An auction for a ride into space next month alongside Jeff Bezos and his brother ended Saturday with a winning $28 million bid.The Amazon founder’s rocket company, Blue Origin, did not disclose the winner’s name following the live online auction. The identity will be revealed in a couple weeks — closer to the brief up-and-down flight from West Texas on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing.It will be the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket with people on board, kicking off the company’s space tourism business. Fifteen previous test flights of the reusable rocket and capsule since 2015 — short hops lasting about 10 minutes — were all successful.Saturday’s auction followed more than a month of online bidding that had reached $4.8 million by Friday. More than 7,500 people from 159 countries registered to bid, according to Blue Origin. More than 20 bidders — the high rollers — took part in Saturday’s auction.Bezos announced Monday that he and his younger brother, Mark, would be on board New Shepard’s first crew flight; the news quickly boosted bidding. The winning amount is being donated to Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, an educational effort to promote science and tech among young people.The completely automated capsule can carry up to six passengers, each of whom gets a big window. Blue Origin’s top sales director, Ariane Cornell, said following the auction that the fourth and final seat on the debut crew flight would be announced soon.Blue Origin has yet to open ticket sales to the public or divulge prices.
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Month: June 2021
Moscow’s mayor on Saturday ordered a week off for some workplaces and imposed restrictions on many businesses to fight coronavirus infections that have more than doubled in the past week.The national coronavirus task force reported 6,701 new confirmed cases in Moscow, compared with 2,936 on June 6. Nationally, the daily tally has spiked by nearly half over the past week, to 13,510.After several weeks of lockdown as the pandemic spread in the spring of 2020, the Russian capital eased restrictions and did not reimpose any during subsequent case increases. But because of the recent sharp rise, “it is impossible not to react to such a situation,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.He ordered enterprises that do not normally work on weekends to remain closed for the next week while continuing to pay employees. Food courts and children’s play areas in shopping centers also are to close for a week beginning Sunday, and restaurants and bars must limit their service.People wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus ride a subway car in Moscow, Russia, June 10, 2021.Mask, glove enforcementEarlier in the week, city authorities said enforcement of mask- and glove-wearing requirements on mass transit, in stores and in other public places would be strengthened and that violators could face fines of up to 5,000 rubles ($70).Although Russia was the first country to deploy a coronavirus vaccine, its use has been relatively low; many Russians are reluctant to get vaccinated.President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said 18 million Russians had received the vaccine — about 12% of the population.For the entire pandemic period, the task force has reported nearly 5.2 million infections in the country of about 146 million people and 126,000 deaths. However, a report from Russian state statistics agency Rosstat on Friday found more than 144,000 virus-related deaths last year alone.The statistics agency, unlike the task force, counts fatalities in which coronavirus infection was present or suspected but was not the main cause of death.The agency’s report found about 340,000 more people died in 2020 than in 2019; it did not give details of the causes of the higher year-on-year death toll.The higher death toll and a lower number of births combined to make an overall population decline of 702,000, about twice the decline in 2019, Rosstat said.
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Concerns about the safety of the COVID vaccine are common especially when it comes to inoculating very young children. A new study suggests that some moms may be passing along antibodies to their infants. VOA’s Dilge Timocin has more. Camera: Tezcan Taskiran
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Top U.S. and Chinese diplomats appear to have had another sharply worded exchange, with Beijing saying it told the U.S. to cease interfering in its internal affairs and accusing Washington of politicizing the search for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.Senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a phone call Friday that revealed wide divisions in several contentious areas, including the curtailing of freedoms in Hong Kong and the mass detention of Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.Calls for a more thorough investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are particularly sensitive for China because of suggestions that it might have have escaped from a laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, where cases were first discovered.Yang said China was “gravely concerned” over what he called “absurd” stories that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab.China “firmly opposes any despicable acts that use the epidemic as an excuse to slander China and to shift blames,” Yang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.“Some people in the United States have fabricated and peddled absurd stories claiming Wuhan lab leak, which China is gravely concerned about,” Yang said. “China urges the United States to respect facts and science, refrain from politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing and concentrate on international anti-pandemic cooperation.”The State Department said Blinken “stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency regarding the origin of the virus, including the need for (World Health Organization) Phase 2 expert-led studies in China.”The U.S. and others have accused China of failing to provide the raw data and access to sites that would allow a more thorough investigation into where the virus sprung from and how it initially spread.Equally contentious were the issues of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and accusations that China has arbitrarily detained two Canadian citizens in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of an executive of Chinese communications technology giant Huawei, who is wanted by U.S. law enforcement.The U.S. has “fabricated various lies about Xinjiang in an attempt to sabotage the stability and unity in Xinjiang, which confuse right and wrong and are extremely absurd. China is firmly opposed to such actions,” Yang said.FILE – People walk by a billboard reading ‘All people participate in building a line of defense against the epidemic, please get the vaccine in time’ in Beijing, May 24, 2021.“Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs,” and those found in violation of a sweeping national security law imposed on the former British colony “must be punished,” Yang said.Blinken, on the other hand, underscored U.S. concern over the deterioration of democratic norms in Hong Kong and the ongoing “genocide and crimes against humanity against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” the State Department said.He also urged Beijing to ease pressure against Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary.According to Xinhua, Yang said Taiwan involves China’s “core interests” and that Beijing “firmly defends its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”The tone of the phone call seemed to echo contentious talks in March in Alaska, when the sides traded sharp and unusually public barbs over vastly different views of each other and the world in their first face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office.At that meeting, the U.S. accused the Chinese delegation of “grandstanding,” while Beijing fired back, saying there was a “strong smell of gunpowder and drama” that was entirely the fault of the Americans.Relations between them have deteriorated to their lowest level in decades, with the Biden administration showing no signs of deviating from the established U.S. hardline against China over trade, technology, human rights and China’s claim to the South China Sea.Beijing, meanwhile, has fought back doggedly against what it sees as attempts to smear its reputation and restrain its development.On Thursday, its ceremonial legislature passed a law to retaliate against sanctions imposed on Chinese politicians and organizations, threatening to deny entry to and freeze the Chinese assets of anyone who formulates or implements such measures, potentially placing new pressure on foreign companies operating in the country.
