The top U.S. infectious disease expert on Sunday urged millions of Americans who already are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to get booster shots “to optimize their status.”

To date, 34.5 million of the 196 million fully vaccinated people in the United States have received booster shots, according to the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even as about 60 million people remain unvaccinated against the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser, told ABC’s “This Week” show, “There is no lack of clarity” about the need for the booster shots because of the waning effectiveness of their first vaccination shots over time.

He said the boosters give people “greater durability,” although it is not clear whether those who have been vaccinated might continue to need booster shots every six months or a year in the future.

“We’re going to look at what it means to be boosted, follow the science, follow the data,” Fauci told CNN’s “State of the Union” show in a separate interview.

A CDC advisory panel Friday voted unanimously to make COVID-19 vaccine booster shots available to those 18 and older.

The number of new cases is on the upswing again in the U.S., with more than 90,000 new cases recorded daily in recent days. Fauci said the increase was not unexpected as temperatures turn colder heading into the winter months and more people are confined inside their homes.

But he said that fully vaccinated families and friends can safely get together for annual Thanksgiving Day dinner celebrations this Thursday and not have to wear face masks.

“You can enjoy a happy Thanksgiving this year,” he said. “Enjoy your holiday season with your family.”
…

As coronavirus infections hit Ukraine, a single shift for Dr. Oleksandr Molchanov now stretches to 42 hours — 24 of them in Kakhovka’s hospital, followed by another 18 hours spent visiting tents set up to care for 120 COVID-19 patients.

While vaccination rates in Eastern Europe have generally lagged, Ukraine has one of the lowest in the region. But because of its underfunded and struggling health care system, the situation has turned dire nearly two years since the virus swept into Europe.

The country is setting records almost every day for infections and deaths, most recently on Tuesday, when 838 deaths were reported.

“We are extinguishing the fire again. We are working as at the front, but our strength and capabilities are limited,” said Molchanov, who works at the hospital in the city in southern Ukraine on the Dnieper River. “We are working to the limit.”

After his grueling shift, the 32-year-old doctor goes home to sleep and recover for two days. The next one may be even more challenging.

“The situation is only getting worse,” Molchanov said. “Hospital beds are running out, there are more and more serious patients, and there is a sore lack of doctors and medical personnel.”

The tents beside Kakhovka’s hospital have 120 beds, and 87 of them are occupied, with more patients arriving every day. But Molchanov is one of only three doctors to care for them.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration inherited a health care system that was undermined by reforms launched by his predecessor that closed many small-town hospitals.

In those communities, people have to seek care in large cities. If the problem is severe enough that a patient needs an ambulance, the wait can be as long as eight hours.

“They are bringing patients in extremely difficult condition, with a protracted form” of COVID-19, said Dr. Anatoliy Galachenko, who also works at the tent hospital. “The main reason is the remoteness of settlements and the impossibility of providing assistance at the primary stages of the disease.”

 

Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who leads the opposition Batkivshchyna party, said she has traveled to many hospitals in Ukraine and found shortages everywhere.

“The mortality from COVID that is now recorded in Ukraine, is not just mortality; it is the killing of people by this government, which does not have oxygen, antiviral drugs, beds and normally paid medical personnel,” she said in parliament.

“There are no free beds in the country anymore — a new patient immediately comes to the bed of a discharged person,” Tymoshenko added.

Four coronavirus vaccines are available in Ukraine — Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac — but only 21% of its 41 million people are fully vaccinated. The Ministry of Health reported that 96% of patients with severe COVID-19 weren’t vaccinated.

Zelenskyy has promised every fully vaccinated Ukrainian a payment of 1,000 hryvnia ($38), about 5% of the average monthly wage, but widespread hesitancy persists.

Doctors say the vaccines are highly effective at preventing deaths and hospitalizations, and when infections in vaccinated people do occur, they usually are mild.

 

Oleksandr Kymanov, who refused to get vaccinated, ended up getting infected and was brought to the tent hospital in Kakhovka from the town of Rozdolne, about 20 kilometers away. Connected to supplemental oxygen, he cited various falsehoods about the vaccine, saying it was “useless” and that “people still get infected and get sick.”

Doctors complain that vaccine falsehoods about containing microchips or that they cause infertility and disease is driving the COVID-19 surge.

“People believe in the most absurd rumors about chips, infertility and the dangers of vaccines, elderly people from risk groups massively refuse to be vaccinated, and this is very harmful and increases the burden on doctors,” Molchanov said. “People trust their neighbors more than doctors.”

The government has required teachers, doctors, government employees and other groups of workers to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 1. It also has also begun to require proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test results for travel on planes, trains and long-distance buses.

The regulations have spawned a black market for fake vaccination documents, which sell for the equivalent of $100-$300. A phony government digital app for smartphones is reportedly available, complete with fake certificates installed.

