Most Americans support a flexible approach to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, with cities reimposing mask mandates when cases surge, even as a growing number are eager to get on with their lives, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Friday found.

The results of the two-day poll illustrate the balancing act facing U.S. officials as they navigate a health crisis that will not go away.

Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults — including 83% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans — said cities and states should impose mask mandates for indoor public places if there is a resurgence of COVID-19 in their area, the poll found.

At the same time, 44% of respondents said that Americans need to get back to normal and get on with their lives, up from 36% in a poll completed in early February.

The tension between the two sentiments was apparent this week in Philadelphia, which on Monday became the first major U.S. city to reimpose a mask mandate in settings including restaurants, schools and businesses following a rise in local COVID-19 cases, only to reverse course days later.

City officials in Philadelphia, which like most big American cities is run by Democrats and overwhelmingly voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, on Thursday said decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts warranted a recommendation that residents wear masks in indoor public spaces, rather than a mandate.

The city is the largest in the state of Pennsylvania, which will be a key battleground in November 8 midterm elections when Democrats will wage an uphill battle to preserve slim majorities in Congress.

More than two years into a public health crisis that has killed nearly 1 million Americans, most U.S. states and localities have eased mask and vaccination requirements.

Mixed results

A bipartisan majority of poll respondents, including 53% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans, said the coronavirus pandemic has reached the point at which decisions to wear masks or vaccinate should be left to individuals rather than the government.

At the same time, just over half of respondents in the poll said they were more likely to support candidates in November that support continued rules, including mask requirements, to combat the pandemic.

Sixty-five percent of respondents supported mask requirements on airplanes, trains and public transport, even after a federal court on Monday struck down a federal mask mandate on public transportation and airplanes.

The Biden administration is appealing the court ruling, however, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the measure was still needed.

Only 44% of respondents said Biden has delivered on his 2020 election campaign pledge to try to control the pandemic, and just 35% said he had delivered on his promises to restart the economy hit by the health crisis.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States, gathering responses from 1,005 adults. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points. 
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Environmentally, the planet was on a downward slide well before the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution designating April 22 in 2009 as International Mother Earth Day. The aim of this day is to celebrate the wonders of Mother Earth.

The day also is meant to shed light on the issues threatening the health of the world’s ecosystems to ensure their survivability.

Unfortunately, says U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, humans have been poor custodians of our fragile planet, which is facing a triple planetary crisis.

“Climate disruption. Nature and biodiversity loss. Pollution and waste. The triple crisis threatening the well-being and survival of millions of people around the world. The building blocks of happy, healthy lives—clean water, fresh air, a stable and predictable climate—are in disarray, putting the Sustainable Development Goals in Jeopardy.”

Ecosystems support all life on Earth. A healthy ecosystem depends on a healthy planet. Yet, scientists warn the planet is losing 4.7 million hectares of forests every year. They estimate around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction.

And, the warming of the planet, they say, could lead to a climate disaster, rendering the planet uninhabitable.

Despite the dire outlook, Guterres says not all is lost. He says there is still

hope of saving Earth if nations act together to tackle the problems that are endangering the well-being of the planet.

He notes much has been accomplished since the global environmental movement started 50 years ago at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden. He says nations have

negotiated agreements which have, among others, succeeded in shrinking the ozone hole.

They have expanded protections for wildlife and ecosystems, and have ended the use of leaded fuel, thus preventing millions of premature deaths.

“But we need to do much more. And much faster. Especially to avert climate catastrophe. We must limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. And we are far off track…At the same time we must invest rapidly in adaptation and resilience, particularly for the poorest and most vulnerable who have contributed least to the crisis.”

In June, Sweden will host a high-level U.N. meeting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first U.N. conference on the human environment. Guterres says the gathering of world leaders will be a great moment to address the triple planetary emergency.

He says we only have one Mother Earth so everyone must do everything to protect her.
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U.S. President Joe Biden has chosen Earth Day on Friday to sign an executive order to protect some of the country’s largest and oldest trees.

The order the president is scheduled to sign in Washington State will require the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service to identify threats to older trees, such as wildfire and climate change, and develop policies to safeguard them.