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COVID-19 vaccines for children are moving closer to availability, but access remains limited.Moderna announced late this week that it was submitting its vaccine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization in children age 12 and older.The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already received the go-ahead for this age group.The companies are testing their vaccines on younger age groups, down to 6 months. Results are expected in the fall.The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are moving into pediatric populations ahead of those from Johnson & Johnson and the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca partnership.The AstraZeneca vaccine makes up the bulk of the doses delivered through COVAX, the WHO-backed program delivering shots to low- and middle-income countries.Rare but serious blood clotting issues have slowed down the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. A study this week in the journal Nature Medicine found a rate of about one case per every 100,000 people who received the AstraZeneca shot.The vaccine’s benefits still far outweigh the risks, according to regulators in the United States and Europe and the World Health Organization. These kinds of blood clots can also be a complication of COVID-19, the Scottish study noted. They are also a rare side effect of other common vaccines, including those for influenza, hepatitis B and measles, mumps and rubella.As to whether this side effect will affect children, “we don’t yet know the answer to that,” said William Moss, head of the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center. “It’s possible either way. The risk could be very similar to (that for) older adults, or the risk could be decreased.”Oxford said it has stopped enrolling children in its vaccine trial while it evaluates the blood clotting issues.Though the delay will push back availability for children, the WHO says children are not the top priority for vaccination currently.”Though they can get infected with COVID-19 and they can transmit the infection to others, they are at much lower risk of getting severe disease compared to older adults,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told the organization’s Science in 5 podcast.”Except for (the) very few children who are at a high risk, (they are) not considered to be a high priority right now because we have limited doses of vaccines. We need to use them to protect the most vulnerable,” including health care workers and the elderly, she said.The G-7 group of industrialized countries this week pledged 1 billion doses to global vaccination efforts, including 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech shots donated by the United States.That falls billions of doses short of what is needed, critics note, and most of the doses are not expected until next year.While the Pfizer and Moderna shots have not had the same blood clotting issues as the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, officials have raised concerns about their possible link to swelling of the heart or the heart’s lining.A few more patients than expected developed this side effect after receiving these vaccines, according to reports from the United States and Israel, but regulators have not determined whether the vaccines are responsible.Most recovered without incident.
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It’s Pride Month, and gay Americans should have a lot to celebrate: A new president who has pledged to advocate for LGBTQ people, an easing of a pandemic that has disrupted their communal activism, and increasing public acceptance of their basic rights, including record-high support for same-sex marriage. Instead, the mood is somewhat bleak. Congress has so far failed to extend federal civil rights protections to LGBTQ people. Pandemic-related concerns are still disrupting the usual exuberant Pride festivals. And a wave of anti-transgender legislation in Republican-governed states has been disheartening “The same week I’m seeing all the ‘Happy Pride’ announcements, I received multiple calls from friends about trans kids having to navigate entering psychiatric hospitals because they were suicidal and self-harming,” said M. Dru Levasseur, a transgender attorney who is director of diversity, equity and inclusion for the National LGBT Bar Association. “I’m doing crisis management,” he added. “These untold stories about what life is like for trans kids are contrasting with ‘Happy Pride, everybody.’ ” On June 1, the start of Pride Month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill making his state the eighth this year to ban transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports at public schools. Arkansas, one of those eight states, also has enacted a law banning gender-confirming medical treatments, like hormones and puberty blockers, that greatly reduce the risk of suicide in trans youth. “Our opponents have been absolutely shameless in their attacks on transgender people,” said Kevin Jennings, CEO of the LGBTQ-rights group Lambda Legal. “We know that trans young people are most marginalized and vulnerable students in our schools — being bullied, harassed, mistreated,” Jennings said. “We’re watching state legislators piling on to the bullying.” The trans community already faces a disproportionate level of violence. At least 28 trans and gender nonconforming people have been killed so far this year in the U.S. — on track to surpass the previous one-year high of 44 such killings in 2020. FILE – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., walks to a news conference as the Democratic-led House prepares to pass a bill extending protections for LGBTQ people, Feb. 25, 2021.Activists’ concerns extend beyond transgender issues. For many, the top political priority is passage of the Equality Act, which would extend federal civil rights protections to LGBTQ people. It was approved by the Democratic-controlled U.S. House and is backed by President Joe Biden, but probably needs at least 10 Republican votes to prevail in the closely divided Senate — and thus far has no GOP co-sponsors. Tyler Deaton, who advises a conservative group called the American Unity Fund that supports LGBTQ rights, believes enough Republican votes can be found if language is drafted to ensure the Equality Act doesn’t infringe on religious freedom. “Senators are having those conversations now,” he said, mentioning Republicans such as Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rob Portman of Ohio who have supported some LGBTQ-friendly legislation in the past. Amid the disappointment, Pride festivities are proceeding, but many have been subject to downsizing, postponement and — in some cases — controversy. The Pride parades in San Francisco and Los Angeles have been canceled for a second year in a row because of uncertainty about COVID-19 restrictions. Organizers are offering smaller in-person events this month. Philadelphia has scrapped its large-scale parade; there are plans for a festival instead on September 4. Chicago’s parade has been rescheduled for October 3. In New York, most events for NYC Pride will take place virtually, as they did last year, though some in-person activities are planned. NYC Pride organizers incurred some criticism last month after banning police and other law enforcement personnel from marching in uniform in the annual parade until at least 2025 and asking that on-duty officers keep a block away from the celebration. The Gay Officers Action League said it was disheartened by the decision. Some recent developments have encouraged the LGBTQ community — the overturning of a Trump administration ban on