“COVID cannot be fooled with a fake certificate, but many Ukrainians learn about it only in intensive care,” Molchanov said.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said 1,200 groups have been sent throughout Ukraine to verify the authenticity of medical documents. Police already have identified several clandestine printers who were creating fake certificates.

Doctors say the fake certificates make their job harder.

“We are working to the limit, but we are tired of fighting not only with disease, but also with stupidity,” Molchanov said.
…

Police arrested seven rioters in The Hague on Saturday night after youths set fires in the streets and threw fireworks at officers. The unrest came a day after police opened fire on protesters in Rotterdam amid what the port city’s mayor called “an orgy of violence” that broke out at a protest against coronavirus restrictions.

Elsewhere in the Netherlands, two soccer matches in the top professional league had to be briefly halted after fans — banned from matches under a partial lockdown in force in the Netherlands for a week — broke into stadiums in the towns of Alkmaar and Almelo.

Police said via Twitter that seven people were arrested in The Hague and five officers were injured. One needed treatment in a hospital.

Local media outlet Regio 15 reported that rioters threw bicycles, wooden pallets and motorized scooters on one of the fires.

The rioting in The Hague was on a smaller scale than the pitched battles on the streets of Rotterdam on Friday night, when police said three rioters were hit by bullets and investigations were underway to establish if they were shot by police. Earlier police said two people were hit. The condition of the injured rioters was not disclosed.

Officers in Rotterdam arrested 51 people, about half of them minors, police said Saturday afternoon. One police officer was hospitalized with a leg injury suffered in the rioting, another was treated by ambulance staff and countless others suffered minor injuries.

Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb told reporters in the early hours of Saturday that “on a number of occasions the police felt it necessary to draw their weapons to defend themselves” as rioters rampaged through the port city’s central shopping district, setting fires and throwing rocks and fireworks at officers.

“They shot at protesters, people were injured,” Aboutaleb said. He did not have details on the injuries. Police also fired warning shots.

Police combing through video footage from security cameras expect to make more arrests.

Photos from the scene showed at least one police car in flames and another with a bicycle slammed through its windshield.

Riot police and a water cannon restored calm after midnight.

It was one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the Netherlands since coronavirus restrictions were first imposed last year. In January, rioters also attacked police and set fires on the streets of Rotterdam after a curfew came into force.

Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus condemned the events.

“The riots and extreme violence against police officers, riot police and firefighters last night in Rotterdam are disgusting to see,” he said in a statement.

“Protesting is a great right in our society, but what we saw last night is simply criminal behavior. It has nothing to do with demonstrating,” he added.

Police units from around the country raced to Rotterdam to help bring Friday night’s situation under control. Aboutaleb said that gangs of soccer hooligans were involved in the rioting.

An independent investigation into the shootings by police was opened, as is the case whenever Dutch police use their weapons.

The government has said it wants to introduce a law that would allow businesses to restrict the country’s coronavirus pass system to only people who are fully vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 — that would exclude people who test negative.

Earlier Saturday, two protests against COVID-19 measures went off peacefully in Amsterdam and the southern city of Breda.

Thousands gathered on Amsterdam’s central Dam Square, despite organizers calling off the protest. They walked peacefully through the streets, closely monitored by police. A few hundred people also marched through the southern Dutch city of Breda. One organizer, Joost Eras, told broadcaster NOS he didn’t expect violence after consulting with police.

“We certainly don’t support what happened in Rotterdam. We were shocked by it,” he said.

The country has seen record numbers of infections in recent days and a new partial lockdown came into force a week ago.

Local political party Leefbaar Rotterdam condemned the violence in a tweet.

“The center of our beautiful city has this evening transformed into a war zone,” it said. “Rotterdam is a city where you can disagree with things that happen but violence is never, never, the solution.” 

 
…

This was supposed to be the Christmas in Europe where family and friends could once again embrace holiday festivities and one another. Instead, the continent is the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic as cases soar to record levels in many countries.

With infections spiking again despite nearly two years of restrictions, the health crisis increasingly is pitting citizen against citizen — the vaccinated against the unvaccinated.

Governments desperate to shield overburdened health care systems are imposing rules that limit choices for the unvaccinated in the hope that doing so will drive up rates of vaccinations.

Austria on Friday went a step further, making vaccinations mandatory as of Feb. 1.

“For a long time, maybe too long, I and others thought that it must be possible to convince people in Austria, to convince them to get vaccinated voluntarily,” Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said.

He called the move “our only way to break out of this vicious cycle of viral waves and lockdown discussions for good.”

While Austria so far stands alone in the European Union in making vaccinations mandatory, more and more governments are clamping down.

Starting Monday, Slovakia is banning people who haven’t been vaccinated from all nonessential stores and shopping malls. They also will not be allowed to attend any public event or gathering and will be required to test twice a week just to go to work.

“A merry Christmas does not mean a Christmas without COVID-19,” warned Prime Minister Eduard Heger. “For that to happen, Slovakia would need to have a completely different vaccination rate.”

