, only about 1 million have received shots. Although authorities say more Nigerians are now getting vaccinated, Abuja Primary Healthcare Board Executive Secretary Ndeyo Iwot says vaccine hesitancy and misinformation about the coronavirus are to blame for the low numbers.  “There’s a very big problem. Now start from the beginning, how many people even believed that we have the pandemic here? And now you want to bring vaccine for what they did not believe in the first instance? We have a lot of work to do,” Iwot says.    Dr Ngong Cyprian receives his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine from Dr Faisal Shuaib, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, in Abuja.As workaround, authorities are trying to increase vaccine awareness in communities, villages, and marketplaces.   Despite this, though, citizens like Richard Uka insist they will not get the vaccine. “To be sincere, I don’t think this is necessary, to me it’s not necessary,” Uka told VOA. “And I believe that in Nigeria nothing works. How do you think that that vaccine works or how do we know that it works?” Nigeria needs to vaccinate about 150 million citizens by next year to attain herd immunity.  Iwot, though, says getting adequate doses of vaccines may prove difficult.  “Looking at the pandemic situation in Europe, India and the U.S.A. and the U.K., some of them are experiencing the third and fourth spikes now and India that was giving us is also having spikes now. So many of the dosages they have will be consumed there,” Iwot told VOA.Very few African countries are able to manufacture the coronavirus vaccines, creating heavy dependence on foreign manufacturers.  The World Health Organization says the continent has so far received less than 2% of the global 690 million doses of the coronavirus vaccines. 
…

The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 cases are increasing globally at a worrying rate, with the number of new cases doubling each week, a pace approaching the highest rate of infection since the pandemic began.The WHO said Friday there were 541,960 new cases in the past week. On February 22 — the week new cases began to tick up after six weeks of decline – 194,469 new cases were reported.  At a virtual briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries that had avoided widespread infections are now seeing steep increases.  He pointed to Papua New Guinea, which, until the beginning of this year, had reported less than 900 cases and only nine deaths. The nation has now reported more than 9,300 cases and 82 deaths.  FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, speaks in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.Tedros said that while that is a small number relative to other countries, the dramatic rate of new infections has the WHO very concerned about the potential for a larger epidemic in Papua New Guinea. He said the WHO began a vaccine rollout in the nation late last month and three emergency medical teams had arrived in the country this week from Australia, the United States and Germany.The WHO chief said Papua New Guinea is an excellent example of why vaccine equity is so important. The small south Pacific nation, just north of Australia, was able to keep the pandemic at bay for a long time, but eventually rising infections hit at a time of social restriction fatigue and low levels of immunity among the population and began to overwhelm a fragile health care system.Tedros said Papua New Guinea has relied on vaccine donations from Australia and the WHO-supported vaccine cooperative COVAX initiative for support.To date, COVAX has shipped about 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, or enough to protect about 0.25% of the world’s population.
 
…

Nigerian authorities are stepping up efforts to vaccinate more people against COVID-19 after a slow rollout blamed on misinformation. Authorities aim to vaccinate over 80 million Nigerians by year’s end but are running far behind schedule. 
An Abuja vaccination center, which opened March 16, one week after Nigeria’s official vaccine rollout, vaccinates between 50 and 100 people daily. It is one of many vaccination locations in the Nigerian capital. Abuja resident Olu Agunbiade visited the center to get his first shot and says receiving the vaccine makes him feel safer.  “I can venture out into the world with a form of protection,” he told VOA. “I know that doesn’t mean I can’t still contract COVID, but at least I have antibodies, I can fight it.”  Nigeria received about 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine early last month.  Authorities say they will vaccine around 80 million people by the end of the year, but so far, only about 1 million have received shots. Although authorities say more Nigerians are now getting vaccinated, Abuja Primary Healthcare Board Executive Secretary Ndeyo Iwot says vaccine hesitancy and misinformation about the coronavirus are to blame for the low numbers.  “There’s a very big problem. Now start from the beginning, how many people even believed that we have the pandemic here? And now you want to bring vaccine for what they did not believe in the first instance? We have a lot of work to do,” Iwot says.    Dr Ngong Cyprian receives his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine from Dr Faisal Shuaib, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, in Abuja.As workaround, authorities are trying to increase vaccine awareness in communities, villages, and marketplaces.   Despite this, though, citizens like Richard Uka insist they will not get the vaccine. “To be sincere, I don’t think this is necessary, to me it’s not necessary,” Uka told VOA. “And I believe that in Nigeria nothing works. How do you think that that vaccine works or how do we know that it works?” Nigeria needs to vaccinate about 150 million citizens by next year to attain herd immunity.  Iwot, though, says getting adequate doses of vaccines may prove difficult.  “Looking at the pandemic situation in Europe, India and the U.S.A. and the U.K., some of them are experiencing the third and fourth spikes now and India that was giving us is also having spikes now. So many of the dosages they have will be consumed there,” Iwot told VOA.Very few African countries are able to manufacture the coronavirus vaccines, creating heavy dependence on foreign manufacturers.  The World Health Organization says the continent has so far received less than 2% of the global 690 million doses of the coronavirus vaccines. 
…