transgender people joining the military; the groundbreaking appointments of Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, as transportation secretary, and Dr. Rachel Levine, who is transgender, as assistant secretary of health. And this week, Gallup reported that 70% of Americans now support same-sex marriage, the highest number since Gallup began polling on the topic in 1996, when support was at 27%. But to many activists, these developments are offset by setbacks to transgender rights. Amy Allen, mother of a 14-year-old transgender boy in the suburbs of Nashville, said her family is dismayed by the multiple anti-trans bills winning approval in Tennessee — including one exposing public schools to lawsuits if they let transgender students use multiperson bathrooms or locker rooms that don’t reflect their sex at birth. FILE – Amy Allen, the mother of an eighth-grade transgender son, speaks at a Human Rights Campaign roundtable discussion on anti-transgender laws, in Nashville, Tenn., May 21, 2021.”We’ve done a pretty good job within our family of really supporting him,” Allen said of her son, Adam. ” Then to have this new layer of the legislation — having to think how that could directly affect his day-to-day life just adds more anxiety.” It’s worrisome enough, Allen said, that she and her husband — who have roots in the Northeast — are considering relocating there if Adam’s situation worsens. Activists have expressed dismay at the lack of corporate backlash to the new anti-transgender laws. A particular disappointment for activists is the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which — despite calls for it to take punitive action — located some of this year’s regional softball and baseball tournament games in states that enacted bans on transgender girls’ sports participation. It’s a sharp contrast to the NCAA’s stance five years ago, when it refused to hold championship events in North Carolina for several months after its legislature passed a bill restricting transgender people’s use of bathrooms in public facilities. “The NCAA should be ashamed of themselves for violating their own policy by choosing to hold championships in states that are not healthy, safe, or free from discrimination for their athletes,” said Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign. Among the transgender Americans with mixed feelings about Pride Month is Randi Robertson, who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during 22 years in the Air Force and now combines work as an airline pilot instructor with transgender-rights advocacy. She is relieved that the Biden administration, unlike its predecessor, pledges support for expanded LGBTQ rights, yet she says activists should be combative rather than complacent. “The fundamentalist, evangelical right has chosen expressly to attack the smallest, most vulnerable part of the LBGT community [transgender people],” she said. “The broader narrative is we’re actually winning. Now is not the time to give up — now is the time to double down and keep the pressure on.” Imani Rupert-Gordon, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, also voiced a nuanced view of Pride Month. “Pride is a time when we get to celebrate who we are,” she said. “It’s also a time when we recognize we still have a lot more to do.”
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The G-7 nations announced Friday that they will donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and medium-income nations. The U.S., as previously announced, will donate 500 million shots, while Britain will donate 100 million. “I hope my fellow @G7 leaders will make similar pledges so that, together, we can vaccinate the world by the end of next year,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson posted on Twitter Friday. G-7 Will Donate 1 Billion COVID Vaccines to WorldUS shots will begin shipment in August President Biden says; Britain will donate 100 million jabsChildhood vaccinations
A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday, focusing on 10 jurisdictions, found that between March and May of 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak resulted in a marked decline in routine childhood vaccinations compared to the same period in 2018 and 2019. The study said the decline placed “U.S. children and adolescents at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases,” such as measles and polio.The CDC study also found the vaccination rate increased from June to September 2020, but “this increase was not sufficient to achieve catch-up coverage.”The CDC recommended health care providers “assess the vaccination status of all pediatric patients, including adolescents, and contact those who are behind schedule to ensure that all children and adolescents are fully vaccinated” to avoid disease outbreaks. Caribbean cruise infections
Meanwhile, two passengers who shared a room on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship tested positive for COVID-19 during required end-of-cruise testing on the Celebrity Millenium ship. The two are asymptomatic, in isolation and are being monitored by a medical team. Passengers on the ship were required to show proof of vaccination and negative results from a COVID test conducted within 72 hours of departure. Children too young for vaccination also were required to have negative COVID test results. Royal Caribbean said the ship’s crew was fully vaccinated. Global COVID cases
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Friday the number of global COVID-19 infections has reached nearly 175 million. The U.S. remains the location with the most cases at 33.4 million infections, but India is rapidly catching up with more than 29 million infections. India’s health ministry reported more than 91,000 new COVID-19 cases Friday in the previous 24 hours.Public health officials say they suspect that India’s cases may be undercounted.
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Ransomware cases are on the rise worldwide and criminal groups based in Russia are suspected of being behind some of the biggest recent attacks. Michelle Quinn reports on the changing world of ransomware.Camera: Matt DibbleProduced by: Michelle Quinn
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The first match of soccer’s European championship gets underway Friday at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, with Turkey taking on Italy.The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship was postponed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic that brought many of the world’s activities to a halt.It is notable that Friday’s opening match will be played in Italy, the first country outside of Asia to get hit by the pandemic and the world’s first to impose a nationwide lockdown.Euro 2020 was suspended last March as countries worked to contain virus outbreaks that have killed more than 1 million Europeans, including 127,000 Italians.Organizers of the tournament, the Union of European Football Associations, hope to allay concerns that it is still unsafe for tens of thousands of fans to gather in stadiums across Europe by undertaking several safety measures. They include crowd limitations, staggered fan arrival times, social distancing and hand sanitizer.Fans attending the match in Rome are required to show documentation they have been vaccinated, tested negative in the 48 hours before the match, or previously have had the coronavirus.Euro 2020, the 16th UEFA championship, is scheduled through July 11. For the first time, matches will be played across Europe. The host cities are Rome, London, Saint Petersburg, Baku, Munich, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Budapest, Copenhagen, Glasgow and Seville.