 

He called the measures “a lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

Slovakia, where just 45.3% of the 5.5 million population is fully vaccinated, reported a record 8,342 new virus cases Tuesday.

It is not only nations of central and eastern Europe that are suffering anew. Wealthy nations in the west also are being hit hard and imposing restrictions on their populations once again.

“It is really, absolutely, time to take action,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday. With a vaccination rate of 67.5%, her nation is now considering mandatory vaccinations for many health professionals.

Greece, too, is targeting the unvaccinated. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a battery of new restrictions late Thursday for the unvaccinated, keeping them out of venues including bars, restaurants, cinemas, theaters, museums and gyms, even if they have tested negative.

“It is an immediate act of protection and, of course, an indirect urge to be vaccinated,” Mitsotakis said.

The restrictions enrage Clare Daly, an Irish EU legislator who is a member of the European parliament’s civil liberties and justice committee. She argues that nations are trampling individual rights.

“In a whole number of cases, member states are excluding people from their ability to go to work,” Daly said, calling Austria’s restrictions on the unvaccinated that preceded its decision Friday to impose a full lockdown “a frightening scenario.”

Even in Ireland, where 75.9% of the population is fully vaccinated, she feels a backlash against holdouts.

“There’s almost a sort of hate speech being whipped up against the unvaccinated,” she said.

 

The world has had a history of mandatory vaccines in many nations for diseases such as smallpox and polio. Yet despite a global COVID-19 death toll exceeding 5 million, despite overwhelming medical evidence that vaccines highly protect against death or serious illness from COVID-19 and slow the pandemic’s spread, opposition to vaccinations remains stubbornly strong among parts of the population.

Some 10,000 people, chanting “freedom, freedom,” gathered in Prague this week to protest Czech government restrictions imposed on the unvaccinated.

“No single individual freedom is absolute,” countered professor Paul De Grauwe of the London School of Economics. “The freedom not to be vaccinated needs to be limited to guarantee the freedom of others to enjoy good health,” he wrote for the liberal think tank Liberales.

That principle is now turning friends away from each other and splitting families across European nations.

Birgitte Schoenmakers, a general practitioner and professor at Leuven University, sees it on an almost daily basis.

“It has turned into a battle between the people,” she said.

She sees political conflicts whipped up by people willfully spreading conspiracy theories, but also intensely human stories. One of her patients has been locked out of the home of her parents because she dreads being vaccinated.

Schoemakers said that while authorities had long baulked at the idea of mandatory vaccinations, the highly infectious delta variant is changing minds.

“To make a U-turn on this is incredibly difficult,” she said.

Spiking infections and measures to rein them in are combining to usher in a second straight grim holiday season in Europe.

Leuven has already canceled its Christmas market, while in nearby Brussels a 60-foot Christmas tree was placed in the center of the city’s stunning Grand Place on Thursday but a decision on whether the Belgian capital’s festive market can go ahead will depend on the development of the virus surge.

Paul Vierendeels, who donated the tree, hopes for a return to a semblance of a traditional Christmas.

“We are glad to see they are making the effort to put up the tree, decorate it. It is a start,” he said. “After almost two difficult years, I think it is a good thing that some things, more normal in life, are taking place again.” 

 
…

A chemical that babies give off from their heads calms men but makes women more aggressive, according to new research in the journal Science Advances.

It could be a chemical defense system we inherited from our animal ancestors, the authors speculate, making women more likely to defend their babies and men less likely to kill them.

Odors affect behavior in the animal world in plenty of ways. A rabbit mom will attack her pups if they smell like another female rabbit. Mice whose sense of smell is damaged don’t attack other mice intruding on their territory.

We humans like to think we are above all that. But scientists are increasingly finding that odors affect us more than we think.

In the latest study, scientists tested how people responded to a chemical called hexadecanal, or HEX.

HEX is found in body odor and breath. It’s also found in feces, and raising babies is “the one social setting where humans have extensive exposure” to poo, the authors note. They also discovered that HEX is the most abundant of the many chemicals babies’ heads give off.

The study tested people’s responses to HEX using rigged games designed to aggravate the player. In one game, when the aggravated player is allowed to win, he or she gets to blast the opponent with a loud noise. The louder the noise, the higher the scientists rated the player’s aggression level.

When players sniffed HEX before playing, women’s blasts were louder and men’s were quieter. The effect was somewhat subtle. On a six-point scale, the differences were, on average, roughly between half a point and less than a point in either direction.

The first time he saw the results, they “made absolutely no sense to me,” co-author Noam Sobel, head of the neurobiology department at the Weizmann Institute of Science, said in an interview. “I personally did not see any possible ecological reason for a molecule to increase aggression in women and decrease it in men.”

‘Eureka moment’

But lead author Eva Mishor, who was studying signals of aggression for her doctorate at the Weizmann Institute, noted that in animals, female aggression is usually aimed at defending their young, while male aggression is often directed at the offspring themselves.