One Tyrannosaurus rex seems scary enough. Now picture 2.5 billion of them. That’s how many of the fierce dinosaur king probably roamed Earth over the course of a couple million years, a new study finds.Using calculations based on body size, sexual maturity and the creatures’ energy needs, a team at the University of California, Berkeley figured out just how many T. rex lived over 127,000 generations, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. It’s a first-of-its-kind number, but just an estimate with a margin of error that is the size of a T. rex.“That’s a lot of jaws,” said study lead author Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. “That’s a lot of teeth. That’s a lot of claws.”The species roamed North America for about 1.2 million to 3.6 million years, meaning the T. rex population density was small at any one moment. There would be about two in a place the size of the Washington, D.C., or 3,800 in California, the study said.“Probably like a lot of people, I literally did a double-take to make sure that my eyes hadn’t deceived me when I first read that 2.5 billion T. rexes have ever lived,” said Macalester College paleobiologist Kristi Curry Rogers, who wasn’t part of the study.Marshall said the estimate helps scientists figure the preservation rate of T. rex fossils and underscores how lucky the world is to know about them at all. About 100 or so T. rex fossils have been found — 32 of them with enough material to figure they are adults.If there were 2.5 million T. rex instead of 2.5 billion, we would probably have never known they existed, he said.Marshall’s team calculated the population by using a general biology rule of thumb that says the bigger the animal, the less dense its population. Then they added estimates of how much energy the carnivorous T. rex needed to stay alive — somewhere between a Komodo dragon and a lion. The more energy required, the less dense the population.They also factored in that the T. rex reached sexual maturity somewhere around 14 to 17 years old and lived at most 28 years.Given uncertainties in the creatures’ generation length, range and how long they roamed, the Berkeley team said the total population could be as little as 140 million or as much as 42 billion with 2.4 billion as the middle value.The science about the biggest land-living carnivores of all time is important, “but the truth, as I see it, is that this kind of thing is just very cool,” said Purdue University geology professor James Farlow.
…