Old trees are an ally in fighting climate change because they absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming.  Scientists say redwood forests are among the world’s most efficient means of removing and storing carbon dioxide.  Thousands of U.S. redwoods have been destroyed in recent years.

Biden’s order will require federal land managers to define and count mature and old-growth forests nationwide within a year.

The measure is a safeguard designed to protest U.S. forests that have been decimated by fires, drought, and blight in recent years.

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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Australia’s most populous states will on Friday abolish a raft of coronavirus rules, including compulsory isolation for close contacts. Some vaccine mandates for key workers will also be scrapped.  Health officials in New South Wales and Victoria say the overhaul to the rules is a “big step” and is part of a plan to “co-exist with COVID-19.”

The new policy is a major overhaul of coronavirus restrictions for more than half of the Australian population. Those who may have come into close contact with COVID-19 in the states of New South Wales and Victoria will no longer have to isolate for seven days. They must, however, wear a mask indoors and be tested regularly. They also need special permission to visit hospitals, nursing homes or prisons.

Many business leaders said the quarantine measures were too strict because they forced workers who weren’t infected to stay at home.

“We get to put COVID in the rear-view mirror and finally leave the baggage of restrictions, isolations, and check-ins behind us. It means that the maximum available staff will now be with us,” said Paul Guerra, chief executive of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce.

Health authorities in Australia say a recent omicron wave has peaked and that many restrictions can be lifted because more than 95% of the population has received at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccination.

However, Nancy Baxter, a clinical epidemiologist at Melbourne University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that it is too soon to end mandatory isolation for close contacts.

“Politically, it is expedient for all of these things to be relaxed because it signals that COVID is over,” she said. “But, you know, the problem is COVID hasn’t gotten the memo that COVID is over and what we are seeing in Australia right now is we are seeing one of the world’s highest rate of new cases of COVID per day.”

In other parts of the country, including Western Australia and Queensland, quarantine rules remain in place for those who have come into close contact with confirmed coronavirus cases.

Australia has had some of the world’s toughest coronavirus restrictions, including strict lockdowns. For more than two years its international borders were closed to most foreign nationals.

According to government data, about 5.3 million infections and almost 7,000 deaths have been recorded in Australia since the pandemic began.
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Every year on Earth Day — April 22 — people come together to raise awareness about environmental problems. And this year they will focus on accelerating the transition to a prosperous green economy.    

During the event, also known as International Mother Earth Day, some 1 billion people in 190 countries take part in activities that often include planting trees, removing litter from land and water sites, and educating others about the environment.    

As curtailing climate change remains at the forefront of the global environmental agenda, Earth Day this year focuses on a business aspect of that goal: investing in our planet.   

More businesses need to be pulled into the effort to safeguard the planet, especially to fight climate change, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Earthday.org.   

According to the Earthday.org website, “Smart companies are discovering that they no longer have the choice between going green and growing long term profits — sustainability is the path to prosperity.”    

“If you want to solve climate change, follow the money, because the money is overwhelmingly moving into technological solutions, research and development, all of which are green,” Earthday.org President Kathleen Rogers told VOA in an interview.  

Oil and gas companies that rely on fossil fuels are feeling the pressure.   

Companies that don’t go green face a “giant risk,” Rogers cautioned, because the outcry to curb fossil fuels continues to grow.   

Climate scientist Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University agreed, saying that “the transition towards clean energy is already happening.”    

“The great revolution of this century is clean energy, and those energy companies that embrace clean renewable energy are going to prosper in the long term,” he told VOA.   

Rogers noted, however, that while some companies “may not be extracting oil for carbon,” they are using fossil fuels to make plastic, another environmental hazard.    

Most plastic — bags, bottles, containers, etc. — is not recycled, Rogers said. Instead, it ends up taking space in landfills or floating in the oceans.    

“There are devastating impacts from the use of plastic,” Rogers said. Wildlife sometimes mistake it for food, and research has shown that tiny plastic particles have been found in human blood, she added.   

“Today we are as aware of the dangers of plastic as we are of climate change,” Rogers said, so it is important to find a substitute for plastic.    

Earth Day comes on the heels of a United Nations climate panel report, released earlier this month, that said worldwide carbon emissions increased by 12% over the past decade. Despite that gloomy picture, it’s possible to curtail climate change if governments act now, the report said.   