“This was totally 100% Eva’s eureka moment,” Sobel said. “If you’re an offspring, you have a vested interest in emitting a molecule that will make women more aggressive and men less aggressive.”

“I said, ‘OK, it’s plausible,’ ” he added. ” ‘But I want to see it again.’ ”

So they did another experiment, this time testing subjects’ reactions while in a brain scanner.

The results were the same. And they saw that HEX activated a part of the brain involved in judging social interactions. This region seemed to turn connections to brain regions that control aggression up or down, depending on the subject’s gender.

There are still plenty of questions to answer. The study did not test babies directly. And the authors noted that they didn’t know if the amount of HEX their subjects smelled was the same as what they would get from sniffing babies’ heads.

“In the beginning, I found it a little bit far-fetched,” said neuroscientist Jessica Freiherr at Friedrich-Alexander University, who was not involved with the research. But “it makes sense,” she said in an interview.

Smelling sweat from angry people made others anxious, according to research by Freiherr and her colleagues. Other studies have found that subjects identified fear in faces faster when they smelled sweat collected from people who were afraid. And women’s tears lowered testosterone and sexual arousal in men, another study from Sobel’s lab found.

“We still are those animals,” Freiherr said. “Maybe not having our nose on the floor all the time, but we can still sniff out those signals.”
…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday expanded emergency use authorization for the booster shot of the PFizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to all U.S. adults.

The decision was announced by the drug companies Friday and comes after at least 10 states already had expanded their booster programs to fight COVID-19 surges.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still has to authorize the expanded distribution of the booster doses before people can start receiving their third shot, and the CDC’s independent panel of vaccine experts is scheduled to meet Friday to review the new data.

During the White House COVID-19 response team meeting Wednesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the agency will quickly review the safety and effectiveness data and make recommendations as soon as the FDA makes its decision.

Walensky said the CDC has compiled evidence demonstrating boosters are working. Through its National Healthcare Safety Network, the agency has been studying new data from COVID-19 cases in long-term care facilities.

She said when comparing cases of COVID-19 between those who are vaccinated with two doses and those who have received a third, booster dose, the rate of disease is markedly lower for those who received their booster shot.

With CDC approval, boosters could be available for all as early as Saturday.

 

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

A partial lunar eclipse could be seen from the Americas and East Asia on Friday.

The phenomenon, when the Earth partially aligns between the sun and the full moon, was visible in much of the United States, in South America and in Philippines and Japan.

“This one’s been kind of in the news as the longest partial eclipse in a very long time,” Resi Baucco, a public program supervisor at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona said during a livestream of the eclipse. “It’s actually the longest partial eclipse since 1440 and it is going to be the longest until 2669.”
…

In a move that has some environmental activists charging it with hypocrisy, the Biden administration has approved the sale of oil and gas drilling rights to more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico — an act it says was mandated by a federal court ruling.

The auction on Wednesday by an arm of the U.S. Interior Department resulted in leases for 1.7 million of the 80 million available acres, with Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. among the top buyers. Some 308 lots were purchased for a total of $191.7 million, though it is not certain exactly how much of that will ultimately be developed. 

The decision came just days after the close of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), at which President Joe Biden promised that the United States would be “leading by the power of our example” in the effort to achieve a zero-emissions future.

While some environmental groups accuse the administration of going back on its word, the Biden administration has said that it was forced to agree to the sale by a federal court ruling. 

Shortly after taking office in January, Biden announced a moratorium on new leases for oil and gas projects on federal property. Republican attorneys general in more than a dozen states filed lawsuits challenging the halt in lease auctions, and in June, a U.S. District Court judge in Louisiana issued an injunction instructing the Biden administration to resume selling drilling rights. 

At the time, a spokesperson for the Interior Department, which oversees the leasing of public lands for energy development, said, “We are reviewing the judge’s opinion, and will comply with the decision.” 

In 2018, a report from the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the operations of the fossil fuels industry — that is, the extraction, refining, and transportation of fuels, before they are actually used by the consumer — is responsible for about 23% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. The report is frequently cited by environmental groups opposed to the leasing of public lands for energy development. 

Wednesday’s auction took place despite a pending lawsuit filed in Washington by the climate activist group Earthjustice. The suit alleges that an environmental impact study conducted in 2017, which the Biden administration used to justify the auction, was flawed and cannot be relied on. 

Other options available 

Brettny Hardy, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, told VOA that Biden had several other options for preventing the auction of the new leases but chose not to exercise them. 

“The administration keeps saying that his hands were tied because of this Louisiana court ruling. But the administration has a ton of discretion under the underlying statute which is at play here, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.” 

She acknowledged that the administration is appealing the district court ruling but criticized it for not seeking a stay of the judge’s ruling while the appeal is decided.

Additionally, she said, the administration is aware of the failings of the environmental impact study underpinning the lease auction, pointing out that two other courts have already ruled that the greenhouse gas emissions model it used was insufficient. The administration could have used that knowledge to declare the auction illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Energy industry pleased 

By contrast, the energy industry and its supporters in Washington cheered the move.