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Hong Kong censors are to vet all films for national security breaches under expanded powers announced on Friday, in the latest blow to the financial hub’s political and artistic freedoms.Authorities in semi-autonomous Hong Kong have embarked on a sweeping crackdown to root out Beijing’s critics after huge and often violent democracy protests convulsed the city in 2019.A new China-imposed security law and an official campaign dubbed “Patriots rule Hong Kong” has since criminalized much dissent and strangled the democracy movement.The latest target is films. In a statement on Friday, the government said the Film Censorship Ordinance had been expanded to include “any act or activity which may amount to an offense endangering national security”. “When considering a film as a whole and its effect on the viewers, the censor should have regard to his duties to prevent and suppress acts or activities endangering national security,” states the new guidance, which is effective immediately.It also cites “the common responsibility of the people of Hong Kong to safeguard the sovereignty, unification and territorial integrity of the People’s Republic of China.” The move sparked concerns that Chinese mainland style political censorship of films had now arrived in Hong Kong. “This new censorship will make it even harder for local filmmakers in Hong Kong to use their democratic rights to create art and challenge unjust power structures,” Oscar-nominated director Anders Hammer told AFP. Hammer, a Norwegian national, received an Oscar nod for his documentary about Hong Kong’s democracy protests “Do Not Split”.”It’s two years since the pro-democracy protests started and I’m saddened to see another serious example of Beijing’s encroachment on Hong Kong’s civil liberties,” he added.Culture controlsFilms are rigorously vetted on the Chinese mainland and only a handful of Western films or documentaries ever see a commercial release each year.Hong Kong’s Film Censorship Authority has traditionally employed a much lighter touch. Historically, the city has boasted a thriving film scene and for much of the latter half of the last century, Cantonese cinema was world-class.In more recent decades, slick mainland Chinese and South Korean blockbusters have come to dominate the regional film scene. Hong Kong still maintains some key studios, a handful of lauded directors and a thriving indie scene.But there are growing signs authorities want to see an increase in mainland-style controls over the cultural and art scenes in Hong Kong.Over the past week, health officials have conducted spot checks on a protest-themed museum and a separate exhibition, stating that neither had the correct licenses. The museum had been operating for years without issue. In March, an award-winning documentary about Hong Kong’s massive pro-democracy protests was pulled hours before its first commercial screening after days of criticism from a pro-Beijing newspaper. It said the film’s content breached the new national security law.Earlier this year a university cancelled a prestigious press photography exhibition that featured pictures of the 2019 protests, citing security concerns. And M+, a multi-million-dollar contemporary art museum expected to open soon, has said it will allow security officials to vet its collection for any security law breaches before it opens to the public later this year.A government spokesperson said film censors would strike a “balance between protection of individual rights and freedoms on the one hand, and the protection of legitimate societal interests on the other”.
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Google has promised to give U.K. regulators a role overseeing its plan to phase out existing ad-tracking technology from its Chrome browser as part of a competition investigation into the tech giant. The U.K. competition watchdog has been investigating Google’s proposals to remove so-called third-party cookies over concerns they would undermine digital ad competition and entrench the company’s market power. To address the concerns, Google on Friday offered a set of commitments including giving the Competition and Markets Authority an oversight role as the company designs and develops a replacement technology. “The emergence of tech giants such as Google has presented competition authorities around the world with new challenges that require a new approach,” Andrea Coscelli, the watchdog’s chief executive, said. The Competition and Markets Authority will work with tech companies to “shape their behavior and protect competition to the benefit of consumers,” he said. The promises also include “substantial limits” on how Google will use and combine individual user data for digital ad purposes and a pledge not to discriminate against rivals in favor of its own ad businesses with the new technology. If Google’s commitments are accepted, they will be applied globally, the company said in a blog post. Third-party cookies – snippets of code that log user info – are used to help businesses more effectively target advertising and fund free online content such as newspapers. However, they’ve also been a longstanding source of privacy concerns because they can be used to track users across the internet. Google shook up the digital ad industry with its plan to do away with third-party cookies, which raised fears newer technology would leave even less room for online ad rivals.
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Authorities in Kenya are taking steps to eradicate trachoma, an infectious disease that is a leading cause of blindness in Africa. About 7 million people in central Kenya are at risk for the disease, as Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi.