But many people wonder when that will happen, as many governments have stalled on the issue.   

“Stop placing the burden on individuals to solve the problem, and put more of the burden where it belongs, on governments and companies,” Rogers said. 

And that includes Africa, which suffers from environmental problems such as air pollution, water scarcity and the loss of biodiversity.    

“Every country is facing the effects of the climate crisis” even though the continent’s global emissions only range between 2 to 3 percent, explained Derrick Mugisha, an environmental scientist and regional director in Africa for Earthday.org. African leaders must step up and “minimize excuses to reverse the trends of environmental degradation.”    

“In Asia, increased global warming due to climate change can no longer be ignored,” noted Karuna Singh, Earth Day’s regional director for Asia. The changing weather patterns can cause food insecurity and loss of biodiversity and compel people to become “environmental refugees,” she said.    

India, with its dependence on fossil fuels, creates some of the worst air pollution in the world, she said. And the Indian government has recognized the gloomy findings and initiated a process to have experts suggest strategies that will accelerate solutions.  

For Mann, Earth Day is also a reminder that polluters who deny climate change are no longer credible.    

There has been a carefully orchestrated “deflection campaign by polluters to convince us that it’s all on us,” he said. But “70% of carbon pollution comes from just 100 polluters like fossil fuel companies and oil companies,” he added.   

Denis Hayes, the organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, told VOA the event is just as viable today as it was 52 years ago.   

“It’s not just about picking up litter, but finding various remedies to combat climate change, including more efficient renewable power and greener transportation methods. It’s about building a world that is livable for our children.”   

 
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A U.K. patient with a severely weakened immune system had COVID-19 for almost a year and a half, scientists reported, underscoring the importance of protecting vulnerable people from the coronavirus.

There’s no way to know for sure whether it was the longest-lasting COVID-19 infection because not everyone gets tested, especially on a regular basis like this case.

But at 505 days, “it certainly seems to be the longest reported infection,” said Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease expert at the Guy’s & St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

Snell’s team plans to present several “persistent” COVID-19 cases at an infectious diseases meeting in Portugal this weekend.

Their study investigated which mutations arise — and whether variants evolve — in people with super long infections. It involved nine patients who tested positive for the virus for at least eight weeks. All had weakened immune systems from organ transplants, HIV, cancer or treatment for other illnesses. None were identified for privacy reasons.

Repeated tests showed their infections lingered for an average of 73 days. Two had the virus for more than a year. Previously, researchers said, the longest-known case that was confirmed with a PCR test lasted 335 days.

Persistent COVID-19 is rare and different from long COVID.

“In long COVID, it’s generally assumed the virus has been cleared from your body but the symptoms persist,” Snell said. “With persistent infection, it represents ongoing, active replication of the virus.”

Each time researchers tested patients, they analyzed the genetic code of the virus to make sure it was the same strain and that people didn’t get COVID-19 more than once. Still, genetic sequencing showed that the virus changed over time, mutating as it adapted.

The mutations were similar to the ones that later showed up in widespread variants, Snell said, although none of the patients spawned new mutants that became variants of concern. There’s also no evidence they spread the virus to others.

The person with the longest known infection tested positive in early 2020, was treated with the antiviral drug remdesivir and died sometime in 2021. Researchers declined to name the cause of death and said the person had several other illnesses.

Five patients survived. Two cleared the infection without treatment, two cleared it after treatment and one still has COVID-19. At the last follow-up earlier this year, that patient’s infection had lasted 412 days.

Researchers hope more treatments will be developed to help people with persistent infections beat the virus.

“We do need to be mindful that there are some people who are more susceptible to these problems like persistent infection and severe disease,” Snell said.

Although persistent infections are rare, experts said there are many people with compromised immune systems who remain at risk of severe COVID-19 and who are trying to stay safe after governments lifted restrictions and masks started coming off. And it’s not always easy to know who they are, said Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist in Texas, who was not part of the research.

“Masking in crowds is a considerate thing to do and a way we can protect others,” he said.
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Scientists have successfully bred a threatened species of coral as part of a project that hopes to restore damaged reefs off the coast of Florida that are under threat by a relatively new disease, a coral rescue organization said on Thursday.