In a statement provided to VOA, Frank Macchiarola, American Petroleum Institute senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs, said: “U.S. oil and natural gas production on federal lands and waters delivers the affordable and reliable energy America needs while providing much-needed funding for conservation, education, infrastructure and other important state and local priorities.” 

“Notably, U.S. oil and natural gas produced offshore in the Gulf of Mexico is also among the lowest carbon barrels produced in the world, according to U.S. Department of the Interior analysis that shows emissions from international substitutions are more carbon intensive,” he added.

In a statement, Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group for the offshore energy industry, called on the Biden administration to offer more lease auctions in the future. 

“Continued leasing is critical to our energy future; good decisions today will benefit America tomorrow,” he said, adding that certainty about future leases “will advance climate progress, stimulate continued economic growth, support high-paying jobs throughout the country, and strengthen our long-term national security.” 

Lease extensions 

It will take between five and 10 years for actual oil production to begin on the new sites, but once a site is producing oil, the energy company running the drilling operation is typically allowed to extend the lease indefinitely. 

The Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf, a 160-million-acre expanse that includes the areas sold Wednesday, holds about 48 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. 

A ‘carbon bomb’ 

Environmental organizations said this week that they remain focused on pressuring the Biden administration to roll back the leases and reimpose the moratorium on additional auctions. 

“The Biden administration is lighting the fuse on a massive carbon bomb in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“This will inevitably lead to more catastrophic oil spills, more toxic climate pollution and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast,” she said. “Biden has the authority to stop this, but instead he’s casting his lot in with the fossil fuel industry and worsening the climate emergency.” 

 
…

The intended increase in effort and manufacturing comes as US lawmakers question inequities in global vaccine distribution and vaccination rates among richer and poorer nations. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
Producer: Katherine Gypson
…

The longest partial lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years, which will bathe the moon in red, will be visible Thursday and Friday for a big slice of humanity. 

The celestial show will see the moon almost completely cast in shadow as it moves behind the Earth, reddening 99% of its face. 

The spectacle will be visible for all of North America, as well as parts of South America, Polynesia, Australia and northeast Asia. 

Sky-watchers in those parts who are blessed with a cloud-free view will see a slight dimming of the moon from 0602 GMT Friday as it enters Earth’s penumbra, the outer shadow. 

An hour later it will appear as if someone has taken a giant bite out of the lunar disc as it starts to pass into the umbra, the full shadow. 

By 0845 GMT the moon will appear red, with the most vivid coloring visible at peak eclipse 18 minutes later.

The whole process then goes into reverse as the moon slips out of shadow and carries on its endless journey around our planet. 

The dramatic red is caused by a phenomenon known as “Rayleigh scattering,” where the shorter blue light waves from the sun are dispersed by particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. 

Red light waves, which are longer, pass easily through these particles. 

“The more dust or clouds in Earth’s atmosphere during the eclipse, the redder the moon will appear,” a NASA website explains. 

From the moment the eclipse proper begins — when the moon enters the Earth’s shadow — to when it ends will take more than three hours, 28 minutes. 

That is the longest partial eclipse since 1440, around the time Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press, and won’t be beaten until the far-off future of 2669. 

The good news for moon watchers, however, is that they won’t have to wait that long for another show. There will be a total lunar eclipse on November 8 next year, NASA says. 

And even better news for anyone wanting to watch is that no special equipment is necessary, unlike for solar eclipses. 

Binoculars, telescopes or the naked eye will give a decent view of the spectacle — as long as the weather here on Earth plays ball.
…

As researchers at U.S space agency NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory prepare for the 16th flight of Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter, the team has used recently downloaded data from the Mars mission to create the best video yet of one of Ingenuity’s previous flights. 

The 1.8-kilogram aircraft arrived on the planet packed away on NASA’s Perseverance rover when it landed on Mars in February. Originally designed to be a simple demonstration project to prove flight was possible in the thin Martian atmosphere, the aircraft has far exceeded expectations and has completed 15 flights. 

JPL scientists say Ingenuity’s 16th flight is scheduled to take place no earlier than Saturday. In the meantime, they have been examining the video footage taken by Perseverance of the helicopter’s 13th flight on September 4, which they say provides the most detailed look yet of the Martian aircraft in action. 

The Ingenuity team said the helicopter is providing NASA with data to guide the Perseverance rover. They said the 2 minutes, 40.5 seconds Flight 13 was one of Ingenuity’s most complicated. It involved flying into varied terrain within a geological feature known as the “Séítah” and taking images of an outcrop from multiple angles for the rover team. 

The images, taken from an altitude of 8 meters, complement those collected during Ingenuity’s previous flights, providing valuable insight for Perseverance scientists and rover drivers. 

The video was captured by the rover’s two-camera Mastcam-Z. One video clip of Flight 13 shows most of Ingenuity’s flight profile. The other provides a closeup of takeoff and landing, which was acquired as part of a science observation intended to measure the dust plumes generated by the helicopter. 