Camera: Amos Wangwa
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On Thursday, before the opening Friday of the G-7 Summit in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the group is set to donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and middle-income countries.Johnson’s announcement came after U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier in the day that his administration is donating 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, half of the G-7 vaccine trove.”We’re going to help lead the world out of this pandemic working alongside our global partners,” Biden said.Britain will donate 100 million shots.“As a result of the success of the U.K.’s vaccine program, we are now in a position to share some of our surplus doses with those who need them,” Johnson said. “In doing so, we will take a massive step towards beating this pandemic for good.”The U.S. shots will begin shipment in August “as quickly as they roll off the manufacturing line,” Biden said in Cornwall on Thursday, adding that 200 million doses will be delivered by the end of this year and 300 million in the first half of 2022.Biden said the donation will be made with no strings attached.“Our vaccine donations don’t include pressure for favors or potential concessions. We’re doing this to save lives, to end this pandemic,” he said.Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, joined Biden for the announcement.“We are testing our vaccines response to newly arising variants,” Bourla said, noting that so far not a single variant has escaped the protection provided by the vaccine.With the pledge, the U.S. also aims to liberate itself from the uncomfortable reputation of being a vaccine hoarder.The move is a signal that the U.S. “isn’t as intensely parochial and inward focused,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas program at Chatham House. That has been a deep concern globally, said Vinjamuri, during former President Donald Trump’s administration as well as in the early months of the Biden administration, when Washington was not sharing doses despite a massive oversupply.COVAXThe doses, delivered by the U.S. through COVAX, the United Nations vaccine-sharing mechanism, are in addition to the 80 million already committed by the U.S. to be delivered by the end of June. In addition, the U.S. has given $2 billion to COVAX.The U.S. initially pledged an additional $2 billion for COVAX but is now redirecting the money to help pay for the 500 million donated doses, which has an estimated cost of $3.5 billion.Humanitarian organizations applauded the move.Tom Hart, acting CEO at The ONE Campaign, an organization that works to end poverty and preventable diseases, said in a statement, “This action sends an incredibly powerful message about America’s commitment to helping the world fight this pandemic and the immense power of U.S. global leadership.”However, it is unclear just how much G-7 countries can help. The member countries are at different stages of vaccinating their own populations. Japan and Canada, which have vaccination rates of under 10%, are not in a position to be as generous.Aside from donating vaccines, the G-7 is also under pressure to waive vaccine patents. The U.S. has supported waiving intellectual property rights on vaccines, the so-called TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization. The European Union, however, is pushing for a different proposal, compulsory licensing to scale up vaccine production.White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told VOA that the different approaches will not be a point of contention at the G-7.“I anticipate convergence, because we’re all converging around the idea that we need to boost vaccine supply in a number of ways,” said Sullivan.The Biden administration knows that Europe will likely hold firm on not supporting the waiver, said Vinjamuri of Chatham House, adding that getting all members of the WTO to agree on a waiver is a long and challenging process, and it’s simply easier to donate vaccines rather than allow countries to produce them without fear of being sued.White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA the U.S. will continue WTO negotiations but would not provide details on whether Biden will put his diplomatic weight behind it at the G-7.Biden-Johnson summitPrior to his vaccine announcement, Biden met Thursday with Johnson, with whom he has had disagreements in the past. Biden had once called Johnson a clone of Trump.The leaders agreed on a new Atlantic Charter, modeled on statement made by then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 to promote democracy and free trade, that was instrumental in shaping the world order after World War II.The 2021 Atlantic Charter underscores that, with similar values and combined strength, the two countries will work together to face the enormous challenges facing the planet – from COVID and climate change to maintaining global security.Biden, who is of Irish descent, is also concerned that Brexit could undermine the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 deal facilitated by the United States that brought peace to Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K.Under the Brexit deal, Northern Ireland remains party to the EU’s single market, yet is no longer part of the union, which means a customs border must be implemented. The Biden administration wants to ensure that nothing in Brexit could endanger prospects for peace.Biden’s support for the Good Friday Agreement is “rock-solid,” Sullivan told VOA.“That agreement must be protected, and any steps that imperil or undermine it will not be welcomed by the United States,” said Sullivan. He would not say whether Johnson is undermining the agreement.Despite these tensions, Biden is very committed to anchoring the G-7 in the U.S.-U.K. partnership, said Vinjamuri. “Really using America’s deep and historic relationship with Britain to affirm the values of democracy, of liberalism, of freedom.”Johnson’s government has just concluded an integrated review of its foreign policy strategy, which included a reaffirmation of the special relationship between the two allies.
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The Keystone XL is dead after a 12-year attempt to build the oil pipeline, yet the fight over Canadian crude rages on as emboldened environmentalists target other projects and pressure President Joe Biden to intervene — all while oil imports from the north keep rising.Biden dealt the fatal blow to the partially built $9 billion Keystone XL in January when he revoked its border-crossing permit issued by former President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, sponsors TC Energy and the province of Alberta gave up and declared the line “terminated.”Activists and many scientists had warned that the pipeline would open a new spigot on Canada’s oil sands crude — and that burning the heavily polluting fuel would lock in climate change. As the fight escalated into a national debate over fossil fuels, Canadian crude exports to the U.S. steadily increased, driven largely by production from Alberta’s oil sands region.Even before the cancellation, environmentalists had turned their attention to other projects, including the proposal by energy delivery company Enbridge to expand and rebuild its Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, the target of protests this week that led to the arrest of some 250 activists.”Don’t expect these fights to go away anytime soon,” said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at Resources for the Future, an energy and environmental think tank in Washington. “This is going to encourage environmental advocates to do more of the same.”Bill McKibben, an author who was arrested outside the White House while protesting the Keystone XL in 2011, said its defeat provides a template to kill other pipelines, including Line 3 and the Dakota Access pipeline from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field.Describing Keystone XL as “a carbon bomb,” McKibben said Line 3 is the same size and “carries the same stuff. How on earth could anyone with a straight face say Line 3 passes the climate test?”Enbridge said the cancellation of Keystone XL will not affect its projects, describing them as “designed to meet current energy demand safely and in ways that better protect the environment.”A second TC Energy pipeline network, known simply as Keystone, has been delivering crude from Canada’s oil sands region since 2010. The company says the line that runs from Alberta to Illinois, Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast has moved more than 3 billion barrels of oil.Canada is by far the biggest foreign crude supplier to the U.S., which imported about 3.5 million barrels a day from its neighbor in 2020 — 61% of all