Health officials in India said they counted more than 200,000 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, an all-time daily high for the South Asian nation.The surge in cases has India scrambling to find hospital beds and oxygen. The escalating tally has also forced India, a major vaccine producer, to delay global shipments of COVID vaccines and instead redirect them for use at home.New Delhi health official S.K. Sarin, told the Associated Press that the case surge is “alarming.”Some public health officials also say they believe a Hindu festival at which hundreds of worshippers bathed in the Ganges, as well as recent political rallies, may have contributed to the landmark surge.More than 30% of U.S. adults, about 78.5 million, are fully vaccinated for COVID-19, according to new data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The CDC said 48% of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, as have 80% of seniors, who are the most vulnerable to the harmful effects of the virus. Sixty-four percent of seniors are fully vaccinated.The CDC also reported about 5,800 so-called breakthrough cases of people who have been vaccinated but still contracted the virus.”All of the available vaccines have been proven effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations and deaths,” the agency said in a statement. “However, [as] with other vaccines, we expect thousands of vaccine breakthrough cases will occur, even though the vaccine is working as expected.”The CDC data come amid a temporary halt in administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.An independent panel of U.S. health experts is delaying a final decision about Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine as they get more information about the vaccine and possible links to a rare but dangerous blood clot.The CDC’s immunization advisory committee held an emergency meeting Wednesday, one day after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement recommending a pause after six women between 18 and 48 years of age developed blood clots known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis within six to 13 days after being inoculated. One of the women died, while another has been hospitalized in critical condition.The six cases are among more than 7 million Johnson & Johnson inoculations nationwide.Dr. Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington, was one of the members who argued in favor of gaining more information. But Bell called the blood-clotting incidents “a very rare event” and insisted she didn’t want to send a message “that there is something fundamentally wrong with this vaccine.”But the reports prompted the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Tuesday to announce it was delaying rollout of the vaccine in Europe, where vaccination efforts have been plagued by a shortage of vaccines and logistical problems, as well as the troubled rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been linked to cases of rare blood clots.Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were developed by using so-called adenoviruses to carry DNA into human cells that generates the body’s immune system to ward off the coronavirus.The issues with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines led the European Union to announce Wednesday that 50 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine that it was initially slated to receive by the end of the year will be delivered by June, adding to the 200 million doses it was already expecting to receive by then.Despite the problems, there was some good news in Europe.COVID-19 cases are declining among Europeans 80 and older, and death rates in the age group are at the lowest level since the pandemic began, according to a World Health Organization official.Speaking Thursday during a virtual news briefing in Athens, WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge credited the improving trend to vaccination programs across the continent, which prioritized the elderly.But Kluge said that was the only silver lining to the otherwise serious COVID-19 situation facing Europe. He said the region is averaging 1.6 million new cases a week and more than 9,500 new cases per hour. Last week, Europe surpassed 1 million deaths since the pandemic began.The world is nearing 3 million deaths from COVID-19 out of 138.8 million confirmed total cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Many nations are seeing a new surge of the virus, which is throwing doubt and confusion over numerous planned events, including the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Thursday during a televised interview the Olympics should be canceled if the current wave of new infections grows out of control. His remarks came 99 days before the July 23 opening ceremony.With Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections, public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the games should be postponed again or canceled.
…

Zimbabwe’s government this month reported a major increase in teenage pregnancies in January and February.  Advocates are blaming the rise from previous years on coronavirus lockdowns and poverty. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, Zimbabwe.Zimbabwe’s government says nearly 5,000 teenage girls became pregnant in January and February and about 1,800 entered early marriages during the same period.According to a government report, most of the girls live in poor suburbs such as Epworth, about 30 kilometers southeast of Harare.Here, since 2018, 17-year-old Natsiraishe Maritsa, founder of the Vulnerable Underaged People’s Auditorium Initiative, has been teaching her peers about the dangers of early pregnancy and early marriage.“I have realized that child marriages deprive the girl child of her rights,” she said. “And I have seen young girls diagnosed with fistula, I have seen young girls sink deep into poverty, I have seen young girls being abused because of child marriages. So, I realized that I had to stand up and fight for this noble cause.”She thinks karate lessons, among other activities, keep girls in this poor suburb occupied, including during the lockdowns.Sibusisiwe Bhuda-Masara, deputy chairperson of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, in Zimbabwe in April 2021. (Columbus  Mavhunga/VOA)Sibusisiwe Bhuda-Masara, deputy chairperson of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, said her group was “hurt” by the report, which was released by Sithembiso Nyoni, women’s affairs minister in Zimbabwe.Bhuda-Masara said stigma prevents young pregnant girls from going to school. She said preventing access to contraceptives by schoolchildren has not worked.“The only way for it is to allow those contraceptives to be distributed in schools,” she said. “Even the safe abortions, because we are trying to hide behind a finger. Our children are engaging in sex activities as early as 10 years. And why are we still not doing what other SADC [Southern African Development Community] countries have done? [In] South Africa it’s done legally. Those who can afford cross to South Africa and have their pregnancies terminated lawfully.”Maritsa disagrees, arguing Zimbabwe’s poverty rates and lack of education are fueling the sharp rise in the rates of teenage pregnancy and early marriage.
…