Reefs in Florida and the Caribbean are facing growing threat of destruction by the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease that strips coral of its color and ultimately its life altogether.

The Florida Coral Rescue Center has in recent weeks bred hundreds of new coral of a species called rough cactus coral at a 185.80-square-meter facility that houses a total of 18 Florida coral species that are threatened by the disease.

“There is potential to propagate these corals… on a level, that you could return some of these corals to the wild,” said Justin Zimmerman, Florida Coral Rescue Center supervisor, in an interview. “And there’s a potential that you could save the species by doing that.”

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease was first observed near Miami in 2014 and by 2017 had spread to Florida’s northernmost reef tract and later past Key West to the south.

Species that fall victim to it have a mortality rate of 66-100%, making it deadlier than the better-known coral bleaching phenomenon that is typically caused by higher water temperatures associated with climate change.

The Florida Coral Rescue Center is managed by SeaWorld, a marine animal theme park company, and funded in part by the Disney Conservation Fund.

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease represents another threat to the world’s coral reefs, which already face an existential threat due to climate change.

“Large numbers of offspring produced by rescued corals will be essential for restoration of Florida’s Coral Reef,” said Gil McRae of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a U.N.-supported global data network, in October said that 14% of the world’s coral on reefs was already lost between 2009 and 2018.

Damage to coral reefs is among the myriad of issues that activists are seeking to raise awareness of during this year’s observance of Earth Day on Friday. 
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Also, Russian cosmonauts put in work at the International Space Station. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi wraps up The Week in Space.
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Farmers across the country and around the world might one day leave the confines of their tractor cabs and operate autonomous tractors remotely through an app. But will farmers, big and small, be willing to trust the technology? VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Palestinian militants fired a rocket into southern Israel for the first time in months on Monday, in another escalation after clashes at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, a series of deadly attacks inside Israel and military raids across the occupied West Bank.

Israel said it intercepted the rocket, and there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Israel holds Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers responsible for all such projectiles and usually launches airstrikes in their wake. It was the first such rocket fire since New Year’s Eve.

Early Tuesday, Israeli fighter jets carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Gaza Strip, targeting a “weapons manufacturing site” for Hamas, the Israeli military said. There were no reports of injuries.

Hours earlier, the leader of the Islamic Jihad militant group, which boasts an arsenal of rockets, had issued a brief, cryptic warning, condemning Israeli “violations” in Jerusalem.

Ziad al-Nakhala, who is based outside the Palestinian territories, said threats to tighten an Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza imposed after Hamas seized power 15 years ago “can’t silence us from what’s happening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.”

However, no Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rocket fire.

Palestinians and Israeli police clashed over the weekend in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, which has long been an epicenter of Israeli-

Palestinian violence. It is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because the mosque stands on a hilltop where Jewish temples were located in antiquity.

Protests and clashes there this time last year helped trigger an 11-day Gaza war.

Police said they were responding to Palestinian stone-throwing and that they were committed to ensuring that Jews, Christians and Muslims — whose major holidays are converging this year — could celebrate them safely in the Holy Land. Palestinians view the presence of Israeli police at the site as a provocation and said they used excessive force.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday, ahead of the rocket fire, that Israel has been the target of a “Hamas-led incitement campaign.”

The latest tensions come during the rare confluence of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover. Christians are also celebrating their holy week leading up to Orthodox Easter. Tens of thousands of visitors have flocked to Jerusalem’s Old City — home to major holy sites for all three faiths — for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with Israel decades ago and coordinate with it on security matters, have condemned its actions at the mosque. Jordan — which serves as custodian of the site — summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires on Monday in protest.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II discussed the violence with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, agreeing on “the need to stop all illegal and provocative Israeli measures” there, according to a statement. Jordan planned to convene a meeting of other Arab states on the issue.

Israel has been working to improve relations with Jordan over the past year and has recently normalized relations with other Arab states. But the latest tensions have brought renewed attention to the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, which Israel has sought to sideline in recent years.

The U.S. State Department urged all sides to “exercise restraint, to avoid provocative actions and rhetoric, and preserve the historic status quo” at the holy site. Spokesperson Ned Price said U.S. officials were in touch with counterparts across the region to try and calm tensions.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled a closed-door meeting on the tensions for Tuesday.