U.S. oil imports.The flow dropped slightly during the coronavirus pandemic but has largely rebounded. Import volumes have almost doubled since the Keystone XL was first proposed in 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said Thursday that it expects no immediate effect on production from Keystone XL’s cancellation, but the group predicted more oil would be moved to the U.S. by rail.A series of fiery accidents occurred in the U.S. and Canada after rail shipments of crude increased during an oil boom on the Northern Plains, including a 2013 incident in which 47 people were killed after a runaway train derailed in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic.The dispute over Keystone XL and other lines raised diplomatic tensions between the two countries, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau adopted a conciliatory tone with Biden, who canceled the pipeline on his first day in the White House.Canada uses much less oil than it produces, making it a huge exporter, and 98% of those exports go to the U.S., according to the Natural Resources Canada.Trudeau raised Keystone XL as a top priority with Biden while acknowledging that the president had promised in his campaign to cancel the line.Both leaders have taken heat at home over Keystone, with Republicans slamming Biden for shutting it down while construction was under way, costing hundreds of jobs. The project was meant to expand oil exports for Canada, which has the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and provincial officials in Alberta wanted Trudeau to do more to save it.The White House declined to comment on the cancellation. Spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to say if Biden plans to address increased crude exports from Canada or intervene in other pipeline disputes.His action on Keystone “signals at least some appetite to get involved,” but pipelines that have operated for years would be tougher targets, Raimi said.Winona LaDuke, executive director of the Indigenous-based environmental group Honor the Earth, called on Biden to withdraw an Army Corps of Engineers permit for Line 3 and to order a new study.”He could stop the project,” she said. “Don’t ask us to be nice to Enbridge. They’re all over our land. They’re hurting us.”The Biden administration has been “disturbingly quiet” on Line 3 and the Dakota Access line, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. He urged the administration to declare both unacceptable.Fiercely opposed by Native Americans, the Dakota Access pipeline was the impetus for protests that were quashed by law enforcement. The Biden administration has not sought to stop the line, and it’s still in court after a judge revoked its permit but allowed oil to keep flowing.Alberta sank more than $1 billion into Keystone XL last year to kick-start construction. Officials in the province are considering a trade action against the U.S. to seek compensation.Keystone XL’s price tag ballooned as the project languished, increasing from $5.4 billion to $9 billion.Another question: What to do with pipe already in place at the U.S.-Canada border and other infrastructure along its route.Jane Kleeb, a pipeline opponent in Nebraska, said state regulators should revoke the permit they approved for a route through the state. Otherwise, she said, TC Energy might try to sell the easements to another company.Until the state acts, farmers and ranchers will continue to face TC Energy attorneys in court, “protecting their property from an eminent domain land grab by a foreign corporation,” she said.
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Jeopardy! needed a host, and Lucille Ball had an enthusiastic suggestion for creator Merv Griffin: The smooth-voiced, debonair emcee of the High Rollers game show.That was 1984. Decades later, filling the void left by the late Alex Trebek involves sophisticated research and a parade of guest hosts doing their best to impress viewers and the studio that’s expected to make the call before the new season begins taping later this summer.Think of Sony Pictures Television as clutching the rose, and Mayim Bialik, Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric and Jeopardy! champs Ken Jennings and Buzzy Cohen among the suitors so far, with more to come including Robin Roberts, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and LeVar Burton.Sony has “the most robust team of people I have ever seen looking at this and analyzing it in a very cerebral way,” said executive producer Mike Richards. “It’s a real change from the way casting has traditionally been done on television.””It’s usually been a gut instinct of the head executive: ‘How about that person?'” Richards said.That was producer-entertainer Griffin’s approach when he brought a syndicated version of Jeopardy! to TV, five years after the quiz show’s last network iteration wrapped in 1979 on NBC. A word from Ball, of I Love Lucy fame, and Trebek’s skill and experience sealed his hire.Audience and critical regard for the Canadian-born Trebek grew over the years, which makes finding a worthy replacement both a gesture of respect for the late host and the means to protect a corporate asset. While ratings have shifted under the guest hosts, Jeopardy! remains among the top-ranked syndicated programs in viewership.’Model of perfection’Trebek helped build the show’s “display of excellence with his own excellence. And it’s tremendously difficult to find somebody to replace him, not only because of the status that he had in the American imagination,” said Deepak Sarma, a Case Western Reserve University professor and Netflix cultural consultant. “Anyone who is going to take his position will be judged in the end against this model of perfection.”Game show hosts of Trebek’s era were usually radio and TV broadcasting veterans steeped in the genre, and almost invariably white men. Among the Jeopardy! subs are men and women of color and prospects from a variety of fields, including NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers.The approach makes sense to Louis Virtel, a longtime fan whose vantage point is informed by writing for a game show (Match Game) and competing on Jeopardy! in 2015.”It’s great to see all these different fill-ins. I’m open to suggestions, and I think most people are,” said Virtel, a Jimmy Kimmel Live! writer and co-host of the Keep It podcast. “Jeopardy! is a one-of-a-kind show, and the replacement should be tailored to the game.”What makes for a good Jeopardy! host?”I think establishing a sense of comfort (so) the audience just eases into the game,” Virtel said. “Also a sense of stakes, that a real tough game is being played. It’s called Jeopardy! for a reason. The host is there to make sure we’re all on our toes.”The tryouts are an unusually public form of auditioning, one that could cause flop sweat even for veteran emcees. For actor Bialik of Blossom, The Big Bang Theory and Call Me Kat, any nerves were crowded out by the demands of the job — and she’s a neuroscientist.”There is very little room for not being 100% dialed in to the job of hosting when you are on that stage,” Bialik said in an email. It proved the most “joyful, challenging, transcendent act I have undertaken — second only to giving birth to my second son on the floor of my living room.”Backlash possibleBack in the day, there were only a handful of pioneers like Betty White, the first female game show host to win a Daytime Emmy (for 1983’s Just Men!), and Adam Wade, a Black singer who hosted the 1975 game show Musical Chairs. Wayne Brady, Steve Harvey and Meredith Vieira are among those who made further inroads, with pressure only growing on the entertainment industry to reflect America more broadly on screen.But taking over for an authority figure like Trebek is harder on women and others not typically seen in such roles, said Sarma.”The sorts of expectations placed on a person of color in a leadership position are usually higher than those placed on a white person in position of power,” he said, and any error or “slight movement against the norm is jumped upon … as some tremendous mistake.”There could be backlash from those resentful that Trebek isn’t replaced like-for-like, which Sarma said isn’t far-fetched in this period of social discord.”Sony is in a pickle,” he said.Series producer Richards, the second temporary host after Trebek’s pancreatic cancer death last November at age 80, holds an optimistic view despite the prospect of online trolls and whatever their gripes about the newbie may be.”My hope is that whoever is chosen will be given a chance to prove why they were chosen, without too much static,” he said. “Ultimately, we are trying to put out the best product for our fans. That tends to narrow your focus to a pretty nice North Star, as opposed to, ‘What’s the internet going to say?'”