It has been 30 years or so since residents in New Mexico’s largest city last saw their stretch of the Rio Grande go dry. There’s a possibility it could happen again this summer. Federal water managers released their annual operating plan for the Rio Grande on Thursday, and it doesn’t look good. Flows have been meager so far this year because of below-average snowpack in the mountains along the Colorado-New Mexico border that feed the river. Spring precipitation has done little to fill the void. Reservoirs are at a fraction of their capacity and continue to shrink. There is no opportunity to replenish them because the provisions of a water-sharing agreement with Texas prevent New Mexico from storing water upstream. That means the drought-stricken state has no extra water in the bank to fall back on, as it has had in previous years. Matters are further complicated because of extremely low soil moisture levels. That, along with warm temperatures, means much of the melting snow will be absorbed or evaporate before it reaches the river. The Rio Grande flows just south of Bernalillo, N.M., April 13, 2021.”Just low dismal numbers all around,” Ed Kandl, a hydrologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said during a virtual meeting that included representatives from municipalities, tribal governments, irrigation districts, state agencies and a rafting company.  The Rio Grande is one of North America’s longest rivers and a major water source for millions of people and thousands of square miles of farmland in New Mexico, Texas and Mexico. The Bureau of Reclamation warned Thursday that a stellar monsoon season would be the only saving grace, but the odds of that happening are slim.  The Pecos River, which delivers water to parts of eastern New Mexico and West Texas, is in a similar situation, and federal officials recently issued a report indicating that releases on the Colorado River — which feeds several Western states — will continue to be limited because of the lack of water flowing into Lake Powell. So aside from residents in Albuquerque seeing sandbars take over the Rio Grande, farmers in central and southern New Mexico will have a shorter growing season with less water for crops.  It also means less water for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. Plans already are being made for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescue fish from drying portions of the river. The rescue missions have become a regular practice in recent years. Near the small agricultural community of San Acacia, officials predicted that river drying would start in June and likely last through November, barring any relief from summer rains.  Last year was also tough, but officials said 2021 will likely mark one of the worst since the 1950s. They said the state’s largest reservoir — Elephant Butte in southern New Mexico — could drop to just 3% of capacity. Carolyn Donnelly, the bureau’s water operations supervisor for the area, said contractors will be monitoring the river for drying as far north as Albuquerque, and managers will try to stretch what little water they have as far as it can go. 
…

Nigerian authorities are stepping up efforts to vaccinate more people against COVID-19 after a slow rollout blamed on misinformation. Authorities aim to vaccinate over 80 million Nigerians by year’s end but are running far behind schedule. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
Camera: Emekas Gibson
…

An independent panel of U.S. health experts is delaying a final decision about Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine as they get more information about it and possible links to a very rare but dangerous blood clot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization advisory committee held an emergency meeting Wednesday, one day after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement recommending a pause in the use of the one-dose vaccine after six women between 18 and 48 years old developed blood clots known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) within six to 13 days after being inoculated.  One of the women died, while another has been hospitalized in critical condition.    The six cases were among the more than 7 million people in the United States who have been inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. FILE – A member of the Philadelphia Fire Department administers a COVID-19 vaccine, March 26, 2021.Dr. Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington, was one of the members who argued in favor of gaining more information.  But Bell called the blood clotting incidents “a very rare event” and insisted she didn’t want to send a message “that there is something fundamentally wrong with this vaccine.” Delays in EuropeBut the reports prompted the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Tuesday to announce it was delaying rollout in Europe, where vaccination efforts have been plagued by a shortage of vaccines and logistical problems, as well as the troubled rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been linked to cases of rare blood clots. Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were developed by using so-called adenoviruses to carry DNA into human cells that generates the body’s immune system to ward off the coronavirus.    People wait to receive a dose of AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine in Fasano, Italy, Apr. 13, 2020.The issues with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines led the European Union to announce Wednesday that 50 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine that it was initially slated to receive by the end of the year will be delivered by June, adding to the 200 million doses it was already expecting to receive by then.  In a related matter, Denmark became the first country in the world on Wednesday to permanently stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the suspected blood clots, just a month after health officials suspended use of the two-shot regimen.   Tokyo Olympic Games   The world is nearing 3 million deaths from COVID-19 out of 138.2 million confirmed total cases, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  Many nations are undergoing a new surge of the virus, which is throwing doubt and confusion over numerous planned events, including the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.   Passersby walk past a screen showing a countdown to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games that have been postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 4, 2021.Toshihiro Nikai, the secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Thursday during a televised interview the Olympics should be cancelled if the current wave of new infections grows out of control.  Nikai’s remarks came a day after Japan hit the milestone of  100 days before the July 23 official ceremony.   The Tokyo Olympics were scheduled for last July and August, but organizers and then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to postpone the event for a year as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe.  However, with Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections, public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the games should be postponed again or canceled.   
…