Justin Maki, JPL’s Mastcam-Z principal operator, said the video shows the value of the camera system, and while the helicopter is little more than a speck in the wide view, “It gives viewers a good feel for the size of the environment that Ingenuity is exploring.” 

Ingenuity’s performance will guide how future missions will be designed and how those missions will utilize aircraft to help determine where rovers should go and where they cannot. 

Aside from solar batteries, a camera and a transmitter, Ingenuity carries no scientific instruments. 
…

This week, space junk threatens the International Space Station, forcing four new arrivals who came on board to take safety measures. Plus, tragedy befalls a space tourist, and the longest partial lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space

Produced by: Arash Arabasadi
…

Someday soon, drivers entering downtown Manhattan can expect to pay for the pollution and traffic jams they cause.

Congestion pricing is a way that places such as Stockholm and Singapore are trying to unclog streets and clean up their air by making it more expensive for drivers to bring dirty vehicles into town.

With traffic bringing many cities to a standstill, air pollution killing an estimated 4 million people per year, and concerns about climate change growing, interest in finding ways to clean up transportation is increasing worldwide.

Economists love congestion pricing. Drivers? Not so much.

But voters in cities that have tried it have come to accept it.

The policy typically works by drawing a border around a city’s downtown business district and charging vehicles to cross the border. Some cities have gone beyond congestion charges and impose extra fees based on the vehicle model’s pollution levels.

London keeps track of vehicles with a network of cameras that photograph license plates. In other cities, cars carry electronic tags. Some cities, rather than identifying individual vehicles, simply bar vehicles on certain days based on license plate numbers.

Free roads aren’t free

New York City has begun holding public meetings to work out its congestion pricing plan, the first in the United States.

Under current proposals, drivers would pay between $9 and $23 to drive passenger vehicles south of Central Park, with some exceptions.

The money raised would go toward improving the city’s public transit system.

The idea behind congestion pricing is to make people pay for something that they generally think of as free but isn’t, said Williams College economist Matthew Gibson.

“When I decide to travel a mile on an unpriced public road, I’m not thinking about the cost I’m imposing on other members of society in the form of accident risk, air pollution and congestion,” he said.

Congestion pricing imposes that cost. If the cost is high enough, drivers will look for alternatives such as public transportation, carpooling, biking or walking.

Studies have found that congestion pricing does work for the most part. But it needs to evolve.

For example, in 2008, Milan started charging high-pollution vehicles a fee to enter the city’s central business district. It worked. Traffic cleared up — for a while.

Drivers did what the policy intended for them to do: They replaced their old, dirty vehicles with newer, cleaner ones. And they hit the roads again. Traffic came back.

So, in 2012, the city imposed a congestion fee on all vehicles.

A glimpse at how effective the policy was came when an Italian court put it on hold temporarily in the middle of 2012.

Traffic spiked immediately.

Researchers found that the congestion fee was reducing traffic by 14.5% and lowering air pollution between 6% and 17% — a big drop, considering the pollution fee had already cleaned up vehicle emissions.

Congestion and pollution fees don’t always do much to clear the air, experts say. Sometimes other pollution sources, such as coal-fired power plants or heavy industries, cause more pollution than vehicles, for example. And sometimes other measures, such as increasing vehicle efficiency standards, may make the impact of the fees less obvious.

Winning over voters

What is obvious, studies have found, is how congestion and pollution fees clear the roads.

In Milan, for example, “the immediate result was the reduction of traffic congestion,” said Bocconi University economist Edoardo Croci. “It is an immediate and evident impact that people notice.”

That impact has persuaded voters to keep these policies, even though most were opposed to them at first.

Milan’s pollution fee was not popular when officials proposed it. But voters agreed to expand the fee to all vehicles in 2012 after they saw how the pollution fee had cleared the streets.

The same thing happened in Stockholm. Solid majorities opposed a congestion fee when the city launched a six-month pilot program in 2006. But voters approved it permanently after the pilot ended.

“The initial opposition was only because of the fear of something new,” Croci said. “But once the advantages were evident, most people were in favor of the charge.”

Both cities invested heavily in public transit before the fees kicked in.

That’s critical, experts say. The policy won’t work if people don’t have another option besides driving.

A hard sell in U.S.?

While New York City has an extensive public transit system, congestion pricing “might be a much harder pitch to make for other large U.S. cities,” said economics Ph.D. candidate Matt Tarduno at the University of California, Berkeley.

In sprawling cities such as Los Angeles or Phoenix, he said, “people would say, ‘Well, I don’t want to pay this toll, and if I don’t pay the toll and can’t drive, what else am I going to do?'”

Without good alternatives, congestion fees can hit the poor disproportionately. Critics note that rich people can afford to drive polluting cars downtown if they want.

New York City plans to exempt people earning less than $60,000 per year.