In Israel, an Arab party that made history last year by joining the governing coalition suspended its participation on Sunday — a largely symbolic act that nevertheless reflected the sensitivity of the holy site, which is at the emotional heart of the century-old conflict.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — which includes the Old City — in the 1967 Mideast War. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally and is building and expanding Jewish settlements across the West Bank, which it views as the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people.

The last serious and substantive peace talks collapsed more than a decade ago.

The Palestinians have long feared that Israel plans to take over or partition the mosque compound. In recent weeks, calls by Jewish extremists to sacrifice animals there have circulated widely among Palestinians on social media, sparking calls to defend the mosque.

Israeli authorities say they have no intention of changing the status quo, and police are enforcing a prohibition on animal sacrifices. Israel allows Jews to visit the site but not to pray there. In recent years large numbers of nationalist and religious Jews have regularly visited under police escort, angering the Palestinians and Jordan.

Israel says police were forced to enter the compound early Friday after Palestinians stockpiled stones and hurled rocks at the gate through which Jewish visitors typically enter. That gate also leads to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

Recent weeks have seen a series of Palestinian attacks inside Israel that killed 14 people. Israel has launched near-daily arrest raids and other military operations in the occupied West Bank that it says are aimed at preventing more.

The military said Monday it arrested 11 Palestinians in operations across the territory overnight. In a raid near the city of Jenin, the army said dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks and explosives toward troops.

Soldiers “responded with live ammunition toward the suspects who hurled explosive devices,” the military said. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men were hospitalized after being critically wounded.

Two of the recent attackers came from in and around Jenin, which has long been a bastion of armed struggle against Israeli rule.

At least 26 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press count. Many had carried out attacks or were involved in clashes, but an unarmed woman and a lawyer who appears to have been a bystander were also among those killed.
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The flight debut of NASA’s mega moon rocket faces additional delays following a string of failed fueling tests. 

Officials said Monday it will be challenging to meet a launch window in early to mid-June. The next opportunity to send an empty capsule to the moon on a test flight would be at the end of June or July. 

The 30-story Space Launch System rocket has been on the pad at Kennedy Space Center for the past month. It will return to the hangar next week for valve and fuel leak repairs. The problems cropped up earlier this month, preventing NASA from filling the rocket’s fuel tanks for a critical dress rehearsal. 

The rocket will likely spend weeks in the hangar before heading back to the pad for a testing redo, said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. 

Managers are considering various options for getting back on track. 

“It’s just a matter of what’s the right time, what’s the right way to do that,” said Tom Whitmeyer, a NASA deputy associate administrator. 

NASA wants this test flight under its belt before putting astronauts on board for the second launch, a lunar flyaround targeted for 2024. The third mission would attempt to land astronauts on the moon around 2025, more than a half-century after NASA’s Apollo moonshots. 
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Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after six months aboard their country’s newest orbital station in the longest crewed mission to date for China’s ambitious space program.

The Shenzhou 13 space capsule landed in the Gobi desert in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, shown live on state TV.

During the mission, astronaut Wang Yaping carried out the first spacewalk by a Chinese woman. Wang and crewmates Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu beamed back physics lessons for high school students.

China launched its first astronaut into space in 2003 and landed robot rovers on the moon in 2013 and on Mars last year. Officials have discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.

On Saturday, state TV showed images from inside the capsule as it traveled at 200 meters per second over Africa before entering the atmosphere.

The trio were the second crew aboard Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace. Its core module, Tianhe, was launched in April 2021. Plans call for completing construction this year by adding two more modules.

Authorities have yet to announce a date for launching the next Tiangong crew.

China is excluded from the International Space Station due to U.S. unease that its space program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.

China was the third nation to launch an astronaut into space on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

Tiangong is China’s third space station following predecessors launched in 2011 and 2016.

The government announced in 2020 that China’s first reusable spacecraft had landed following a test flight but no photos or details of the vehicle have been released.

On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping visited the launch site in Wenchang on the southern island of Hainan from which the Tianhe module was fired into orbit.

“Persist in pursuing the frontiers of world aerospace development and the major strategic needs of national aerospace,” Xi told staff at the site, all of them in military uniform.
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