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Two passengers on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship have tested positive for COVID-19.Cruise operator Royal Caribbean said Thursday the two guests on the Celebrity Millennium ship tested positive during required end-of-cruise testing.Royal Caribbean said the two passengers who shared a room are asymptomatic, in isolation and are being monitored by a medical team.”We are conducting contact tracing, expediting testing for all close contacts and closely monitoring the situation,” Royal Caribbean said in a statement.The cruise operator said the “comprehensive protocols” that the Celebrity Millennium had observed had exceeded “CDC guidelines to protect the health and safety of our guests.”Celebrity Millennium set sail Saturday from St. Maarten and has made several stops around the Caribbean.Royal Caribbean said its crew was fully vaccinated. Passengers were required to show proof of vaccination and negative results from a COVID test conducted within 72 hours of departure. Children too young for vaccination also were required to have negative COVID test results.
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Hire a Hacker: Criminal Organizations Work with Hackers to Look for Targets, Collect Ransom Proceeds
Ransomware cases are on the rise worldwide and criminal groups based in Russia are suspected of being behind some of the biggest recent attacks. Michelle Quinn reports on the changing world of ransomware.Camera: Matt DibbleProduced by: Michelle Quinn
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On Thursday, the eve of the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, U.S. President Joe Biden formally announced what had been disclosed a day earlier — that his administration would donate 500 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low- and middle-income countries. Here’s the latest from White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara, who is traveling with the president.
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The United States may soon look to regulate private companies, mandating higher standards for cybersecurity following a series of damaging hacks and ransomware attacks against key firms and critical infrastructure.U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominees to fill two top cyber roles in his administration warned Thursday that malign actors are currently operating with impunity and that too many private sector organizations have, so far, failed to take the necessary precautions.FILE – In this June 8, 2013 photo, Chris Inglis, then deputy director of the National Security Agency testifies on Capitol Hill. Inglis is being nominated as the government’s first national cyber director at the Department of Homeland Security.”Enlightened self-interest, that’s apparently not working,” Chris Inglis, tapped to be the country’s first national cyber director, told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Market forces, that’s apparently not working.””When they’re conducting critical activities upon which the nation’s interests depend, it may well be we need to step in and we need to regulate or mandate in the same way we’ve done that for the aviation industry or the automobile industry,” he added.Jen Easterly, nominated to head up the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, agreed.”As a nation, we remain at great risk of a catastrophic cyberattack,” she said. “It seems to me that voluntary standards are probably not getting the job done and that there is probably some sort of role for making some of these standards mandatory, to include notification.”The question of how best to take on a range of cyberthreats, from state-sponsored hackers to ransomware networks, has been thrust into the spotlight following a series of high-profile attacks in recent months, starting with discovery of the hack of SolarWinds, a Texas-based software management company, last December.That breach, described by U.S. intelligence agencies as a Russian espionage operation, exposed as many as 18,000 A JBS meatpacking plant is seen in Plainwell, Michigan, June 2, 2021.More recently, ransomware networks forced Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, pauses to speak with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, June 10, 2021.”Congress needs to act,” Mark Warner, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Axios Thursday at a virtual event, when asked about the recent attacks.”The Biden administration has moved aggressively, but they can only do a certain amount of things,” Warner said. “We need to put this mandatory reporting bill in place.”Last month, Biden signed an executive order that requires internet service providers to share certain information about breaches into their networks, mandates higher standards for software development, and creates a playbook for how government agencies should respond to a breach.On Thursday, Inglis told lawmakers that the recent series of high-profile hacks and ransomware attacks “signal the urgent need to secure our national critical infrastructure” and that if confirmed as national cyber director, he would work to strengthen not just the technology but the people using the technology, as well.”What we need to do is make these systems defensible — they’ll never be secure,” Inglis said. “We need to then defend them … such that we can change the decision calculus of adversaries.”Every one of us needs to learn how to cross the cyber street in the same way we learned to cross a physical street when we were young,” he added.