An independent panel of U.S. health experts is delaying a final decision about Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine as they get more information about it and possible links to a very rare but dangerous blood clot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization advisory committee held an emergency meeting Wednesday, one day after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement recommending a pause in the use of the one-dose vaccine after six women between 18 and 48 years old developed blood clots known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) within six to 13 days after being inoculated.  One of the women died, while another has been hospitalized in critical condition.    The six cases were among the more than 7 million people in the United States who have been inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. FILE – A member of the Philadelphia Fire Department administers a COVID-19 vaccine, March 26, 2021.Dr. Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington, was one of the members who argued in favor of gaining more information.  But Bell called the blood clotting incidents “a very rare event” and insisted she didn’t want to send a message “that there is something fundamentally wrong with this vaccine.” Delays in EuropeBut the reports prompted the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Tuesday to announce it was delaying rollout in Europe, where vaccination efforts have been plagued by a shortage of vaccines and logistical problems, as well as the troubled rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been linked to cases of rare blood clots. Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were developed by using so-called adenoviruses to carry DNA into human cells that generates the body’s immune system to ward off the coronavirus.    People wait to receive a dose of AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine in Fasano, Italy, Apr. 13, 2020.The issues with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines led the European Union to announce Wednesday that 50 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine that it was initially slated to receive by the end of the year will be delivered by June, adding to the 200 million doses it was already expecting to receive by then.  In a related matter, Denmark became the first country in the world on Wednesday to permanently stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the suspected blood clots, just a month after health officials suspended use of the two-shot regimen.   Tokyo Olympic Games   The world is nearing 3 million deaths from COVID-19 out of 138.2 million confirmed total cases, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  Many nations are undergoing a new surge of the virus, which is throwing doubt and confusion over numerous planned events, including the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.   Passersby walk past a screen showing a countdown to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games that have been postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 4, 2021.Toshihiro Nikai, the secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Thursday during a televised interview the Olympics should be cancelled if the current wave of new infections grows out of control.  Nikai’s remarks came a day after Japan hit the milestone of  100 days before the July 23 official ceremony.   The Tokyo Olympics were scheduled for last July and August, but organizers and then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to postpone the event for a year as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe.  However, with Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections, public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the games should be postponed again or canceled.   
…

Matchbox is launching a new series of toy cars based on real-life electric and hybrid vehicles, in a bid to make its miniatures more sustainable and to raise awareness among children of the environmental impact of motoring.The first model off the production line is a scaled-down version of the Tesla Roadster, which will be joined by toys based on cars made by Nissan, Toyota and BMW. Electric charging stations will also go on sale this year.”We are unveiling a concept car, just like the real car industry does,” said Nuria Alonso, head of Matchbox marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa.She added that it would be the first die-cast model made of 99% recycled materials.”We wanted to work with Tesla to inspire kids as the future drivers of tomorrow. We think their parents will love to see how their kids play with cars that encourage environmental consciousness, like electric cars.”The launch is part of an overhaul in Britain and Europe at Matchbox, which is owned by toymaker Mattel.The Matchbox brand was created nearly 70 years ago and sells more than 40 million die-cast vehicles each year. 
…