It’s a balancing act, Tarduno said. Lower-income drivers tend to drive older and less efficient cars, which can make the policy less effective.

New York is planning a lengthy public review process, followed by months more to roll out the program. It may be another two years before Manhattan drivers start paying for their pollution and congestion.
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One of the takeaways from this year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow is that much of the world is actively planning for a world without oil and coal. But as Jessica Stone reports, some of the world’s worst polluters, at least for now, need fossil fuels. Video editor – Keith Lane.
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Australian public health experts are making new efforts to curb the use of tobacco products, comparing its adverse effects on health to that of asbestos and lead paint.  

Australia has led the world on tobacco control, with plain packaging laws introduced in 2012, higher taxes and graphic public health warnings. 

But campaigners say those steps are not enough to stop people from smoking. Public health experts want to remove cigarettes from supermarket and convenience store shelves.   

Fourteen percent of Australians smoke, according to the government’s latest figures.  In 1977, 37% of Australians smoked. In an article published Monday in The Medical Journal of Australia, researchers said tobacco use was declining too slowly. 

Coral Gartner is the director of the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame, a government body. 

She says the availability of tobacco in stores and supermarkets needs to be further restricted. 

“You know, it has been a very slow road that we have traveled to get to this point.  We are at the point now where we think, you know, it is time to start thinking about how long is it really suitable to be just selling this product in a general retail environment. We are not talking about making it an illicit product or banning smoking as such,” Gartner said.

Researchers have said that studies in Australia, England, Canada, and Hong Kong have shown that half of all adults want tobacco sales to be phased out. In April, the New Zealand government proposed several new measures that would sharply reduce the number of tobacco retail outlets. 

Government health experts have said that smoking was the leading cause of preventable diseases and death in Australia. 

The government said it would continue “to explore a range of new evidence-based measures” to further cut tobacco consumption.  
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The White House says about 10% of eligible kids aged 5 to 11 have received a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine since its approval for their age group two weeks ago.

At least 2.6 million kids have received a shot, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday, with 1.7 million doses administered in the last week alone, roughly double the pace of the first week after approval. It’s more than three times faster than the rate adults were vaccinated at the start of the nation’s vaccination campaign 11 months ago.

Zients said there are now 30,000 locations across the country for kids to get a shot, up from 20,000 last week, and that the administration expects the pace of pediatric shots to pick up in the coming days.

Kids who get their first vaccine dose by the end of this week will be fully vaccinated by Christmas, assuming they get their second shot three weeks after the first one.

Pace varies among states

State-by-state breakdowns of doses given to the age group haven’t been released by the White House or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but figures shared by states show the pace varies. About 11% to 12% of children in that age group have received their first doses in Colorado, Utah and Illinois, but the pace is much slower in places like Idaho (5%), Tennessee (5%) and Wyoming (4%), three states that have some of the lowest rates of vaccination for older groups.

The White House was stepping up its efforts to promote kid vaccination, with first lady Jill Biden and the singer Ciara taping a video Wednesday encouraging shots for kids.

The first lady also visited a Washington pediatric care facility along with Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Washington Mystics’ Alysha Clark and the Washington Wizards’ Thomas Bryant.

“You’re the real heroes,” Biden told newly vaccinated kids. “You have your superpower and now you’re protected against COVID.”

Biden also warned parents against misinformation around the vaccines and emphasized their safety.

“I want you to remember and share with other parents: The vaccine protects your children against COVID-19,” she said. “It’s been thoroughly reviewed and rigorously tested. It’s safe. It’s free, and it’s available for every single child in this country 5 and up.” 
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A Ghanian entrepreneur is helping prepare students in rural areas for the modern economy by teaching them about robotics. His roaming classes have been so successful that Ghana’s Ministry of Education has adopted the lessons in schools. Victoria Amunga reports from Accra, Ghana. Camera – Senanu Tord. Video editor – Henry Hernandez.
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With the Indian capital enveloped in a haze of toxic smog, authorities ordered six thermal plants in the city’s vicinity to shut temporarily, closed schools and colleges indefinitely and imposed work-from-home restrictions to control pollution levels that turned severe on several days this month.

A panel of the federal environment ministry has also banned construction activity until the end of the week and barred trucks, except those carrying essential commodities, from entering the city as part of the series of emergency measures.

Environmentalists pointed out that these steps would only marginally mitigate the air pollution crisis that grips New Delhi every winter.

“The emergency action is not a magic bullet that will address the pollution crisis,” said Anumita Rowchowdhury, executive director research and advocacy at New Delhi’s Center for Science and Environment. “It only ensures that it will not worsen the pollution but it will not clean the air.”

The world’s most polluted capital city has recorded levels for dangerous particles known as PM 2.5 that settle deep inside lungs many times higher than the standards set by the World Health Organization.

The haze that covers the city is a mix of fumes, including vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, construction dust, farm fires and fumes caused by the burning of waste in the open. In winter, the pollutants hang over the city due to low wind speeds.