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An executive order signed by President Joe Biden this week dropped a Trump-era measure that barred Americans from downloading TikTok and several other Chinese smartphone apps. But analysts say the order also broadens the scrutiny of foreign-controlled technology.Biden’s move replaced three Trump administration executive orders that sought to ban downloads of TikTok and WeChat and transactions with eight other Chinese apps. The FILE – A counter promoting WeChat, a product of Tencent, for reading books for the blind is displayed at a news conference in Hong Kong, March 18, 2015.”This means that TikTok may have to go through another review, and any decision won’t be easily challenged in court,” he added. “This is the start of Round 2, and TikTok may not get off as easily this time.”When asked during a briefing Wednesday if the White House still intended to ban TikTok or WeChat, an administration official told reporters that all apps listed on the revoked executive orders would be reviewed under the new process and criteria.Key order standsJulian Ku, a law professor at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, told VOA that Biden had maintained one of Trump’s most important executive orders. Trump signed the “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain” order in May 2019, declaring a national emergency posed by foreign adversaries “who are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in information and communications technology and services.”Biden is “not revoking the basic framework, which is that the U.S. government should be trying to prevent transfer of personal data to a foreign adversary,” Ku told VOA in a phone interview. “He reserves the right in theory to come back and go after those companies or other companies that would potentially be threatening the personal data of America.”Both TikTok and WeChat did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.TikTok, a social networking app for sharing short, user-produced video clips, and WeChat, an app that includes messaging, social media and payment platforms, both collect extensive data on their users. The core concern is that the Chinese government will be able to access this data and potentially leverage it for espionage or blackmail. U.S. officials also worry that the heavy censorship of these apps will result in biased political opinions and increased spread of misinformation.A Ban on WeChat and TikTok, a Disconnected World and Two Internets Some policy analysts from America’s closest allies welcome the latest hardline approach by the Trump AdministrationThe American Civil Liberties Union applauded Biden’s move but warned against “taking us down the same misguided path by serving as a smokescreen for future bans or other unlawful actions” with the requirement of a new security review. The rights group considered the Trump-era bans a violation of First Amendment rights.BREAKING: The Biden administration has revoked Trump-era executive orders that targeted TikTok and WeChat and violated our First Amendment rights.— ACLU (@ACLU) June 9, 2021Senator Josh Hawley criticized Biden’s move, calling it a “major mistake.”It “shows alarming complacency regarding China’s access to Americans’ personal information, as well as China’s growing corporate influence,” he said on Twitter.This is a major mistake – shows alarming complacency regarding #China’s access to Americans’ personal information, as well as #China’s growing corporate influence https://t.co/AP8KswDHNW— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) June 9, 2021Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng said in Thursday’s daily briefing that the revocation of Trump-era bans was “a step towards the right direction” and that officials hoped to see Chinese companies “treated fairly.”
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Washington-area residents are increasingly out and about as COVID-19 cases fall in the U.S., including the capital region. But reluctance to get vaccinated persists in some quarters, despite extensive campaigns promoting inoculation — and warnings of the dangers of failing to get the jab. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.Camera: Laurel Bowman
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The U.S. has condemned Nigeria’s continuing ban of Twitter in the country, saying the action “has no place in a democracy.”“Freedom of expression and access to information both online and offline are foundational to prosperous and secure democratic societies,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Thursday in a statement calling for the African nation to reverse its Twitter suspension.He said the U.S. “condemns the ongoing suspension of Twitter by the Nigerian government and subsequent threats to arrest and prosecute Nigerians who use Twitter. The United States is likewise concerned that the Nigerian National Broadcasting Commission ordered all television and radio broadcasters to cease using Twitter.”The U.S. had joined the European Union, Britain, Ireland and Canada last weekend in criticizing the Nigerian action. The Abuja government indefinitely banned Twitter after the U.S. social media company deleted a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari’s account for violating its rules.Tweet about unrestBuhari’s tweet referred to the country’s civil war four decades ago in a warning about recent unrest, referring to “those misbehaving” in violence in the southeastern part of the country. Officials there blame the prohibited separatist group IPOB for attacks on police and election offices.”Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” the president had posted on Twitter.Buhari’s office denied the Twitter suspension was a response to the removal of that post.”There has been a litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real-world violent consequences,” presidency spokesperson Garba Shehu said in a statement.Shehu said the removal of Buhari’s tweet was “disappointing” and that “major tech companies must be alive to their responsibilities.”Twitter said it was working to restore the social media network in Nigeria, but government officials warned they would prosecute violators.
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U.S federal workers will not be required to get a COVID-19 vaccine before returning to the office, according to guidance from the Biden administration released Thursday.The guidance says federal agencies should base their reopening plans on the percentage of employees who are vaccinated, but said revealing vaccination status would be voluntary.The guidance urged agencies to build in more flexibility for some workers, including more remote work and working outside normal business hours.About 60% of the 4-million-person federal workforce has been operating remotely during the pandemic, Reuters reported.Agencies are required to submit their plans for reopening by next week, the guidance stated, and they should be ready to implement the plans by July 19.According to the guidance, agencies’ “eventual post-pandemic operating state may differ in significant ways from [their] pre-pandemic operating state.”
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The top of the world got a sunrise special Thursday — a “ring of fire” solar eclipse. This so-called annular eclipse began at the Canadian province of Ontario, then swept across Greenland, the North Pole and finally Siberia, as the moon passed directly in front of the sun.An annular eclipse occurs when a new moon is around its farthest point from us and appearing smaller, and so it doesn’t completely blot out the sun when it’s dead center. The upper portions of North America, Europe and Asia enjoyed a partial eclipse, at least where the skies were clear. At those locations, the moon appeared to take a bite out of the sun. The moon is seen blotting out 81 percent of the sun during a solar eclipse in Washington, D.C., Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. (Photo by Diaa Bekheet)It was the first eclipse of the sun visible from North America since August 2017, when a dramatic total solar eclipse crisscrossed the U.S. The next one is coming up in 2024.A total lunar eclipse graced the skies two weeks ago.
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