City authorities in Delhi have told the Supreme Court they are considering a weekend lockdown, similar to what was implemented during the pandemic. If so, it would be the first of a kind “pollution” lockdown.

The toxic smog is not restricted to the capital city — skies across much of North India also turn grey at this time of the year leaving millions gasping for air.

But while Delhi has taken some steps to combat the dirty air by shutting down coal-fired power stations and switching most industry and public transport to clean fuel, the same standards have not been imposed by neighboring states, experts point out.

“Air does not respect political boundaries. The time has come to take a regional approach and scale up stringent action in the entire Indo-Gangetic plains,” said Roychowdhury. “For example, Delhi is the only city to have switched industry to natural gas, imposed clean fuel standards for vehicles and shut down coal plants. But the same needs to be done elsewhere. We really need to ramp up our energy transition.”

However, phasing out coal, which still powers 70% of India’s electricity grid, will not be easy. As North India battled its annual air pollution crisis, Indian delegates to the recent climate summit held in Scotland said developing countries were entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels.

“How can anyone expect that developing countries can make promises about phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies?” Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav asked at the summit. “Developing countries have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication.”

India and China were blamed for watering down a commitment to phasing out coal at the summit.

But in India, environmentalists said the country’s concerns were genuine. “The dilemma that India faces is, how quickly can it make the transition from coal?” said Chandra Bhushan, who heads the Delhi-based International Forum for Environment. “While coal does contribute to air pollution and climate change, we cannot shut down coal right away and replace it with renewables in a hurry. This is going to be a process.”

Meanwhile, the severe air pollution has led to a public health emergency with many residents in Delhi and other North Indian cities struggling with respiratory problems and doctors warning it is a serious health hazard.

The dirty air kills more than a million people every year in India according to a report by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, a U.S. research group.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that 100,000 Americans died of drug overdose between May 2020 and April 2021 — a nearly 30% increase over the previous year. 

While not an official count, the CDC says it can confirm 98,000 deaths so far during the period and estimates the total number will likely be around 100,300 after causes of death are made official. It can take months to investigate and finalize drug fatalities. 

Experts say the increased availability of the deadly opioids, particularly fentanyl, is a major driver, accounting for 64% of overdose deaths.

Another factor is the COVID-19 pandemic which made it hard for drug users to get treatment or support. 

“What we’re seeing are the effects of these patterns of crisis and the appearance of more dangerous drugs at much lower prices,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told CNN. “In a crisis of this magnitude, those already taking drugs may take higher amounts and those in recovery may relapse. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen and perhaps could have predicted.” 

In a statement, President Joe Biden called the number a “tragic milestone,” and said his administration “is committed to doing everything in our power to address addiction and end the overdose epidemic.”

Overdose deaths are now more common than deaths from car crashes, guns and the flu. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the U.S., killing 660,000 in 2019. 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 
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News outlets say the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is planning to spend $5 billion to purchase Pfizer’s new experimental antiviral pill designed to treat COVID-19, enough to cover 10 million courses of treatment. 

The revelation comes a day after the U.S. drugmaker announced it had signed a deal with Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed public health group, to authorize generic drugmakers to produce its experimental COVID-19 pill for 95 countries. 

The deal will make the pill available for low- and middle-income countries comprising about 53% of the world’s population.  

Pfizer says its new pill, called Paxlovid, reduces the risks of hospitalization and death by nearly 90% in people with mild to moderate coronavirus cases. Independent experts recommended ending Pfizer’s study because of its encouraging results.

Tuesday’s agreement between Pfizer and the Medicines Patent Pool coincided with Pfizer’s application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize use of the drug on an emergency basis.  

“It’s quite significant that we will be able to provide access to a drug that appears to be effective and has just been developed, to more than 4 billion people,” said the Medicines Patent Pool’s Esteban Burrone. 

Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, said the organization is disappointed the agreement does not make the pill available to all countries. 

“The world knows by now that access to COVID-19 medical tools needs to be guaranteed for everyone, everywhere, if we really want to control this pandemic,” she said. 

Pfizer will not receive payments on sales in low-income countries, where fewer than 1% of its COVID-19 vaccine doses have been provided. It also will waive royalties on sales in all countries covered by the deal while COVID-19 remains a public health emergency.  

The Medicines Patent Pool announced in October that another U.S. drugmaker, Merck, agreed to allow other companies to make its COVID-19 pill available in 105 poorer countries. 

Merck says its antiviral pill reduces the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 by half when administered soon after the appearance of the first symptoms. 

The Biden administration has pledged to spend about $2.2 billion to purchase about 3.1 million doses of Merck’s pill once it has been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. An FDA advisory panel will meet on November 30 to discuss Merck’s COVID-19 pill. British drug regulators granted authorization for Merck’s pill earlier this month.  

Despite decisions by Pfizer and Merck to share their COVID-19 drug patents, Pfizer and other vaccine-makers have refused to release their vaccine formulas for broader production.  

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